Bernard Drainville se retire de la course

2015/04/24 Leave a comment

The coronation continues:

« J’y allais pour gagner. Ceux qui me connaissent savent que je joue pour gagner. Toujours. J’ai tout donné, comme mon équipe, mais il faut se rendre à l’évidence: dans les dernières semaines, le vote s’est cristallisé et Pierre-Karl a rassemblé une nette majorité derrière lui », a déclaré M. Drainville lors d’une conférence de presse mercredi après-midi. « Continuer la course en sachant cela n’aurait pas eu de sens. Pour continuer, y’aurait fallu mener une campagne très dure, trop dure. Il ne faut pas être trop égoïste là-dedans. Il faut penser à l’équipe, à notre parti et à la cause qu’on porte », a-t-il ajouté.

À ce moment-ci, cinq des sept députés ayant donné leur appui à sa candidature gagneront aussi le camp de M. Péladeau. Il s’agit de Sylvain Gaudreault (Jonquière), Alain Therrien (Sanguinet), Mathieu Traversy (Terrebonne), Sylvain Roy (Bonaventure) et Guy Leclair (Beauharnois) font partie du lot. Les députes d’Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Carole Poirier, et de Berthier, André Villeneuve, poursuivaient quant à eux leur réflexion mercredi après-midi.

La décision de Bernard Drainville suscite l’étonnement dans les rangs du PQ. L’élu de Marie-Victorin avait recommandé jeudi dernier aux militants péquistes de ne pas céder « à la tentation de s’accrocher à un sauveur », qui pourrait n’être qu’« un mirage », mais plutôt de choisir un chef capable de faire gagner le PQ « au jour un ». M. Drainville a ouvert trois jours plus tard (dimanche) un local de campagne dans l’arrondissement de Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve à Montréal. Pourtant, il songeait déjà à abandonner la course à la chefferie. Ses députés alliés ont été associés à sa réflexion lundi et mardi.

« J’ai rapidement réuni mon équipe et nous avons convenu que notre tâche pour la suite était de continuer à porter nos idées, tout en amorçant dès maintenant le rassemblement. J’ai rencontré Pierre-Karl et nous avons eu des discussions très franches et amicales pour éclaircir certaines questions et préparer la suite. Je dois dire que ça a porté ses fruits », a soutenu M. Drainville, accompagné de sa garde rapprochée.

Bernard Drainville se retire de la course | Le Devoir.

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Silence of the charities – Renzetti

2015/04/21 Leave a comment

Elizabeth Renzetti on what appears to be selective criteria in CRA charity audits:

If you look at the 52 groups that have been targeted for audits since the Harper government’s 2012 crackdown on political activity by charities, it’s not hard to see what joins them: advocacy of causes that the Conservative government thinks are, by its own admission, “radical.” I don’t actually know the full list, because it’s not been revealed, but last year the CBC revealed the names of seven environmental charities, including the David Suzuki Foundation and Tides Canada. The free-speech group PEN Canada and human-rights advocates Amnesty International were also targeted. Some 400 academics signed a letter denouncing the audit into the political activities of the progressive think tank Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The CRA swears up and down that there is no political motivation to the audits, but how is the public to know? The agency doesn’t reveal who is the target of its audits, nor how they’re prepared. Charities live in fear of catching the eye of Sauron.

“Among environmental groups right now there’s a broad reluctance to speak out,” says Calvin Sandborn, director of the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre. “It’s kind of like in Nixon’s America where you didn’t want to be the enemy that he’d sic the IRS on.”

The law students working with Prof. Sandborn recently released a report on the troubling legal underpinnings of the current audit system, and its need for reform. (Mr. Harper’s government may not have been the first to target charities, but it was certainly one of the more vehement, setting aside $13.4-million for audits shortly after adding “environmentalists” to the roster of threats Canada faces.)

Canada’s charities are hobbled in a bunch of ways, the report found. The CRA’s rules around what constitutes “political activity” are murky and confusing; there is little transparency about how those rules are applied; charities subject to audit often have to spend precious resources putting together documents for auditors and providing legal training for staff; and most important, many charities are self-censoring for fear of breaching the 10 per cent rule and facing shutdown by the CRA.

Although the report does not come to any conclusions about whether the current spate of audits are politically motivated, it does find the threat alone has a sinister chilling effect: “The important thing is that the audits themselves – and the mere perception that they may be targeted – are clearly silencing charities that have much to offer society.”

Other countries around the world don’t hobble the political advocacy of their charities the way Canada does. In some countries, like the Netherlands, lobbying by charities is encouraged. In others, like England, the body that oversees charities is an independent entity at arm’s length from government (in Canada, the CRA falls under the remit of the Minister of Revenue.) In the U.S., charities that spend too much on political activities (already set at a far more generous level than here) are taxed rather than shut down.

Silence of the charities – The Globe and Mail.

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Stephen Maher: Can you remind us how you care about your opponents’ rights too, Mr. Harper?

2015/04/21 Leave a comment

Seems like an audit of the Church’s charitable status seems in order 🙂

It seems likely the P.E.I. church is secretly doing its last-minute cancellations of Liberal events to get revenge on the party for Trudeau’s abortion policy.

I hope that’s what they’re up to, because the alternative — that they are telling the truth — is chilling.

Grecco said the church is afraid that if it allows Liberals to hold events in its halls, the church could have to face auditors. [the Church seems not to fear repercussions from holding Conservative events]

“That would jeopardize our standing as a charitable status with the (Canada Revenue Agency),” Grecco said.

That seems like a weak excuse from an organization trying to avoid the truth, but who knows?

In 2012, the CRA threatened to take away the tax-free status of a magazine published by the Mennonites because they published some editorials that were critical of Harper’s wise environmental stewardship.

The CRA’s political auditors have also taken a hard line with the Kairos church charity, various anti-pipeline groups and, of course, the David Suzuki Foundation.

They even targeted Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., bird watchers who were unwise enough to criticize the environmental policy of Conservatives in their bird-watching circulars.

Is it possible that some of the prime minister’s auditors in the CRA have been excessively zealous in carrying out the leader’s wishes, to the point they are frightening churches into cancelling events from opposition parties?

The idea is ridiculous.

We can be sure Harper wants church halls to open their doors to events for all parties, because he supports the fundamental democratic rights of all Canadians.

It’s absurd to think, as the Harper haters would have you believe, that he doesn’t care about the rights of those who disagree with him.

Still, maybe he should say so from time to time, just to make it crystal clear.

Stephen Maher: Can you remind us how you care about your opponents’ rights too, Mr. Harper? | National Post.

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Ottawa’s ‘Strong Proud Free’ slogan can’t be explained because it’s a secret

2015/04/21 Leave a comment

Both sad and funny, the contortions required to justify public funds for quasi-partisan funding:

The genesis of the Harper government’s “Strong Proud Free” slogan that is currently bombarding Canadian television viewers is considered a cabinet confidence and will be sealed from public scrutiny for 20 years.

A request by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act seeking any background rationale for the tagline, which is being used to punctuate all the latest taxpayer-funded advertising, has come up empty.

That’s because a 149-page Treasury Board submission on advertising has been deemed advice to cabinet, placing it behind a lead sheet of secrecy that even the federal information commissioner can’t penetrate. No title for the submission, nor a date, author or even the department that originally prepared it can be revealed.

A spokesman for the Privy Council Office, the bureaucracy that supports the Prime Minister’s Office, would only say that the slogan is “drawn from the thematics” of the government’s 2013 throne speech.

Opposition critics point out the language is also drawn from the 2011 Conservative party platform and mirrors the themes promoted as Conservative values on the party website and in fundraising pitches.

“Using cabinet confidentiality on something that should be so benign is ridiculous,” said Mathieu Ravignat, the NDP Treasury Board critic.

“They’ve been caught using a partisan tagline and they’re hiding behind cabinet confidentiality to avoid the political fallout.”

No minister or department will claim responsibility for the whole-of-government marketing campaign, and requests for comment from the Prime Minister’s Office were returned by the Privy Council, which co-ordinates the development of government advertising.

“Section 23 of the communications policy of the government of Canada states that institutions must not use public funds to purchase advertising in support of a political party,” PCO spokesman Raymond Rivet said in an email.

“All government of Canada advertising is designed to comply with the guidance set out in the policy.”

Ottawa’s ‘Strong Proud Free’ slogan can’t be explained because it’s a secret – Politics – CBC News.

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Something of a compromise on the census?

2015/04/20 Leave a comment

This is a significant improvement, given that income reporting through tax returns should be more accurate than self-reporting. Of course, the broader issues related to the NHS versus Census remain:

But StatsCan has made one notable change to the process.

. . . in order to reduce the time required and to make it easier for Canadians to respond to the National Household Survey, income questions will be replaced with more precise tax and benefit data that have been available to Statistics Canada since 1985. As this will be done for all Canadians, income information for 2016 will be the most accurate in the history of the census.

What does this mean?

Within the 2011 national household survey were various questions about income. But respondents were also given the option to skip those, if they agreed to let Statistics Canada access information already provided in their tax filings.

… In addition to saving respondents time, StatsCan says it will save the agency money. In the case of 2016, income data will be linked to census responses.

Liberal MP Ted Hsu had proposed a private member’s bill to, among other things, reinstate the long-form census. That bill was defeated in February, but, at the time, he told me about a possible compromise: adding some number of questions to the short-form census to provide a better statistical basis. UBC economist Kevin Milligan dubbed this the “medium-form census” and Milligan says he’s somewhat pleased with the change. “I think it is a step toward a medium-form census,” he says. “If I couldn’t have a long-form census, and I was asked for one change to the short form, this is what I would have asked for.”

Hsu would still rather have the long-form census—something the Liberals are committed to reinstating if they form government—and notes that the voluntary nature of the NHS will still create problems. Hsu also thinks it would be useful to link tax and benefit data to the NHS so that income could be correlated with dwelling, education and labour market information. Milligan would also rather have income data linked to the NHS, but says, “Having it for short form gets you pretty close to the tools you need to make some decent weights that make all the other surveys (like NHS) more useful.”

And though Hsu doesn’t think the use of tax and benefit information is a big deal, he does think there needs to be a conversation about possible privacy implications if the government moves further to use administrative data that it already possesses. Back in 2010, when debate arose over the government’s decision to eliminate the long-form census, the Scandinavian model of data collection and use raised as a possible alternative, but the databases maintained by those countries might raise questions for Canadians about the handling of personal information.

Something of a compromise on the census? – Macleans.ca.

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What conservatives really care about

2015/04/15 Leave a comment

Interesting perspective by Sunstein of Jonathan Haidt’s assessment of the similarities and differences between the values of  liberals and conservatives:

In his later work, Haidt has rightly emphasized a sixth moral foundation, one that conservatives and liberals both respect, but that they understand differently: liberty. He finds that conservatives are more likely to emphasize the right to be let alone, while liberals emphasize the rights of vulnerable groups, such as racial minorities, whose freedom requires (in their view) government support. Nonetheless, the biggest and most consistent partisan differences involve loyalty, authority and sanctity.

Haidt’s central claim is that across partisan lines, people often fail to understand one another, because a moral concern that strongly motivates one group may be obscure or unintelligible to another. Democrats are wrong to be puzzled when rural and working-class Americans turn out to favor Republicans. There is no puzzle here, because Republicans are more likely to speak to their deepest moral commitments.

These claims are arresting, but it’s not clear that they are entirely right. Insofar as liberals focus on the environment, they are often motivated by ideas about the sanctity of nature. More than conservatives, liberals appear disgusted by cigarette smoking. Nor are they indifferent to loyalty: If a civil rights leader publicly opposed affirmative action, or if a prominent Democrat broke with the party on health care or climate change, many liberals would feel a sense of betrayal. Conservatives may be more likely to emphasize loyalty in the abstract, but in concrete cases, everyone cares about that virtue.

That said, Haidt’s general conclusions are founded on evidence, not speculation, and he has compiled a mountain of evidence to support his conclusions. There’s a big lesson here for those who aspire to public office, including the White House: If they neglect the values of loyalty, authority and sanctity, they’re not going to speak to the moral commitments of a large segment of the American electorate.

Suspect this also holds true for Canada.

What conservatives really care about

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Cohen: Time to move beyond the myth of Vimy

2015/04/13 4 Comments

Andrew Cohen on Vimy, with help from Jack Granatstein:

“For the first time, Canadians soldiers fought as one unit, under the command of Canadian officers and employing tactics developed by Canadians,” according to an article in the National Post in 2013. “And we won, trouncing the Germans where our allies had failed and congratulating ourselves ever since.”

As J.L. Granatstein argues, that view “is almost completely wrong. Almost. All that it gets right is that Canadians have congratulated themselves ever since.”

Granatstein, the highly decorated military historian who chaired the advisory board of the Vimy Foundation until 2014, is not belittling the foundation or Canada’s role in the Allied offensive that spring. Nor am I.

But, as he points out in his provocative new book, The Greatest Victory: Canada’s One Hundred Days, 1918, we have come to believe a more comforting mythology. His persuasive point is that our decisive impact came in the last three months of the war, that those were our greatest battles.

At Vimy, Granatstein writes, the Canadian Corps was not commanded by a Canadian but by British Lieutenant General Sir Julian Byng. The planners were not Canadians, as widely thought, but Britons. Seven of nine of the Heavy Artillery Groups that put Canadians on Vimy Ridge were from the Royal Artillery. And the supplies, weapons and ammunition were largely from Britain, he says.

While thousands of the soldiers at Vimy were born in Canada, most were recent British immigrants to Canada. (Indeed, we had no citizenship then.)

Most important – and hardest for us to accept – is that Vimy changed little. Yes, we took the ridge with courage, daring and innovation, a magnificent victory. But the Germans retreated a few miles east into new trenches, suffering a “tactical” more than a strategic defeat.

“Vimy regrettably did not win the war or even substantially change its course,” concludes Granatstein.

Yet that is not what Canadians know about Vimy. More likely, they hear that it “began our evolution from dominion to independent nation.” Or, more breathlessly, it marked “the birth of a nation.”

It helped that the battle opened under gun metal skies on Easter Sunday, fostering a poetic sense of resurrection. That some 10,300 were killed or wounded, that they fought through snow and sleet, that it was our greatest victory in the war up to then – all contributed to a national mythology.

But the birth of a nation? Lord, we had been here for 300 years, and organized as a country since 1867. To say that we fell from the heavens in 1917 denies centuries of achievement and sacrifice. That we began to emerge in the world afterward because we went to the Versailles Conference is an empty boast; in reality, we had little international influence until the Second World War.

All this may be useful to those who crave a comforting narrative. A century ago, as an adolescent people, we needed one.

Today we should remember Vimy. But we should also ask what we were doing there, and in the slaughterhouse of the Great War itself, and what the war did to us. That’s what a mature, self-confident people does.

Vimy is a myth. It’s time to move beyond it.

Cohen: Time to move beyond the myth of Vimy | Ottawa Citizen.

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Employment Equity in the Public Service of Canada 2013–14

2015/04/10 Leave a comment

EE - TBS 2013-14 Summary Chart

Disappointing that TBS has not updated labour market availability (LMA) from 2006 (unlike Labour Canada for federally-regulated sectors – banking, communications, transport – has (17.8 percent visible minorities). However, while visible minorities remain under-represented, the hirings, promotions and separations data is relatively strong:

As at March 31, 2014, all four employment equity designated groups exceeded their workforce availability, as determined from 2006 Census data. Aboriginal peoples continued to increase their representation, from 5.0 per cent to 5.1 per cent; members of a visible minority group increased their representation from 12.6 per cent to 13.2 per cent; the representation of persons with disabilities decreased marginally from 5.8 per cent to 5.7 per cent; and women’s representation decreased slightly from 54.2 per cent to 54.1 per cent.

Within the executive cadre, representation rates continued to exceed workforce availability for three of the four designated groups. Women increased their representation from 46.0 per cent to 46.1 per cent; persons with disabilities increased their representation from 5.3 per cent to 5.4 per cent; and members of a visible minority group increased their representation from 8.2 per cent to 8.5 per cent. The representation of Aboriginal peoples remained stable at 3.7 per cent, below their workforce availability for executives.

For those interested, this table shows the overall trend over the past 5 years:

2009-10

2010-11

2011-12

2012-13

2013-14
Representation

10.7%

11.3%

12.1%

12.6%

13.2%
Hirings

11.3%

9.8%

10.7%

14.7%

16.0%
Promotions

12.1%

12.5%

13.5%

13.5%

13.8%

Separations

6.4%

7.1%

7.7%

8.9%

9.9%

Despite most of these years being under restraint and cutbacks, it is encouraging that representation, hirings and promotions continue to increase (separations may reflect cutbacks).

While TBS has not yet issued a revised LMA, a rough calculation would suggest the LMA has increased from 12.4 in 2006 to 15.0 percent in 2011.

This is based on the percentage of the population which is visible minority (19.1 percent) and adjusting for the percentage that are also Canadian citizens (78.3 percent).

Another view of public service employment equity can be derived from the National Household Statistics on public sector employment, which covers all federal public institutions (less the Canadian Forces), not just the Schedule 1 departments covered in the TBS reports:

 

Multiculturalism in Canada-Evidence and Anecdote Deck - April 2015.044 Multiculturalism in Canada-Evidence and Anecdote Deck - April 2015.045

Employment Equity in the Public Service of Canada 2013–14.

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Ralph Heintzman: Creeping politicization in the public service

2015/04/08 1 Comment

Heintzman on the Finance Department’s crossing the line and calling for stronger action by the Clerk:

But we don’t need to wait for action until the next Parliament. The arrival of a new clerk gives her an opportunity to provide the kind of leadership for which the rest of the public service yearns.

It’s time to stand up for a professional, non-partisan public service, as described in all the official laws, regulations and policies of the government of Canada. But too often betrayed in practice.

It’s not enough to reaffirm, verbally, “the principles of a non-partisan professional public service,” as the clerk did in a recent interview (Canadian Government Executive, 2 February 2015). Words like these are only hot air if they’re contradicted by public service behaviour. The walk has to match the talk.

If the clerk wants her words to be taken seriously, she should start by doing something about the unaddressed and still uncorrected case of the department of finance. And she should tell us what’s being done to prevent public servants from crossing the line, from non-partisan to partisan communications, in future.

Ralph Heintzman: Creeping politicization in the public service | Ottawa Citizen.

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CRA audits of charities look fair but feel foul – Don McRae

2015/04/08 1 Comment

Looking and finding patterns in the selection of charities for CRA audit:

The Charities Program Update states that one of the factors in building the audit plan was that groups from all four charitable categories were audited. (The categories are relief of poverty, advancement of education, advancement of religion, and other purposes of benefit to the community.)

As of Jan. 31, 2014, there were 31 files under audit. Twenty-two of the 31 audits were community benefit groups (where environmental, social justice and human rights groups are found). This segment, which is 23.3 per cent of all charities, makes up 71 per cent of the 31 audits. There appears to be no cause for an over-representation of these groups as they make up only 18.5 per cent of all charities revoked for cause since 1967.

In a Canadian Press story last August, the director general of the charities directorate, Cathy Hawara, explained the audit selection process. She said the CRA considered formal complaints from citizens, lobby groups, MPs or even cabinet ministers. (Having a complaint from a minister raises questions about the selection process.) These external complaints led to 30 “leads” to investigate.

From 2008-09 to 2010-11, there was an average of 24 such complaints to the CRA each year. This went up to 139 complaints in 2011-12 and 159 the year after that. Ethical Oil, the lobby group with Conservative ties that encourages “people, businesses and governments to choose Ethical Oil from Canada’s oilsands,” made several complaints and at least five of these groups are being audited.

Of the 20 self-identified charities, 11 do some work on environmental issues and seven work on social justice or international development. Seven of the 20 have had their federal funding eliminated since 2006. KAIROS, the group that was famously not recommended by the former CIDA minister Bev Oda, is being audited under the auspices of the United Church of Canada. Four other groups identified on the church’s website as partners are being audited. Some of the audits have taken years, draining staff time, resources and energy from the organizations.

The Conservative government has assured Canadians that the system of political activity audits is fair and neutral. The limited evidence we have suggests a different conclusion. To paraphrase Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, the system looks fair but feels foul.

There are two major losers in this process. The first are Canadians, who will not benefit from the research, experience and advice of Canadian charities. The second is the CRA, which must defend what appears to be a stunted and warped selection process by finding new ways to say “trust us.”

CRA audits of charities look fair but feel foul | Toronto Star.

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