Damage from cancelled census as bad as feared, researchers say

2015/01/30 Leave a comment

The impact of an ideologically motivated decision, impacting both social research (the intended target, as suggested by Paul Wells in his book The Longer I’m Prime Minister) as well as the business community and municipalities who use census data for planning purposes (e.g., store and school locations):

“It has certainly impacted my own work on what has been happening to middle-class earnings in Canada,” says Charles Beach, professor emeritus of economics at Queen’s University.

More broadly, it has “inhibited research into inequality and identifying winners and losers in economic growth, research into understanding the national problems of the have-nots in the economy, and research into how best to provision local government services.”

In the private sector, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, whose network represents 200,000 businesses across the country, is publicly calling on the federal government to restore the mandatory long-form census.

Some researchers – such as those working on a sweeping long-term study on income polarization in Canadian cities – are choosing to abandon using the NHS altogether. They may be settling for less-detailed tax-filer data, while others, such as some public health units, are still using outdated 2006 census data.

In Canada’s largest city, “it has definitely had an impact in the way we plan for services” for people such as seniors, single parents, youth and immigrants, says Harvey Low, manager of social research at the City of Toronto. “We are less sure ” about the characteristics of people served in communities.

Damage from cancelled census as bad as feared, researchers say – The Globe and Mail.

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Feds to spend $50,000 for flag’s 50th birthday celebration

2015/01/17 1 Comment

The historic scars of the debate over the Canadian flag still haunt the Conservatives, apparently (under Minister Kenney, the historic flags of Canada were often displayed along with the current flag).

And in contrast to the $1.5 million to commemorate the Holodomor, displaying yet again the political clout of the Ukrainian Canadian community:

The federal government has allotted $50,000 for celebrations for the upcoming 50th birthday of the iconic Maple Leaf flag.

As Maple Leaf approaches 50, some wonder: Where’s the party?

That’s compared to almost $4 million for a campaign marking the 200th anniversary of Sir John A. Macdonald’s birth, and $5.2 million spent on the bicentennial of the War of 1812.

Canadian Heritage said Thursday that the $50,000 includes funds for promotional material, a photo exhibit during Ottawa’s upcoming Winterlude festivities and various “outreach products.”

In an email, a spokesman also said the department has provided more than $200,000 to organizations, including provincial lieutenant-governors, for their 50th birthday projects.

By way of contrast, the government announced earlier this week it will spend $1.5 million on a cross-country project to raise awareness about the Holodomor, a state-sponsored famine in Ukraine in 1932-33 in which millions starved while resisting Soviet collectivist policies.

Feds to spend $50,000 for flag’s 50th birthday celebration – Politics – CBC News.

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NDP MP to challenge Chris Alexander over visa data requests

2015/01/16 Leave a comment

Further to the earlier post (Minister Alexander helped bureaucrats avoid giving full details on visa wait times), more detail on the amount of work required.

Tend to believe the points made by the parliamentary briefings coordinator: if the data base can’t spit out the information and the data needs to be manipulated (technical use of the term) in Excel, this time required would increase exponentially.

Not necessarily a reason to refuse what is a valid request (an extension could have been requested):

She also warned the massive quantity of data involved would lead to server crashes, thus further delaying the process.

“We estimate that the [temporary resident] population being requested corresponds to upwards of 16,000,000 records,” she wrote.

“The tools currently at our disposal do now yet fully integrate all the TR data and would therefore require substantial amount of manipulation in Excel of a very large amount of data, which regularly results in system crashes and slower processing of requests of this magnitude.”

The next day, Gagnon’s colleague, Amanda Morelli, called off the search.

“You can hold this work — [the minister’s office] has come back to advise ADMO that we will use the same response we provided to Q-359,” Morelli wrote in an internal email — a reference to an earlier reply to a similar written question filed by Liberal MP John McCallum.

NDP MP to challenge Chris Alexander over visa data requests – Politics – CBC News.

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More state power, not free speech, the likeliest we-are-Charlie result – Neil MacDonald

2015/01/14 1 Comment

Extensive commentary by Neil MacDonald of the CBC who unfortunately nails it in his somewhat lengthy piece on the aftermath of the Paris killings:

Western governments are, however, quite interested in enforcement and security, and that, not more speech, is the order of the day once again.

With unintended irony, and a very short memory, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared over the weekend that France is now locked in a “war on terror.”

That’s exactly the term George W. Bush used after 9/11. It presaged an unprecedented expansion of the surveillance state and the powers of America’s security apparatus.

Civil liberties were tossed aside. Other countries’ laws, even those of U.S. allies, became irrelevant.

And the frightened American population cheered.

The French, among others, mocked the slogan relentlessly, especially once it became apparent that the U.S. invasion of Iraq, carried out as part of this war on terror, was based on a false pretext.

Eventually, Bush’s own Pentagon quietly dropped the slogan. And when the Democrats took the White House, they repudiated it.

But it’s clearly back on. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder agreed with the French prime minister. America, he said, is at war, too.

Next month, Washington is convening an international summit to discuss new measures.

Canada is preparing new legislation to expand the powers of its security agencies.

The French, and the Americans, and no doubt the Canadians, are considering how better to monitor and obliterate incitement on the internet.

Or, more precisely, what security officials consider incitement. It’s a term that can be interpreted rather broadly, and no doubt will be.

Clearly, the ultimate answer to the Charlie Hebdo massacre will not be freer speech. It will be a mostly secret intensification of police power, with attendant shrinkage of individual freedoms.

And we will all be told not to worry: If you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

At least one French demonstrator seemed to recognize some of this over the weekend. The sign he hoisted read: “Je marche, mais je suis conscient de la confusion et de l’hypocrisie de la situation.”

I march, but I am aware of the confusion and hypocrisy of the situation.

More state power, not free speech, the likeliest we-are-Charlie result – World – CBC News.

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The monumental politics behind Ottawa’s newest memorials

2015/01/13 Leave a comment

Good piece on the history of the Holocaust and Communism memorials and the Government over-riding experts, particularly with respect to site location:

The advisory committee on which Bedford serves is chaired by Larry Beasley, Vancouver’s retired director of planning, and arguably the biggest star in Canadian urban planning circles. Beasley is now a University of British Columbia professor, and heads an international consulting firm. (He was not available to comment when the version of this article that appears in the print edition of Maclean’s was being written, but has responded by email to questions for this updated online version.) Not only did Beasley confirm that his advisory committee concluded that “the chosen site was not a good site, and that it was needed for a higher priority government purpose over the next few years,” he added that, beyond the location issue, the committee didn’t like the winning design, by ABSTRAKT Studio Architecture of Toronto.  “We did not vote on the actual design, but the selected one was not the one the majority of our group preferred, as advisers on the urban design aspects only,” Beasley said.

Asked why the government ignored or rejected the advice of Beasley’s committee, particularly on the site for the memorial, a spokesman for the Department of Canadian Heritage said in an email: “The National Capital Commission’s role in this project is not to advise or approve a location but to oversee the design competition.” That description of the NCC’s function seems more limited than is suggested by the commission’s own website, where the role of Beasley’s committee is described as providing advice on “long-range plans and policies for the use of public lands and properties in Canada’s Capital Region; design proposals affecting these federal lands; [and] real property matters.”

The future court building previously slotted for the contested site was to have been named after Pierre Elliott Trudeau—hardly a mark in its favour for the Conservatives. Soon after the election of the Harper government in 2006, the memorial alternative gained powerful political backers, particularly Employment Minister Jason Kenney, who also spearheads Harper’s political outreach to ethnic communities. Tribute to Liberty, the private group formed in 2008 to support the memorial, is led by Canadians who immigrated from former communist countries in Eastern Europe, as well as Asia, communities Kenney has tirelessly courted.

The Holocaust Monument site, a short walk west beyond the built-up Parliament Hill area, has attracted no significant criticism. Both Bedford and Abel said this site—next to the Canadian War Museum in an open area slated for major new development—is far more suitable than the location for the Victims of Communism memorial. Still, its ultimate popularity is not guaranteed. The monument is expected to cost $8.5 million, with Ottawa matching up to $4 million in private donations. The design calls for six slanting triangular concrete segments, suggesting a broken Star of David, enclosing a space big enough for 1,000 people to gather. Its key designer is Daniel Libeskind, the Polish-American architect, perhaps best known to Canadians for his jutting addition to Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, called the “Crystal,” which opened to mixed reviews in 2007, and has not proven to be a conspicuous hit with the public.

With Canadian Heritage saying that “major elements” of both monuments are slated to be largely completed by fall, this highly visible aspect of Harper’s legacy seems assured no matter who wins this year’s federal election. The verdict that matters most will be rendered by visitors, when they decide whether or not to add two sombre stops to the must-see circuit of Ottawa landmarks.

The monumental politics behind Ottawa’s newest memorials – Macleans.ca.

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Minister Alexander helped bureaucrats avoid giving full details on visa wait times | Toronto Star

2015/01/12 1 Comment

While there is some validity to the concerns regarding officials about the workload, one has to question whether or not CIC’s computer systems cannot generate these kinds of reports relatively easily (it’s not as if officers are looking at the 16 million records individually, they are using the CIC databases to extract the information):

The emails have officials describing the “enormity of the request,” estimating it would involve some 16 million records.

The emails also say the team tasked with crunching these numbers had to keep putting it aside to work on “high-priority requests to respond to public discussion and interdepartmental analysis around the (temporary foreign workers) file.”

Relief came when an official wrote on May 2: “You can hold this work — MINO (minister’s office) has come back to advise ADMO (office of the assistant deputy minister for operations) that we will use the same response we provided to Q-359.”

That was an order paper question about processing times submitted by Liberal immigration critic John McCallum, which was almost identical to the part of the question from Blanchette-Lamothe officials were scrambling to answer in time.

The response Alexander provided in the Commons last May 12 — there was no accompanying paperwork — is nearly verbatim to the response Blanchette-Lamothe received in writing two days later, although it also refers to “an excessive number of taxpayer-funded man-hours.”

A spokesman for Alexander said that was appropriate.

“It was at the advice of the department that we took the chosen approach. The questions posed by both Mr. McCallum and Ms. Blanchette-Lamothe were detailed, multi-part questions which could not be answered within the prescribed time frame. The answer to this (order paper question) reflects the advice of (Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s) professional, non-partisan public servants,” Kevin Menard wrote in an emailed statement Friday.

Chris Alexander helped bureaucrats avoid giving full details on visa wait times | Toronto Star.

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Apprenticeship ad’s claim of skilled trades shortfall open to question – Politics – CBC News

2015/01/12 Leave a comment

Embarrassing lack of due diligence:

The government pointed CBC News to “a combination of industry estimates,” several of which were written by Rick Miner, the president of Miner & Miner Ltd., a management consulting firm specializing in labour market issues.

Miner concluded that Canada will face a “major problem” with skilled worker shortages if nothing changes over the next 16 years.

But he told CBC News his projections are for overall labour and for skilled labour, not specific to the trades.

“I think you’d have a tough time finding somebody who is going to back that unless they have a real broad definition of both the trades and a broad definition of what they define as shortage,” Miner said.

“If somebody said … right now there’s a shortage of a million workers in the trades in Canada, I’d say that’s an inflated number. That’s not true.”

Asked if he could point to labour data showing Canada would face a shortage of “one million skilled trades” workers over the next decade, Miner said he could not.

The government also pointed to a 2013 estimate by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. But Sarah Anson-Cartwright, the chamber’s director of skills policy, told CBC News those forecasts originated from Miner’s older reports, which are not specific to the trades and have since been reviewed.

“The Canadian chamber does not cite the forecasts from Miner’s 2010 and 2012 reports since they are out-dated now.”

Apprenticeship ad’s claim of skilled trades shortfall open to question – Politics – CBC News.

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ICYMI: Mistrust between bureaucrats and politicians bad for Canada: survey

2015/01/05 Leave a comment

doing their best 1224-survey2-ps04-grInteresting survey. Above chart I found particularly striking and worrisome.

While it is unlikely that a new incoming government will be much more trusting and reliant on public servants for broader policy advice given some of the macro-trends at play, some of the more fundamental distrust and ideology regarding the role of government may improve the relationship:

About 66 per cent of Canadians think public servants should “actively” provide expert advice and recommend policies, compared to the 18 per cent who say their job is simply to implement the desires of politicians. This view is evident across the country but is strongest among older, more educated people and higher-income earners.

And nearly three-quarters of those asked believe the best policies would come from a “collaborative” working relationship between public servants and politicians. Only 10 per cent believe “tension” would generate better policy.

The survey provides Canadians’ perspective on an issue that has been hotly debated in Ottawa for several decades, as power shifted to the Prime Minister’s Office and public servants lost their onetime monopoly on providing advice to ministers.

The findings are also at odds with the view of the current Conservative government, which, after nearly a decade in power, doesn’t particularly trust the public service and sometimes finds its advice obstructionist.

Public servants complain their advice isn’t actively sought or is ignored if offered on big issues and direction. They say ministers come to the table with ready-made policies that public servants are told to implement. The rising stars among public servants are issue-managers and fixers, not big-idea thinkers.

This view of policy advice was recently illustrated when Finance Minister Joe Oliver gave a $550-million tax cut to the small-business lobby without his department — once the bureaucracy’s crème de la crème of policy analysts — conducting any analysis of its own.

…Maryantonett Flumian, president of the Institute on Governance, said she commissioned the survey to determine how Canadians feel their governments serve them.

She said the findings suggest Canadians still support a parliamentary democracy even though Canada has drifted towards a “Washminister” system — the name used for a hybrid of Washington’s presidential and Britain’s Westminster systems of responsible government.

“We see a mismatch in expectations and outcome from all the players: politicians, public servants, citizens, and we wanted to see how Canadians viewed this,” she said, “and they think the spirit of co-operation would have better outcomes and they understand who is accountable: the people who form the government and make the decisions,”

Although Canadians expect public servants to have a policy advisory role, they don’t necessarily think public servants of the future should have more influence on managing departments and agencies than they do now. About 28 per cent say they should have more influence; 17 per cent said less and 34 per cent were in the middle, happy with the status quo.

Mistrust between bureaucrats and politicians bad for Canada: survey | Ottawa Citizen.

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Explained: How the Harper government put spending on ice – Macleans.ca

2014/12/13 Leave a comment

Department  Authorities for 2014-15 ($millions) Year-to-date (first six months) spending at September 30, 2014 ($millions) % of authorities spent
Agriculture and Agri-food $365 $48 13.2%
Employment and Social Development $1,702 $680 40.0%
Environment $107 $29 27.1%
Fisheries and Oceans $58 $25 43.1%
Health $1,683 $1,047 62.2%
Natural Resources $444 $99 22.3%
Transport $758 $42 5.5%
Veterans’ Affairs $2.7 $1.3 48.1%

Good piece by Jennifer Robson on the various ways to reduce spending:

So, if you’re in government and want to restrain your own spending, another way to do it is to just make it harder to move money out the door.  There are a lot of small but incrementally effective ways to do this.  Some of us use tricks to stop ourselves from spending.  For example, when my mother grew alarmed by her credit card bill, she would put her card in a block of ice in the kitchen freezer.  Really.  I’m not making this up.

The ways:

  1. Increase complexity of Treasury Board processes and requirements;
  2. Limit “March Madness” spending;
  3. Tie executive bonuses to managing spending (good discipline in any case);
  4. Make staffing processes more lengthy and complex;
  5. Increase administrative burden on grants and contributions.

Even at the time when I left government in 2011, some of this was apparent and being implemented.

Explained: How the Harper government put spending on ice – Macleans.ca.

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Information commissioner pleads poverty, Tory MPs say raise fees

2014/12/06 Leave a comment

The debate over Access to Info fees:

But Legault said charging fees is contrary to the governments touted open government policy, which calls for free access to government information, such as the 200,000 data sets it has now posted online.

She also said it often costs the government more to process fees than they are worth, and that any two-tier or three-tier fee system would simply add complications to the system. It would also require public servants to inquire about the motivation of requesters and the use to which they would put the information, both anathema to modern freedom of information principles.

Conservative MP Joan Crockatt asked Legault to be more open-minded about how fees might help solve the budget crunch. “The solution is in plain sight,” she said, referring to higher fees. “You have a garden growing outside your window.… You can look at cuts or grow your pie.”

Money from access to information fees currently goes into general revenues, not to the information commissioners office, and there is no fee charged to file a complaint with Legault’s office. She recently reported to Parliament that she no longer has any room to manoeuvre in her budget, and that a simple computer-server failure could halt operations for lack of funds to replace it.

I do not have a problem with a doubling of fees and indexing them to inflation (i.e., from $5 to $10).

But given that fees go into general revenues, not the Information Commissioner, this would have to be matched with an increase in her budget.

With hopefully more fulsome government compliance …

Information commissioner pleads poverty, Tory MPs say raise fees – Politics – CBC News.

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