Category Archives: Canada

The True Meaning of Labour Day

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Paul Moist Paul Moist

National President, Canadian Union of Public Employees

08/30/2013    http://www.huffingtonpost.ca

Labour Day is a time to celebrate the role of workers in the economy and address the real economic issues of our time.

Labour Day is about more than a well-deserved day off. It is a time to celebrate the important contributions working people make to our economy. It is also a good time to reflect on what is needed to improve the economic and social well-being for all workers.

Working people are the engine of the economy. The work we do, the services we provide and the money we spend drive the economy. But, in 2013 the economy is failing working people. Downward pressure on wages and government austerity programs are resulting in layoffs, contracting out, privatization of public services while families struggle to make ends meet. The rich are getting richer and the debt load of working people is increasing. It is no wonder our economy is experiencing such slow growth.

Economic recovery is being undermined by federal government actions over the last two years that erode workers wages, including: exploitation and fast-tracking approval for business to employ temporary foreign workers at wages below market rates; cuts to Employment Insurance and forcing workers to work at lower wages, continuous interference in the collective bargaining process on the side of employers, as well as attacks on unions and labour rights. These measures all need to be reversed and replaced by policies that support, rather than undercut real wage increases for workers.

At the same time, workers need a retirement security system in Canada to support our economy and provide economic security after a lifetime of work. It is a central economic problem today. Without adequate retirement incomes, we will pay with reduced living standards and an increase in seniors’ poverty. These outcomes, will, in turn, cost taxpayer money through programs like the federal Guaranteed Income Supplement and provincial and territorial income support and social assistance programs.

But, study after study shows that Canadians are not saving enough for retirement, and that this problem will only get worse as future generations retire. These troubling projections demonstrate the shortcomings of an increasingly individualized retirement income system. Working people are increasingly told their retirement security is their own problem. Save more for your own retirement at the same time your real wages are declining and debt level increasing?

The answer is clear. The economy needs a raise — disposable incomes need to rise to increase demand and create good jobs and economic growth. And we need to build an economy that sustains jobs with decent incomes for the next generation.

As we celebrate Labour Day this year, let’s really celebrate the contribution of working people by continuing to press for economic change to reverse growing income inequality. Press for economic change to drive the economy through higher wages and economic change to ensure all Canadians can retire in dignity.

Workers can count on the labour movement to do just that. We do that through collective bargaining and political action on behalf of all working people. And on this labour day, as national president of Canada’s largest union, I repeat my call to the government of Canada to convene a national pension summit where we can roll up our sleeves and address the affordability issues with defined benefit pension plans and re-tool the Canada Pension Plan so that it will continue to provide economic security for all Canadian retirees for generations to come.

TPP: Prescription for Galloping Corporatism

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Michele Swenson    Michele Swenson   Author, activist   http://www.huffingtonpost.com

08/28/2013

Arsenic and Old Lace is a movie depicting two older sisters who spike elderberry wine with arsenic and serve it to lonely elderly gentlemen to ease them out of their misery. Declares their nephew, insanity doesn’t run in the family — “It practically gallops.”

Now in the third year of secret negotiations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been branded a trade agreement on steroids. The TPP signifies the ultimate corporate power grab — galloping corporatism.

TPP negotiations, hidden from public, media or congressional oversight, have been heavily weighted by 500 corporate versus 100 non-corporate advisors. Even Sen. Ron Wyden, Chair of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Trade, the congressional committee with jurisdiction over the TPP, has been denied access to the text of U.S. proposals submitted during TPP negotiations. After two years of being excluded, in May Sen. Wyden submitted legislation requiring access to the proposal for those with congressional oversight.

One of few granted a view of the text on the condition that he not share its contents, Rep. Alan Grayson called the draft “a gross abrogation of American sovereignty” and “a punch in the face” to the American middle class (what’s left of it). He notes the irony that “the government thinks it’s alright to have a record of every single call that an American makes, but not alright for an American citizen to know what sovereign powers the government is negotiating away.” Characterizing it an assault on democratic government and the public interest on a variety of fronts, Grayson surmised, “It’s all about tying the hands of democratically elected governments and shunting authority over to the non-elected for the benefit of multinational corporations.”

The TPP represents “The largest corporate power grab you’ve never heard of,” concluded Rep. Keith Ellison. Ratification of the trade agreement portends disastrous economic consequences, and the death of “democracy as we know.”

Some anticipated consequences of the TPP, and its sister European Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA), proposal: compromise of environmental and worker protections in virtually every developed nation; banks will become “way too big to fail”; prescription medications will be more expensive; natural gas costs will rise as there will be open season on our lands for fracking in order to export natural gas to the highest bidder; decline of food quality standards will jeopardize health; Monsanto will have free reign for unregulated sale of unidentified GMO foods; and corporations like Nestle will easily corner the market on water as a saleable commodity, rather than a basic right.

Continued Subversion of the Courts by Multinational Corporations

Leaked text reveals that U.S. TPP negotiators are rewriting substantial segments of U.S. law having nothing to do with trade. A two-track legal system would permit foreign firms to sidestep domestic courts and laws to sue TPP governments in foreign tribunals, exposing governments to massive new financial liabilities. Multinational corporations and investors could demand compensation on many different grounds – domestic financial, health, environmental, land use laws and other laws they claim undermine their TPP-defined right to profit.

Critics cite patent and copyright provisions of the agreement that could boost the cost of medicines and restrict Internet freedom, while anti-smoking advocates warn it could create a new forum for tobacco companies to aggressively challenge government efforts to curb smoking.

Further weighting the scales of justice against the people, negotiations reportedly include the condition that foreign tribunals be staffed by “private sector lawyers that rotate between acting as ‘judges’ and as advocates for the investors suing the governments.” Among 12 participating countries, U.S. negotiators alone have sought to expand the functions of the extra-judicial foreign tribunals to enforce foreign investor contracts related to operating government utilities and concessions surrounding natural resources on federal lands.

Continued corporate usurpation of the Courts is represented by recent Supreme Court decisions conceding evermore power to corporations while undermining individual access to judicial redress. Citizens United vs. FEC is just one case conceding individual rights to corporate influence. The Center for Media and Democracy has identified 71 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) bills narrowing citizen access to the courts, introduced in the first 6 months of 2013. Fourteen of those became law. ALEC model bills cap damages, limit corporate liability, or otherwise make it more difficult for citizens to hold corporations accountable for products or services that result in injury or death.

A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision rejected claims of human rights abuse by a corporation on foreign soil based on the Alien Tort Statute. The decision reinforces near-immunity for private contractors operating in secrecy, without accountability for well-documented war crimes. Thus, four former Iraqi Abu Ghraib prisoners who were tortured are being sued by their torturers. The four had filed a lawsuit against private military contractor CACI International for torture experienced at Abu Ghraib Prison: “electric shocks; repeated brutal beatings; sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; forced nudity; stress positions; sexual assault; mock executions; humiliation; hooding; isolated detention; and prolonged hanging from the limbs.” Not only was their lawsuit dismissed by a federal judge who cited the recent Supreme Court decision, the four plaintiffs are now being sued by CACI International which seeks to recoup $15,000 in legal costs from the four Iraqi prisoners. The plaintiffs’ lawyers are appealing the decision on the grounds that a U.S. corporation operating in a U.S. military prison should be subject to U.S. law.

Obama Administration Reversal on Trade Policy

President Obama has moved 180 degrees from his 2008 campaign pledge “to oppose Bush-style free trade agreements that lead to thousands of lost American jobs” and his vow not to support “NAFTA-type agreements.” Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch analysis reports that the final 2008 DNC platform draft outlining the Obama Agenda depicted trade agreements as major tools to leverage labor and environmental standards, human rights, poverty alleviation, climate control, national security, as well as other progressive issues.

Instead of fixing foreign trade investment rules to protect the public interest, Public Citizen’s analysis reveals that Obama administration TPP negotiators would expand on the extreme investor privileges outlined in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and subsequent NAFTA-style deals, which some have opposed for undermining public health, the environment, democratic policymaking, and for favoring foreign over domestic firms.
U.S. taxpayers are already on the hook for past trade agreements: Public Citizen notes that there are currently over $13 billion in pending corporate “investor-state” trade pact attacks on domestic environmental, public health and transportation policy. “….mere threats of such cases have resulted in countries dropping important public interest initiatives, exposing their populations to harm that could have been avoided…Over $719 million has been paid out under U.S. Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) alone – 70 percent which are from challenges to natural resource and environmental policies, not traditional expropriations.”

State Plans for Public Banks Jeopardized by TPP

Currently 20 states are considering some form of state public banking legislation, plans that could well be jeopardized by the TPP. The United States Representative’s chief TPP negotiator, Barbara Weisel, contends that entities like the Bank of North Dakota unfairly compete with private banks. North Dakota, the only state with a Public Bank, has been able to invest in infrastructure and employment, thus weathering economic crisis better than most. Weisel insists that “preferential provision of goods and services” by a government would be unfairly conferred on “State Owned Enterprises”(SOEs), thus disadvantaging private banks. Weisel frankly protests that “State Owned Enterprises….can be used to undermine what we’re otherwise trying to gain from this free trade agreement.”

One observer writes, “…depending on the [TPP] report’s language, foreign bankers could claim that the Bank of North Dakota (BND) stops them from lending to commercial banks throughout the state.” He cites Rudy Avizius’ New World Order Blueprint Leaked: “If implemented, this agreement will hard code corporate dominance over sovereign governments into international law that will supersede any federal, state, or local laws of any member country.”

Fast Track Authority Bypasses Constitutional Congressional Oversight

Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress exclusive authority to determine the terms of international trade agreements. Public Citizen notes that Obama administration TPP negotiators are pushing Fast Track trade promotion authority for the executive branch, which could then determine contents of the trade agreement and sign it without Congressional review or vote.

In June Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan initiated a letter signed by 35 other House freshmen, addressed to Ranking Ways and Means Member Sander Levin and copied to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, expressing serious concern about Congress relinquishing trade authority. “The administration has yet to release draft texts after more than three years of negotiations, and the few TPP FTA texts that have leaked reveal serious problems,” the letter reads. “Thus, we are especially concerned about any action that would transfer Congress’s exclusive Constitutional trade authority to the president.”

Rudy Avizius names the TPP the ultimate corporate takeover of the public Commons and the overthrow of democracy. He writes, the results of the proposed TPP “would be total corporate global governance with an accompanying police state. In this new system the role of elected governments would be to serve as subservient agents for the transnational corporations, while the armies, police, and courts would serve the interests of these transnational corporations.”

Further information: Expose the TPP
Flush the TPP

Federal NDP trade critic calls for more transparency in TPP negotiations

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2013 08 28    http://www.ndp.ca

VANCOUVER – NDP Trade critic Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway) is calling on the Harper Government to give Canadian MPs the same information that US Members of Congress have about the ongoing Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. 

The NDP has learned that all members of the US Congress are being given access to the draft text of the TPP. 

“The TPP is a sweeping agreement covering issues that affect many areas of Canada’s economy and society – including several areas of policy that have never been subject to trade agreements before,” said Davies. “By keeping Parliament completely in the dark on negotiations the Conservatives also leave Canadians in the dark and, for an agreement of this magnitude that is abnormal and unacceptable. 

“If the US can allow its legislators to see the TPP text, there is no reason that Canada can’t,” Davies said. 

Davies further expressed concern that American legislators are being given an undue advantage over Canadian MP’s, saying “it is both unfair and unwise for Canadian parliamentarians to operate from such an imbalanced knowledge base in discussions with our US colleagues.” 

Access to Information requests have also revealed that there is a small group of insider industry associations that have special access to Canada’s negotiating position, but the Harper Government has prevented others from having access to the text, including Parliamentarians. 

“Canadians have a right to know how trade policies are being negotiated, and Parliamentarians have a duty to defend the public’s interests,” said Davies.  “Allowing private actors to have information that Parliamentarians don’t have is inappropriate,” said Davies. 

Recently, trade experts from across the political spectrum have criticized the Harper Government for being far too secretive in its approach to trade negotiations. 

“Canada’s trade performance has suffered badly since the Conservatives took power,” said Davies. “The prosperity of all Canadians depends on healthy, balanced international trade. To get there, we need trade negotiations that are more inclusive and transparent. 

“Mr. Harper’s obsession with secrecy is unhelpful, undemocratic and, as the US practice demonstrates, unnecessary.”

Average weekly non-farm payroll earnings rise to $919 in June: StatsCan

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Tuesday, 27 August 2013 The Canadian Press

OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says average weekly earnings of non-farm payroll employees were $919 in June, up 0.2 per cent from the previous month.

It says earnings increased 2.6 per cent on a year-over-year basis.

Year-over-year growth in average weekly earnings outpaced the national average in five of the largest industrial sectors.

Average weekly earnings grew by 8.1 per cent to $764 in administrative and support services, while they increased by 4.9 per cent, to $1,107, in wholesale trade.

In professional, scientific and technical services, weekly earnings increased 3.6 per cent to $1,273.

In contrast, weekly earnings in accommodation and food services decreased by 2.2 per cent to $362 in the 12 months to June.

Byron Holland: Putting blinders on Big Brother’s surveillance apparatus

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   Byron Holland, National Post | 13/08/28

The Internet has been around for two decades. But from a public-policy perspective, we’re just starting to figure it out. Fortunately, there are some online activities for which there is an established offline precedent. Most of us would agree that surveillance is one of those activities.

Governments — even generally transparent, democratic ones, such as our own — always have engaged in surveillance activities. But as a society, we long have recognized the need to place safeguards on surveillance activities. Wiretaps and other forms of “traditional surveillance” are subject to judicial oversight, requiring warrants. Outrage at RCMP activities in the 1970s, including unauthorized mail openings and wiretaps without warrants, resulted in the MacDonald Commission, and ultimately the creation of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

In fact, it was not so long ago that we found the issue of oppressive state scrutiny so repugnant that we were willing to go to war over it (albeit a cold one): The liberty-destroying surveillance regimes imposed by the Stasi, and by other communist agencies, epitomized the reason we stood up against the Soviets.

Fast forward a few decades, and we now have the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM program, which copies virtually every online message sent to and from the United States — all without transparent judicial oversight. Cell phone data, Facebook updates, Google searches, emails – pretty much all communications – are tracked and stored by the U.S. government.

And in case you thought you were safe because you’re Canadian, it turns out that your data is tracked and stored, too.

But, if the lack of vocal outrage on the part of Canadians is any indication, most of us are apparently fine with it. This is why my group, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), has decided to work with the polling firm Ipsos Reid to find out what Canadians think of online privacy and government surveillance.

We were surprised to find that about half of Canadians (49%) believe it is acceptable for the government to monitor email and other online activities of Canadians in some circumstances. When those circumstances include preventing “future terrorist attacks,” that number rises to 77%.

That means that more than three quarters of Canadians are fine with indiscriminate and ongoing government monitoring of Canada’s online activity without a warrant, as long as it is in the interest of national security.

Given past lessons about personal privacy, how can Canadians seem so apathetic? What is it about the Internet that changes our perceptions and values concerning civil liberties?

Our apathy may be partially due to the fact that only 18% of us start out with the baseline belief that our Internet activity is confidential to begin with. In fact, our research shows that 63% of Canadians believe the government already is monitoring who visits certain websites, while 40% think the government is collecting and saving Internet activity records so they can be reviewed in the future. If most of us aren’t expecting privacy on the Internet, it would follow that we would be ambivalent when we learn that government is indeed watching us.

This is a problem. Canadians deserve internet privacy.

The argument that “if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be concerned” is baseless. Even in cases where people really do have something to hide, there are plenty of historical examples of behaviour that once was criminally sanctioned, but which we now recognize to be justified acts of resistance to unjust laws. Think about the civil rights movement, for instance.

The argument that the NSA collects only time, place and tech “metadata” — as opposed to the actual content of internet messages — also is not convincing. Such metadata provides information about whom you contact, when and how you contacted them, and where you contacted them from. With that information, a profile of an individual and their actions can be created. But this data is devoid of context. And so linkages can be inferred that erroneously connect individuals to illegal activity. We Canadians need only remember what happened to Maher Arar to understand what can happen when authorities misinterpret information.

Moreover, the definition of what constitutes “terrorism” in the eyes of governments continues to expand. From environmental activists to members of the Occupy and Idle No More movements, the net seems to continue to be cast even wider.

The time has come for a national dialogue about online surveillance in Canada. Yes, governments should have the power to monitor citizens under certain circumstances and with the appropriate oversight. But we are now in uncharted waters, with governments having unfettered ability to monitor the wide-ranging activity of an unprecedented number of people in every corner of the world.

To this end, my organization, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority — which manages the .CA domain space on behalf of all Canadians — will be dedicating its Canadian Internet Forum to a discussion on government and corporate online surveillance. I invite you to join us at cif.cira.ca.

If we found out that the government were opening every single letter in the Canadian postal system and monitoring all of our phone calls, Canadians would be enraged. Why is it, then, that when the government does the very same thing online, we become complacent?

National Post

Byron Holland is the CEO of The Canadian Internet Registration Authority.