Making Canada Relevant Again- The Economic Super-Thread

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from a recent edition of the Globe and Mail is more on Chinese students studying in Canadian universities and, perhaps, staying on or becoming residents or sea turtles – who return to China, or seagulls – who go back and forth:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canadian-universities-falling-behind-in-drawing-students-from-china/article1313302/

Canadian universities falling behind in drawing students from China
 
CAROLYNNE WHEELER

BEIJING

Thursday, Oct. 08, 2009

As a young adult just out of university 25 years ago, Henry Wang was among the first wave of Chinese students permitted to go abroad to study.

His destination, for the prestigious and then still-rare degree of MBA, was Canada - first the University of Toronto for a summer polishing his English, then the University of Windsor, and later doctoral studies at the University of Western Ontario.

His education landed him jobs with SNC-Lavalin and then the government of Quebec, promoting trade in its Hong Kong representative office. He would not return to his homeland until the mid-1990s.

Now, his son is studying in a secondary school in British Columbia; his daughter, newly graduated from a Canadian high school, has just moved to New York's Columbia University. They are the next generation of students eager to add a Canadian education to their résumés.

As China's middle class grows, a foreign education has become even more prized, and Canadian universities, colleges and even secondary schools are lining up in the hope of winning their share of new talent and tuition money.

"Canada always has a good image for overseas studies," said Mr. Wang, who now heads the Center for China and Globalization, a private think tank, in Beijing and serves as vice-chair for the China Western Returned Scholars Association.

"Having overseas experience, especially in a different culture, a different school system and a different value system, the benefits are felt in many ways. It's very useful, particularly in this age of globalization."

The number of Chinese students awarded visas to study in Canada has grown exponentially in the past few years. In 2007, 9,228 students from mainland China were approved for study visas through Canada's embassy in Beijing; a year later, the number had risen to 13,552, bringing the total number of Chinese students in Canada to more than 42,000.

Despite the global recession, recruiting agencies linking students to Canadian schools say demand for their services is once again higher than last year, raising expectations that the number of students has increased again in 2009.

"Canadian universities offer a high quality education to students at what is, when compared to other countries, a very affordable price," said Pari Johnston, director of international relations for the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.

Yet Canada - despite regular, direct flights between the two countries, a large Chinese-Canadian community and a reputation as a safe place for parents to send their only children to study - is falling behind other major countries when it comes to attracting Chinese students. The United States, the United Kingdom and even Australia all attract more students than Canada does. Australia, a country with 10 million fewer people than Canada, drew nearly 50,000 new Chinese students in the 2007-08 school year, for a total of more than 130,000 in the country.

"Canada actually could do better in terms of having Chinese students," Mr. Wang said. He added that a continuing dispute between China and Canada, resulting in delays in Canada gaining approved-destination status for Chinese tourists, is also a factor, since parents aren't likely to send their children to countries they can't easily visit.

As a result, Mr. Wang said, Canada is losing out both on the income and the talent that strong recruiting is drawing elsewhere.

Part of the problem, recruiters say, is that education is a provincial matter, leading to piecemeal efforts by individual institutions or provincial departments to attract students.

However, signs indicate a more co-ordinated national effort may not be far off. Canada's Speech from the Throne in November, 2008, pledged greater co-operation with the provinces in drawing international students. The government is now considering a proposal from postsecondary institutions to invest $20-million a year over five years in the promotion of Canadian education abroad, in hope of drawing top foreign students.

The first and most obvious gain for Canadian institutions is financial; international students' tuition fees alone can run from $10,000 to $13,000 for secondary school, and as much as $18,000 for a bachelor's program, and more for postgraduate work - a boon for publicly funded schools otherwise strapped for cash.

But there are other, equally significant gains, proponents say.

"What better immigrants to have than ones who are educated in Canada, speak the language, and who understand the culture?" says James Aldridge, country director for the Canadian Education Centre in China.

Canada also faces a fight over the future of these students, once they have finished their studies and have established themselves in the professional world.

Chinese authorities have successfully coaxed increasing numbers of these "sea turtles" - a nickname given returnees for their metaphorical swim back across the ocean - home, upping the ante for Canadian authorities to attract and retain graduates.

"We are seagulls, basically," laughed Mr. Wang, who coined the term in a recent book to refer to families like his, who now effectively divide their time between two countries.

"The global village now is getting smaller, and the trend now is going abroad."

*****

Canada by degrees:

42,000 -Number of students from mainland China studying in Canada
in 2008

130,000- Number of Chinese students studying in Australia - a country with 10 million fewer people than Canada - in the 2007-2008 school year

Up to $18,000 - Tuition fees paid by international students for a bachelor's program in Canada

There is a perception that the sea turtles are a net loss to Canada but that is not true. My own observation lead me to conclude that Chinese people who were educated in Canada retain considerable knowledge of and respect for Canada and, when the opportunity arises, will favour Canadian policy or business.

 

[Larkvall]

<b><u>It is prudent to begin cutting government spending at all levels immediately.</u></b>

Amen to that.

I also believe it is a myth though that the Conservatives care about fiscal responsibility.

 

[Kirkhill]

Amen to that.

I also believe it is a myth though that the Conservatives care about fiscal responsibility.

I agree with Brad in principle but, as has been noted by others previously, I believe that our current PM has made the political calculation that the general population find it more acceptable to wake up one morning and discover that the well is dry rather than be told that their going to be rationed because the well is going dry.  Harper's plan seem to be to speed up the rate of baling so that the well dries up faster allowing him to deal with the crisis during a Conservative administration. 

And, if it happens soon he can turn around and say that Jack, Gilles and Iffy forced him to continue with Liberal SOPs long after they should have been retired.

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
I also believe it is a myth though that the Conservatives care about fiscal responsibility.

It is a minority government and it’s working the way minorities do: by pandering.

At some point, during the recovery, the governments, most governments, will have to face the fact that deficit spending cannot be sustained for very long. Budgets must be balanced and, after too long periods of deficit financing, put into surplus so that the collective debts (municipal, provincial and federal) can be reduced – so that interest payments on those debts can be reduced to manageable levels.

When the realization hits that we cannot just grow our way out of deficit then we will have to face two options:

1. Increase revenue: higher taxes; or

2. Decrease spending: lower programme spending.

Successive governments have experimented with efficiency – which can produce very small, almost imperceptible, spending decreases and better performance (output), and downloading – which masks rather than solves the problem.

Look at this list of hundreds and hundreds of federal government departments and agencies. Rest assured that someone believes that each and every one must exist because it does something useful – for Canada and Canadians or, for the party in power.

For example, in the FAQs section, the Natiuonal Seniors Council says of itself:

Q1. Why is a National Seniors Council necessary?
A1. Seniors are the fastest growing group in the population in Canada. By 2031 the number of seniors will almost double to nine million people, representing close to one quarter of Canada's population.

Canada's New Government recognizes that people 65 and older have diverse needs and expectations. They are a valuable resource, offering their experience and wisdom to Canadian society.

The Council help us reach out and hear what seniors have to say. We want to ensure that seniors' ideas and views are considered in the creation and delivery of the policies, programs and services that have an impact upon their well-being.

I don’t know how much the National Seniors Council costs. I’m fairly certain each member is paid, at least, a per diem for meetings and that all travel expenses are paid. I know they travel a lot. I’m a senior and I do not need a National Seniors Council and neither, I dare to say, does anyone expect the few lucky seniors who augment their incomes by serving on it.

Cuts, big cuts that will save millions and millions and, with ease, billions and billions and tens of billions, are obviously necessary and some are obvious – as soon as we have a majority government.

 

[GAP]

Oh, without a doubt cutbacks and tax increases are coming, but I also think that the Conservatives are hoping that the economy will bounce back like it did in the mid 90's with the Liberals and they can then utilize all that cash that came rolling in....

what they are forgetting is that the Liberals had off loaded everything they could to the provinces and hiked taxes whenever/however they could (anyone remember the 5 Cent surtax on fuel that's never gone away?) This allowed them to literally roll in cash surpluses until the Conservatives got in....

 

[Larkvall]

It is a minority government and it’s working the way minorities do: by pandering.

Yes, but look at the Mulroney years. Two terms and they were still overspending hand over fist. I just don't have any faith in any of them.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Yes, but look at the Mulroney years. Two terms and they were still overspending hand over fist. I just don't have any faith in any of them.

And your point is very well taken.

In fairness Mulroney/Wilson did balance the programme budget; that is to say that the government of the day spent less on programmes than it received in taxes, etc. But he was afraid, especially after his run in with Solange Denis, to make the sorts of programme cuts that are essential if one wants to have a sound, sensible fiscal regime. Chrétien/Martin were equally afraid and that's why they made (relatively) minor cuts to programmes other than defence and downloaded expenses instead.

 

[Kirkhill]

Yes, but look at the Mulroney years. Two terms and they were still overspending hand over fist. I just don't have any faith in any of them.

In addition to Edward's point I think it is important to recognize the influence of the "personal" on the "institutional".  Institutions, like the Liberal and Conservative parties, elect/select their leaders based on the memberships belief that the nominee is one of them.  But nobody ever shares 100% of everybodies views. 

Once elected/selected the leader acts according to their individual or personal views.  If they are an effective leader then they bend the institution to their personal philosophy (Trudeau, Klein).  If they are ineffectual then they get dumped by the institution (Day) or they break the institution (Ignatieff?).

Harper is leading HIS Conservatives down a different trail than Mulroney led HIS Conservatives.  And the Conservatives that Mulroney started leading were not the same Conservatives that he handed over to Kim Campbell.  Nor are Stephen Harper's Conservatives the same as those that Kim Campbell briefly led.

I support the current incarnation of the Conservatives, and generally speaking, I find myself more in agreement with the historical tendencies of the Conservatives than the historical tendencies of the Liberals, Socialists, Social Democrats, Communists and others that believe if a little government is good then a lot of government must be great.  That doesn't mean, at times, that I don't find myself more in tune with the direction a particular Liberal leader might be taking that party than the regnant Conservative leader is taking them.

And politics is the art of the possible, and everything is political.  Everything is always a compromise with the optimum solution generally being "the least worst".

 

[Edward Campbell]

Further to immigrants and education: this report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, amplifies the work done by Finnie, Mueller and Sweetnam:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/if-youre-a-new-canadian-you-go-to-university/article1321201/

If you're a new Canadian, 'you go to university'
Variety of social factors cause first- and second-generation Canadians to attend university far in excess of non-immigrant children

Elizabeth Church

Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009

Patricia Jura's journey to university was long and complicated, but her destination was never in doubt.

Born in Zimbabwe, Ms. Jura arrived in Canada at age 11, living in Toronto's Rexdale neighbourhood while her parents gained Canadian training, then moving to Steinbach, Man., where her mother, a chemist, got a job.

Now in her second year at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus, Ms. Jura, 18, says higher education was always the goal. “In my family you go to university,” she explained. “I guess it was a choice, but it didn't feel like that.”

Ms. Jura's story is a common one. First- and second-generation Canadians are arriving on Canadian university campuses at a rate that far exceeds that of non-immigrant children. It's a trend that offers some important clues to the importance of social factors in decisions about education.

Getting more young Canadians to go to university may be as much about making it a goal early in life and supporting them to get there as it is about removing barriers such as cost or even marks, researchers say.

“They just go,” said Ross Finnie, a University of Ottawa economics professor who has crunched the numbers. “There is something going on here that goes beyond all we can measure.

“It may be about the desire to go and getting that desire in a person early enough so that they are prepared to go.”

For anyone who has visited a campus in recent years, the growing presence of new Canadians will come as no surprise. Canada is becoming increasingly diverse and nowhere is that diversity more evident than in the youngest members of the population, a rising number of whom are drawn to higher education. Still, even researchers such as Prof. Finnie, who have studied trends in enrolment and access to postsecondary education for some time, say new figures reveal some unexpected trends.

Researchers have long known, for example, that there are several factors that influence a young person's decision about higher education. How far their parents went in school, family income, where they live and academic achievement are key. But even when all these factors are taken into account, new research, based on numbers collected by Statistics Canada over several years, shows young people who came to Canada as children or are the offspring of immigrants are still far more likely than other Canadians to enroll in university.

This gap is even greater when students are divided by country of origin. A study, conducted by Prof. Finnie and Richard Mueller from the University of Lethbridge, shows that while roughly 38 per cent of non-immigrant Canadians go to university, those who came as children or have parents who came from China, Africa or other Asian countries such as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have participation rates that in some cases approach 90 per cent. The study is based on numbers from Statscan's Youth in Transition project, which has been tracking a group of young Canadians since 2000.

“These numbers point to groups in our society who absolutely have no problem in attending university,” Prof. Finnie said. “They also point to the importance of background factors such as family and cultural factors in determining who goes and who doesn't.”

Only one group of immigrants, those from the Americas, excluding the United States, go to university at lower rates that all other Canadians.

All this is not news to Tom Nowers, dean of student affairs for more than a decade at U of T's Scarborough campus. He's all too familiar with the family and cultural ties that exist for many of the students on his campus who are first- or second-generation Canadians. “They have very strong family bonds,” he said. “It keeps them on track.”

He also has seen the downside. “Some struggle to navigate their own way, others go to extraordinary lengths to live up to expectations,” he said.

Beyond family, Mr. Nowers also sees students from various backgrounds supporting each other and forming communities and clubs on campus. That network, he believes, helps students deal with pressures to achieve.

For Ms. Jura, who once dreamed of a singing career, going to university was something she did for her parents, but now feels was the right choice. She'd like to go into pharmacy and perhaps later get a business degree.

“My mom said, ‘Do whatever what you want, just make sure you bring a degree home,' ” she remembers. “I came for my mom; I'm here now for me.”

For those who want more details, the Statistics Canada Youth in Transition programme has a web page.

What the data shows is that “first generation” Chinese immigrants, which include children born in Canada and China of parents who immigrated to Canada, are 2.34 times more likely to attend university than are the children of non-immigrant (third generation or beyond) Canadians. For first generation Anglosphere and Western and Northern European  children the ratios are 1.2 : 1 – pretty much the same. I think there might be a refugee effect, too – in other words children of refugees might have different ‘motivations’ than do the children of immigrants and that might explain some of the changes between the first and second generations.

(I have a problem with some of the statistical groupings. I would, for example, have preferred to have seen “Southern Asia and the Middle East” broken into more parts. The problems for StatsCan include too long tables and politics – there are political pressures to present data in certain ways and senior statisticians bend to political will as do all senior officials.)
 
Part of the surprising Chinese results – which go, as Prof. Finnie notes ”beyond all we can measure,” and which ”may be about the desire to go and getting that desire in a person early enough so that they are prepared to go” – do have deep cultural roots which I have described elsewhere. Filial responsibility is a HUGELY powerful social force that is not unique to Confucianism but may be most advanced in those societies.

For us: the real problem is not our relatively low university rate it is our explicit reliance upon immigrants to fuel our economy. That, in and of itself, is not a problem either; the problem is: how to we “source” our immigration?

Clearly, to me, we ought to accentuate the positive which means sourcing more and more immigrants from China and India – both of which have surpluses of educated, entrepreneurial, ambitious and Confucian peoples who want to emigrate in order to prosper in a new, different society.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail is an important column/book review by Neil Reynolds:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/canadas-downward-path-from-nation-to-fiction/article1280143/

Canada's downward path from nation to fiction
'Canada is no longer a community of strongly held principles. It's as simple as that'

Neil Reynolds

Wednesday, Sep. 09, 2009

The population of Quebec will shrink to barely one-fifth of Canada's by 2031 - implying, according to economist Brian Lee Crowley in an important new book, "a big drop in the province's relative weight in the House of Commons." In fact, he calculates, Quebec's influence will fall from 75 out of 308 MPs to 75 out of 375. The political implications would be profound.

British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario together would have roughly 250 members," Mr. Crowley says. "Winning three-quarters of those seats would give a political party an overall majority in the Commons without a single Quebec seat, or indeed a seat in any other province." Ottawa's long bidding war with Quebec for the loyalty (and votes) of Quebeckers would end - and an historic transformation of Canada would begin.

Mr. Crowley's book – Fearful Symmetry: The Fall and Rise of Canada's Founding Values - argues that Canada went disastrously off track in the 1960s and the 1970s for two reasons. The first was the rise of Quebec nationalism. The second was the population explosion following the Second World War. The need to appease Quebec separatism, Mr. Crowley says, warped federal policies and federal politics for two generations. The baby boomers, he says, provided a dubious justification for a rapid expansion of the welfare state.

Didn't governments have a responsibility to find jobs for the baby boomers - and especially for Quebec's baby boomers? Without federal jobs, wouldn't these rebellious young people opt for separatism? Separately and in combination, these self-reinforcing influences induced successive federal governments (beginning with Liberal prime ministers Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau) to abandon Canada's traditional laissez-faire governing principles and to substitute the statist assumptions favoured by intellectual elites in Ottawa and Quebec City. The federal government's obsession with finding work for the baby boomers, for example, led to the creation of vast numbers of federal and provincial "pseudo-jobs"- which inexorably corrupted the work ethic for which Canadians had, in earlier years, been famous.

The consequence was predictable, Mr. Crowley says. Canadians had prospered as a society of makers. They became a society of takers - and Canadian productivity inevitably faltered. The Canadian state became an intellectual conceit, "a great fiction through which everybody endeavoured to live at the expense of everybody else." Mr. Crowley's citation of this famous aphorism, crafted by the famous 19th century liberal economist Frédéric Bastiat, is persuasive. Bastiat's corollary is corroborative: "Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone."

Mr. Crowley's unique interpretation of Canadian history rings loudly with clarity and conviction. Perhaps intuitively, many Canadians appear to sense, with profound regret, the radical changes that have taken place in this country in the past 50 years. This sentiment is more than nostalgia; it is a growing awareness of personal loss. Canada was once a community of strongly held principles - principles shared by French-speaking Canadians as well as English-speaking Canadians. They included a profound commitment to limited government, personal responsibility and the rule of law. Canada is no longer a community of strongly held principles. It's as simple as that.

Mr. Crowley tackles the mythology that Canadians are natural statists, that the welfare state is the product of a collective preference. Before the country began to change in the 1960s, he says, Canadians were "resolutely North American." In some ways, he says, the British tradition made Canadians even more leery of the expansive state than the American tradition did south of the border - notwithstanding "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

He is absolutely correct. For much of the country's existence, governments needed less than 10 per cent of Canada's GDP to fulfill their obligations - because these obligations were narrowly defined by universal consent. Government was limited because Canadians wanted it limited, a fact attested by innumerable witnesses. In his memoirs, for example, J.A. Corry, principal of Queen's University in the 1960s, observed that Canadians were as alert historically to government aggrandizement as Americans.

"Jeffersonian democrats," he wrote, "littered the ground in Canada." Mr. Corry regarded the centralizing federal state as the biggest threat to Canadian democracy. Mr. Crowley quotes iconic Canadian essayist Stephen Leacock to illustrate the strong aversion of Canadians to intrusive government well into the 20th century: "We are in danger of over-government; we are suffering from a too-great extension of the functions of the state."

Leacock wrote this judgment in 1924, when governments spent 11 per cent of Canada's GDP - roughly one-quarter what they spend now (which is modestly less than in 1992, when government spending peaked at 50 per cent). A couple of generations later, Montreal economist William Watson concluded that Canada finished the Great Depression as "probably the most laissez-faire country going." In a word, as Mr. Crowley amply demonstrates, Canada got mugged - and never recovered its valuables.

Founder of the Halifax-based Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, Brian Lee Crowley has written a courageous book with absolutely unique analysis and interpretation. Part lament, part celebration, Fearful Symmetry is most of all a profoundly optimistic book. Why? Rush to read it as soon as you can.

More about Brian Lee Crowley can be found here.

Everything wasn’t perfect or right or even pretty good prior to Pearson/Trudeau but they, Trudeau especially, did, indeed, overturn the socio-economic/political applecart and they, again Trudeau especially, did create a corrosive, destructive culture of entitlement taking us from being a ”society of makers” and turning us into a ”society of takers.”

If we cannot fix the (relatively few) really important bits that Trudeau broke – and I’m not convinced we can – then Canada, as a modern, prosperous, sophisticated, wealthy, capitalist nation-state is doomed.

I’m almost through a first reading of Fearful Symmetry and, broadly, I agree with Lawrence Martin’s review which is reproduced here under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from yesterday’s Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/review-fearful-symmetry-the-fall-and-rise-of-canadas-founding-values-by-brian-lee-crowley/article1326434/

From Saturday's Books section
Canada, Quebec and the nanny state
Fear of separation and the constant demands of baby boomers have transformed Canada in unwelcome ways, says Brian Lee Crowley

Lawrence Martin

Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009

Fearful Symmetry: The Fall and Rise of Canada's Founding Values, by Brian Lee Crowley, Key Porter, 359 pages, $34.95

Customarily, political books come with one or two quotes of advance praise from well-known writers. In the case of Brian Lee Crowley's Fearful Symmetry, we behold a multitude. The book's entry on the market teems with lavish endorsements from Canada's conservative cardinals: David Frum, Tom Flanagan, Andrew Coyne, Michael Bliss, Conrad Black, Ken Boessenkool, Jack Granatstein, William Gairdner and others.

They're enraptured. Fearful Symmetry is brilliantly original, they say. It's a blockbuster, a must-read, a national looking glass, and, to be sure, it will change our thinking about Canada.

In fact, it might. It will certainly, if widely read, stir resentment toward Quebec. A central theme of the book is that we've all been had by that province. Quebec sovereigntists repeatedly blackmailed Ottawa over an extended period when the baby-boom generation was flooding the job market. The blackmailing, in combination with a perceived need to accommodate all the new job seekers, brought on a rash of subsidies and benefits and pseudo-employment that changed the character of our governance. Led by Quebec, Canada was transformed into a parasitic, underachieving welfare state that violated the intent of our founding fathers.

We're the bloated society, the author maintains. Been that way for nearly half a century. The good news is that with the clout of left-leaning Quebec diminishing as the power shifts westward, and with the baby-boom era passing on, we will probably be freed from government's shackles. Unemployment will no longer be a problem. The welfare state will accordingly shrink. We will return to our pre-1960 market glories.

Crowley, president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, is a direct descendant of the survival-of-the-fittest school. Send everybody out onto the free-market tundra, let them beat the daylights out of one another, weed out the strong from the weak – and watch that GDP soar!

But while his book faithfully trots out all the familiar economic and family-values arguments of the right, Crowley is not just another Ayn Rand in trousers. In Fearful Symmetry, he has developed a credible and somewhat original take on Canada's latter-day evolution that is cogent and, in good part, persuasive. Just as you're preparing to drive a fleet of trucks through any one of his many eye-popping postulates, he comes at you with a flurry of convincing statistics and well-documented overtures that have you pressing, as good books should, your rethink button.

“ Crowley's portrait of Quebec, undergirded with a plethora of studies and stats, is excoriating ”

He divides his story into welfare-state takers and private-sector makers. The big-time takers were indolent Quebeckers who demanded and soaked up government largesse like sponges and who, the author boldly asserts, would have been far better off without the Quiet Revolution.

“Far from being a model that has secured the economic success of Quebec, Quebec Inc. has created the conditions in which people and capital have fled the province, in which population renewal through both births and immigration has faltered ... in which powerful and essentially parasitic interest groups organize to capture large benefits from the bloated Quebec state while spreading the costs over not just the entire society of Quebec but the entire country of Canada.”

Crowley's portrait of Quebec, undergirded with a plethora of studies and stats, is excoriating. Quebec is a province where the work ethic has been destroyed, where pseudo-work and massive welfare programs predominate, where productivity is lame, where out-migration has crippled economic growth, where common-law unions, lone-parent families, divorce rates and suicide rates are uncommonly high, as is the stress level of its citizenry.

Because Ottawa was afraid to stand up to the separatist threat, it succumbed to almost each and every demand. With appeasement came an overdose of statism. If Quebec was getting the booty, other provinces, with the exploding demands of baby boomers, had to get it too. If failing steel and fish and pulp-and-paper plants had to be propped up in Quebec, they had to be propped up in other parts of the country.

Bigger government has been the general trend in North America and elsewhere since the Great Depression. But while recognizing this, Crowley contends that it is the separatist/ baby-boom dynamic that was the principal factor in the great expanse of Ottawa's waistline.

He makes the case that in sapping the work ethic, oversized government has had a corrosive effect on the Canadian family unit, leading to increasing divorce rates, a diminishing birth rate and other social ills.

With some selective quotes from the likes of Wilfrid Laurier and Charles Tupper, Crowley thinly argues that our forefathers envisaged a society in which, much like that of the Americans, the laissez-faire ethic would be far more preponderant. In the 19th century, the complexities of the modern-day Canada could hardly be contemplated by the figures he cites.

As well, Crowley should have paid more heed to a range of other factors such as the impact of the United Empire Loyalists, who came here in large numbers, and to our aboriginal peoples, who were trying to nurture – see John Ralston Saul's A Fair Country – a collectivist society.

His sense that the decline of the influence of Quebec and the big drop-off in job seekers owing to baby-boomer retirements will see Canada revert to a pre-1960s culture seems extravagantly wishful. Increased immigration could, though he doubts this, fill many of the needs of the job market.

The book isn't particularly well-timed. Owing to the excesses of the market – the deregulation-induced recession, the need for bailouts, the obscene executive compensations – it is the public sector that is in the vanguard now. A counterargument that we may, in fact, have benefited from greater public-sector regulation and vigilance could be made – and has been made in Mel Hurtig's The Truth About Canada.

Nevertheless, Fearful Symmetry is an audacious, provocative and impressively researched volume. In setting out a new way of looking at the country's development, it will open more eyes than it closes.

Lawrence Martin is an Ottawa columnist for The Globe and Mail. He is the author of 10 books, including a two-volume study of Jean Chrétien.

My two important points of agreement with Martin are:

1. Crowley ” has developed a credible and somewhat original take on Canada's latter-day evolution that is cogent and, in good part, persuasive.” Crowley’s central argument is, in my opinion sound and soundly proved; but

2. ”His sense that the decline of the influence of Quebec and the big drop-off in job seekers owing to baby-boomer retirements will see Canada revert to a pre-1960s culture seems extravagantly wishful.”

Québec’s influence in and on Canada is declining and the rate of decline can only increase and that can only be a good thing. But the culture of entitlement or what Crowley calls the society of takers (rather than the society of makers) is not restricted to Québec; it is well entrenched throughout the country and demographics alone will not solve the problem.

The “battle” - a battle "we" must win if we want Canada to be "relevant" again - must be fought for “New Canada” – geographically, everything West of the Ottawa River, which is sophisticated, multi-cultural/worldly, entrepreneurial, well better educated (than “Old Canada”), willing to work and, broadly, liberal in its socio economic outlook. (The word liberal implies a belief in fundamental individual rights, including a fundamental right to private property and a suspicion of collectives (big business, big labour, big religion, bit government) and collective rights. It will take some, but not too much, political courage to wage the battle for “new Canada” but that courage should be easy enough to find in politicians who are basically numerate because the data is pretty convincing.

But there is a risk. The battle for “New Canada” may be fought by others, too. The very people – the only resource that really matters – who make “new Canada” worthwhile are also being actively sought by e.g. the USA. It would not take much to convince Canada to enter into a customs and immigration union with the USA. We are about 97.5% there in terms of the customs union and the immigration union, essentially the free flow of people across the border would be welcomed by many Canadians even though there would, finally, be that “great sucking sound” of our most valuable people being drawn into the “better” American market – where those people can do “better’ for themselves and their children.

More about this later and elsewhere.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This report, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from yesterday’s Globe and Mail, is about the tensions between Québec and “New Canada:”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-sets-off-constitutional-battle-over-regulator/article1327137/

Ottawa sets off constitutional battle over regulator
In move that could enrage Quebec, Harper government asks Supreme Court whether it can impose national financial regime

Steven Chase and Rhéal Séguin

Ottawa and Quebec

Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009

In a move that will provoke a constitutional showdown with Quebec, the Harper government is asking the Supreme Court to rule on whether Ottawa has the power to create a national securities regulator.

Last night, Quebec, which opposes a countrywide watchdog as an encroachment on its turf, said it “has not budged one iota” from this view and is ready for a fight.

The federal Tories, armed with legal opinions in their favour, are trying to speed resolution of this constitutional question by asking Canada's top judges for a verdict now.

That's because Ottawa is drafting legislation for the spring to create a single commission that could replace Canada's much-maligned patchwork of 13 provincial and territorial securities regulators.

At least two provinces, including Quebec, oppose these plans, calling them an overstepping of Ottawa's bounds. Provinces are not obliged to join this national regulator, but Quebec fears a countrywide body would render any provincial holdouts obsolete.

Ottawa's move pre-empts a legal challenge of the plan for a national regulator that Quebec recently launched at the province's Court of Appeal.

Heading this off allows Ottawa to frame the legal debate itself and begin the battle now, instead of waiting for Quebec's challenge in the lower court to make its way to the Supreme Court.

The risks for Quebec-Ottawa relations in this conflict is that a legal loss for Quebec could fuel the perception it's losing power in the federation. This could place the Charest government in a tight spot and give separatists fodder.

The Tories, who have spent years trying to woo provinces to their plan for a national regulator, say they want to purge any sense that what they are doing is unconstitutional.

“The government strongly believes that Parliament has the constitutional authority to enact a comprehensive federal securities act and is initiating preparatory steps in that direction,” Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Friday.

“An opinion from the Supreme Court of Canada will provide legal certainty to all provinces and territories and market participants, and thus protect the integrity of a Canadian securities regulatory regime,” the Tories said.

Legal opinion in Canada is on Ottawa's side, noting that Section 91 of the Constitution Act gives Parliament the power to make law on the “regulation of trade and commerce.”

“I think the consensus view among most constitutional scholars is the federal government has the full authority to proceed in the way it's proceeding,” said Patrick Monahan, legal scholar and provost of York University.

Prof. Monahan called the Supreme Court reference a wise move, although he warned that Ottawa cannot be certain of what response it will get. “The only caution is you can never take the Supreme Court for granted. There certainly have been cases in the past where federal governments were very confident – and referred matters to the Supreme Court and got unwelcome surprises.”

Provinces currently operate their own securities regulators, bodies that develop and enforce the rules for issuing and trading securities such as stocks. They are supposed to safeguard investors and scrutinize conduct. While they have taken steps to work in concert, critics say the remaining patchwork approach still makes it cumbersome to regulate markets and police securities violations.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has argued it's archaic for Canada to be one of the few major countries that lacks a single securities regulator.

While a majority of provinces and territories have warmed to his idea, Quebec and Alberta remain holdouts. Quebec's worry is that if the national regulator proceeds, its powers would wane. For instance, a panel advising Mr. Flaherty this year even suggested Ottawa consider allowing companies operating in holdout provinces to choose whether to be regulated by the national regulator or the provincial one.

Quebec and Alberta refused this week to nominate representatives to an advisory committee that will design the national regulator. The Manitoba government remains undecided about participating in this committee because a leadership campaign is under way to replace departing Premier Gary Doer.

Catherine Poulin, spokeswoman for Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand, said the province has not swayed from its view that the interests of Quebeckers and people in other provinces would be best served by provincial regulators.

The separatist Parti Québécois said if the Charest government fails to maintain Quebec jurisdiction over securities regulation, it would be further proof of the need for Quebec to achieve political sovereignty to maintain full control over its economic destiny.

Alberta’s objections to a national securities regulator are, if I understand them, based on two concerns:

1. A constitutional concern related to just what constitutes “regulating trade and commerce” vs. “regulating industry,” which are the bits from §91/92 of our Constitution that are in question; and

2. A wholly practical concern re: promoting the petroleum industry.

My guess is that neither is well founded and that the “real” reason for the opposition lies with a desire, amongst a few Albertans, to actually build Stephen Harper’s firewall.

Now, on principle, I look for an even more decentralized Canadian federation – even though we are, already, amongst the most effectively decentralized one in the world (see Ronald L Watts, Comparing Federal System, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999) – because I believe every province, not just Alberta and Québec should have a similar “firewall” thus confining the national government to a few function that it can do well, including national securities regulation.

If the legal experts are right then we will have a national securities regulator and Québec (and Alberta) will be allowed to opt out but opting out will not make economic/business sense and Alberta will “opt in” after ensuring that the regulations for resource industry securities meet their needs. Québec may have to opt out, it may be politically impossible to do the economically sensible thing – but it will demand compensation for the inevitable economic damage it will inflict upon itself. Canada will, likely, pay because we have grown accustomed to paying Québec to shoot itself in the foot.

 

[Rifleman62]

Quebec, Quebec, Quebec.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, is a classic example of why Canada never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity (as Abba Eban famously said of the Palestinians):

http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20091018.escenic_1328568/BNStory/International

EU trade talks stuck on butter

DOUG SAUNDERS

October 18, 2009

London — As 200 officials from Europe and Canada gather in an Ottawa meeting room Monday to begin the most comprehensive trade talks in Canadian history, there is great fear on both sides that the whole thing could become bogged down over the price of butter.

Negotiators will hold the first of five planned rounds of intensive talks this week to negotiate the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, a major trans-Atlantic treaty between Canada and the 27-nation bloc that would extend far beyond free trade and investment into the integration of manufacturing standards, government contracting, food standards and possibly labour mobility.

Officials hope to have all bargaining positions on the table by the end of this year and the CETA deal fully negotiated within two years, with a major push at next year's G8 summit in Huntsville, Ontario.

European officials said in briefings that even with a successfully negotiated deal, CETA could take years longer to get ratified, because of objections by EU member countries to Canada's climate-change policies, seal-hunting practices and visa restrictions.

The toughest sticking-point in negotiations this week, both sides say, will likely be the dairy farmers of central Canada, who are threatening to derail the entire deal over the relatively small matter of agricultural subsidies and the sale of butter and cheese across the Atlantic.

Europe insists that its dairy industries have full access to Canadian markets without any unfair competition from within Canada. Danish, Irish and French butter can be bought in supermarkets all over Europe, and officials see no reason why that can't be the case in Canada, too.

And for the most part, Canada's farmers share that desire: There are beef shortages in European markets, for example, and the beef-cattle industry is lobbying for more open access, along with most other farm sectors, which see Europe's 500 million people as a highly desirable market for farm products.

But dairy farmers in central Canada, who represent a small share of agriculture, are pushing hard for protection of the government-subsidy program known as supply management. European farmers generally not receive subsidies for the production of food, and provincial supply-management programs, which mainly apply only to dairy, would be seen as an unfair competitive advantage.

“The dairy farmers of Ontario and Quebec are by far our biggest obstacle and source of frustration, I don't mind saying that,” said Jason Langrish, the executive director of the Canada-Europe Roundtable for Business and an advisor to the Canadian side.

While officials in Canada's Conservative government have stressed that they are “keeping supply management off the table” and protecting it from trade, European officials say that this position could prove to be a deal-breaker.

Officials from both the EU's Trade Commission and the Canadian government have been startled by the extent to which Canada position is that of a nation of farmers, as the talks between the major economies have become almost exclusively focused on tiny fields of agriculture and food production.

It is an especially frustrating matter for the Canadian negotiators, who have worked hard clear away the obstacle that has blocked all previous free-trade efforts with Europe: The authority held by Canada's provinces over many trade-relevant matters.

In 2005, talks aimed at a more limited deal broke down over provinces refusing to open up their municipal and provincial government procurement contracts (for garbage collection or data processing, for example) to equal bidding from any European companies that provide those services.

This time around, after Quebec Premier Jean Charest pushed hard to get the French government to put a deal on the table and rallied his fellow premiers around the talks, the provinces claim to be united around the deal and appear to support open-access procurement contracts unanimously.

This has made it even more frustrating that food issues have overwhelmed the old concerns about government contracting and automobile imports.

Europeans are insistent that Canadian agricultural exports meet its standards for hygiene and purity (they currently fall short), and that Canada agree to abandon the use of European-region “geographical indicator” trademark names such as Parma ham and Feta cheese, limiting their usage to products from their European regions of origin.

Producers from England's Cheddar district are lobbying to have the name limited to English exports – - possibly creating a situation where a Canadian cheese maker selling Cheddar from supply-managed milk could face a double-whammy competitive hit.

“It's frustrating,” said one Canadian official closely involved in the talks, “that we are getting ready to gain hundreds of billions in business and we're being held hostage by an industry that represents a tiny fraction of that.”

The dairy farmers, especially those from Québec, are known to be well organized and they have and are not afraid to use political power and even, occasionally, violent protest to protect their “supply management” from any trade deals: inter-provincial or international.

No one should blame them for wanting to protect the good deal they have – the reason we, all Canadians, pay far too much for milk, butter and eggs – but we must ask if protecting a few harms the many.

 

[Rifleman62]

Canadian Wheat Board - only farmers in western Canada are regulated.

The new Canadian Dairy Board - only farmers in eastern Canada are regulated. See how they like that. Additionally have a bunch of western MP's demanding the establishment of the Board.

Compare the price of dairy/eggs/pork to the USA. A huge difference.

 

[a_majoor]

A veiw of Canada by a former resident (from the comments page of a blog post). Note the great differentials in prices, which reduces our standard of living directly, and also by reducing the amount available to save and invest...

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-and-harper-a-tale-of-two-leaders/

10. Andrew:

I’m an American who, until late 2008, spent 7 of the preceding 11 years in Canada (Calgary and Ottawa.) I used to tell our friends that I wished Harper was the U.S. President, so vastly preferable to Bush and Obama was he.

Canada is in certain ways a lovely place. I traveled it from the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island to eastern Quebec and from the US border to the NW Territories.

However, let’s not get carried away. The reasons why my Canadian (PhD engineering professor) wife and I decided to settle in the US instead of Canada are structural ones that won’t change in Canada anytime soon, if ever.

First, there’s the absurd cost of goods and services. Americans take for granted the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution and the Uniform Commercial Code that grease the skids of what is the most efficient production and distribution system in the world. Canada’s provinces merrily maintain trade barriers, and the Feds facilitate oligopolies and outright monopolies, that impoverish consumers. Even in late 2007 and early 2008 when the C$ was stranger than par with the US$ everything was still at least 20% more expensive than in the US on a comparable basis.

My favorite example of this is when I bought a new hockey helmet in 2006. I ended up buying a famous Canadian brand manufactured not more than 200 miles from my home in Ontario. I could find this most cheaply in Canada (in retail stores or online) for US$140 (incl taxes). I bought the same helmet from a California big-box sports retailer’s Web site and shipped it to my brother’s house in upstate NY for US$80.

Think about that. It was cheaper to buy a product produced near my home, shipped across the continent and into another country to California, warehoused, packed and shipped back across the continent again, than to buy it down the street from my house in its country of origin. And it was 57% CHEAPER. This wasn’t some fire sale. It was a current model of a product.

That’s life in Canada, folks. Every day. These sorts of pricing disparities have been amply documented by Teh Conference Board, McKinsey and others in extensive studies about why the Canadian economy is so inefficient and uncompetitive.

It’s a country with 80% the productivity level of the US and a 20-40% higher cost of living. At the margin that’s a huge hit to one’s standard of living and it’s all due to sloppiness, inefficiency and political reward of rent-seeking behavior.

I won’t even get into the health-care nightmare (don’t kid yourself that a two-tier system will flourish within the next generation given how brainwashed Canadians are about the nanny state.) Having seen the innards and operations of a top flight Canadian hospital when our child was born I prayed every day thereafter that we wouldn’t get sick before we were able to leave the country. The system is simply macabre.

I won’t get into the endemic political apathy. Or the terrible deficiencies of the parliamentary system that create a political class structurally unresponsive to constituents. Or the ludicrously illiberal and left-wing state-run media. Or the hostile atmosphere toward individual liberty and free speech. Or the mediocrity in schools and universities that state monopoly and enforced egalitarianism fosters. Or the willfully self-destructive bending over backwards to encourage immigrants (which make up an incredibly high proportion of young Canadians these days) to maintain their entirely illiberal and medieval cultural practices after becoming citizens. Or the fact that in order to become a citizen one must pledge fealty to the Queen of England (she’s the head of state in Canada.) Yes, the constitution in Canada was an act of the British parliament until 1982. And even today Canada is ruled by the Queen, however disinterestedly. Incredible.

I haven’t even had my coffee yet this morning so I’ll stop here before I get rolling. Why did we leave Canada for the US? Because life, liberty and opportunity flourish here. Still. Even at 10% unemployment. Even in the face of a statist such as Obama bent on destroying what has made America flourish. Even with the worst political class we have had since the late 19th Century, if ever, in our country. This, too, will pass. All of it. And even if it didn’t, our quality of life is dramatically higher here than anywhere in Canada.

(BTW, the Canadian economy AVERAGED 10% unemployment for the 90s and into this decade.)

Canada is, in the words of one of its most astute native critics, a vast land of uniformed and unexamined opinion. I am thankful every day to have liberated my wife and child from its clutches.

I encourage all lefties enamored with the idea that the tentacles of the state extend into as many facets of life as possible to emigrate and sample it for themselves. In return, I’d love to wake up with President Harper convening a conference with Prime Minister Obama. That is truly beneficial trade.

Oct 17, 2009 - 6:38 am

 

[Edward Campbell]

One, but only one, of the many obstacles to improving our productivity - and, consequentially, making Canada economically relevant again - is the inter-provincial trade barriers that, effectively, render us less efficient and, therefore, less productive (and less prosperous) than our American neighbours. Failing to remove existing and totally unnecessary trade barriers is bad enough but trying to erect new ones is terrible.

This article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s CBC web site, will be bad news, indeed, if it is allowed to happen:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2009/10/26/nb-power-strategy.html

Hydro-Québec seeks control of N.B. corridor to U.S.: experts
Monday, October 26, 2009

CBC News

Hydro-Québec has a strategic motive for its interest in NB Power, say people familiar with the industry.

Former New Brunswick energy minister Jeannot Volpe said Hydro-Québec may want to buy the utility so it can block sales of electricity to the United States by Newfoundland and Labrador from its Lower Churchill development.

The Newfoundland government wants to get electricity from that project into the U.S., he said, but it has not been able to arrange transmission through Quebec.

The only other route, Volpe said, is under the Gulf of St. Lawrence, then through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and finally into Maine.

But if Hydro-Québec takes over NB Power, Volpe said, it can also block that route by throwing up obstacles to linking transmission lines.

"It would not be as easy for them to get what I would call for them a fair access," Volpe said.

Pierre-Olivier Pineau, a Montreal economist who has studied Hydro-Québec, said the U.S. is the utility's biggest market, so it naturally wants to make it difficult for Newfoundland and Labrador to sell power there.

"So, if you basically prevent a competitor, in this case Lower Churchill, to have access to the U.S., then that's perfect for Hydro-Québec because they're the only one to sell," Pineau said.

Nalcor Energy, formerly Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, is proposing the development of two hydroelectric generating stations on the Lower Churchill River, located near Happy Valley-Goose Bay in Labrador.

This arrangement could be advantageous for New Brunswick residents, Volpe said, because selling NB Power for billions of dollars would lower the province's debt and may allow it to freeze power rates.

The downside, he said, is that New Brunswick would lose control over power generation.

On Friday, Energy Minister Jack Keir did not rule out the sale of the provincial utility to Hydro-Québec.

"What I would say to you is everything is on the table at this point," Keir told reporters.

New Brunswick and Quebec have been talking for months about energy co-operation, he said.

Premier Shawn Graham had repeatedly promised that the sale of NB Power was off-limits for a Liberal government, including in the 2002 debates in the legislature and the 2006 election platform, Charter for Change.

"Our position is 'Look, this is an asset of the province and we want to keep it in the ownership of New Brunswickers,'" he said at that time.

NB Power has been owned by the province since 1920.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I was sure we discussed this topic a week or so ago but I cannot find it.

Here is a report, a week plus old, reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-can-meet-climate-goals-but-the-west-will-pay/article1342887/

Canada can meet its climate goals, but the West will write the cheques
Report reveals costs of taking action, now Canadians have to decide

Shawn McCarthy

Ottawa —

Published on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009
Last updated on Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

Ottawa will have to lead a massive restructuring of the Canadian economy, with wealth flowing from the West to the rest of the country, if it is to meet its climate-change targets, a landmark report has concluded.

The Conservative government's goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 can be achieved, but only by limiting growth in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

This is the finding of a report, financed by the Toronto Dominion Bank and conducted by two environmental organizations, that for the first time offers a detailed regional breakdown of the economic impacts of pursuing a strategy of fighting global warming.

The report, which arrives as nations prepare to meet in Copenhagen to debate future plans to address climate change, is bound to increase tensions between provinces that rely on oil and coal production, which would have to sacrifice economic growth to meet any realistic targets, and Central Canada, which would be less affected and might even benefit.

Either through direct taxation or by capping emissions and forcing companies to buy allowances, the federal government would receive approximately $46-billion or more in revenues, which it would redistribute through spending and personal tax cuts.

In that event, Alberta's economy would be 8.5 per cent smaller in 2020 than projected under an unconstrained scenario, though it would continue to lead the country in growth through the decade, and the province would provide as much as $5-billion more in revenue than it would receive back.

The uneven regional impacts vividly illustrate Ottawa's political challenge in implementing the government's own relatively modest climate-change aspirations. In addition to the effects on Alberta, Saskatchewan would lose 2.8 per cent from its potential output. Ontario and Quebec would come out virtually unscathed, and employment growth would actually be higher in Central Canada.

The Harper government would have to move aggressively and quickly, with a range of highly interventionist policies not now planned, just to meet targets that opposition parties and environmentalists decry as too timid, the study concludes.

Meeting the more stringent standards recommended by environmentalists and many scientists would impose even more onerous burdens. Nonetheless, the report stresses, both sets of goals could be met while still preserving economic growth throughout the decade.

“While addressing climate change in Canada is certainly not going to be as easy as changing our light bulbs, it won't be as bad or economically difficult as some fear-mongers have been saying,” said Pierre Sadik, director of government relations for the David Suzuki Foundation. And it pales, he said, in comparison to the environmental and economic impact of unchecked emissions growth.

The TD Bank financed Calgary-based Pembina Institute and Vancouver's David Suzuki Foundation to produce the comprehensive report. The group contracted with respected economic consultants, M.K. Jaccard and Associates Inc., to model the impacts of climate policies; Jaccard has done similar work for the Canadian government.

TD's chief economist, Don Drummond, said the bank has not endorsed any targets, though it has supported a policy of a national emissions cap. He said the bank's interest was to shed light on an area where there has been little informed debate: the likely cost of imposing regulations.

Despite the steep costs involved in meeting targets, the analysis concludes the Canadian economy would continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace, and that investment in renewable energy and efficiency measures would result in an overall increase in employment compared to a “business-as-usual” scenario.

And even with the significant reduction in Alberta's potential growth and employment prospects, the province would still lead the country economically over the next 10 years.

The Pembina/Suzuki study advocates pursuing deeper emission-reduction targets than the Harper government proposes, ones that environmentalists say would be consistent with Canada's international obligations.
To meet the more ambitious target of reducing emissions by 25 per cent from 1990 levels, Ottawa would impose $72-billion worth of emission levies. By way of comparison, the federal corporate income tax brought in $40-billion in revenue last year.

And while Alberta would be a net loser, analysts from Pembina and Suzuki argue that gap could be closed by rebalancing equalization and other federal programs.

Final report comparing greenhouse-gas emission targets

The government's commitment would require an effective carbon price of $100 a tonne by 2020, while the steeper reductions urged by the environmental groups would need a carbon price of $200 a tonne by that date, the study says. Ottawa has estimated carbon prices would be $50 a tonne by 2020.

Pembina climate researcher Matthew Bramley said Ottawa has to move far more urgently than it has to date if it intends to meet its own targets.

“We would be not even close” to meeting the 2020 goal with the current policy direction that the government has announced, Mr. Bramley said.

The Conservative government says it wants to wait for the results of the Copenhagen meeting and for the United States to finalize its climate-change policies before unveiling its own approach.

In addition to the large, regional transfer of wealth, Canada would have to spend up to $5-billion to purchase international emission credits, or face even higher costs at home. The Harper government insists that virtually all of Canada's effort will involve domestic action.

The report was, essentially, rejected by Environment Minister Jim Prentice and it was not exactly embraced by the Liberals.

But here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, is some background on the report:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/red-cloud-over-alberta/article1354846/

Red cloud over Alberta
On the environment, Quebec is content to play the holier-than-thou role

Lysiane Gagnon

Monday, Nov. 09, 2009

Former energy minister Marc Lalonde has fond memories of Ed Clark, who's now the CEO of Toronto-Dominion Bank. “The guy was brilliant. We used to call him Red Ed,” he told me last year at a dinner party.

Mr. Lalonde was energy minister under Pierre Trudeau. Albertans will remember his name forever, because he was responsible for the much-hated 1980 national energy program – of which Mr. Clark, then a high-ranking civil servant, was the chief architect.

It seems Ed Clark still has Alberta on his mind.
REUTERS

So here's the answer to those who wonder why TD commissioned two advocacy groups (the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation) to write a climate-change study. Their report recommends that Canada reduce its greenhouse emissions by limiting growth in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

It seems Mr. Clark still has Alberta on his mind, 30 years after he devised a plan that diverted to Ottawa control over the province's oil and gas resources as well as part of the profits. To this day, the NEP remains the reason why Alberta and, to a lesser degree, the other western provinces are a no-go zone for the Liberals.

Faced with a flurry of criticism, especially from the oil patch, Mr. Clark somewhat distanced himself from the climate report, saying TD only wanted to stimulate the debate over greenhouse-gas reduction. Hogwash. By paying for the study and releasing it only weeks before the Copenhagen summit, TD lent its credibility to the environmental activists.

And the fact that this complicated, figure-laden study was sponsored by a key bank – the very symbol of capitalism – also lends a great deal of respectability to a report that might otherwise have been dismissed as yet another biased, agenda-driven proposal. If TD wanted to take part in the climate-change debate, why didn't it just bring together a diverse panel of opinions?

Mr. Clark was widely commended last year for having been the only bank chief in Canada who refused to buy the toxic asset-backed securities that precipitated the collapse of so many financial institutions. He certainly showed good judgment then. But his judgment on Alberta's natural resources is as questionable now as it was 30 years ago.

The Edmonton Journal once recalled how he came to his plan. “He based much of that horrendous scheme on his doctoral thesis on government intervention in the economy of Tanzania, which he insisted had been a roaring success. He argued Canada could make itself immune from world oil and gas prices through government regulation of the markets the way Tanzania had cloistered itself away from the forces of world trade.”

At the time, Quebec premier René Lévesque was sympathetic to Alberta, even though the NEP was advantageous to those Canadian consumers who happened to live in Central Canada. Mr. Lévesque was a friend of premier Peter Lougheed, but, more important, Quebec saw the NEP as a huge power grab in an area of provincial jurisdiction. Today, Quebec's reaction is different.

Since the environment has become the new religion, and Alberta's oil sands the cherished target of environmental activists, Quebec – whose main natural resource (hydroelectricity) is the cleanest source of energy – is content to play the role of the holier-than-thou province while benefiting from the success of the West's energy industry.

Ontario is playing the same kind of game – it watches the international crusade mounting against the West, but, when it came to saving its own polluting automobile industry, it sang another song.

The Harper government is right to tread carefully on this issue. Notwithstanding the fact that its electoral base is in Alberta, it was not elected to hurt Canada's economy – of which the West is the major engine – in the name of a long-term and uncertain goal. There's no reason why Canada should become the sacrificial lamb at Copenhagen while the biggest emitting countries refuse to curb their own development.

This goes back to my point about Torontonians and their ‘blinkered’ view. Ed Clark is one of them.

On the bigger issue: we, nationally cannot afford a beggar they neighbour policy in order to pacify taker Canada, as Brian Lee Crowley describes Québec and Atlantic Canada (in contrast to maker Canada which Crowley says lies West of the Ottawa River).

 

[a_majoor]

Canada and our oil:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjMwNWRlMmFkZjQyZjRlOWY3MjQ2Y2YwODkyNTQ2NGM=

Canada: Rogue State  [Jonah Goldberg]


According to the EUrocracy, the world would be better, heck the world would be great, if only we were more like our little brother to the North, Canada. They're nice, deferential to the U.N. and Europe, and they have exactly the right attitudes on everything from diversity to the backwardness of the US of A (a "Northern Puerto Rico with an EU sensibility" was how I described it in one article). And yet, it appears that Canada, not America, is the greatest threat to a Copenhagen accord on global warming. Why? Because they want to exploit their enormous (and particularly filthy in parts) oil reserves.

George Monbiot is out of his gourd about it. No, really:

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

A few months ago, I wrote a cover story on offshore drilling for the magazine. In it I wrote:

...Which brings us to the futility of the “Stop Me Before I Drill Again” mentality that characterizes the Democratic party and the environmental movement. We are constantly told that America must “take the lead” on global warming in order to persuade the rest of the world to cut their own emissions. But America has restricted domestic drilling for decades. Has anyone—anywhere— followed our example? No. Everywhere in the world, governments jump for joy when they discover new oil fields to exploit. Tell a Brazilian official that he should stop drilling because drilling is just wrong, and, once he realizes you’re not joking, he’ll throw his caipirinha in your face.

No serious student of energy and development economics thinks that oil will become less important in at least the next several decades. Every forecast shows demand—domestic and worldwide—going up steadily, or even sharply. Perhaps more importantly, this is also true of coal. China, which is building a new coal-fired power plant every 10 days, has surpassed the U.S. to become the biggest CO2 emitter in the world, and very soon India and Brazil will overtake America as well. They have no intention of abandoning cheap, reliable, and powerful fossil fuels—that they own—in favor of incredibly inefficient, unproven, and expensive “alternative” energy that they’d have to buy from America or Europe. This is true not only because fossil-fuel energy is cost-effective in its own right, but also because they’ve already paid for the infrastructure. Peter Huber writes in City Journal, “Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet’s oil reserves— about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion.” Then he gets to the heart of the matter. “If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they’ve got.”

Look, if Canada — CANADA! — can't be relied upon to "lead by example," particularly when leading by example makes America look bad and Canadians feel good about not being Americans, how on earth does anyone expect Brazil or China to play along?

 

[RangerRay]

I just started reading Fearful Symmetry...very good read.

 

[a_majoor]

This might also be a good article for the Election 2012 thread, you just know that if the Minister were to try to impliment these cuts the shrieks of outrage would echo off the Rockies (and then Jack and Mike would explain how they would end the deficit and reduce the debt without cutting programs or raising taxes... :)

What is really to be determined is the absolute and relative size of these proposed cuts, the economic fallout (would there be tax cuts to go with these savings?) and the political will to carry through? The suggestion we still need stimulus spending is ominous...

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/742220--flaherty-s-deficit-plan-take-an-axe-and-cut-deep

Flaherty's deficit plan: Take an axe and cut deep

December 23, 2009

Les Whittington

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says he will continue with stimulative spending in 2010.
SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS FILE PHOTO

OTTAWA–Faced with the largest federal deficit in history, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says he will start looking for programs to axe and government assets to sell off as soon as the economy recovers.

"It's necessary for restraint to happen" to rein in Ottawa's spending, Flaherty told the Toronto Star in a year-end interview.

"We get hundreds and hundreds of programs that just trundle along, growing at 3 or 4 per cent a year or more – ahead of the rate of inflation – and it takes some resolve to restrain that spending growth."

With a chuckle, he admitted that slashing government programs can prompt public outrage. "Every program has a group of people who believe strongly in that program," he said.

But "some programs should end," Flaherty insisted. "This assumption in government – that every time a program is created, the program should go on indefinitely – is mistaken. So some programs should just end because their usefulness has ended."

Flaherty, who carried the provincial finance portfolio with the Mike Harris government in 2001-2002, said clamping down on spending "doesn't make one popular as a finance minister.

"I've done it before. I did it in Ontario."

Flaherty was a key figure all through the Harris years, when under the banner of the Common Sense Revolution Ontario's Progressive Conservatives elevated chopping government programs and reducing taxes to articles of faith.

In his 2001 Ontario budget, Flaherty handed $2.4 billion in tax cuts to the province's corporations, promised personal tax breaks and paid down $3 billion in provincial debt – all while balancing the books by holding down badly needed expenditures for universities, hospitals and infrastructure projects.

Praising the tax reductions of the Harris era, Flaherty told MPPs at the time: "Ontario paved the way for tax cuts in this country. I am proud that every province in Canada is following our lead."

Five years later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives came to power in Ottawa preaching tax cuts and smaller government in the same vein as Harris's Ontario Tories.

In one of his earliest acts as federal finance minister, Flaherty on Sept. 25, 2006, trimmed $1 billion from programs for human rights, women's issues, museums, youth employment and other initiatives. At the same time, he announced that a $13.2 billion budget surplus would be used to pay down the country's $481 billion debt.

Today, hamstrung by $33.9 billion a year in federal tax cuts and a $28 billion economic stimulus program, Flaherty is contending with the most bloated budget deficits ever recorded in Ottawa. The cumulative total of budget shortfalls will hit $164 billion by 2014.

The finance minister says he will continue with stimulative spending in 2010 to ensure the fragile economy makes a full recovery. But after that, the government will usher in a period of frugality intended to balance Ottawa's books again.

Because higher taxes have been ruled out, Flaherty will have to find the savings by getting tough on government spending. Some antiquated programs could be axed, he said, "but the more important thing is to just watch the rate of growth" of spending.

Most economists say this will be a daunting task. About half of the $241 billion in Ottawa's annual program expenses are for major social programs and cash transfers to the provinces – all of which grow automatically each year.

So in September, when the finance department laid out a rough program for bringing the deficit near zero by 2014, officials said doing so would require keeping the annual growth in the other $120 billion in annual federal program spending to 3.3 per cent.

While that might sound easy, analysts point out that doing so would mean significant reductions in the programs and services many Canadians count on.

The Harper Conservatives have so far shown little stomach for unpopular belt-tightening measures. Despite talking about government restraint, the government has allowed its spending since 2006 to climb by a hefty 7 per cent a year.

Flaherty also said he hopes to realize savings in operational costs by letting the federal public service shrink as employees retire over several years.

"We will have some natural attrition, too, in the federal public service over the next while because of demographics and we can look at that, too, as: Do we need to replace each person who retires?" he said.

Over the next four or five years, the government also hopes to drum up large chunks of cash by selling off billions of dollars in federal lands, buildings and Crown corporations, including possibly the Royal Canadian Mint, Via Rail and Atomic Energy Canada Ltd.

Governments have generally been lax when it comes to examining the need to own assets, Flaherty said.