An oped based on my and Brock Ellis’ recent report, Canada’s Carbon Liabilities, was published in iPolitics (alas, behind a pay wall): Canada’s economic development model is on a collision course with the urgent need for global climate action. Worldwide, extreme weather events from drought to floods to powerful storms
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The Progressive Economics Forum: Carbon bubbles and fossil fuel divestment
Divestment from fossil fuels is an idea whose time has come. Sparked by Bill McKibben’s Rolling Stone article last summer, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math”, divestment campaigns are now up and running on over 300 university campuses in the US, with 4 early victories already notched. Students in Canada have declared tomorrow (March 27) Fossil
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Conservative Pension Behavioural Utopianism
Conservatives like to portray themselves as hard-bitten “realists” who look objectively at the world as it really is and shake their heads at silly liberals with our rose coloured glasses. Yet I often find conservatives pushing policy ideas that are based on Utopian standards of human behaviour. This is where they make
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Two Messages For Tim Hudak
I have a bit of a busy morning ahead, so just a brief post for now. I have written many times about young Tim Hudak, the lad who aspires to become Premier of Ontario through rhetoric that demonizes the public sector, public sector pensions, and unions. Apparently, constructive policy and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – While we may sometimes lose track of the continuing differences between Canadian politics and those in the U.S., here’s a reminder of how we’re familiar with a far wider and more progressive range of public policy choices: while we’ve seen plenty of discussion
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Saturday reading. – Kate Heartfield worries that the NRA knows exactly what it’s doing with its jaw-dropping response to the Newtown shootings – and that it should be all too familiar based on the tactics of the Harper Cons: It’s ridiculous, but ridiculous works, time and
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Jim Stanford is the latest to point out that the Cons see accountability and transparency solely as punishments to be inflicted on their perceived enemies, not as values to be applied to their own decision-making: Following Mr. Hiebert’s logic, any organization in society
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Thomas Walkom discusses the meaning of the Ontario Libs’ attempt to take collective bargaining rights away from teachers in the context of the wider labour movement: The union movement is one of the last remnants of the great postwar pact between labour,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: #skndpldr Roundup
With official forums on hold until January but the holiday lull not quite yet here, Saskatchewan’s NDP leadership candidates have been fairly active over the last little while. So let’s take a look at the latest developments. – The latest fund-raising numbers are available here, and charted by Alice below:
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Bill Curry reports on Jim Flaherty’s arbitrary choice to declare that Canadians can’t have any more CPP retirement security than the most callous provincial government in the country is willing to grant them. And Martin Regg Cohn rightly responds that our reaction
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Premiers Goal to Increase CPP both Pragmatic and Desirable
“Flaherty said Friday the federal government is concerned about increasing CPP contributions at the current time because it would slap an additional financial burden on employers during fragile economic times, potentially threatening their ability to hire workers. The federal government can’t unilaterally change the CPP; amending it requires the backing
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Premiers Goal to Increase CPP both Pragmatic and Desirable
“Flaherty said Friday the federal government is concerned about increasing CPP contributions at the current time because it would slap an additional financial burden on employers during fragile economic times, potentially threatening their ability to hire workers. The federal government can’t unilaterally change the CPP; amending it requires the backing
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Premiers Goal to Increase CPP both Pragmatic and Desirable
“Flaherty said Friday the federal government is concerned about increasing CPP contributions at the current time because it would slap an additional financial burden on employers during fragile economic times, potentially threatening their ability to hire workers. The federal government can’t unilaterally change the CPP; amending it requires the backing of two-thirds of the provinces representing two-thirds of the population. “This is not the time to put another burden on employers and dampen employment prospects for Canadians. That’s my view. Not everyone agrees with that view,” Flaherty told reporters Friday in Ottawa.
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Nothing New Here
In a valiant effort to not be forgotten by a fickle public, Tim Hudak is at it again, advocating a policy that is guaranteed to find favour with the public: going after the pension plans of civil servants. Unfortunately for young Tim, this repetition …
Continue readingLeft Over: Shaking Hands with the Devil You Think You Know….
While the Cons huff and puff and try to simply blow our House of Parliament down, let me play devil’s advocate here and rant about something that no one else (that I’ve been aware of) seems to be mentioning, in all the foofaraw about increasing the golden handshake contributions…
Continue readingImpolitical: Mercer does omnibus
I agree. Could have done without the use of the word handsome but otherwise, spot on. Also, look for MP pension reform to be included in the omnibus bill for public relations purposes, always a paramount priority: When Peter Van Loan announced Monday that scaling back MP’s retirement nest eggs
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: So Did YOU Get a 3% Raise Last Year?
So, did you get a 3% raise last year? The average Canadian did. See the first chart below. If not, you’re behind the average Canadian. And even with a small offset of increased hours worked going up by only 1% for the 12 months ending last June, at worst, the
Continue readingParliamANT Hill: Labour Day Weekend – Courtesy of Unions
Inspired by Labour.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher keep up their reporting on Robocon by noting that Elections Canada’s trail seems to have gone cold with the use of an unsecured wifi connection to hide the identity of Pierre Poutine. But as Susan Delacourt points out,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Mitchell Anderson discusses the Ten Commandments that have ensured that Norway’s oil wealth is preserved for the benefit of citizens. But it’s particularly worth contrasting Norway’s philosophy surrounding non-renewable resources against the frenzy to extract everything today at any price (which of
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