For those who haven’t yet seen Whipped, Sean Holman’s documentary on party discipline in the B.C. legislature is now available through CPAC’s website. And it’s well worth a watch (particularly on a stormy Saturday). But I will point out that there may be an important distinction between an elected representative
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Accidental Deliberations: The unengaged majority
Samara has released a study on the sadly limited level of public participation in Canadian politics and community activities. And Susan Delacourt and Misty Harris both follow up – with Harris catching what looks to me like the most important point: Sixty per cent of Canadians say they haven’t discussed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Frances Russell discusses the inevitable collateral damage to our planet from the Cons’ war on science: Over the past 200 years, Canadians built on flood plains because “we thought we had relatively stable climate — the climate we experienced over the past century,”
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Housing Policy Under Harper
Today I gave a presentation on Canadian housing policy at the annual conference of the European Network for Housing Research. Points raised in the presentation include the following: -Fiscal context, more so than which party has been in government, appears to have shaped federal housing policy in Canada over the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Polly Toynbee writes that there’s no magic involved in collecting fair tax rates from the rich – only a need for the political will to fund public priorities: Cutting the 50% top rate suggests no great enthusiasm for rigorous taxing. Last week’s ONS
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Andrew Gavin Marshall surveys the grossly disproportionate amount of wealth and power held by a small elite class: In 2006, a UN report revealed that the world’s richest 1% own 40% of the world’s wealth, with those in the financial and internet sectors comprising the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Deep thought
“The Conservatives are being asinine, let’s shut down Parliament!” isn’t a recipe for more functional politics, it’s a means of encouraging more asinine behaviour from the Conservatives.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how Tom Mulcair’s effective cross-examination of Stephen Harper serves as only one step toward the government we should want – i.e., one thoughtful and responsible enough to actually withstand answering real questions. For further reading… – Plenty of other commentators are rightly pointing out Harper’s predictable retreat into
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how a narrow focus on pursuing a seemingly safe path to a bare majority government may have contributed to the B.C. NDP’s stunning election defeat this week. Needless to say, there’s no lack of other commentary on the election, with Alice Funke, Sixth Estate, Michael Stewart, Paul Ramsey
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Arthur Haberman argues that our universal public health care system helps contribute to a more democratic society: There is something that political philosophers — those like Tocqueville and Mill in the 19th century — have come to call living democratically. By this it
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, building off of my previous analysis on the current positioning of Canada’s federal parties. For further reading, see:– Bob Hepburn and Carol Goar on the purpose and effect of attack ads in general; and– Andrew Coyne on the Cons’ particular brand of personal attack, featuring some suggestions to reduce
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Tim Harper reminds us why Brad Wall is thoroughly off base in claiming that it’s the duty of every Canadian politician to demonstrate constant fealty to his resource-sector puppet-masters: The Conservatives, of course, would like the entire country to come together behind their
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has unveiled its alternative federal budget – which highlights the choice between the Cons’ needless austerity, and the 200,000-300,000 extra jobs which could be created alongside important social improvements which could be brought about through well-placed
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Chrystia Freeland comments on the disproportionate influence of the super-rich in a democratic system which is supposed to value citizens equally: “I think most Americans believe in the idea of political equality,” Callahan told me. “That idea is obviously corrupted when in 2012,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Plenty more commentators are taking a turn duly mocking the Cons’ Senate shenanigans. Here’s Tabatha Southey: In fact, Mr. Duffy lives and votes in Kanata, a suburb of Ottawa, in a home he purchased five years before he was appointed to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Molly Ball writes about the false assumptions underlying far too much political discussion – with one looming as particularly significant for Canadian purposes: 5. Campaign ads really, really, really don’t make much difference. In this part of the paper, Fiorina’s exasperation becomes
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Andrew Nikiforuk discusses how Alberta and other petro-states have ended up destroying their treasuries and their democratic systems alike by relying excessively on volatile resource prices: Thanks to the volatile nature of the world’s most lucrative commodity, various petro states find themselves short
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Joseph Stiglitz discusses how the combination of increasingly concentrated wealth and deteriorating has eliminated any pretense of equal opportunity within the U.S.: It’s not that social mobility is impossible, but that the upwardly mobile American is becoming a statistical oddity. According to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Shawn McCarthy discusses the Cons’ latest plan to sell Keystone XL to the U.S. – which involves hoping that the best-resourced government on the planet will be suckered into accepting a transparently false pretense that the Cons have the slightest interest in addressing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Tabatha Southey rightly turns Brad Trost into a poster boy for the Harper Cons’ deliberate aversion to critical self-evaluation: We shouldn’t be too quick to judge. Let’s instead take a cue from Conservative MP Brad Trost, who, when questioned regarding the calls, said,
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