Well, that United Nations envoy certainly put us in our place, didn't he?
So...
Is everyone clear now on how the Rest of Us should go about negotiating with Canada's First and Foremost Nations?
One of us will propose something -- a mine, perhaps, or a forestry project that would bring much-needed revenue to our cash-strapped government for little things like, uh, health care, education, welfare or new homes in one of Canada's needy FFN communities.
Or maybe it's just a testy comeback to a bit of political grandstanding.
The FFNs, assisted by their social justice friends, will respond to this insult by running off to the mainstream media to reveal the shocking truth about the evil, colonial, rapacious and uncaring government. We will get an earful about treaties, George III, residential schools, assimilation, greedy corporations, malnourished children, inadequate funding, destitute reserves, small pox and the duplicity of settlers.
If this fails to produce immediate capitulation, the FFNs will call on their team of non-Aboriginal lawyers to ask the courts to block whatever it is that the government might ponder doing or saying or permitting to happen. They will cite a Constitution that, apparently, applies only to them.
The courts will deliberate for about ten minutes, then issue a decision that favours the FFNs, humiliates the governement, ignores the Rest of Us and sets a precedent that further entrenches the right of FFNs to most of Canada's land mass.
As these "negotiations" are happening, the FFNs will ice the cake by racing off to New York to play their newly acquired "rights of indigenous people" card. The United Nations will oblige with a scathing attack on all things Canadian. The world will tut-tut about Canada's evil, colonial, rapacious and uncaring people.
Properly chastised by our betters, the Rest of Us will give the FFNs whatever they want.
Life will go on until the next set of "negotiations."
That, folks, is the meaning of reconciliation.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Attawapiskat debate has positive impacts
We owe a big thanks to Attawapiskat First Nation and MP Charlie Angus for thrusting the little community’s housing problems into the spotlight.
In setting off a firestorm, they have sparked a much-needed discussion about remote communities and their place in the larger nation. The debate has elicited nastiness and name-calling, of course, but it has also done several valuable and positive things.
First, it has prompted average Canadians to think about their relationship with First Nations and the more distant reaches of this country.
One impression emerges. The principal players in this drama – INAC and the native leadership – are locked in a dysfunctional dance that smells of another era. For too many years, this show has been run as a two-step on a ghost ship, with the Aboriginal industry providing accompaniment. There’s a wind-up gramophone on the bar, but it’s stuck in a groove of “Do as we say / Send us more money.”
Now that we’ve had a chance to peek through the porthole, we may want to shove the door open, stop the music and drag the dancers out into the light of the currrent century. It’s time for new steps to a new tune played by a better band on a different dance floor.
Second, the debate has stimulated creative suggestions, even bold actions, from outside groups.
Meanwhile, homebuilder Mike Holmes, host of HGTV’s Holmes on Homes, has stepped forward to offer advice and assistance, also under AFN’s aegis
In a CBC interview, he proffered a simple solution to the housing situation – just “stop building crap” with inappropriate materials that are subject to rot, fire and mould. He suggests cinder block and drywall. And make sure you transfer the skills to build and maintain those sustainable homes to the First Nations. It will make a world of difference.
Thirdly, the crisis has exposed major weaknesses in our economic infrastructure.
For a country that prides itself on its transportation network, it is unconscionable that 15 modular homes cannot be delivered to Attawapiskat until the ice roads are ready in January or February.
Granted, this part of Ontario is vast and harsh, but we’ve been tooling around in it since the late 1600s. Yes, the muskeg is difficult. But back in the 1930s, Ontario managed to build a railway to Moosonee through very difficult terrain. And if we look across the bay, over toward the Quebec side, we might notice there are roads that link the Cree communities almost to Hudson Bay.
There is no real excuse, either, for our inability to design and build safe, sustainable communities in a northern environment.
Just 90 kilometres inland from Attawapiskat, De Beers Canada has built a safe, warm, comfortable community for its 500 employees. How could this be? How is it that one company, headquartered in distant South Africa, can conjure up a working town from the cold northern air, while we muddle along with under-serviced shacks and a string of excuses?
We will have to do a lot better -- in planning, designing, engineering and delivering -- if we wish to be known as a northern people, and if we have any aspiration of benefiting from our rich northern lands.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Chiefs jump aboard the bash-Canada wagon
Canada’s Indian chiefs have escalated the dispute over Attawapiskat’s housing crisis by seeking to shame Canada in front of the nations of the world.
Chiefs asked the UN to appoint a "special rapporteur" to examine whether the Harper government is dealing with the crisis in a way that meets its obligations under Canadian and international treaties concerning First Nations people
Their declaration also calls on the federal and provincial governments to respond to communities in dire need.
The next step, presumably, is for the UN to raise its hands in horror and deem Canada an “apartheid” regime. It could impose sanctions on dirty tar sands, tainted seal meat, blood diamonds and clear-cut lumber. Perhaps a UN protectorate could also be established to control Canada’s renegade mining companies and address Canada’s disappointing performance on climate change.
Other people may have a different view, but I am thoroughly fed up with this never-ending bash Canada routine from First Nations and their friends in the social justice brigade.
In the past few years, First Nations groups have worn a path to New York, taking grievance upon grievance to the international body. They should stop doing it. It is bad citizenship that borders on treason. It damages all Canadians by painting the country as a thuggish colonial throwback.
Further, these overwrought pleas for the world’s pity are bad business. In its effort to put the squeeze on the federal government, Attawapiskat has made itself look pitiful and incompetent. That may be great for fundraising, but it's hardly a selling point for a company in need of a keen workforce. The community compounded the damage by launching an over-the-top attack on the De Beers diamond mine near the reserve, raising even more questions about the wisdom of investing large sums of money in this part of the world.
Then there's the democracy thing.
Canadian citizens do not deserve to be denigrated as irrelevant squatters, who have no right to their own lands, who should sit silently by, like good children, while First Nation governments conduct their “nation to nation” negotiations with the monarch’s representatives.
We are not in the 1700s, when Rupert’s Land was run by British fur traders and King George III could spout proclamations that would bind a people forever. Today's Canadians are not "settlers." They have a right to make decisions about their country, its lands and its resources, no matter what the UN -- or some dead English monarch -- thinks about it.
The approach chosen by First Nation chiefs is deeply insulting to Canadians. It’s part of a stale, old mindset that hobbles Canada and restrains its people from moving forward as an independent and prosperous nation.
Bad politics; bad business; bad choice.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Little Qatar, our role model on climate change
This just in from the Durban climate change talks. The world's leading per-capita carbon dioxide emitter will play host to the biggest event on the world's climate change agenda next year.
Yes, teacup-sized Qatar, the filthy-rich jewel of the Persian Gulf, will be the site of the United Nations 2012 climate change conference from November 26 to December 7, 2012.
According to New Scientist, Qatar has the world's highest per-capita carbon dioxide emissions (thanks mainly to a booming offshore natural gas industry). At more than 50 tonnes a head, its emissions are seven times those of Britain and more than triple those of the United States. It also has one of the highest per-capita rates of water use, averaging 400 litres a person per day.
And it is doing little to improve that woeful record. On the contrary, it provides its citizens -- the earth's wealthiest people on a per-capita basis -- with unlimited free electricity and water, which it creates through energy-intensive desalination of seawater.
No wonder its emissions are five times greater than they were in 1990, the start date for Kyoto targets.
Fortunately for Qatar, it is exempt from the Kyoto protocols targets. Like its super-rich Gulf neighbours, it was placed on the "developing nation" list when the targets were set in 1997, and no one has bothered to update the list since.
If only Canada could get itself on the list, our climate change public relations problems would be over.
We could make all the oil sands money we wanted, and no one would say boo. Every house lit up like a Christmas tree. Lawns groaning in wet, green pleasure. Golf courses and refineries on every block.
Oh, let those energy-sucking, carbon-dioxide-emitting good times roll! And give that ridiculous fossil award to someone else for a change.
Now that's a climate change policy I could get behind.
Yes, teacup-sized Qatar, the filthy-rich jewel of the Persian Gulf, will be the site of the United Nations 2012 climate change conference from November 26 to December 7, 2012.
According to New Scientist, Qatar has the world's highest per-capita carbon dioxide emissions (thanks mainly to a booming offshore natural gas industry). At more than 50 tonnes a head, its emissions are seven times those of Britain and more than triple those of the United States. It also has one of the highest per-capita rates of water use, averaging 400 litres a person per day.
And it is doing little to improve that woeful record. On the contrary, it provides its citizens -- the earth's wealthiest people on a per-capita basis -- with unlimited free electricity and water, which it creates through energy-intensive desalination of seawater.
No wonder its emissions are five times greater than they were in 1990, the start date for Kyoto targets.
Fortunately for Qatar, it is exempt from the Kyoto protocols targets. Like its super-rich Gulf neighbours, it was placed on the "developing nation" list when the targets were set in 1997, and no one has bothered to update the list since.
If only Canada could get itself on the list, our climate change public relations problems would be over.
We could make all the oil sands money we wanted, and no one would say boo. Every house lit up like a Christmas tree. Lawns groaning in wet, green pleasure. Golf courses and refineries on every block.
Oh, let those energy-sucking, carbon-dioxide-emitting good times roll! And give that ridiculous fossil award to someone else for a change.
Now that's a climate change policy I could get behind.
Friday, November 18, 2011
This cannot stand
The Guardian is reporting that the draft Irish budget is making the rounds of German legislators before the Irish people themselves get a chance to look at it. Needless to say, the Irish were shocked by the revelation.
"Loss of sovereignty may be an abstract notion," the Guardian article says, "but this week Irish people were confronted with what it means in reality. Revelations that draft proposals for the Irish December budget had been circulated in a German parliamentary committee were met with horror in Ireland. It has since emerged that they were sent to every finance minister in the EU."
There are explanations and apologies for the leak, of course. But the fact remains that German state legislators are vetting the Irish budget, as they will vet the Greek budget, and the Portuguese budget and, perhaps, the Italian budget. Next will come the Spanish budget and, perhaps, horror of horrors, the French budget.
When one thinks, for even a moment, of the blood and tears expended by the Irish people to shuck off the yoke of British rule in the last century, one can only feel infinite sadness at how easily they have traded away their sovereignty in this century. Whatever their financial misdeeds -- and those are still a matter of debate -- the Irish do not deserve this.
And yet it is also apparent that it cannot and will not happen. The Irish people will not allow it. Nor will the Greeks, the Portuguese, the Italians, the Spanish and, above all, the French.
There may be a way out of this. The Germans may be gifted by a sudden flash of insight; the technocrats may receive an infusion of human feeling; the bond vigilantes may take up butterfly collecting; the world may come to its senses.
Barring those unlikely interventions, however, it is clear that the dream of a peacefully, united Europe has been shattered.
"I think it will be damaging in the sense that it plays to a narrative that Germany is calling shots all over Europe," Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin told Reuters. "It will damage sentient towards Europe and that is a problem."
Do tell.
"Loss of sovereignty may be an abstract notion," the Guardian article says, "but this week Irish people were confronted with what it means in reality. Revelations that draft proposals for the Irish December budget had been circulated in a German parliamentary committee were met with horror in Ireland. It has since emerged that they were sent to every finance minister in the EU."
There are explanations and apologies for the leak, of course. But the fact remains that German state legislators are vetting the Irish budget, as they will vet the Greek budget, and the Portuguese budget and, perhaps, the Italian budget. Next will come the Spanish budget and, perhaps, horror of horrors, the French budget.
When one thinks, for even a moment, of the blood and tears expended by the Irish people to shuck off the yoke of British rule in the last century, one can only feel infinite sadness at how easily they have traded away their sovereignty in this century. Whatever their financial misdeeds -- and those are still a matter of debate -- the Irish do not deserve this.
And yet it is also apparent that it cannot and will not happen. The Irish people will not allow it. Nor will the Greeks, the Portuguese, the Italians, the Spanish and, above all, the French.
There may be a way out of this. The Germans may be gifted by a sudden flash of insight; the technocrats may receive an infusion of human feeling; the bond vigilantes may take up butterfly collecting; the world may come to its senses.
Barring those unlikely interventions, however, it is clear that the dream of a peacefully, united Europe has been shattered.
"I think it will be damaging in the sense that it plays to a narrative that Germany is calling shots all over Europe," Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin told Reuters. "It will damage sentient towards Europe and that is a problem."
Do tell.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Toronto Life laughs at Timmins - Now that's funny!
Can’t resist posting this item from Toronto Life’s “The Informer” column:
If you were a highly educated denizen of Tiny Condo Inner City, you might find this very, very funny. Ever so witty and urbane. Comes with its own powdered wig.
Beloved Toronto – Always expanding the meaning of the term effete snob.
Porter Airlines to service Timmins, Ontario (and all of its 200 residents)
Beloved airline and free alcohol dispensary Porter Airlines
celebrated its fifth birthday this month by expanding service to
Timmins. The local airport provides access to the hamlet’s many attractions
and serves as an important gateway to the rest of Northern Ontario. The
three daily flights begin January 16, 2012, a month after Burlington,
Vermont, is also added to the roster. This latest destination is one
more tiny reason to choose Porter, especially with Air Canada hell-bent on a strike. New flights and beer versus pissed-off flight attendants—you decide.If you were a highly educated denizen of Tiny Condo Inner City, you might find this very, very funny. Ever so witty and urbane. Comes with its own powdered wig.
Beloved Toronto – Always expanding the meaning of the term effete snob.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Guess we're a bunch of maroons, eh?
For sheer chutzpah, it’s hard to beat Chris Gibson-Smith, chairman of the London Stock Exchange.
In an interview with a U.K. newspaper last week, Gibson-Smith urged the Occupy movement to stop blaming banks for the financial crisis and instead focus their rage on the real culprits – irresponsible governments and…wait for it…politicians
According to Gibson-Smith, governments caused all the problems by letting banks run up huge debts. Those damned politicians “allowed the financial system to explode by permitting the build-up of ludicrous amounts of debt and leverage.”
Say what?
ALLOWING banks? PERMITTING the build-up of debt? Who are these banks -- a bunch of unruly teenagers? And governments have been bad parents because they gave the kids the keys to the car instead of locking the little brats in their bedrooms until they did their homework?
They were idiots, apparently, for believing what bankers told them about the sanctity of free markets and the need to deregulate.
"No one ever said that free markets could or would be self-regulating,” sniffed Gibson-Smith. “That's where people over the past few decades have got it wrong, and many are still in denial – look at Alan Greenspan, who is still defending free markets."
Seems people got a lot of things wrong in the past few decades. What a bunch of maroons!
Wonder where they got all those goofy free-market, keep-government-out-of-our-business ideas?
In an interview with a U.K. newspaper last week, Gibson-Smith urged the Occupy movement to stop blaming banks for the financial crisis and instead focus their rage on the real culprits – irresponsible governments and…wait for it…politicians
According to Gibson-Smith, governments caused all the problems by letting banks run up huge debts. Those damned politicians “allowed the financial system to explode by permitting the build-up of ludicrous amounts of debt and leverage.”
Say what?
ALLOWING banks? PERMITTING the build-up of debt? Who are these banks -- a bunch of unruly teenagers? And governments have been bad parents because they gave the kids the keys to the car instead of locking the little brats in their bedrooms until they did their homework?
They were idiots, apparently, for believing what bankers told them about the sanctity of free markets and the need to deregulate.
"No one ever said that free markets could or would be self-regulating,” sniffed Gibson-Smith. “That's where people over the past few decades have got it wrong, and many are still in denial – look at Alan Greenspan, who is still defending free markets."
Seems people got a lot of things wrong in the past few decades. What a bunch of maroons!
Wonder where they got all those goofy free-market, keep-government-out-of-our-business ideas?
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Look to China for economic salvation?
The bad news just keeps on coming for Ontario.
On Friday, a group of native chiefs from Ontario’s far northern region announced that they were withdrawing their support from an environmental assessment of a proposed chromium mining project.
The chiefs want one particular process – a joint panel review -- and the federal agency in charge of environment assessments has opted for a different process – a comprehensive environmental assessment. The chiefs don’t like that decision, so they are vowing to do everything in their power to block development until they get exactly what they want.
The announcement by the Matawa chiefs was not unexpected. They have been calling for a joint review panel for several months.
In fact, cynics have been waiting for this kind of announcement since the premier started extolling the Ring of Fire mineral zone a couple of years ago. Development of this area has the potential to light a fire under Ontario’s stuttering economy. It is important to Ontario’s economic future.
The premier was foolish enough to say so.
That was a very bad idea, because it raised the stakes. It also signalled to certain malevolent forces that there are significant benefits in opposing Ring of Fire development. Oppose it they will. At every turn. Because they stand a good chance of winning.
Cynics won’t be surprised. They don’t believe Ontario has the political will to undertake industrial development of this scope. Not in this part of the province. Not in this environment of political correctness. Not against the combined forces of native power-brokers, a reconciling court, Dudley Do-Right citizens, the U.N. and opaque social activism, much of it funded by organizations based in other countries.
So what to do?
Maybe Ontario should look to China.
Many years ago, China faced a similar problem -- impotent governments, factious regions and external mischief-making. It leased Hong Kong to the English for 99 years, got annual revenue and received back a thriving capitalist hub for its emerging economy. Today, China is flush with funds and actively searching for natural resource opportunities to feed its burgeoning industrial development.
Excellent deal all around.
If the premier is really committed to the development of the Ring of Fire, he should take a trip to China and pitch the opportunity to people who can actually make it happen. A good annual lease rate for the next 99 years would help pay the bills and pull down the debt. It's a heck of a lot better than what we’re facing now in the province's far north – high costs, low rewards, failure and frustration, international criticism, legal paralysis, endless obstructionism….
It’s not a great answer, but it’s probably the best we can do in the circumstances.
Let's face the fact that we’re outgunned and over-matched in our efforts to develop these contested lands. Maybe in 99 years we’ll have grown enough to be up to the challenge.
On Friday, a group of native chiefs from Ontario’s far northern region announced that they were withdrawing their support from an environmental assessment of a proposed chromium mining project.
The chiefs want one particular process – a joint panel review -- and the federal agency in charge of environment assessments has opted for a different process – a comprehensive environmental assessment. The chiefs don’t like that decision, so they are vowing to do everything in their power to block development until they get exactly what they want.
The announcement by the Matawa chiefs was not unexpected. They have been calling for a joint review panel for several months.
In fact, cynics have been waiting for this kind of announcement since the premier started extolling the Ring of Fire mineral zone a couple of years ago. Development of this area has the potential to light a fire under Ontario’s stuttering economy. It is important to Ontario’s economic future.
The premier was foolish enough to say so.
That was a very bad idea, because it raised the stakes. It also signalled to certain malevolent forces that there are significant benefits in opposing Ring of Fire development. Oppose it they will. At every turn. Because they stand a good chance of winning.
Cynics won’t be surprised. They don’t believe Ontario has the political will to undertake industrial development of this scope. Not in this part of the province. Not in this environment of political correctness. Not against the combined forces of native power-brokers, a reconciling court, Dudley Do-Right citizens, the U.N. and opaque social activism, much of it funded by organizations based in other countries.
So what to do?
Maybe Ontario should look to China.
Many years ago, China faced a similar problem -- impotent governments, factious regions and external mischief-making. It leased Hong Kong to the English for 99 years, got annual revenue and received back a thriving capitalist hub for its emerging economy. Today, China is flush with funds and actively searching for natural resource opportunities to feed its burgeoning industrial development.
Excellent deal all around.
If the premier is really committed to the development of the Ring of Fire, he should take a trip to China and pitch the opportunity to people who can actually make it happen. A good annual lease rate for the next 99 years would help pay the bills and pull down the debt. It's a heck of a lot better than what we’re facing now in the province's far north – high costs, low rewards, failure and frustration, international criticism, legal paralysis, endless obstructionism….
It’s not a great answer, but it’s probably the best we can do in the circumstances.
Let's face the fact that we’re outgunned and over-matched in our efforts to develop these contested lands. Maybe in 99 years we’ll have grown enough to be up to the challenge.
Monday, October 17, 2011
OWS gets support from odd quarters
The Occupy Wall Street protesters are getting support from some unexpected quarters, among them Mark Carney, head of the Bank of Canada. And he's not the only voice from the financial world suggesting we "listen up" to the calls for change.
Last Friday, Carney told CBC's Peter Mansbridge that the protests "highlight the need for policy makers to show they are serious about forcing change." He cited an increase in inequality that started with globalization and was made worse by the financial crisis. Carney is pushing for financial reforms that would make future crises less likely.
And as a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, there's a good chance he knows and understands the murky financial backwaters that spawned the 2008 crisis.
In 1998, Goldman Sachs helped bail out Long-Term Capital Management when the overly ambitious hedge fund executed a $4.6-billion pratfall that threatened to take financial markets down with it. It was a chilling precursor to the Lehman Bros. collapse in mid-2008, and could easily have led to the same dismal outcome.
LTCM had been established by a group of financial whiz kids partly to get out from under regulatory oversight and partly to play tiddly winks with U.S. tax laws. One of its founders was Myron Scholes, a former Timmins boy who grew up to win a Nobel prize in economics for co-developing the Black-Scholes formula, which provides a mathematical model for valuing and managing the risk of derivatives.
It's not a stretch to say hardly anyone understands the Black-Scholes formula. But almost anyone trained in Finance can plug in some numbers and spit out an answer. Apparently, the formula was much beloved by the high-flying Wall Street derivative traders in the lead-up to the 2008 financial collapse.
Here's the thing. Myron Scholes, for all his qualities, has been a spectacular financial flame-out since leaving academia for the world of hedge funds. In fact, he's a train wreck looking for a place to happen. He's a serial catastrophe generator, having engineered two less dramatic, but still gob-smacking, hedge fund crashes before joining the LTCM disaster.
Presumably, he was using his award-winning mathematical model to facilitate all that crashing and burning.
Which leads to three questions -- What is the fatal flaw in the Black-Scholes model, what role did it play in the problems we are facing today, and why are we letting these people go on and on with their catastrophic financial models?
Maybe Mark Carney knows. And maybe he can do something about it.
Let's not do this again in 2018.
Last Friday, Carney told CBC's Peter Mansbridge that the protests "highlight the need for policy makers to show they are serious about forcing change." He cited an increase in inequality that started with globalization and was made worse by the financial crisis. Carney is pushing for financial reforms that would make future crises less likely.
And as a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, there's a good chance he knows and understands the murky financial backwaters that spawned the 2008 crisis.
In 1998, Goldman Sachs helped bail out Long-Term Capital Management when the overly ambitious hedge fund executed a $4.6-billion pratfall that threatened to take financial markets down with it. It was a chilling precursor to the Lehman Bros. collapse in mid-2008, and could easily have led to the same dismal outcome.
LTCM had been established by a group of financial whiz kids partly to get out from under regulatory oversight and partly to play tiddly winks with U.S. tax laws. One of its founders was Myron Scholes, a former Timmins boy who grew up to win a Nobel prize in economics for co-developing the Black-Scholes formula, which provides a mathematical model for valuing and managing the risk of derivatives.
It's not a stretch to say hardly anyone understands the Black-Scholes formula. But almost anyone trained in Finance can plug in some numbers and spit out an answer. Apparently, the formula was much beloved by the high-flying Wall Street derivative traders in the lead-up to the 2008 financial collapse.
Here's the thing. Myron Scholes, for all his qualities, has been a spectacular financial flame-out since leaving academia for the world of hedge funds. In fact, he's a train wreck looking for a place to happen. He's a serial catastrophe generator, having engineered two less dramatic, but still gob-smacking, hedge fund crashes before joining the LTCM disaster.
Presumably, he was using his award-winning mathematical model to facilitate all that crashing and burning.
Which leads to three questions -- What is the fatal flaw in the Black-Scholes model, what role did it play in the problems we are facing today, and why are we letting these people go on and on with their catastrophic financial models?
Maybe Mark Carney knows. And maybe he can do something about it.
Let's not do this again in 2018.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Northern malaise again
What's up with one of my favourite economists, Livio Di Matteo of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay?
In his October 4 posting, Di Matteo surveys the pre-election political scene and finds little to like from a Northern Ontario prospective, no matter what outcome the vote produces. And despite all the talk about the North, he sees no indication that the main parties are prepared to grant the region any real decision-making power.
"As a sign of where the priorities really lie, consider the fact that in all of the main party platforms, there was no real mention of new institutions for the North or any real policy of decentralization or devolution of decision-making when it comes to northern resource development."
He admits there has been no push from northerners to win greater autonomy, and he seems baffled by this willingness to tolerate the situation.
In his October 4 posting, Di Matteo surveys the pre-election political scene and finds little to like from a Northern Ontario prospective, no matter what outcome the vote produces. And despite all the talk about the North, he sees no indication that the main parties are prepared to grant the region any real decision-making power.
"As a sign of where the priorities really lie, consider the fact that in all of the main party platforms, there was no real mention of new institutions for the North or any real policy of decentralization or devolution of decision-making when it comes to northern resource development."
He admits there has been no push from northerners to win greater autonomy, and he seems baffled by this willingness to tolerate the situation.
"Northerners seem to be quite happy in their role as an economic dependency punctuated by bouts of adolescent outrage," he writes. "They will be dealt with accordingly no matter who forms the government."
Decentralization will only come when the north's aboriginal population gets big enough to demand -- and get -- a new deal, he says.
He sounds a bit out of sorts and dispirited, doesn't he?
Well, it's not easy trying to push the North toward a more self-reliant future. Di Matteo is not the first northern warrior to succumb to frustration. Nor will he be the last. Over the years, many good people have thrown their hands in the air and wandered away to do something more rewarding.
At the same time, he does make good point.
Maybe it's worth looking deeper into the reasons behind Northern Ontario's soul-sucking inability to get its act together.
Di Matteo's "Northern Economist" blog -- always a good read -- is found at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/
Sunday, October 2, 2011
CRA soft on well-heeled tax cheats
Financial services reporter John Greenwood raises important questions in Friday’s Financial Post (FP Street - A taxing pursuit) about big-time Canadian tax cheats and the apparent reluctance of the Canada Revenue Agency to bring them to justice.
Goodwood says the CRA has come into possession of more than 1,000 names of scofflaws who stash tax-free cash in secret European bank accounts.
“However, despite harsh criminal penalties for tax evasion in this country, not a single one of those account holders has gone to jail,” he says.
Goodwood is far from impressed with CRA’s record.
Most of its “success” has come from a voluntary disclosure program that allows cheats to confess without penalty, he says. Other cases were related to organized crime activities in Montreal, a couple of small companies, a piano player who failed to declare U.S. property and the operator of an offshore gambling site.
In fact, CRA’s record is darned insipid – almost wilfully insipid -- compared to the aggressive efforts of U.S. authorities to reclaim some of an estimated $100-billion slippage to the offshore tax dodge.
I guess Canada doesn’t need the money right now. The rest of us don’t mind paying more, thank you. Or maybe it’s just so much easier to pluck the feathers off terrified low- and middle-income taxpayers. Oh, heck. Why not both? We’ll pay more and you can turn our lives into a living hell at the same time!
In any case, if the CRA is not going to use its lists of tax cheats, perhaps the agency would consider publishing the names for us to see.
That way, we could cheerfully disregard these fine Canadians when they pop up on our TV screens bleating for more tax cuts and corporate subsidies.
Goodwood says the CRA has come into possession of more than 1,000 names of scofflaws who stash tax-free cash in secret European bank accounts.
“However, despite harsh criminal penalties for tax evasion in this country, not a single one of those account holders has gone to jail,” he says.
Goodwood is far from impressed with CRA’s record.
Most of its “success” has come from a voluntary disclosure program that allows cheats to confess without penalty, he says. Other cases were related to organized crime activities in Montreal, a couple of small companies, a piano player who failed to declare U.S. property and the operator of an offshore gambling site.
In fact, CRA’s record is darned insipid – almost wilfully insipid -- compared to the aggressive efforts of U.S. authorities to reclaim some of an estimated $100-billion slippage to the offshore tax dodge.
I guess Canada doesn’t need the money right now. The rest of us don’t mind paying more, thank you. Or maybe it’s just so much easier to pluck the feathers off terrified low- and middle-income taxpayers. Oh, heck. Why not both? We’ll pay more and you can turn our lives into a living hell at the same time!
In any case, if the CRA is not going to use its lists of tax cheats, perhaps the agency would consider publishing the names for us to see.
That way, we could cheerfully disregard these fine Canadians when they pop up on our TV screens bleating for more tax cuts and corporate subsidies.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The Dirty Little Secret of the '60s
Was chatting with my daughter over dinner about the position of women in society, and how the decades have been so different in their reality for girls, when something was said about the '60s. I don't know who said it or what it was, but suddenly there was a scent of hostility, a rancour that I found disconcerting.
It pulled me up short, and I suddenly felt a gulf between my daughter and I, a friction -- something hard and cold that made me feel that her generation, which I had always considered my good friends, had come to the point where they wanted to push mine aside, not because they didn't like us, but rather because we had something that they could never have and they deeply, deeply resented us because of it.
I realized then that I have never really spoken to my daughter about my life in the 60s. I just don't talk about it, even though I am, I think, reasonably open about other aspects of my life. Even though it was a flashpoint of modern history; even though I had adventures that are worth repeating; even though an understanding of what I was doing in the '60s is essential to an understanding who I am today -- even with all that...I don't talk about it.
I don't know why I don't talk about it. Perhaps because it is such a private, secret part of those of us who are of a certain age, those of us who lived it.
But perhaps we should.
Our children obviously want to know. They want to understand what it was we had then. And maybe what they could aim to have now.
Maybe we should tell them. Or not.
I don't know that I'd know where to begin.
It pulled me up short, and I suddenly felt a gulf between my daughter and I, a friction -- something hard and cold that made me feel that her generation, which I had always considered my good friends, had come to the point where they wanted to push mine aside, not because they didn't like us, but rather because we had something that they could never have and they deeply, deeply resented us because of it.
I realized then that I have never really spoken to my daughter about my life in the 60s. I just don't talk about it, even though I am, I think, reasonably open about other aspects of my life. Even though it was a flashpoint of modern history; even though I had adventures that are worth repeating; even though an understanding of what I was doing in the '60s is essential to an understanding who I am today -- even with all that...I don't talk about it.
I don't know why I don't talk about it. Perhaps because it is such a private, secret part of those of us who are of a certain age, those of us who lived it.
But perhaps we should.
Our children obviously want to know. They want to understand what it was we had then. And maybe what they could aim to have now.
Maybe we should tell them. Or not.
I don't know that I'd know where to begin.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Too funny
This is funny.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-politics/ndp-screening-leadership-candidates-to-head-off-internet-embarrassments/article1881534/
And we despair that we have political leaders who are lacking in pizzazz, charisma, oomph, general knowledge of life? One has to wonder who will be left to run for public office in this country.
You remember those kids who used to sit in the front row of the class and wave their hands at the teacher? Ask me. Ask me. I know. I know. Well, they're running your life now. Thanks to the world of gotcha journalism and hyper-partisan goodie-two-shoes smarminess.
Let me know how it works out for you.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-politics/ndp-screening-leadership-candidates-to-head-off-internet-embarrassments/article1881534/
And we despair that we have political leaders who are lacking in pizzazz, charisma, oomph, general knowledge of life? One has to wonder who will be left to run for public office in this country.
You remember those kids who used to sit in the front row of the class and wave their hands at the teacher? Ask me. Ask me. I know. I know. Well, they're running your life now. Thanks to the world of gotcha journalism and hyper-partisan goodie-two-shoes smarminess.
Let me know how it works out for you.
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