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Canadian Politics, Election 2015

Federal Election 2015: Costly Campaign All About Saving Taxpayers Money, Harper Says

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Conservative Leader Stephen Harper says a desire to save taxpayers’ money motivated his decision to call an 11-week campaign that will actually cost taxpayers millions of dollars more.

Outside Rideau Hall on Sunday, Harper said it was “essential” to start the campaign in the first week of August ahead of a vote on Oct. 19. The 78-day campaign will be the longest in more than a century and, almost certainly, the costliest in Canadian history.

“As it my intention to begin campaign-related activities and it is also the case for the other party leaders, it’s important that these campaigns be funded by the parties themselves, rather than taxpayers,” the Conservative leader said.

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Canadian Politics, Election 2015

Nanos survey: Tight race begins for top three parties

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CTVNews.ca Staff
Published Sunday, August 2, 2015 12:20PM EDT

The federal election race is officially under way, and the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP appear to be in a three-way race as they leave the starting line.

The latest ballot tracking from Nanos Research shows a razor-thin margin of voter preference support separating the first-place Conservatives from the NDP and Liberals, in a survey that asked respondents which two parties they would consider voting for in their local riding.

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives led the survey results with 31.5 per cent support overall, followed closely by Thomas Mulcair’s NDP at 30.1 per cent, with Justin Trudeau’s Liberals trailing at 29.3 per cent support. The Green Party ranked a distant fourth in the survey with 5.4 per cent support.

“The trend has been favouring the New Democrats,” pollster Nik Nanos told CTV News on Sunday.

Petro State

A Big Summer Story You Missed: Soaring Oil Debt Returns diminish as energy companies resort to higher-cost, higher-risk hydrocarbons.

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A Big Summer Story You Missed: Soaring Oil Debt

Source URL http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/08/29/Soaring-Oil-Debt-Summer/

Returns diminish as energy companies resort to higher-cost, higher-risk hydrocarbons.

By Andrew Nikiforuk, Yesterday, TheTyee.ca

KeystoneNebraska_600px.jpg

Over 100 of the world’s largest energy companies are running out of cash. Photo of Keystone pipeline in Nebraska by Shannon Ramos. Creative Commons licensed

Some of the summer’s biggest news stories took place in the bombed schools of Gaza, the abandoned hospitals of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the wheat fields of eastern Ukraine and the bloody mountains of northern Iraq.

But one of the most important made virtually no headlines at all, and seemed to only appear on the website of the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Last July the government agency, which has collected mundane statistics on energy matters for decades, quietly revealed that 127 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies are running out of cash.

They are now spending more than they are earning. Profits have lagged as expenditures have risen. Overburdened by debt, these firms are selling assets.

The math is simple. The 127 firms generated $568 billion in cash from their operations during 2013-2014 while their expenses totalled $677 billion. To cover the difference of $110 billion, the energy giants increased their debt load or sold off assets.

Given that the gap between earned cash and spending stood at a modest $10 billion in 2010, that’s a significant change for the industry as well as the global economy it fuels.

Mining messy bitumen

The Energy Information Administration doesn’t explain why the world’s major hydrocarbon producers are now spending more and making less. But an August report by Carbon Tracker, a non-profit financial think-tank, provides some possible answers.

Most companies are now investing in high-cost and high-risk projects to mine difficult hydrocarbons such as bitumen or shale oil, according to Carbon Tracker. Hydraulic fracturing, the land equivalent of ocean bottom trawling, adds to the cost of oil, too.

It’s not only the firms deploying fracking that are racking up high debt loads. Chinese state-owned corporations, for example, plopped down $30 billion to develop junk crude in the oilsands over the last decade.

But with a few exceptions, none of the investments are making a good dollar return due to the difficult and costly nature of mining messy bitumen as well as problematic quality of the reserves, combined with huge cost overruns.

IEA chart

Source: EIA.

By Carbon Tracker’s calculation, bitumen remains the world’s most expensive hydrocarbon. The extraction of this fuel signals that business as usual is over, and mining of extreme hydrocarbons comes with extreme financial and political risks.

Cheap and easy days are over

The Chinese aren’t the only ones facing diminishing returns from high-cost projects in the oilsands.

Most of the world’s oil and gas firms are now pursuing extreme hydrocarbons because the cheap and easy stuff is gone. The high-carbon remainders include shale oil, oilsands, ultra deepwater oil and Arctic petroleum. (Industry now wants to frack the Northwest Territories, too.)

But given that oil demand in places like Europe, the United States and Japan is flattening or declining, many analysts don’t think that high-carbon, high-risk projects (which all need a $75 to $95 market price for oil to break even) make much economic sense in a carbon-constrained world.

“Our analysis demonstrates that a blind pursuit of reserve replacement at all costs or a focus on high expenditure regardless of returns could go against improving shareholder returns,” recently warned Carbon Tracker.

The capital costs for liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals supplied by heavily fracked coal or shale fields is also rising. Highly complex LNG projects in Norway, Australia and Papua New Guinea have all experienced major cost overruns.

Goldman Sachs now reckons more than half of the oil companies listed on the stock market — are spending five times more than what they did in 2000 chasing extreme hydrocarbons. As a consequence they need an oil price of $120 a barrel to remain cash neutral in the future.

Spending more cash to get less energy has major implications for the global economy, a creature of oil. Whenever nations spend lots on oil, they record crazy exponential growth, like China. And whenever nations spend less on petroleum, like Europe and the U.S., there is stagnation.

Oil’s slavish hold

To explain oil’s slavish hold on the global economy, the Russian physicists Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia M. Makarieva employ a useful metaphor.

Imagine a town of 100 people. Ten own the air, the oil of the modern economy, and they force everyone else to pay to breathe. The other 90 work hard and give the air owners about 10 per cent of their production.

Whenever the price of air goes up quickly (and the cost of extracting oil has increased substantially in the last decade — about 12 per cent a year), then economic growth slows to a crawl. The air owners have killed the growth potential of the workers.

Sooner or later the owners of the air realize they have to lower the price. “As the air price goes down, the workers feel better…. This, in short, is the scenario of the global economic crisis, how it starts and how it develops,” explains Gorshkov and Makarieva. “Curiously, none of the economic analysts relate the world crisis to the abnormally high oil prices that preceded it.”

But diminished returns from extreme hydrocarbons will do more than slow down productivity and increase price volatility. They will impose lasting and material adjustments on all of us.

In addition to seeing fewer vehicles on the road (a startling U.S. reality already), we shall also see lower wages (except in the hydrocarbon industry), rising food prices, rising personal debt loads, increased demands on governments increasingly short of revenue, explosive inequalities in wealth and rising political conflict.

Our new narrative

We shall also see more of what the U.S. Energy Information Administration dutifully recorded: soaring debt loads to support massive energy sprawl. That means industry will spend more good money chasing poor quality resources. They will inefficiently mine and frack ever larger land bases at higher environmental costs for lower energy returns.

Combined with its twin brother, climate change, this is the great energy narrative that will shape our destiny in the years to come.

Marion King Hubbert, a Shell geologist, predicted this development decades ago and presented the cultural conundrum clearly: “During the last two centuries we have known nothing but an exponential growth culture, a culture so dependent upon the continuance of exponential growth for its stability that is incapable of reckoning with problems of non-growth.”

But why would such a radical development be news in the dog days of summer?  [Tyee]

Read more: Energy,

Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the energy industry for two decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee. Find his previous stories here.

This coverage of Canadian national issues is made possible because of generous financial support from our Tyee Builders.

Canadian Politics

Don’t underestimate Trudeau, say two former Harper advisers

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By ABBAS RANA | 
Published: Monday, 07/07/2014 12:00 am EDT

Two former senior advisers to Prime Minister Stephen Harper are warning Conservatives not to underestimate Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau after last week’s four by-election results, saying the Liberals have momentum and could surprise Conservatives in the next election like they did with Liberal leader Jean Chrétien in the 1993 election

“We completely underestimated Mr. Chrétien [in 1993]. My biggest concern is that the Conservatives do not underestimate Mr. Trudeau. Brian Mulroney has said he’s [Mr. Trudeau] the real deal. Whether he is or not, he’s certainly got something that’s appealing [to Canadians],” Bruce Carson, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) from told The Hill Times last week referring to the Liberal Party’s landslide victory in 1993 and where Progressive Conservatives under then-prime minister Kim Campbell were reduced to mere two seats from 169 that they had won in 1988.

In the four byelections that took place on Monday, June 30 between the weekend and the Canada Day holiday, the Liberals won the two GTA ridings and the Conservatives won the two Alberta ridings. But in all four ridings, the Liberals’ popular vote went up.

Keith Beardsley, former deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister Harper told The Hill Timesthat, in the short term, the Liberals have momentum on their side but it remains to be seen how things will unfold until the next election.

“In the short term, momentum will help him [Mr. Trudeau] in fundraising, in finding candidates, and volunteers for the election machine. Whether he can sustain it and turn that into votes this far out, that’s a different issue. But in the short-term, it’s going to help him,” Mr. Beardsley said, now president of Cenco Public Affairs.

Mr. Beardsley said that the Liberal vote growth in Alberta in byelections means that Conservatives will have to campaign in the next general election in Alberta—the bedrock of Conservative base where, in the past elections, Conservatives won almost all the seats with only nominal campaigns. In the last election, Conservatives won 27 of the 28 ridings.

“They’ve [Conservatives] got to take each riding seriously and that includes Alberta,” Mr. Beardsley said.

The only surprise in the four byelections was the downtown Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina where Liberal candidate Adam Vaughan, a former journalist and city councillor bested NDP candidate Joe Cressy, a social activist, by a margin of 6,745 or 19.4 per cent of the vote. Former NDP MP Olivia Chow, widow of late Jack Layton had held the riding since 2006 and in the 2011 federal election won it by a whopping margin of more than 20,0000 votes. She resigned her seat in March to run for the mayor’s race in Toronto. Ms. Chow first won this riding from former four-term Liberal MP Tony Ianno in 2006.

Based on the last federal election result in the riding and Liberal infighting which was caused when Mr. Trudeau blocked Christine Innes, wife of Mr. Ianno from seeking the Liberal nomination because of her husband’s alleged bullying and intimidation campaign tactics, the NDP was expected to win the riding. Ms. Innes now is suing Mr. Trudeau and Ontario Liberal campaign co-chair David MacNaughton for $1.5-million for defamation.

The ridings of Toronto-Danforth and Trinity-Spadina held special symbolic significance for the New Democrats as the husband and wife team held both. After Mr. Layton’s death in 2011, the NDP won Toronto-Danforth in March 2012 in a byelection with Craig Scott, a Rhodes scholar and a former law professor at Osgoode Hall law school as their candidate.

Mr. Cressy, 29, a bright social activist and a close family friend of the Layton family played an important role in planning Ms. Chow’s mayoral campaign. Mr. Cressy and Mike Layton, son of Jack Layton were best men at each other’s weddings. In the last NDP leadership campaign, Mr. Cressy, a former senior adviser at the Stephen Lewis Foundation supported NDP MP Paul Dewar’s (Ottawa Centre, Ont.) unsuccessful leadership campaign in 2012. Both of Mr. Cressy’s parents Joanne and Gordon were Toronto City councillors.

Mr. Vaughan, a former CBC and CityTV/CP 24 journalist, whose father Colin was also a Toronto City councillor, is well-known as a popular and good retail politician. He replaced Ms. Chow as city councillor after she resigned to run federally in 2006. In the municipal election, Mr. Vaughan defeated Helen Kennedy, chief of staff to Ms. Chow.

The other GTA riding of Scarborough-Agincourt was expected to stay in the Liberal column as Liberals have held it for more than 25 years. Former Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis had been representing this riding since 1988. He resigned in April to spend more time with his family and to run municipally. In last week’s byelection, Liberal Arnold Chan, a former senior adviser to former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty won by a margin of about 6,500 votes and won a total of 59.6 per cent of the votes.

Conservatives won both Alberta ridings but the popular Liberal vote percentage went up in both ridings.

In Fort McMurray-Athabasca, which became vacant after former Conservative MP Brian Jean resigned his seat in January, Conservative David Yurdiga won by a margin of 11.4 per cent of the vote. He won 46.7 per cent of the vote and second place Liberal candidate Kyle Harrietha garnered 35.3 per cent of the vote. In the 2011 federal election, Mr. Jean garnered 71 per cent and second place NDP candidate Berend Wilting won 13.2 per cent and third place Liberal Karen Young captured 10.4 per cent.

In Macleod, Conservative John Barlow beat Liberal candidate Dustin Fuller, who placed second, by a margin of 51.7 per cent of the vote. The Liberals placed fourth in the last general election. This riding opened up after the early resignation of former Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister Ted Menzies in November. In the 2011 election, Liberal Nicole Hankel won only 3.6 per cent of the vote in this riding but in the byelecton not only came in second but also increased their vote count by about 14 per cent.

Meanwhile, Mr. Carson who served in the Prime Minister’s Office from 2006-2009 and also worked with Mr. Harper in the OLO after Canadian Alliance and PC Parties merged in 2003, said the attack ads that Conservatives have been running against Mr. Trudeau since he became party leader have not been producing the desired results. He said that his party should come up with more substantive attack ads rather than using “throwaway phrases” like “he’s in over his head.” Mr. Carson said that the Conservatives should pay particular attention to next year’s budget and election platform and make it exciting and innovative in order to ask Canadians for another mandate.

Mr. Carson, however, cautioned that although the Liberals have done well in byelections, it remains to be seen how the Liberal leader will perform in the general election campaign when it lasts 37 days and there will be 338 ridings, televised leaders’ debates, and a lot more scrutiny of him and his party’s record.

“…The appeal that Trudeau has, that’s exciting and they put a lot of attention in the byelections which is easy to do because there are only three or four happening at the same time,” said Mr. Carson.

“What I think Mr. Trudeau and Gerry [Butts] and others have to figure out is how do you take that and translate it into over 300 ridings.”

Since Mr. Trudeau became party leader last year, there have been nine byelections. In all, Liberals not only won their own ridings, but also knocked off the NDP in Trinity-Spadina and the Conservatives in Newfoundland and Labrador, where new Liberal MP Yvonne Jones defeated former Cabinet minister Peter Penashue. In all nine byelections, the Liberals’ popular vote percentages went up.

New Democratic Party spokesman George Soule told The Hill Times that his party is disappointed with last Monday’s byelection results and are now regrouping to plot their strategy for the fall Parliamentary session and the next general election. But he also warned that pundits should not read too much into the NDP defeat in Trinity-Spadina as he said his party has experienced similar setbacks before.

Using the example of 2010 byelection in the Manitoba riding of Winnipeg North, he said that the NDP lost that riding to Liberals after former NDP Judy Wasylycia-Leis stepped down. At the time, he said, pundits declared that the momentum was with the Liberal Party and declared then-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff as prime minister, but the 2011 general election produced a very different scenario.

“I remember a lot of analysis back then saying, ‘That was a good sign,’ and ‘That Jack Layton was done and that Michael Ignatieff is going to be the prime minister,’ but you saw how it turned out in the [general] election,” said Mr. Soule.

In the last general election, the NDP in an unprecedented move, increased its seat count from 36 to 103, thanks mostly to the unexpected gain of 59 seats in Quebec and for the first time in the party’s history, won official opposition status.

As for NDP’s loss in Trinity-Spadina, Mr. Soule gave all the credit to Mr. Vaughan’s popularity in the riding, but did not comment on whether Mr. Trudeau’s appeal had anything to do with it.

“When you look at Trinity-Spadina, it’s hard to argue that this wasn’t Adam Vaughan’s name recognition, Adam Vaughan’s campaign,” said Mr. Soule.

Deputy Liberal leader Ralph Goodale (Wascana, Sask.) said that last week’s positive byelection results for his party have showed that the momentum is with the Liberals, but that now the onus is on Liberals to ensure that they carry the momentum to the next election.

“There’s a mood for change in the air, but change doesn’t happen by accident or by default,” Mr. Goodale said.

“That’s our job [to carry the momentum forward]. It’s very encouraging to have that sense of momentum but one should never assume it comes automatically. It’s not easily gained and it’s not easily sustained. All Liberals will have to work very hard to keep up the pace. What we can say thus far is, so far so good, but we’ve got a long way to go, a lot of hard work to do, and this campaign for 2015 is really only just beginning.”

In the next election, Mr. Goodale said that his party is trying to find the best candidates from across the country, work on a strong message focused on economy, and come up with an election platform that catches the interest of Canadians.

“He’s [Justin] demonstrating this is not a one man show. This takes a team and it has to be a team drawn legitimately form every corner of the country with the talent not only to represent but also to govern,” said Mr. Goodale.

“Those are the three ingredients that are coming together for Justin—his own leadership, his strong candidates and his strong team and a message about the economy and about middle class Canadians and about fairness and about renewing our democracy that Canadians find timely.”

Meanwhile, the voter turnout in all four ridings was low most likely because the byelections took place between Canada Day holiday and the weekend and any outcome in all four ridings would not have changed the dynamics in the House. In the riding of Fort McMurray-Athabasca, the turnout was at 15.9 per cent—the lowest in any riding in modern Canadian political history. In the riding of Macleod, the turnout was slightly better at 19.6 per cent. In the two GTA ridings, the turnout  was better than Alberta ridings but still low—29.4 per cent of voters cast their vote in Scarborough-Agincourt and 31.6 in Trinity-Spadina.

After last week’s byelections, the Conservatives now hold 162 seats, the NDP 98, the Liberals 37, the Bloc Québécois four and the Green Party has two seats. There are four Independent MPs and one vacant seat—Whitby-Oshawa, Ont.—after Jim Flaherty died in April.

arana@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

Source URL: http://www.hilltimes.com/news/news/2014/07/07/dont-underestimate-trudeau-say-two-former-harper-advisers/39019

 

Canadian Politics

Justin Trudeau Introduces His Kids To Harper At Calgary Stampede Parade

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The Huffington Post Canada  |  Posted: 07/04/2014 3:00 pm EDT  |  Updated: 07/04/2014 5:59 pm EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/07/04/justin-trudeau-stephen-harper-son-photo_n_5558640.html

By now it goes without saying that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau don’t always see eye to eye.

But it appears they both respect each other as fathers.

On Friday, while both leaders were taking in the Calgary Stampede parade, Trudeau introduced his six-year-old son, Xavier, to the prime minister.

The nice moment was captured by Trudeau’s photographer, Adam Scotti, and shared on Twitter.

“Nice to introduce Xavier to the Prime Minister,” Trudeau wrote, adding it was good of Harper to say hello.

The prime minister also met Trudeau’s five-year-old daughter, Ella-Grace.

stephen harper ellagrace trudeau

Photo credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

The moment may remind some of a story Trudeau shared in the eulogy for his father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, back in 2000.

Trudeau said that when he was eight, he spotted one of his father’s “chief rivals” — believed to be former PC leader and prime minister Joe Clark — eating at a parliamentary restaurant. Thinking it would please his dad, Trudeau told a “silly” joke about the man.

It didn’t go over well.

From the eulogy:

My father looked at me sternly, with that look I would learn to know so well.And said: Justin, we never attack the individual. We can be in total disagreement with someone, without denigrating them as a consequence, and, saying that, he stood up, took me by the hand and brought me over to introduce me to this man.

He was a nice man, who was eating there with his daughter, a nice-looking blond girl, a little younger than I was.

He spoke to me in a friendly manner for a bit, and it was at that point that I understood that having opinions that are different from another does not preclude being deserving of respect as an individual.

Because simple tolerance, mere tolerance, is not enough.

We need genuine and deep respect for each and every human being, notwithstanding their thoughts, their values, their beliefs, their origins.

When Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Grégoire, gave birth to the couple’s third child in February, both Harper and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair offered congratulations online.

(Trudeau’s initial announcement about the boy said his name was “Hadrian,” but it’s actually spelled “Hadrien.”)

Some things, as they say, are bigger than politics.

 

Uncategorized

Kill Canada’s temporary foreign worker program: Siddiqui Jason Kenney made a mess of the temporary foreign worker program and is now posing as its saviour by introducing reforms.

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Jason Kenney made a mess of the temporary foreign worker program and is now posing as its saviour by introducing reforms.

Employment Minister Jason Kenney, left, and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander are seen in a reflection at a news conference in Ottawa on June 20, 2014, where reforms to the temporary foreign worker program were announced.

SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Employment Minister Jason Kenney, left, and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander are seen in a reflection at a news conference in Ottawa on June 20, 2014, where reforms to the temporary foreign worker program were announced.

By:  Columnist, Published on Sun Jul 06 2014

It hit me on Canada Day that even the name, temporary foreign worker program, is un-Canadian. “Temporary” and “foreign” are the antithesis of long-standing Canadian immigration policy, the bedrock principle of which is that immigrants are selected to be permanent residents and future fellow-citizens.

The formula has served us well by minimizing the “us vs. them” undercurrent that charges relations between new arrivals and the rest of society. In our native and adopted land, the old and the new are in it together.

Canada studiously avoided Europe’s guest worker program, under which hundreds of thousands were imported in the expectation that they’d leave at the end of their work. Few did, creating a permanent underclass in Germany, France and elsewhere — and all the resentments that go with it.

We were never like the oil-rich Persian Gulf nations that allow employers to import temporary foreign workers, but not their families, pay dirt-poor wages and hold them hostage as indentured labour tethered to their master.

Now our temporary foreign worker program allows employers to import cheap foreign labour, without families, mostly for low-end jobs for short periods. The temps are tied to their employer who may mistreat them. That Canadian employers do not exploit foreign workers the way Arabs do is not saying much.

The program, besides undermining Canadian values, has depressed wages in certain regions, adding to the already unacceptable level of inequity between rich and poor.

It allowed too many employers, about 25,000, to rely too much on cheap foreign labour. About 1,100 of those employers rely on foreigners for more than half their total workforce. This is scandalous in times of high unemployment, especially among our youth and new immigrants, whose jobless rate is double the national average, not to mention those middle-aged Canadians who have been laid off and cannot get back into the workforce.

As of Dec. 1, 2013, there were 338,000 temporary foreign workers officially. But the total may be as high as 500,000. Since Canada has no exit controls, there’s no way of knowing how many went underground at the end of their visas, creating a new underclass, as in Europe.

The program was started under Jean Chrétien but expanded under Jason Kenney, one of Stephen Harper’s few competent ministers. He mastered the complicated immigration file. He went about overhauling the entire system but showed particular zeal for importing cheap labour. He did so in conjunction with the Conservative belief that too many Canadians were too lazy or too spoiled by employment insurance benefits to work. The Tories tightened the insurance rules and opened the floodgates to foreign workers, in the name of ostensible skills shortages.

Kenney allowed the program to grow even when the economy slowed down. He let employers in some sectors hire more foreign workers than Canadians. At times, he brought more temporary foreign workers into Canada than skilled new landed immigrants.

He who made a mess of the program is now posing as its saviour.

He is being clever about his hypocrisy. He first tried two sets of mini-changes — designed as palliatives for an increasingly angry public. He could not spin his way out of trouble. So he has introduced comprehensive reforms. But he avoided parliamentary scrutiny by announcing the changes the day the House of Commons rose for its summer recess. He opted instead for a propaganda blitz — leaking details to selected reporters the day before, then doing an unusually long news conference and following that up with a stream of interviews, public appearances and Twitter pronouncements.

He promises to better control the entry of low-skilled foreign temps; raise the fee for employers to hire foreigners; deny the hotel, fast-food, retail, security and other sectors access to the program in areas of high unemployment; allow temps to stay only two years, not four; force companies with more than 10 employees to hire only up to a tenth of their work force from abroad; have employers document how many Canadians applied for the job and how many were interviewed, etc.

Still, he is exempting employers with fewer than 10 employees from the 10 per cent cap, meaning that all nine employees of a small business may still be foreigners. He does nothing about improving the working conditions of the temporary workers.

He expects the changes to reduce the number of low-wage temporary foreign workers to 16,000 in two years. That’s 16,000 too many.

As an exercise in political damage control, Kenney has done well. He is an astute politician. But the program is not fixable. It needs to be nixed, beyond its limited use for seasonal farm workers and caregivers for infants and the elderly. Even for those two categories, we need to rethink whether exploiting poor Third World workers in tedious jobs at low wages for short periods fits our collective sense of who we are and what that says about Canada.

Where labour shortages exist, they should be addressed by recruiting Canadians at competitive wages.

Or by better immigrant selection. That’s how Canada was built. The farmers who tilled the topsoil in the Prairies were not sent back to Ukraine. Nor were miners and construction workers returned to where they had come from. Had they been, Canada would not have been blessed with the Esposito brothers and millions of other talented children of immigrants.

Haroon Siddiqui’s column appears on Thursday and Sunday.hsiddiqui@thestar.ca

Source URL: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/07/06/kill_canadas_temporary_foreign_worker_program_siddiqui.html

Canadian Politics

Stephen Harper targets Justin Trudeau in speech to supporters in Calgary

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By  —  — Jul 6 2014

Prime Minister Stephen Harper poses with people dressed as horses at the Calgary Stampede parade, Friday, July 4, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Prime Minister Stephen Harper poses with people dressed as horses at the Calgary Stampede parade, Friday, July 4, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

CALGARY – Prime Minister Stephen Harper hammered Liberal leader Justin Trudeau in a speech to party faithful at his annual Calgary Stampede barbecue on Saturday.

With a federal election looming next year, Harper accused Trudeau of having nothing substantial to offer to voters, contrasting the Conservative government’s accomplishments with the Liberals’ positions on the economy and crime.

Mention of Trudeau elicited boos from the crowd, which included federal cabinet ministers and provincial politicians.

Harper’s speech made scant mention of the Opposition New Democrats and didn’t single out NDP leader Tom Mulcair by name.

Harper said the economy is “rock solid” in a fragile global environment and his government has created jobs, lowered taxes and increased trade agreements with other countries, including the European Union.

“The opposition will say now’s the time to spend and spend and spend, but next year we will use the fiscal room to do what we promised: cut taxes for hard working Canadian families. That’s our priority,” Harper said.

Harper said through the years all of the agreements were opposed by the NDP and although the Liberals announced in the 1970s they wanted free trade with Europe “They never even got to the bargaining table.”

The prime minister said both the Liberals and NDP offer the alternative of spending without any fiscal responsibility.

“Never, ever cut any spending; Spend more, now and always; let the deficit rise, increase taxes. You can look around the world at any number of basket cases to see how that works out.”

The prime minister said he is particularly proud of the progress made in implementing the Conservative agenda to ensure streets and communities are safe.

“And if, God forbid, Canadians are attacked, or robbed, if they lose someone they love to a murderer, or if they see their children driven to suicide by bullying and harassment… the first thing they want their government to do is not make excuses for criminals, but to stick up for victims,” Harper said.

Harper said Canadians need to be aware that Trudeau wants to undo all the good work that his government has achieved.

“In fact, Justin Trudeau has said he will repeal our reforms. Repeal, for example our mandatory prison sentences for serious, violent crime,” he said.

“In other words, I like to describe it this way: he will restore that key liberal principle of criminal justice…that the offender must be considered innocent even after being proved guilty.”

Harper said Canadians have to make a choice when they go to the polls next year – what his government has delivered or what Justin Trudeau is offering.

“In somewhat more than a year from now, Canadians will pass judgement on that. Canadians will be asked to choose.”

He said the Liberals will offer to give voters anything they want.

“Want something from the government? Whatever you want, they’ll spend money on it and you can have it. Don’t worry about who’s going to pay for it. Don’t like crime? Just legalize marijuana and, somehow, it will all go away.”

“He has nothing – absolutely nothing – of substance to offer.”

Trudeau and two of his children took in the Calgary Stampede parade on Friday before heading to the rodeo. He told reporters he’s optimistic the Liberals can win over Albertans, despite their failure to snag two Alberta seats that were up for grabs in recent byelections.

Earlier Saturday, Harper served pancakes at the Stampede breakfast at the Chinook Centre mall — the largest breakfast during the 10-day cowboy festival that attracts about 50,000 people.

Follow @BillGraveland and @LaurenKrugel on Twitter

Election Fraud, Robo Call

3 roadblocks to the robocalls probe — and their possible fixes Fair Elections Act makes robocalls, live campaign calls more traceable By Laura Payton, CBC News

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Investigators ran into a series of problems in trying to probe allegations of misleading or nuisance calls across Canada in 2011. The fair elections act pitches ways to fix one of them, but leaves out a number of others.

Investigators ran into a series of problems in trying to probe allegations of misleading or nuisance calls across Canada in 2011. The fair elections act pitches ways to fix one of them, but leaves out a number of others. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

Investigators ran into a series of problems in trying to probe what came to be known as robocalls, allegations of misleading or nuisance calls across Canada in the 2011 federal election.

In a report released Thursday, Yves Côté, the commissioner of Canada Elections, said no charges would be laid following complaints ofmisleading or nuisance live calls and robocalls. He noted a number of problems that limited the ability to investigate the complaints.

In the end, it was difficult to sort out the legitimate calls made to encourage people to vote, or to vote for a specific party, from the calls alleged to be misleading or harassing.

The fair elections act would bring in some improvements, but leaves out a number of others. Here are three problems identified by investigators and how they may — or may not — be fixed under Bill C-23.

1. Limited information

National parties don’t have to submit receipts and other documents to back up the expenses they claim for reimbursement from Elections Canada, so investigators didn’t have access to contractual information between the national campaigns and telemarketing companies used to make the calls.

“The challenge lies in the limited information that must be provided to Elections Canada,” the report said.

Candidates do have to submit supporting documents, but, the report noted, “the purpose for which a firm was retained, the phone numbers called, and the text of any calls made is not reported.”

The Fair Elections Act would force the companies to keep scripts of live calls and recordings of robocalls, but parties still won’t have to submit any records to back up their expense claims. Elections Canada officials have for years called for the ability to acquire those records, particularly because parties get 50 per cent of their spending reimbursed.

While the bill says the scripts and live calls will have to be held for a year, Minister of State for Democratic Reform Pierre Poilievre said Friday that he is asking for the bill to be amended to have the records held for three years.

2. Inability to compel witnesses

Elections Canada officials have asked repeatedly for the ability to go to a court and ask a judge to compel oral evidence from witnesses.

Côté’s report notes that limitation, combined with the difficulty in getting production orders without significant progress in an investigation, made the robocalls probe harder.

“After a certain point, investigators had to rely on the voluntary participation of any concerned entity or person to obtain relevant information,” the report said.

Marc Mayrand, the chief electoral officer, says many other regulatory agencies have that power, as well as provincial electoral agencies. Poilievre says police don’t have that power and he isn’t about to give it to Elections Canada.

“It’s reasonable to expect that he [the commissioner] go to a judge and seek a court order to produce documents,” Poilievre said. “That’s what judges do… but I don’t think that it’s fair to give an election investigator powers that are not even available to police officers who are investigating the most violent and serious of crimes.”

3. Robocall records

“There are no binding industry standards for the creation and retention of records by telephone service providers and telemarketing companies,” Côté said in his report.

In the case of the complaints following the 2011 election, media reports the next year drew attention to the problem and elicited thousands of complaints. The vast majority of those complaints came nine months later, making the investigation harder.

The proposed bill will force the companies that provide calls to register with the CRTC, and Poilievre’s new amendments will have them keep script and call recordings for three years. But they still won’t have to keep the lists of phone numbers called, which would give investigators an additional avenue to pursue if new allegations surface in the future.

The investigators also pointed to technological challenges that allow callers to mask their phone numbers to prevent being traced.

Canadian Politics

Feds not out of options on Senate reform, Senator Segal says

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OTTAWA — Although the Harper government seemed to shrug its shoulders and move on following the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Senate, it is by no means out of options, said one Conservative senator.

“I would … make the case that there are still changes that could be made,” Senator Hugh Segal said in an interview on The West Block with Tom Clark. “There could be a new approach to how you appoint, on a consultative basis.”

On Friday, the Supreme Court shot down Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s plans toreform the upper chamber, which has been plagued with scandal.

In a historic, unanimous decision, the top court advised that the prime minister’s proposals to impose term limits on senators and create a “consultative election” process to choose nominees cannot be done by the federal government alone.

Instead, the court ruled, those reforms would require constitutional amendments signed off by at least seven provinces representing 50 per cent of the nation’s population. That, however, would set the country down a path peppered with political landmines — a route Harper was hoping to avoid.

The court went even further on the idea of abolishing the Senate, deciding that move, which Harper said he would take should he be unable to reform the upper chamber, would require unanimous consent of all 10 provinces.

So as the Conservative government sees it, its hands are tied.

WATCH: Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre says the government is out of options when it comes to reforming the Senate, and explains why the government decided to make amendments to the Fair Elections Act.

“The court has made Senate reform by Parliament impossible,” Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre said in an interview Sunday. “So at this point we’re going to do what we can to limit the cost and maximize the accountability of the Senate within the existing constitutional framework that the court has laid out.”

Senate reform has long been a priority for the Conservatives. But with last week’s ruling, it seems they’re prepared to move on.

Poilievre dismissed the notion of the government sitting down with the provincial premiers to see if they could get on board with the proposed reforms.

“I just think this time, the Canadian people are focussed on the economy,” he said when asked whether that was an option. “Our government is focused on jobs growth and lower taxes, and we don’t want to distract from that agenda by having a complicated constitutional wrangling with politicians at other levels of government.”

Senator Segal credited the government for respecting the Supreme Court’s decision, but argued there still are options.

He gave the example of the British House of Lords, upon which the Senate is based, where no government has a working majority.

“The mix of people appointed from the various political parties and as crossbenchers who come because they bring a particular expertise and science, or technology, or the military, or the church, or whatever, is such that the body can never be controlled by any one political party,” Segal said. “These are changes that could be made and require no constitutional revision at all.”

– With files from The Canadian Press

© Shaw Media, 2014

 

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