Newshoggers.com

The Dreaded Canadian Option

By BJ Bjornson

The discussion over healthcare is continuing to heat up, with another editorial from the Wall Street Journal making the rounds today declaring how horrifying the Canadian system is. A system they then accuse Obama of pursuing for Americans. As with most such, it mixes a few facts with a great deal of spin and misinformation. Ron already posted on some of the myths the insurance industry and its allies are trying to spread regarding the Canadian system, though to some degree the whole issue is academic, as it seems clear that whatever comes from the manoeuvring on Capitol Hill won’t be the single-payer system Canada has.

In any case, I thought it would be a good opportunity to post this article written almost a month ago by a CBC journalist living in the US. As MacDonald says, we do rather like our system, and enjoy lording it over you Yanks when we get the chance. As such, it is difficult not to leap to its defence when we see it twisted for propaganda purposes, but as he also notes, we should be willing to note that the twisting comes from both sides.

There is rationing and long wait times for elective surgeries. Granted, it is the health care professionals who make those decisions rather than the government, but the decision over who gets faster treatment is still being made, and there is no way for you to buy your way into the front of the line outside of leaving the country and getting the service elsewhere. For those facing a pain-filled wait for operations on their joints, Canadian healthcare is clearly no picnic.

To balance that, there are a few things you don’t have to deal with north of the border.

You won't have your health insurance cancelled on an insurer's whim, which happens here all the time, or have it denied if you or some relative was once sick. "Pre-existing conditions" don't matter at all in Canada.

You won't have some bean-counting weasel in your health group or your insurance plan conspiring to deprive you of the treatment to which you are entitled.

You won't lose your health care if you lose your job. You won't have ever-rising "co-pays" and deductibles and fees; and you won't wind up hounded by a collection agent who calls at all hours to inform you that your credit could be wrecked for life if you continue to dispute a charge on your medical bill.

Also, if you spend some time in hospital, you won't end up with months of incomprehensible invoices from everyone who provided any service, from the guy who operated the EKG machine to the guy who read the test results to the woman who administered the anaesthetic to the lab that did the blood work.

The difference between our systems is pretty simple really.

If you have money or gold-plated coverage, you're probably better off here the way things are now.

If you can't afford insurance or you're a working stiff struggling to pay your premiums, you're probably better off in Canada.

“If you have money or gold-plated coverage”, both of which I assume describes pretty much everybody who happens to be debating the health care initiatives put forward in Congress. Little wonder things have a hard time getting anywhere.

Lock up the good china, the Conservatives are coming

By BJ Bjornson

This is just embarrassing

Three sterling silver flower baskets sold off by the government at bargain-basement prices on a government website were on loan to Rideau Hall from Buckingham Palace, Sun Media has learned.

Richard Legrand, who worked at the governor general's residence for 35 years, says he was told when he started at Rideau Hall in 1968 that the ornate pierced silver flower baskets were among several items borrowed from the British royal family.

"Those three baskets were on loan from Buckingham Palace, including two huge candelabra that we used on the diningroom table for state events."

Whenever Queen Elizabeth II visited Canada and stayed at Rideau Hall, the silver baskets filled with flowers were placed in the suite where she slept, said Legrand who retired in 2003.

"This was a special treat because we knew they were English, we knew they were from Buckingham Palace."

We know our government's are usually thieves, but generally its more figurative, or at least of the white collar/embezzlement variety. Hocking other people's stuff like a cheap pawn shop is a new low.

Ignorance is Bliss

By BJ Bjornson

At least according to the Government of Alberta.

Alberta legislators passed legislation early Tuesday that will give parents the option of pulling their children out of class when lessons on sex, religion or sexual orientation are being taught.

. . .

A clause in the bill, which is an amendment to the province's human rights legislation, requires that school boards give parents written notice when controversial topics are going to be covered in the curriculum. Parents can then ask for their child to be excluded from the discussion.

First, let me repeat what I said when this legislation was first introduced.

After all, we wouldn't want children to actually learn things while in school, would we? I mean, if they were to start acquiring knowledge, they may start questioning the silly superstitions and prejudices of their parents, and we can't have that.

Second, note that this is bill amends the province's human rights legislation, meaning teachers are going to face human rights complaints if they happen to put anything into their lesson plans that some nutjob decides is objectionable.  That should really assist the curriculum, shouldn't it?  And what does this do to testing?  Is it now going to be possible to pass high school biology without ever having even heard of evolution, let alone been tested on its basics?

And I can't help but love the defense one of the Conservative MP's came up with during the legislative debate:

"There are thousands and thousands of parents, the silent majority, severely normal Albertans that are extremely happy with this legislation, that believe it's right to affirm the right of parents as being the primary educators of their children on these subjects," Anderson said during the debate.

"Severely normal"?  When have you ever heard of a group of people being described as severely normal?  Do you get the impression that Mr. Anderson has a very strict and narrow definition of what constitutes, "normal"?  And that his hope is that this kind of legislation helps ensure that the next generation of Albertans don't learn enough while they're in school to deviate from that definition?

All I can say is that I can't help but feel sorry for the youth of Alberta, who are now going to have a big asterisk attached to their educational achievements.

Deficit Follies

By BJ Bjornson

Oh, how I pine for the days that “Conservative” carried the connotation of fiscal responsibility. Yesterday, Canada’s Finance Minister announced that he was now expecting a $50 billion dollar deficit this year, a new record for the country and $16 billion more than he was calling for in January. Even better, as of November, 2008, he was calling for a surplus or at least a balanced budget for the next several years.

To be fair, I doubt any government could have avoided a deficit this year given the circumstances, but the fact that the trajectory was already downward before the worldwide credit crisis is another matter. While Obama inherited a series of deficits and had to extend them to increase spending for stimulus reasons, north of the border, the Conservatives inherited a decade of sound fiscal management that reversed the $40 billion dollar deficits of the last Conservative government to provide steady and increasing surpluses. Even during the dot-com bubble burst and 9/11 interruption in North American markets, Canada merely posted smaller surpluses while the Republican-led US dived deeply into debt.

When the Conservatives took power in 2006, the surplus was around $15 billion. To solve this problem, the Cons went to the favourite, (and seemingly only), policy they have, tax cuts to reduce revenues, coupled with spending like drunken sailors to buy votes.  Some famous guy once said that democracy would only work until people realized they could voe themselves largess from the public purse.  North American conservatives have become the epitome of that warning.  However much they may rail against government spending while out of power, once they take over, they generally spend even more rather than risk losing votes.  All the while taking the populist stance of reducing taxes that might otherwise pay for such programs, leading to ever-larger deficits and situations where their great grandchildren will have to pay for their largess.

In any case, when the downturn hit, instead of having a solid cushion to deal with it, the surplus had already been wiped out and deficit spending became the only option.

Again, even with the cushion of a surplus, the drying up of tax revenues caused by the downturn and the need for increased spending could have driven even a more fiscally prudent government into deficit territory, but that isn’t the end of the Conservatives’ poor governance. It turns out the stimulus money that deficit spending should be funding isn’t really going anywhere.

Wednesday also marks 120 days since the federal budget — a key date for the government's plan to stimulate the economy, said McCallum. According to the budget, "measures to support the economy must begin within the next 120 days to be most effective."

McCallum said the flow of money for stimulus projects has stalled.

"We have a flurry of announcements and money is only trickling out to shovel-ready projects to get people working," he said.

Hmm, can’t seem to get the money out to shovel-ready infrastructure projects to get people working, you say? I wonder why that might be?

Two years after Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government approved $1.25 billion in funding for an office to support infrastructure projects, a newly-created crown corporation still finds itself in temporary headquarters with a skeleton crew of 12, several vacant positions on its board of directors, and little public visibility to fulfil its mandate.

But its chief executive officer, who has only been on the job for about 100 days, says that PPP Canada is working on a long-term plan to achieve its goals of encouraging and supporting partnerships between the public and private sectors for new infrastructure projects. Much of its early focus has been on meeting with stakeholders from provincial governments and the private sector to identify needs, priorities and potential infrastructure projects for analysis.

“When I was appointed, there was clearly no office, no anything, so I kind of got myself installed in some temporary accommodation,” said John McBride, a veteran federal bureaucrat who now heads the crown corporation. “We don't have any administrative infrastructure like computers and websites and communications material and the rest of that kind of stuff, so we've been figuring out how best to do that, and now we're starting to develop some kind of capacity.”

Even better is the fact that until McBride was appointed a little over three months ago, the entire complement of the crown corporation was a single employee. While McBride was quick to point out that the projects their mandate covers are not exactly tied to the stimulus funding, it is probably not a coincidence that the push to actually start staffing the office only came after the stimulus funding was announced, and even if their projects are supposed to be more long-term, had they been up and running and, dare I say it, “shovel-ready”, they could easily have made use of that funding to get even more done.

Then again, why worry about actually running the government when you have attack ads against the opposition to launch?

Woe Be My Lost Riches

By BJ Bjornson

There is nothing I love more than listening to the whine of the formerly rich complaining about how their greedy overreach has left them in bad financial shape.   Today’s news brings the story of a bunch of Canadians who are upset that the stock market wiped out the gains their stock options gave them, even coining a new term, “phantom income”, to try and gain sympathy for their gains that were wiped out by the recent stock market crash.

Thousands of Canadian workers who purchased stock options from their employers before the market downturn are expected to pay millions of dollars in taxes on income they haven't received because the shares have lost their value.

. . .

The income tax is applied to stock options, a benefit many Canadian employees are given as part of their remuneration. Employees at various levels of companies in high tech, mining, banking and other industries are allowed to buy stock in their firm at a significantly reduced price.

. . .

Because of a little-known loophole in Canada's tax law, people are expected to pay income tax on the market value of the stocks when they are issued — not on their lesser value if they are later sold at a lower price. Those affected call it a tax on "phantom income."

This is not a loophole.  A loophole is what allows people to avoid paying taxes on their gains, what is what these folks are actually asking to be put in, not something that forces them to pay what they owe.  Seriously, when was the last time you heard people complaining about people taking advantage of loopholes to pay more taxes?

The issue here is pretty simple.  People who are granted stock options as part of their remuneration must claim the gain when they exercise their options as income.  Stock options are a pretty attractive way to earn money since they eliminate the downside risk of most stock transactions.  Say you’re given an option to buy stock at $10 a share.  If the stock loses ground to $2 a share, you don’t exercise the option and you’re not out any money.  On the other hand, if it goes up to $20 a share, you exercise the option to buy the shares at $10 and have immediately doubled your money without any risk to you. The only caveat is that the $10 gain has to be recognized as such for income tax purposes.  There isn't anything "phantom" about that income.  You could sell the shares right then and there and walk away having made quite the killing with absolutely zero risk.  Or you could hold onto the shares hoping to make even more money, but from that point forward, you take on the same risk every other shareholder has, that the stock may not keep going up.

This is where the folks in the story find themselves. Having made a quick killing, they held on looking for more and got burned.  I'm just having a really hard time feeling sorry for them for that.

"Apparent?"

By BJ Bjornson

From the BBC:

Canada politician eats seal heart

Canada's governor general, Michaelle Jean, has helped to butcher and eat a seal in an apparent act of solidarity with hunters.

Ms Jean used a traditional Inuit knife to help gut the animal then ate a slice of raw heart.

Trust me, unless you've been raised on the stuff, you don't chaw down on raw seal for anything short of real solidarity.  I've been up here for better than twenty years and I still have trouble with the taste, even if it is a lot better for me than cattle meat.  (Granted I tend to be a picky eater, but near as I can tell, the aversion is widespread amongst those not raised on the east coast diet.)  I do love the fur though, particularly for mitts.  The recent furor is over the European Union's decision to ban the import of Canadian seal products because of the commercial hunting methods, which happen to be far less distasteful than most farming practices they turn a blind eye to.  Cattle, pigs, and chickens just aren't as cute as seal pups after all.

Inuit exemption or not, the EU ban is already having a negative effect on traditional hunters in the region, which is why GG Jean is up here trying to bring some attention to the issue.   Just for the love of dog, don't be comparing her to Sarah Palin.

The Republicans and another Tory Party

By BJ Bjornson

Ron linked to a post at TMV yesterday comparing the current Republican situation to the British Tories long exile from the halls of power, seemingly soon to end now that they've finally picked a new leader with newer, more moderate positions.

There is, however, another example in the Anglo-Americann world for a conservative party being pushed aside on the national scene for a decade or more, and it is one that doesn't end so well when looked upon from the progressive point of view.

The Canadian version of this story starts in 1993, when the Progressive Conservative Party, led for a few months by Kim Campbell, but previously in power for nine years under Brain Mulroney, suffered the most devastating federal election defeat in Canadian history. While this was in large part due to the unpopularity of the PC's by this point, it was helped considerably by the defection of several key Quebec MPs, who formed the separatist Bloc Quebecois, and the rise of the far-right Reform Party in Western Canada and the decision by its leader, Preston Manning, to compete nationally in the '93 election. Although the Reform party didn't win any seats outside of its western strongholds, they pulled enough enough right-wing voters to their side to ensure the defeat of many Tory MPs in vote-rich Ontario.

The PCs tried several leadership changes, but ultimately never recovered. In 2003, the remnants of the more moderate, but entirely under-funded and short on morale PC Party merged with the successor to the hardline Reform Party, the Canadian Alliance; larger, better-funded, and far more ideological than the PC Party had ever been.

The new Conservative Party blew their first chance at defeating the governing Liberals, who had been coasting without a unified right-wing opposition and had fallen into squabbling camps between the supporters of Jean Chretien and his successor Paul Martin, not to mention the effects of several brewing scandals from their time in power. The reason for the Conservative's loss was in part the less-than-politic comments being made by the furthest of far-right Conservative MPs, which scared enough Canadians into giving Martin a minority government.

Conservative leader Stephen Harper learned his lesson, though. The universal muzzle clamped upon any and all Conservatives since that time is virtually unprecedented. Harper's MPs cannot even write their local paper without going through his office.

The message discipline paid off, with Harper projecting a more moderate face for the party to the electorate while the Liberals first dealt with the fallout of the kind of scandals that always seem to go with long terms of one-party power, and then picked a leader so hapless it was actually painful to watch his performance on the national stage.  In all, enough that these new Conservatives have managed two minority governments so far, (fortunately, given the fact that when Harper tried to push through some real right-wing fodder, it was enough to cause the three opposition parties to stop their bickering long enough to nearly unseat him and spark a constitutional crisis, and ultimately a major climb-down by the Tories. Might be looking for some gods to help us should they ever get a majority, however).

Long story short, the Tory party that came out of the Canadian wilderness wasn't a kinder, gentler, more moderate and forward-looking version of the one that fell from grace, but a more regressive and ideological one. The moderate conservatives all but vanished as their own political force, ultimately splitting themselves between the Liberal and Conservative parties, becoming the Canadian version of "Blue Dogs" and "Traitors", if you will.

Which path will the US Republicans take, that of the British or Canadian Tories? I really can't hazard a guess, except to say that they will recover one way or the other, and it wouldn't be unlike them to try and put a moderate face on a more extreme agenda.

Locking In Ignorance

By BJ Bjornson

I always do love to be reminded that I come from Canada's version of the Bible Belt.

A controversial Alberta bill will enshrine into law the rights of parents to pull their children out of classes discussing the topics of evolution and homosexuality.

The new rules that would require schools to notify parents in advance for "subject-matter that deals explicitly with religion, sexuality or sexual orientation" is buried in a bill that extends human rights to homosexuals. Parents can ask for their child to be excluded from the discussion.

After all, we wouldn't want children to actually learn things while in school, would we? I mean, if they were to start acquiring knowledge, they may start questioning the silly superstitions and prejudices of their parents, and we can't have that.

The Strategic Failure of Torture

By BJ Bjornson

Jay was quite right to note that the torture floodgates have been opened. The revelations about the torture program, and the attempts of the apologists to defend them, remain very much the main topic of discussion these days. Since the rest of the crew is doing a bang-up job on the topic, I thought I'd focus on something that twigged my memory in one of our Senior Comrade Licentious Nihilist Extremist's posts, (see this post's comments for explanation of the title). In particular, two of the points from Bernard Finel.

First, if the United States fails to cooperate with these investigations, it raises the possibility of future difficulties in intelligence sharing and cooperation on criminal justice matters. Our failure to take active measures to investigate and punish torture taints our entire justice system, potentially causing problems on issues of extradition and sharing of evidence until the U.S. system is “clean.”

. . .

Third, we are likely to face problems in the area of military cooperation as European militaries worry about cooperating with or serving under the command of officers who might be deemed war criminals. This clearly could pose problems for NATO.

These points are not really speculative. The issues of cooperation and prisoner access have already come up in the Afghan theatre.

For the almost five years that Canadian troops have been in Afghanistan, there has been controversy over what to do with captured Taliban fighters and other suspected insurgents.

The former Liberal government initially decided to turn prisoners over to the U.S. military, which was then leading the fight against al-Qaeda and other militants. But that policy did not always sit well at home.

Then, when the UN took over responsibility for quelling Afghan's insurgents — and when Washington began to develop a reputation for pushing the limits of the Geneva Convention on prisoners — Canada struck a deal with the new Afghanistan government to turn its prisoners over to Afghan security forces.

It was a couple of years after the transfer to Afghan authorities began that the whole process wound up blowing up into a major scandal for the Canadian government. The reason?

Legal authorities in Canada have said Canadian soldiers involved in past transfers of captives to Afghan security forces — who have a bad reputation when it comes to torture — could be charged with assisting war crimes.

And as noted previously, it was the reputation the Bush administration was creating that led Canada to stop transferring prisoners to their custody in the first place.  A reputation that turns out to be very well deserved indeed, and leads to the same problem for other allied countries.

From re-reading a few dozen articles and blog posts from that time, the issue is that under international law, a country’s responsibility to ensure the humane treatment of captured prisoners doesn’t end when it transfers custody to another nation, and transferring prisoners to a jurisdiction with known human rights issues makes you complicit in the crimes committed against those transferred.

In short, assisting a United States whose record on human rights remains doubtful could result in serious consequences for the soldiers or other personnel who assist them. Under such circumstances, it seems reasonable that other countries may wish to limit their ties to the American intelligence community.

You wind up with a nation cut off from even its own allies, which as John Robb notes, is a really bad idea:

In short, a primary objective of US grand strategy should be to increase its connectivity within the moral sphere.  The embrace of torture does exactly the opposite.  It self-inflicts moral isolation on the US by violating codes of conduct we profess to uphold.  

This moral isolation creates an internal dialogue plagued by mistrust, menace, and uncertainty.  As a result, non-cooperative centers of gravity organically develop (internal opposition movements) and every decision becomes more difficult to accomplish.  Over a long conflict, like the one we are engaged in, anything that leads to slower and less effective decision making this early in the process is nothing short of a disaster.

McCain "Defends" Napolitano

By BJ Bjornson

With friends like this . . .

Arizona Senator John McCain is the latest high-profile politician to repeat the diehard American falsehood that the Sept. 11, 2001, attackers entered the United States through Canada.

Just days after Janet Napolitano, the U.S. homeland security secretary, sparked a diplomatic kerfuffle by suggesting the perpetrators took a Canadian route to the U.S. eight years ago, McCain defended her by saying that, in fact, the former Arizona governor was correct.

"Well, some of the 9/11 hijackers did come through Canada, as you know," McCain, last year's Republican presidential candidate, said on Fox News on Friday.

The Arizona senator's remarks prompted the Canadian embassy to immediately reissue remarks made Tuesday by Ambassador Michael Wilson, who reminded Americans once again that none of the attackers came to the U.S. via Canada.

. . .

"As the 9/11 Commission reported in July 2004, all of the 9/11 terrorists arrived in the U.S. from outside North America. They flew to major U.S. airports. They entered the U.S. with documents issued to them by the U.S. government. No 9/11 terrorists came from Canada."

Criticisms of the Obama administration aside, I'm still really glad this guy didn't win.