Category Archives: Canada

Andrew Coyne: There’s no spinning it — the Conservatives were spanked in Monday’s byelections

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   Andrew Coyne  27/11/13  http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com

Does Stephen Harper realize that he needs to turn things around to win in 2015?   Adrian Wyld/The Canadian PressDoes Stephen Harper realize that he needs to turn things around to win in 2015?

If you were determined to be obtuse about it, you could look at the results of Monday’s byelections and say: nothing changed. The Tories held onto their two seats in the West, the Liberals held onto theirs in Ontario and Quebec. Move along folks, no story here.

Justin Trudeau would have come under less flak if he’d drawn a caricature depicting the Prophet Mohammed. Mr. Trudeau had the temerity to quote fallen NDP leader Jack Layton in his victory address, after the Liberals retained the Bourassa and Toronto Centre seats in Monday’s byelections.

Mr. Trudeau said that the NDP is “no longer the hopeful, optimistic party of Jack Layton … it is the Liberal Party that proved that hope is stronger than fear, that positive politics can, and should win out over negative.”

The invocation of Mr. Layton’s words, penned in a note to Canadians just before he died two years ago – “love is better than anger, hope is better than fear” – has incensed New Democrats, who have all but accused Mr. Trudeau of defaming the memory of their former leader.

You could do this, as I say, only if you took extravagant care to ignore everything else that happened that night: If you focused myopically on the top-line result in each riding, and paid no attention to the popular vote — the trend, the swing, across the nation and over time.

In private, I can assure you, no one in any of the parties does this. Only in the public realm do they say things like “a win’s a win” — which is what you say when a win looks a lot like a loss — and only the most programmed partisans actually mean it.

Only in the most literal sense is the Tories’ 391-vote margin in Brandon-Souris, one of the safest Conservative seats in the country, a “win.” Even the partisans found this hard to say with a straight face. Rather, they were obliged first to pretend that a Forum Research poll showing the Liberals ahead by 29 points the weekend before the election had some basis in reality, the better to conjure up a fantasy “comeback.”

To be sure, every party comes well-stocked with rationalizations on occasions like these, usually introduced by “when you consider” or some such phrase. As in: The Conservatives did pretty well, when you consider we’re in the throes of a massive national scandal. Or: the NDP collapse in Manitoba is understandable, when you consider the unpopularity of the province’s NDP government. It’s not cold, when you consider it’s February.

We would have done better, in other words, but for the fact that we did worse. Figures don’t lie, but losers can consider.

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But there’s just no spinning this one. The trends are too pronounced. Across all four ridings, the Tory vote was down 11 points versus the 2011 election, from 39% to 28%, almost exactly mirroring the national polls. The NDP, which might have been expected to gain the most from the Tories’ disfavour — when you consider how well Tom Mulcair has been performing in Parliament — instead dropped five points overall, while the Liberals surged 18 points.

If the drop in the Tory vote was the night’s main story, the rise in the Liberals’ was the other. In Provencher and Brandon-Souris, the Grits blew past the NDP to become the Tories’ main rivals, taking as many votes from the left as they did from the right. In Toronto Centre and Bourassa, they increased their margins of victory, even in the face of spirited challenges from the NDP. Conservative candidates in the East both lost their deposits, as NDP candidates did in the West. Only the Liberals were up across the board.

But the true significance of the result is captured, not by comparison to the last election, but set against the broad sweep of history. The 8.7% of the vote the Conservatives managed to hold onto in Toronto Centre — the riding of David Crombie and David MacDonald — is the party’s worst showing in any election in that riding since Confederation.

The Conservative candidate in Bourassa, likewise, took less than 5% of the vote. That is the second-worst showing for the Conservatives in that riding since 1968, when it was created. (Only 2000, when they split the vote with the Canadian Alliance, was worse.) By contrast, the Liberals’ 43% showing in Brandon-Souris was not only a 37% increase over 2011, it was their best ever.

NP Graphics

NP GraphicsClick to Enlarge

Nothing changed? Come on. We can argue about the reasons, we can debate what it portends, but on the night, there’s no getting away from it: The Conservatives were spanked. No doubt it would have been even worse for the Tories had they actually lost Brandon-Souris (“not unexpected, when you consider the Liberal candidate was the son of the riding’s long-time former Conservative MP”), but the results ought to prompt some deep reflection among the party’s leadership.

No, the Senate scandal is not likely to be at the top of most voters’ minds two years from now. But I rather doubt the Senate scandal, on its own, is what has driven one in four Tory voters to abandon the party: As I say, the polls have been showing the same thing for some time. It’s everything that went before it, and everything that’s happened since.

It’s the general impression that we are being governed by a gang of thugs — secretive, high-handed, unprincipled gusting to unethical, and openly contemptuous of such quaint notions as democratic accountability — an impression that grows more baked in each time the Prime Minister dodges a question in Parliament, or worse, sends in the clownish Paul Calandra to answer in his place.

At the same time, it’s clear the NDP have a lot of work to do to convince voters, not just of the Conservatives’ faults, but of their own virtues as their putative replacements. It must gall Mr. Mulcair, after all his weight and substance, to see the voters flock instead to the lighter-than-air Justin Trudeau. But he still has lots of time to turn things around.

For that matter, so does Stephen Harper. The difference is, Mr. Mulcair seems to realize he needs to.

Postmedia News

Andrew Coyne: There’s no spinning it — the Conservatives were spanked in Monday’s byelections

Posted on by

   Andrew Coyne  27/11/13  http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com

Does Stephen Harper realize that he needs to turn things around to win in 2015?   Adrian Wyld/The Canadian PressDoes Stephen Harper realize that he needs to turn things around to win in 2015?

If you were determined to be obtuse about it, you could look at the results of Monday’s byelections and say: nothing changed. The Tories held onto their two seats in the West, the Liberals held onto theirs in Ontario and Quebec. Move along folks, no story here.

Justin Trudeau would have come under less flak if he’d drawn a caricature depicting the Prophet Mohammed. Mr. Trudeau had the temerity to quote fallen NDP leader Jack Layton in his victory address, after the Liberals retained the Bourassa and Toronto Centre seats in Monday’s byelections.

Mr. Trudeau said that the NDP is “no longer the hopeful, optimistic party of Jack Layton … it is the Liberal Party that proved that hope is stronger than fear, that positive politics can, and should win out over negative.”

The invocation of Mr. Layton’s words, penned in a note to Canadians just before he died two years ago – “love is better than anger, hope is better than fear” – has incensed New Democrats, who have all but accused Mr. Trudeau of defaming the memory of their former leader.

You could do this, as I say, only if you took extravagant care to ignore everything else that happened that night: If you focused myopically on the top-line result in each riding, and paid no attention to the popular vote — the trend, the swing, across the nation and over time.

In private, I can assure you, no one in any of the parties does this. Only in the public realm do they say things like “a win’s a win” — which is what you say when a win looks a lot like a loss — and only the most programmed partisans actually mean it.

Only in the most literal sense is the Tories’ 391-vote margin in Brandon-Souris, one of the safest Conservative seats in the country, a “win.” Even the partisans found this hard to say with a straight face. Rather, they were obliged first to pretend that a Forum Research poll showing the Liberals ahead by 29 points the weekend before the election had some basis in reality, the better to conjure up a fantasy “comeback.”

To be sure, every party comes well-stocked with rationalizations on occasions like these, usually introduced by “when you consider” or some such phrase. As in: The Conservatives did pretty well, when you consider we’re in the throes of a massive national scandal. Or: the NDP collapse in Manitoba is understandable, when you consider the unpopularity of the province’s NDP government. It’s not cold, when you consider it’s February.

We would have done better, in other words, but for the fact that we did worse. Figures don’t lie, but losers can consider.

Related

But there’s just no spinning this one. The trends are too pronounced. Across all four ridings, the Tory vote was down 11 points versus the 2011 election, from 39% to 28%, almost exactly mirroring the national polls. The NDP, which might have been expected to gain the most from the Tories’ disfavour — when you consider how well Tom Mulcair has been performing in Parliament — instead dropped five points overall, while the Liberals surged 18 points.

If the drop in the Tory vote was the night’s main story, the rise in the Liberals’ was the other. In Provencher and Brandon-Souris, the Grits blew past the NDP to become the Tories’ main rivals, taking as many votes from the left as they did from the right. In Toronto Centre and Bourassa, they increased their margins of victory, even in the face of spirited challenges from the NDP. Conservative candidates in the East both lost their deposits, as NDP candidates did in the West. Only the Liberals were up across the board.

But the true significance of the result is captured, not by comparison to the last election, but set against the broad sweep of history. The 8.7% of the vote the Conservatives managed to hold onto in Toronto Centre — the riding of David Crombie and David MacDonald — is the party’s worst showing in any election in that riding since Confederation.

The Conservative candidate in Bourassa, likewise, took less than 5% of the vote. That is the second-worst showing for the Conservatives in that riding since 1968, when it was created. (Only 2000, when they split the vote with the Canadian Alliance, was worse.) By contrast, the Liberals’ 43% showing in Brandon-Souris was not only a 37% increase over 2011, it was their best ever.

NP Graphics

NP GraphicsClick to Enlarge

Nothing changed? Come on. We can argue about the reasons, we can debate what it portends, but on the night, there’s no getting away from it: The Conservatives were spanked. No doubt it would have been even worse for the Tories had they actually lost Brandon-Souris (“not unexpected, when you consider the Liberal candidate was the son of the riding’s long-time former Conservative MP”), but the results ought to prompt some deep reflection among the party’s leadership.

No, the Senate scandal is not likely to be at the top of most voters’ minds two years from now. But I rather doubt the Senate scandal, on its own, is what has driven one in four Tory voters to abandon the party: As I say, the polls have been showing the same thing for some time. It’s everything that went before it, and everything that’s happened since.

It’s the general impression that we are being governed by a gang of thugs — secretive, high-handed, unprincipled gusting to unethical, and openly contemptuous of such quaint notions as democratic accountability — an impression that grows more baked in each time the Prime Minister dodges a question in Parliament, or worse, sends in the clownish Paul Calandra to answer in his place.

At the same time, it’s clear the NDP have a lot of work to do to convince voters, not just of the Conservatives’ faults, but of their own virtues as their putative replacements. It must gall Mr. Mulcair, after all his weight and substance, to see the voters flock instead to the lighter-than-air Justin Trudeau. But he still has lots of time to turn things around.

For that matter, so does Stephen Harper. The difference is, Mr. Mulcair seems to realize he needs to.

Postmedia News

Canada fails in its promise to end child poverty: Editorial

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Campaign 2000 reports that, almost 25 years after MPs voted to end child poverty, there are even more poor kids in Canada.

While the federal government has failed to keep its commitment to end child poverty, the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto is trying to fill that gap with bold targets for its holiday food drive.   Richard Lautens / Toronto Star  While the federal government has failed to keep its commitment to end child poverty, the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto is trying to fill that gap with bold targets for its holiday food drive.

Published on Wed Nov 27 2013   http://www.thestar.com

Few parliamentary actions have been so well-intentioned yet produced so disappointing a result. Almost a quarter-century ago the House of Commons unanimously voted to end child poverty by the year 2000. But more children are living in a low-income household than in 1989, when Members of Parliament made their optimistic pledge.

About 967,000 Canadian kids — one in seven — live in families that fall under Statistics Canada’s “low-income measure,” according to an annual report released by Campaign 2000 on Tuesday, the anniversary of Ottawa’s historic pledge. When that bright promise was made, there were 912,000 kids in poverty.

The burden is not equally distributed. Four in 10 indigenous children are considered poor. And, as reported by the Star’s Laurie Monsebraaten, 38.2 per cent of Ontario children cared for by single mothers are being raised in a low-income environment.

While government has failed to keep its commitment, non-profit organizations and private donors are stepping in to try to fill the gap. The Daily Bread Food Bank announced bold targets for its holiday food drive on Wednesday, hoping to raise $2.5 million and a million pounds of food.

To put that challenge in perspective, the Toronto organization’s holiday drive raised just over 555,000 pounds of food in 2012. Daily Bread’s goal this season is high, but the need is great. More than a million people turned to food banks in Greater Toronto last year.

The agency especially needs canned fruits and vegetables, tinned fish, tomato sauce, peanut butter, baby food and formula, powdered milk, beans, rice and pasta. Donations can be made at fire halls and participating grocery stores. What’s given is shared by 170 agencies that deliver 200 food bank and meal distribution programs.

But non-profit groups, and generous donors, can’t end poverty alone. They can only hope to ease its sting a bit. The rest is up to government. Campaign 2000, a coalition of labour and anti-poverty groups, is urging Ottawa to draft a practical, nation-wide strategy to finally eliminate poverty. It would need to include an affordable housing plan, since so much of poor people’s income goes to just keeping a roof over their heads.

Queen’s Park could make a great many lives easier by boosting the minimum wage, increasing the Ontario Child Benefit, and delivering a much-needed $100-a-month increase for singles on welfare.

With more determination and a stronger commitment to change, governments could yet deliver on a promise made to the poor that has become so painfully overdue.

Should the public service have the right to strike? YES

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By Jim Stanford, Ottawa Citizen November 26, 2013

Should the public service have the right to strike? YES   Photograph by: Chris Mikula , The Ottawa Citizen

It might seem like ancient history, but it wasn’t long ago that Canadian governments knew how to balance their books — and then some. The collective operating surplus of Canadian governments in 2007 equalled almost $40 billion. Teachers, nurses, and other public servants did their jobs. Tax revenues were more than sufficient to pay for their valuable work (in fact, average tax rates were falling, not rising).

Then along came a global financial meltdown. (No one argues, by the way, that it was caused by teachers, nurses and civil servants.) Surpluses dissolved into deficits: not huge, by historic or international standards, but significant. And some political leaders made tackling the deficit their defining crusade. Showing they could manage their own finances helped them pretend they were in control of the worrisome events around them. In that effort, public sector workers and their unions presented a politically convenient target.

It’s not that public sector compensation costs caused the deficit (which didn’t exist, remember, until 2008). Nor would squeezing public employees be central to the deficit reduction exercise. At the federal level, direct compensation accounts for only 8.5 cents of each dollar in total government spending, and that ratio has been stable. Achieving, say, a wage freeze instead of paying a normal two-per-cent annual increase, on that small share of spending, could make no noticeable difference to the fiscal trajectory.

Nor was strike activity crippling the economy and service delivery. In fact, the incidence of work stoppage (measured by days lost per worker to strikes and lockouts) fell in 2012 to the lowest since statistics began in 1946: down over 95 per cent compared to the strike-happy 1970s. Public sector workers are less likely to go on strike, not more: they’ve accounted for one-third of all work stoppage days in the last decade, even though they now make up over half of all union members.

No, tilting at public sector unions is all about politics, not economics. Governments want to change the channel from persistent economic stagnation and embarrassing scandals. Workers in the private sector suffered during the recession, politicians argue (not that they act to support private sector workers, either). So it’s about time public sector workers suffer, too. The logic of this ideology of “shared misery” may be bizarre, but it’s politically potent.

Thus began the latest chapter in a long-standing Canadian tradition: when times are tough, blame the unions. And then take away their right to strike. It’s happened over 200 times in Canada in the last 30 years.

The latest example is Bill C-4. It would give the federal government unilateral power to define who can strike and who can’t (contrary to past practice and international convention). The government won’t detail how this will happen until after the law is passed. In a true Catch-22, the bill would also neuter the arbitration process for workers who can’t strike. And the whole process is buried within a 321-page omnibus bill, debate on which was curtailed two days after it was introduced. Bill C-4 is an affront to democracy — both in Parliament, and in the workplace.

The attack on public sector labour rights is usually justified by the claim that unions have soaked taxpayers through their irresistible demands. This claim is not supported. In practice, public sector bargaining tends to follow economy-wide trends, but with a lag. Public sector wages were much lower before public sector unionization took off in the 1970s. Wages caught up in the 1980s, then fell behind again during the austere 1990s. The public sector did better in the mid-2000s. But more recently, bargaining has clearly responded to tough times: for four years running, public sector settlements have lagged well behind private sector deals, and behind the general growth of earnings in the overall economy.

Average earnings in the public sector are five to 10 per cent higher than economy averages (depending on how they are measured) — but education and credentials are significantly higher, too. Comparing similar occupations and credentials, it’s largely a wash. Women make more in the public sector than in the private sector, but men make less. The whole wage scale is compressed (with a higher bottom and a lower top). But overall public sector compensation is not out of whack — and powerful economic and political pressures tend to keep it that way.

Governments are the only employer with the power to “solve” their labour relations problems by simply dictating a settlement. The potential for misuse of this confluence of fiscal interest and political power is enormous. Most private sector employers would love to outlaw strikes and dictate wage outcomes, but they can’t — and for good reason. Where public employees provide a genuinely essential service (like fire, police, and some health services), there’s no debate: in place of strikes or lockouts, a neutral arbitration system should replicate collective bargaining outcomes without work stoppage. But other public sector workers must have the same rights as anyone else in our society to organize themselves and promote their interests, up to and including withdrawing their labour if that’s necessary to get a deal.

Jim Stanford is an economist with the trade union Unifor. Tuesday night at the Canadian War Museum, in a debate hosted by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and moderated by former House speaker Peter Milliken, economist Jim Stanford and professor Tom Flanagan debated the resolution “The right to strike has no place in the public sector.”

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

In Canada, the fading union movement is a male phenomenon

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Louella Vincent (left) and Sue Munn of the Hospital Employees’ Union walk in solidarity with other community living workers from various unions that include CUPE, BCGEU and HEU outside the Richmond Caring Place in Richmond, B.C. (Rafal Gerszak For The Globe and Mail)

 

TAVIA GRANT The Globe and Mail  Nov. 26 2013, 2:00 PM EST

A dwindling proportion of men are members of labour groups, a shift that’s driving declines in Canada’s unionization rate in recent decades as rates for women have held steady.

The country’s rate of unionization (the proportion of workers who are union members) was 30 per cent last year, down from 38 per cent in 1981. Most of that decline happened in the 1980s and 1990s, Statistics Canada analysis shows, with rates stabilizing in the past decade.

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Men used to be more likely to belong to unions, but that has changed. In 1981, the proportion of men in unionized jobs was 42 per cent; by last year, that had tumbled to 29 per cent. By contrast, women’s unionization rate has hovered around 30 per cent for the past 30 years – leaving them now more apt to be unionized than men. (See chart, here.)

Unionization rates are rising among 45- to -64-year-old women, which may reflect their growing numbers in health care and education. Rates are falling among men of all age groups. And young people are far less likely to be unionized than in the past.

In general, “full-time work, longer job tenure, large firms, higher educational attainment and better wages were all associated with higher unionization rates,” said Statscan analysts Diane Galarneau and Thao Sohn.

Total unionization rates haven’t budged much in the past decade, but there are shifts within industries. The rate has fallen in goods-producing industries, such as manufacturing, while it has risen, a little, on the services side. The services sector now has a higher rate of unionization than goods-producing industries, a reversal from a decade ago.

Unionization rates are rising in management and administration support, along with public administration. They’re falling in forestry, factories and transportation. Education had the highest unionization rates last year, while agriculture had the lowest.

Alberta had the lowest unionization rates in Canada, at 22 per cent last year, while Newfoundland and Quebec had the highest, at 38 and 37 per cent, respectively. Unionization has declined in all provinces in the past three decades.

Statscan’s study draws on information from its labour force survey and earlier data sources.

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