from the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF)
The Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) applauds the affirmation by the Supreme Court of Canada in its judgment in Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission v. Whatcott, released today, that hate speech causes deep harm to vulnerable groups and to society at large, and that hate speech prohibitions in human rights legislation are justified.
by Trish Garner
The recently released Rich 100 list shows that the combined worth of the wealthiest 100 Canadians surpassed $200 billion this year, with 11 percent belonging to the 12 British Columbians included in the list. Clearly, it’s been a great year at the top. For most of us, it’s a very different story. We’re working harder than ever before but still falling behind.
by Stephen Kimber
Solidarity Halifax’s quixotic campaign to rename the Commons skating oval isn’t likely to find many takers among cash-starved city councilors, but it should give the rest of us pause.
How is it that Emera, the parent company of Nova Scotia Power, the private utility that keeps applying to jack up our electricity rates, not only has enough spare cash to reward its million-dollar-a-year executives with top-up performance bonuses — in no small measure for convincing regulators to jack up our electricity rates to keep shareholder returns high — but also still has sufficient leftover scraps to contribute “generously” to public recreation complexes in exchange for rights to name those mostly-publicly-financed facilities after itself?
by Gillian Steward
Both the Alberta and federal governments are now pointing to the “oil price differential” as the culprit that has forced them to revamp budget projections and talk darkly about the need for cuts to programs, services and public employees.
But is this really true? Or is it just a complicated but convenient excuse that draws attention away from deeper problems?
A 2011 Alberta government research document recently released to the Alberta Federation of Labour after a lengthy tussle with the Freedom of Information gatekeepers suggests that it is a convenient excuse.
In today’s market, where the oil price has slipped and the differential is greater, the oilsands players who mine and refine oil are much more profitable than those who simply mine and ship it south.
“The premier is telling only half the story,” says AFL president Gil McGowan.
The oil price differential is not something people think about, even in Alberta. It’s the kind of numbers game that only experts in the field usually pay attention to.
To put it simply, the oil price differential is the gap between the price Alberta producers get for the heavy oil that comes from the oilsands and the benchmark price for West Texas Intermediate, which is a lighter oil. Right now the US has access to lots of lighter oil, so our unrefined oil is less desirable and fetches less per barrel.
According to the Alberta government, Alberta heavy oil producers are getting $30 a barrel less than the benchmark price And this is the main reason, says Premier Alison Redford, the provincial treasury has a $6 billion shortfall to deal with. Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is using the same excuse for reduced federal revenues.
So, you might ask why don’t we refine more of our oil before we ship it south or ship it anywhere for that matter? Wouldn’t that make more economic sense?
Not only would more refineries create more value for the resource in Canada, they would provide good jobs for thousands of workers.
According to the experts inside Alberta Energy who wrote the research paper that was stamped “secret” and never publicly released, it certainly does make more economic sense for a key sector of the oilsands industry, especially when there is a large price differential.
“Stand alone mining is sensitive to changing light-heavy differentials while integrated mining is much less responsive. Despite the fact that adding upgrading capacity makes less sense in today’s market (in 2011 oil was selling at $100 per barrel) our sensitivity analysis suggests an integrated upgrader serves as a hedge against volatility of light-heavy differentials,” they wrote.
In other words, in today’s market where the oil price has slipped and the differential is greater, the oilsands players who mine and refine oil are much more profitable than those who simply mine and ship it south. And profitability means more money for both the overall economy and the provincial and federal treasuries.
“We think the premier and the government should be shouting this from the rooftops,” says McGowan. “It’s the upside of the price differential and we should be taking advantage of it.”
Instead, only 57 percent of oilsands production is upgraded, and that percentage is expected to slide dramatically in the next few years.
McGowan has long been advocating for more refineries in Alberta. So did former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed, the godfather of oilsands development, right up until he died last September.
Not only would more refineries create more value for the resource in Canada, they would provide good jobs for thousands of workers. And wouldn’t refined oil be less of an environmental threat in all those pipelines that are currently being thwarted because they will carry diluted bitumen from the oilsands?
“Government can’t force industry to build upgraders. But it can make the most of an opportunity through good policy, regulation, incentives, even equity partnerships,” says McGowan. “That’s what Lougheed did with the petrochemical industry and it worked.”
It’s not as though oil price volatility is a sudden turn of events. The price of oil has been volatile ever since someone first discovered it seeping from the ground and realized it might be useful for lighting lamps.
Governments could face up to the volatility and minimize the risks. Instead they seem to be betting that no one will notice the truth differential — the widening gap between reality and political propaganda.
from Inside Queen's Park Volume 26, Number 4
Ontario’s new government is headed by a politician who is not afraid to declare key objectives, both substantive and in regard to process. Kathleen Wynne, the Premier-elect, wasted no time in declaring the importance of acting to advance both social justice and jobs and the economy before she left the Make Believe Gardens stage on which her convention victory was celebrated.
The premier has also sounded the klaxon on the state of Ontario’s agriculture, having kept her campaign promise to assume that portfolio – or the best part of it, at any rate. Hiving off the Rural Affairs component (to the steady Jeff Leal) will help some, but there is no guarantee that Queen’s Park can afford the political and financial cost of squaring the horse-racing industry, calming the uproar over wind-turbines and dissipating the bolshy attitudes in rural and remote territories.
Wynne’s team contains ten newbies, MPPs not previously invited to sit the Cabinet table, 8 women ministers (30 percent) and 19 men (70 percent).
Far more difficult, Wynne has to reach a workable détente with the teachers – for which she has tapped a trusted school board leader (Liz Sandals). This is in addition to allocating trusted or promising colleagues to address our jobs and employment needs (Eric Hoskins), and the deficit and spending challenges in infrastructure and transportation (Glen Murray). Then there are Toronto's demands for action to address grid-lock, added to the province-wide transit dossier. And the burdensome issues in the crowded field of energy have been given to a veteran (Bob Chiarelli).
Further cost-saving action on health care is imperative and the ministerial portfolio is now wielded by a reliable Deputy Premier (Deb Matthews). She can be expected to oversee the poverty implementation plan developed by Frances Lankin and Munir Sheikh. The premier has already inscribed this last priority on the agenda for the responsible ministers and key bureaucrats. And that reflects, IQP has learned, the consensus-making technique Wynne’s government will adopt to compile the traditional "mandate letter". These will now be negotiated in sessions involving the Minister, Deputy Minister – and the Premier — rather than being handed down as marching orders to the Minister from the OPO, as before.
Another of Wynne’s highly significant priorities is aboriginal affairs, the stand-alone ministerial portfolio having been bestowed on another key Wynne campaign backer, David Zimmer. He was Personal Assistant (PA) to the Attorney-General from the 2003 beginning to the 2011 end of the McGuinty government, and was also PA at Aboriginal Affairs from November 2011 through February 2013. Zimmer does not need to be instructed on how important this field is to the new premier, having been PA to Wynne as Aboriginal Affairs minister from October 2011 to November 2012.
The new premier often strongly pressed Team McGuinty to do more than pay lip service to aboriginal rights. She was the only leadership contender who reminded convention delegates that they were meeting on lands of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. (This went into her Throne Speech, as well.) She understands the potential of aboriginal land claims and other disputes to create strife and foment violence. Road and rail blockages in the name of Idle No More have drawn heavy media interest but their economic impact is perhaps less disruptive than the measures taken more remotely against development of the “Ring of Fire” in which so much northern development depends.
A strong factor which will ensure the Premier’s continuing engagement with aboriginal affairs is her family connection with that community. One of her daughters is married to a man from the Moose Cree First Nation in Moose Factory, giving Wynne aboriginal grandchildren.
Cabinet composition
Read alphabetically, the Wynne Cabinet lists four veteran ministers/non-supporters (Bradley, Broten, Chan, Chiarelli) before a newbie/supporter (Coteau) gets a look in. Then another veteran/non-supporter (Duguid), a veteran/supporter (Gerretsen) a veteran non/supporter (Gravelle) and a rival then supporter (Hoskins), a veteran/supporter (Jeffrey), a veteran/non-supporter (Leal) and a newbie/rival’s backer (MacCharles). Next comes a veteran/strong backer who was promoted to be deputy premier (Matthews), a veteran/supporter (McMeekin), a pair of veteran/non-supporters (Meilleur, Milloy), a newbie/supporter (Moridi), and a recent minister/rival/backer (Murray). Next are a newbie/neutral (Naqvi), a veteran backbencher/non-supporter (Orazietti), a newbie/non-supporter (Piruzza), and a pair of veteran/ backbenchers/supporters (Sandals and Sergio). Finishing up is a recent minister/rival/then backer (Sousa), a veteran/rival/then non-backer (Takhar), a very supportive veteran minister (Wynne herself) and finally a veteran backbencher/newbie and very strong supporter (Zimmer).
So of the 27 cabinet ministers, IQP classifies 14 of them as supporters and 12 as non-supporters. With that margin (which Wynne’s backers may have been tempted to think of as a minor majority), it helps that Yasir Naqvi has not maintained any vestige of his leadership convention neutrality as party president – and is (to judge from the zealous answer to his first question in the opening day of the Legislature) a strong Wynne booster.
Indeed, boosting the leader vigourously is what all Liberal MPPs can be expected to do, whomever they backed in the leadership contest and whether they showed up for the February 11 swearing in or not. In that respect, we can anticipate that Wynne’s government will not need reminding that minorities do not last unless they can work effectively with the opposition. And it’s already clear from the NDP response to yesterday’s Throne Speech that Wynne has cleared her first hurdle.
Wynne’s team contains ten newbies, MPPs not previously invited to sit the Cabinet table, and of this category, only three had first been elected in the most recent, 2011 Ontario provincial election. The new LIB cabinet contains 8 women ministers (30 percent) and 19 men (70 percent).
The Legislature opened again today but Premier Wynne was unhappy that the Progressive Conservative s spurned her offered Select Committee yet still called unhappily for – yes, a Select Committee. Mr Speaker Levac also called unhappily for Members to stop cat-calling and told them to expect a crack-down. He also said pointedly that he does not need to be told how to do his job. IQP thinks we’d better brace for some robust conversation.
by Bill Tieleman
by Ricardo Acuña
Three hundred Albertans, ostensibly from all walks of life, got together on February 9 at an invitation-only summit to discuss Alberta's economic future. Although a significant majority of those present came from corporate-funded right-wing think tanks, industry groups, large corporations, and Alberta's academic right, there were also a handful of union leaders, non-profit organizations and community groups represented.
by Stephen Kimber
The proposed $66.6 million payout to McInnes Cooper for its successful legal work in the veterans’ benefits case is — in the words of Defence Minister Peter MacKay — “excessive and unreasonable.”
