New Environics poll reveals Canadians reject SPP priorities

Ottawa - As Stephen Harper prepares to attend the North American leaders’ summit on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in New Orleans next week, a new Environics Research poll shows that Canadians disagree with key elements of North American integration. The survey commissioned by the Council of Canadians shows considerable opposition to regulatory harmonization, energy integration and bulk water exports. It also reveals that Canadians are not sold on security cooperation with the U.S. and would overwhelmingly like to see the SPP debated publicly and voted on in Parliament.

“It’s been four years since the launch of the SPP, and while corporations have been given a seat at the negotiating table, the Canadian government has never asked the public how they feel about it,” says Maude Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians.

Highlights:

* 87% of Canadians agree that Canada should be able to set its own independent environmental, health and safety standards and regulations even if it could limit trade with the United States.

The SPP commits Canada to widespread regulatory convergence which has already resulted in Canada adopting weaker standards, most recently through consumer product legislation.

* 89% of Canadians agree that Canada needs an energy policy that protects Canadian supplies and the environment even if it means placing restrictions on exports and foreign ownership.

The SPP calls for greater energy integration and a fivefold expansion of the environmentally destructive tar sands project in Alberta.

* 88% of Canadians want a national water policy that recognizes clean drinking water as a basic human right and that also bans bulk water exports.

But at an SPP-related meeting in Calgary last year, commissioned by all three governments, the issue of bulk water exports was firmly on the table.

* Only 47% of Canadians feel that improving the Canada-U.S. trading relationship would justify harmonizing our security policies with the US and sharing personal information with American security agencies.

This means that Canadians are not sold on the very raison d’être of the SPP, yet the last Harper budget committed an additional $165 million towards security initiatives in the SPP agreement.

* 86% of Canadians feel there should be an open, public debate on the SPP, and that the agreement should be brought to Parliament for a vote.

Four years after the launch of the SPP there has been no public consultation or any parliamentary debate. “How can the government continue to push this agenda behind closed doors, when the public overwhelmingly rejects it?” asks Barlow.

The organization is calling for public consultation and parliamentary debate on the SPP and an end to all talks aimed at promoting continental integration between Canada and the United States.

Environics Research interviewed 1,007 Canadians by telephone during the period: April 7th – 10th, 2008. The margin of error for a survey of this magnitude is +/-3.1 percent, nineteen times out of twenty.

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For more information, please contact:
Meera Karunananthan Media Officer: Tel.: (613) 233-4487, ext. 234; Cell: (613) 795-8685; meera@canadians.org.

–
The Council of Canadians
700-170 Laurier Avenue West, Ottawa, ON K1P 5V5.
Tel: (613) 233-2773; Toll-free: 1-800-387-7177
Fax: (613) 233-6776
inquiries@canadians.org
www.canadians.org

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/410662

Great Lakes levels are plunging yet we still treat water like it’s a limitless resource. We have to get our act together and start paying the real price. And soon
Apr 06, 2008 04:30 AM
Chris Wood
Special to the Star

The Great Lakes, and those who work or live around them, are witnessing profound changes in climate. No one knows that better than Linda Mortsch.

Her childhood was spent near the banks of the St. Lawrence River, at Cornwall, in a house built in 1958 from lumber salvaged from an historic inn that was due to be submerged, along with half a dozen riverside villages, to make way for the St. Lawrence Seaway. Today, she teaches geography at the University of Waterloo, investigating how the changing weather will affect the Great Lakes.

Mortsch walked me through the Lakes’ historic water calendar. Typically, the year begins with most smaller lakes and rivers – and large expanses of the great ones – locked in ice. Snow covers the land. As spring comes, the snow and upland ice melt, releasing a vast pulse of fresh water to the Lakes.

Superior, the largest lake, receives the biggest pulse. As the winter’s snow-melt flows in, the Lakes’ levels rise, with Superior reaching its peak earliest and the lower lakes peaking progressively through the summer until the annual pulse of winter runoff reaches Lake Ontario, usually around Labour Day. The Lakes are at their lowest in December and January, when the cycle begins again.

Now this timeless rhythm is changing. Average air temperatures in the Great Lakes region rose by nearly a degree Celsius over the last 100 years, faster than the world average. Winter and spring have warmed even more, with highs as much as 4 degrees Celsius above those of the last century.

By 2003 places like Sault Ste. Marie and the Kawartha Lakes were getting a month fewer days below freezing and nearly two months fewer of cold nights each winter than in 1950, but 30 more very hot days and nights each summer.

With less snow hanging around anywhere in the Lakes’ basin, the yearly pulse of melting snow and ice starts earlier and carries less water into the Lakes.

By far the greatest threat to the Lakes, however, comes from the insidious amplification of evapotranspiration (ET). Evaporation already extracts more water from the Great Lakes than all our human diversions combined.

Across Ontario, calculated losses to evaporation claim two-thirds of every centimetre of rain or snow the province receives. Scientists who monitored lakes in northwestern Ontario between 1970 and 1990 discovered that as temperatures rose by 1.6 degrees Celsius – more than twice the global average for that period – rainfall declined. But evaporation ballooned by 50 per cent. Annual runoff into Lake Superior plummeted by almost two-thirds, from 40 centimetres to only about 15.

[The combination of late-forming ice on the Lakes, and that invisible thief evaporation, may have been largely responsible for this past winter's record snowfalls in eastern Ontario and Quebec. With little ice to protect the Lakes' water, it easily evaporated into the dry arctic air that flows south during the winter, riding the wind to fall back to land later as snow. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, the record heaps of snow were not evidence of climate change slipping into reverse — but of it going into overdrive.]

If less water flows into the Great Lakes each spring, and more of it is drawn out by evaporation over longer ice-free seasons, exactly how much lower will the Lakes be at the end of each year?

If Mortsch and her colleagues are correct, Lake Superior’s seasonal low-water levels could fall 38 centimetres below present-day lows before mid-century. Lake Ontario could drop more, losing 54 centimetres from present-day lows, with the deepest impact in the spring. But Lake Erie, already the shallowest of the five, could fall as much as 85 centimetres below its current low-water level. Another study has suggested that the St. Lawrence River at Montreal could in some late summers be at barely half its present volume.

THE CONDITIONS that will give our society its best shot at flourishing through the new climate’s violent mood swings are evident. We must use less water whenever we can, extracting more work from every drop we do use. We must minimize our vulnerability to extremes of weather. To reduce our risk, we must “design in” flexibility and resilient adaptive capacity from the get-go. At every turn we should copy or employ the original and still best example of resilience to climate change: nature itself.

And one more thing: any response that would prepare us adequately and in time for the turbulent weather ahead must surely find a way to work with the aspirations, psychology and economy of our society, rather than against them.

Improvements to the water efficiency of industrial processes, cropping and livestock practices and our personal sanitation occur incrementally, in the small or large innovations each of us makes. They can’t be centrally prescribed, any more than one device could solve every industry’s pollution problem. At best they can be motivated.

So why are we so unmotivated to make our water last? Perhaps for the same reasons so many of us fail when we try to diet: we cheat. While praising water as “priceless” in the abstract, we value it at next to nothing at the tap. When we treat water that way, it’s cheaper to let it leak from old pipes than to fix the holes.

Our systemic dishonesty about the value of water is of a piece with the larger fraud we’ve perpetrated by failing to account in full for the myriad other services that natural ecosystems provide to our dollar economy. These range from the “free” fish in the ocean to the marsh-raised wild waterfowl that fill the larders in many northern communities; from the carbon dioxide that forests scrub out of the atmosphere to the forests’ moist exhalations that cool the local environs before returning downwind as welcome rain.

They include the waters bearing freighters through the Rock Cut south of Sault Ste. Marie and the crust of ice that shoulders the weight of winter traffic into Manitoba’s St. Theresa Point. At the grandest scale, they embrace the vast planetary distillery and filtering system that cleanses our water.

Sixty per cent of these critical services are now over-exploited and run down, the United Nations Environmental Programme found in its Millennium Assessment of the global ecosystem, precisely because they are undervalued in commerce.

“Technology and knowledge can reduce considerably the human impact on ecosystems,” the project’s scientific board underscored in a statement. “They are unlikely to be deployed fully, however, until ecosystem services cease to be perceived as free and limitless, and their full value is taken into account.”

We dare not carry on this way. The health of our habitat must become as automatic and seamless a consideration in our economic decisions as the price of money (which affects everything from billion-dollar takeovers to personal credit-card spending).

Far from segregating nature from human commerce, in other words, we must urgently reintegrate the two. Bringing natural services “onto the books” of our conventional economy would mean not only fully acknowledging their benefits, but also paying for their maintenance. It would give each of us a sharp new awareness of the load we place on the planet and an immediate reason to lighten it.

NO DEVICE CAN accomplish this task better than a correctly set price. Price includes an entire chain of costs that go into a product’s creation and supply, from raw materials to labour. There’s more to getting a mango than a Macintosh apple to Toronto in January, so the mango costs more.

Over time, multiple considerations have entered pricing: the cost of insuring the workers who make the product, the cost of taxes to pay for the roads over which it gets delivered, and so on. Increasingly, prices for some products, like electronics, include disposal costs.

Certain social costs that should be included in prices aren’t yet: in particular, the burdens borne by the “low-wage” societies that manufacture exports. Overall, however, the trend is in the right direction. But while we’ve made progress in integrating human social costs in prices, we’ve done extremely poorly at including nature’s contribution. A more inclusive price for water would dramatically change the incentives in the countless decisions we make in our daily lives

“People say you can’t put a price tag on the priceless,” remarks ecologist Gretchen Daily. “I agree – nature is priceless. But if we don’t (put a price on it), it’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet: People go whole hog and it’s gone.”

Those who advocate the public commons and a human right to water are correct that water runs through us all. It infuses every aspect of economic, social and cultural life and every hour of the day. For this very reason, neither government, no matter how powerful and intrusive, nor any self-appointed overseer from “civil society,” can possibly ensure its wise use.

Only we can do that, through the decisions we make in our homes, fields, office cubicles, plant floors, schools and shopping malls or wherever else we spend our time. It’s what we each do daily in the marketplace that will determine whether collectively we protect our water and the natural systems that provide it, or despoil both.

The marketplace is the most flexible problem-solving institution we have. Adapting it to the smarter use of water veers away from the one-size-fits-all frame of last century’s “big engineering” and outdated eco-Marxism that sets disciples of Blue Gold on course toward a tragedy of the commons.

It directs us instead toward a liberating ecology of persistent innovation in which a diversity of solutions can prosper.

http://parentcentral.ca/parent/article/410900

Data analysis method urged for all provinces
April 7, 2008

Kristin Rushowy
TORONTO STAR

Poor students are doing far worse on standardized tests than the results themselves indicate, says a groundbreaking study that links children’s birth and health records to education data.

A study of Winnipeg children in Grades 3 and 12 in 2001-02 showed that while three quarters or more of those from lower socio-economic groups writing provincial tests earned a passing grade, when all eligible children at those ages from poor homes were included, only about one-third were successful test takers, says the study out of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy at the University of Manitoba.

By linking birth, health and education data, researchers were able to conclude how many kids from poor homes had left school, had failed at some point to place them in a lower grade, were otherwise absent or exempt from the provincial test or hadn’t completed it.

“The Manitoba data linking provided this most remarkable result,” said Clyde Hertzman, president of the Toronto-based Council for Early Childhood Development, part of a group of researchers pushing for every province to create such databases.

“Rather than using the classroom as the denominator, you use the population as the denominator. At the upper end, the pass rate drops slightly, but at the low socio-economic end, the pass rate drops in half,” he said.

Many of the children counted were “so weakly attached to the school system” they simply didn’t show up to write the provincial test, he said.

These were kids “off the radar system,” he said.

While such data comparisons aren’t available in Ontario, there’s no reason to think the situation is much different here, he said.

Manitoba’s shared data system is an example of methods all provinces should be using to monitor the well-being of children, he added.

The Manitoba research was one of four approaches cited in a recent report by early childhood researchers as “the building blocks of the system of early childhood development statistics that Canada needs.”

Dr. Kellie Leitch, the federal government’s adviser on healthy children and youth, recently called for better information management, calling it “invaluable in the development of public policy and programs which can have a meaningful impact on child and youth health.”

“Those kinds of things do put a shine on significant problems – problems you don’t see when you only look at school data,” added Dr. Robin Williams, chair of the early childhood council and Niagara Region medical officer of health.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/411040

Apr 07, 2008 01:39 PM
THE CANADIAN PRESS

Too many people only consider the environmental impacts of global warming and don’t realize public health is at serious risk as well, the Ontario College of Family Physicians said today as it added its voice to the chorus of climate change concern.

The effects of climate change could bring on a new onslaught of health problems nationwide and even small incremental rises in temperatures could have a “profound effect” on public health, the review suggests.

“When we think about climate change, we typically think about how it will affect our environment, but we need to start thinking about how it affects our health too,” said college president Dr. Renee Arnold.

“The negative health effects of climate change are profound, and will be irreversible if we don’t get our act together now and stop damaging our environment.”

The review, which the college calls the most comprehensive of its kind worldwide, states there’s already evidence that abnormal heat waves can trigger public health crises.

A two-week heat wave in France in 2003 is cited as one startling example, when about 15,000 people died prematurely as the country was struck by intense heat.

The report also envisions a future where Canadians commonly return home from Caribbean vacations with malaria or dengue fever, and warns the medical community will have to be prepared to deal with conditions they’ve never dealt with before.

Warmer weather would also allow ticks that carry Lyme disease to survive in areas where they couldn’t before; if left untreated, Lyme disease can cause chronic arthritis and neurological symptoms.

Public health units could also be faced with more cases of the West Nile virus, which can cause meningitis, encephalitis and a polio-like syndrome.

The American Public Health Association raised similar concerns about climate change last week and said its effects on the public could be one of the top challenges facing the health community.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/410461

Criticism as common as praise in a nation where repentance, renewal are part of the national dream
Apr 05, 2008 04:30 AM
Brett Grainger
Special to the star

Several weeks ago, when Fox News started playing clips of Barack Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, hollering “God damn America,” the pastor’s views were condemned as inflammatory, racist and, perhaps most damning of all, “anti-American.”

Most commentators who attempted to justify or explain Wright’s comments framed them in light of African-American experience. In the black church, we were told, emotions run high, rhetoric runs loose and pastors rail against the private sins of the heart and the public sins of the state, in particular the social injustice that spun out from America’s original sin, slavery.

All this may be true, but it’s far from the whole story. By reading the Wright furor as evidence of the gulf dividing black and white in the U.S., it’s easy to overlook a long line of white evangelicals who have also used the pulpit to condemn America. “God damn America” has been as sturdy an article of American civil religion as “God bless America.” Wright’s invective is a perfect model of a time-honoured rhetorical tradition, one that cuts across racial lines: the jeremiad.

The jeremiad takes its name from the Old Testament prophet, whose harangues promised swift destruction to the Israelites whenever they strayed. “God built you up,” he’d say. “He can just as easily take you down.” As a feature of American public life, the jeremiad has offered a reality check on the unbounded optimism of “manifest destiny” and free-market capitalism.

America’s first jeremiad – John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” sermon – was delivered before the Puritans set foot in the New World. On board the Arbella in 1630, Winthrop told his rabble they were a chosen people, and that God would hold them to a higher standard. Whenever the colony suffered a setback (drought and famine, attack from natives, tragedy at sea), they should take for granted that God was pouring out his wrath for their disobedience.

Even Americans whose religious beliefs were less orthodox found it difficult to shed the harsh logic. In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln described the Civil War as a “scourge” on North and South alike for the gross offence of slavery. Though the nation might drown in blood, Lincoln affirmed, “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

In many contemporary fundamentalist churches, such reasoning still applies. Jerry Falwell glossed the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the just retribution of an angry God for the sins of “the pagans, the abortionists, the feminists, the gays and lesbians.” Similarly, John Hagee, the Texas-based televangelist who recently endorsed John McCain’s bid for the presidency, described Hurricane Katrina as an “act of God” visited on the Big Easy for a planned gay-rights parade. “I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God,” he said. “I believe the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, God brings punishment sometimes before the Day of Judgment.”

The most distinctive trait of the American jeremiad is the notion that, however low the nation might sink, disaster might be averted through repentance and spiritual renewal. Change is possible. While clips of Wright suggest little of the spirit of forgiveness, he remains a devotee of the primal American creed: that every individual has the ability to seek redemption. In one sermon, Wright lists government “lies” propounded against blacks, natives, women and others, to conclude: “But I stop by to tell you tonight that governments change.” In the American narrative, damnation and redemption go hand in hand.

In his now-infamous sermon, Wright recounts the long struggle it took to make his government live up to its founding affirmation that “all men are created equal.” When Wright rails against America’s ugly history of racism, he isn’t telling folks to burn the flag – he’s trying to get it back above half-mast. When he says, “God damn America for treating us citizens as less than human,” Wright isn’t attacking the mythology of the American dream. He’s preaching it as gospel.

The civil religion of the United States – black and white – has always contained a healthy dose of incivility, of calling the nation to account whenever its makes itself into an idol. “God damn America,” said Wright, “for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.” The irony of the conservative backlash against Wright is that his sermons aren’t anti-American in the least. They’re the purest expression of patriotism imaginable.

Brett Grainger is a Canadian author based in Cambridge, Mass. He is the author of the recently published book, In the World but Not of It: One Family’s Militant Faith and the History of Fundamentalism in America.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/409003

Advocates devastated at failure of resolution to recognize water as a basic human right
Apr 02, 2008 04:30 AM
Linda Diebel
National Affairs Writer

Canada emerged as the pivotal nation behind recent manoeuvres to block the United Nations Human Rights Council from recognizing water as a basic human right, according to international observers.

The Geneva-based body wrapped up an intense three-week session late Friday without passing a German-Spanish resolution intended to enshrine its importance in a world where more than 2 billion people live in water-stressed regions.

It would have also set up an international watchdog to monitor the actions of individual countries.

After its 46 members accepted a consensus resolution – essentially for more study – Canadian representative Sarah Geh told the council: “Canada does not view this resolution as creating a human right to water under international human rights law.”

In his final speech, disappointed German representative Reinhard Schweppe stressed action is urgent. Access to clean water and sanitation, is “a part of human dignity,” he said, adding a child dies every 20 seconds due to water-borne diseases.

Advocates for water rights were devastated by the outcome.

From Oxford, Ashfaq Khalfan, co-ordinator of the U.K.-headquartered Right to Water Program, said he believes the resolution to make water a right would have passed without the resolute lobby efforts of the Canadian delegation.

“It’s rather unfortunate Canada put itself in that position,” he said in an interview.

Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, said reservations about specific aspects of the motion were raised by member nations, notably Russia and the U.K. But she said it was Canada that “derailed” the process, a view shared by other international observers who monitored the Geneva sessions.

Barlow also suggested Canada acted with support from the United States, which shares Ottawa’s view on water but doesn’t have a seat at the UN rights council.

“Canada failed to take up the challenge. Canadians would find it shocking to realize our role in this,” said Barlow, a veteran of battles about water.

She added that the resolution would have buttressed the argument that nobody should be able to expropriate water for financial profit. There have been battles in countries such as Bolivia over attempts to privatize water.

“It was a benchmark for the concept water is a right, not a commodity,” Barlow said, adding claims that the resolution would have forced nations to export water to drought-plagued regions were “fantastical.”

MP Peggy Nash (Parkdale-High Park), the NDP’s water critic, said: “Once again, we’re internationally disappointed and embarrassed. … How do you deny water is a basic human right?”

Nash criticized both the former Liberal government and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives for failing to take a progressive attitude on water rights.

However, siding with the government’s position in Geneva, her Liberal counterpart Francis Scarpaleggia (Lac-St.-Louis) raised what could become a critical public issue in the national dialogue over water.

The Quebec MP said Canada’s sovereignty over its own water was not established in the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, raising problems for Ottawa internationally. In trade terms, water arguably is a commodity or service like any other.

“I believe – and I guess the government sees it the same way —– if we start signing on to recognizing water as an international human right … it might make it easy for private companies, or for those south of the border, who would like to export Canada’s water in bulk to embarrass us on the public square,” Scarpaleggia said.

“These people could argue, ‘Well, you’ve agreed water is a human right, we here down in Atlanta have no water, there’s a drought,’ or in California or whatever. You have a moral obligation to be consistent with your word and let us take some water down here, by one means or another.”

He criticized the Harper government for failing to deliver on its pledge of a national water policy and said he intends to introduce a motion in the Commons to protect Canadian water.

Nash long ago tabled a motion of her own.

The consensus was worked out over three weeks. Minutes taken by representatives of NGOs who attended an open meeting March 18, show disappointment among representatives of countries including Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Finland, France, Norway, Switzerland and others.

Khalfan said that if the German-Spanish resolution had been defeated in a vote, it would have damaged any fight for water rights. Instead, there is at least a consensus to examine obligations “related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation under international human rights instruments.”

Khalfan and Barlow stressed their organizations haven’t given up. Among other avenues, they will focus on the report expected to be tabled in three years, under the terms of last week’s consensus.

Khalfan said it would have been particularly sweet for Canadians had the rights council enshrined water as a right. In his view, it would have been the next logical step to a report the council already requested from former UN high commissioner for human rights Louise Arbour. A former Supreme Court of Canada justice, Arbour stepped down from her UN post last month.

Her September 2007 report said: “The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights believes that it is now time to consider access to safe drinking water and sanitation as a human right. …”

In her comments Friday, Canadian representative Geh quoted Arbour’s report as saying “debate is still open as to whether water and sanitation is a human right.”

Khalfan disputed that view, arguing Arbour’s report said it was not clear whether the right to water was a “self-standing right” or derived from “other human rights.”

Yesterday, from Ottawa, foreign affairs spokesperson Shaun Tinkler said the compromise resolution “accurately reflects that a right to water is not explicitly recognized as a fundamental human right under international human rights law.”

He praised the consensus agreement for setting up an independent expert and said Canada had “worked constructively with other delegations to develop a negotiated text which accurately reflects the status of this issue.”

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/04/01/which-giant-corporation-owns-your-favorite-organic-food-brand.aspx

Did you know that Boca is owned by Kraft? That Naked Juice is completely controlled by Pepsi? That General Mills runs Cascadian Farm and Muir Glen?

This fascinating chart (to view it click the source link below) by Phil Howard, an assistant professor of Community, Agriculture, and Recreation and Resource studies at Michigan State University, will show you where your money really goes when you buy that name-brand “organic” snack — and you can bet that if it’s made by Kraft, it’s probably not coming from a small family farm, either.
Sources:

* Good Magazine March/April 2008
http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/features/009/009buyingorganic.html

(GO TO ABOVE LINK TO SEE FULL LIST!)

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080328/federal_surplus_080328/20080328?hub=Politics

Tax, GST cuts eat away at federal surplus

Updated Fri. Mar. 28 2008 7:56 PM ET

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — The days of the federal government routinely recording surpluses in the tens of billions appear to be over, a new finance department report on its fiscal position suggests.

The department’s fiscal monitor released Friday shows that revenue growth came to a sudden halt in January, shrinking the surplus for the month to a mere $600 million as the GST cut and personal income tax reductions announced last fall began eating away at Ottawa’s tax haul.

The finance department said revenues dropped $900 million, or 3.9 per cent, in January. Last year during the month, the budgetary surplus was $2.4 billion.

For the first 10 months of the fiscal year that ends Monday, the accumulated surplus was $10 billion, down $600 million from the corresponding period last year.

“The results to date reflect the impact of personal income tax relief measures introduced in the October 2007 economic statement,” the report states.

Meanwhile, program expenses were up $10.8 billion, or 7.2 per cent, for the period, due to higher transfer payments to provinces and individuals, and program expenses, such as the cost of fighting the war in Afghanistan.

Program spending by the Defence Department stood at $14.5 billion by the end of January, up 10.7 per cent from the corresponding 10-month period last year.

Prior to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s fall mini-budget, many had been predicting the federal surplus for the fiscal year could top $20 billion.

But in last month’s budget, Flaherty forecast the year’s surplus would be $10.2 billion, dropping to $2.3 billion next year and $1.3 billion in the 2009-2010 period.

The January fiscal monitor appears to confirm that the surpluses enjoyed in recent years are unlikely to be matched for some time due to a combination of tax cuts and a slowing economy expected to grow just slightly above last year’s 2.7 per cent rate.

But Dale Orr of Global Insight Canada said he doesn’t believe the government is in any serious danger of falling into a deficit position, even though economic growth this year is unlikely to reach the budget’s working premise of 1.7 per cent.

“The drivers of their revenues and expenses have been doing better than you would suppose because the labour market remains strong and payouts for employment insurance are low,” he said. “On top of that, they could get $1 billion from the spectrum auction (for cellphone providers), and they didn’t account for that in the budget.”

Orr said real gross domestic product growth is now expected to come in at about 1.5 per cent this year. But nominal GDP, which includes inflation, is likely to meet the government’s 3.5 per cent forecast due to higher revenues from high-priced oil.

And most government revenues from personal taxes, GST revenues and business taxes reflect nominal — not inflation adjusted — growth, he noted.

Another bright spot for the government is that the cost of servicing the national debt continues to fall as a result of lower interest rates and the government’s record of making payments on the principal. Debt charges were down $400 million during the first 10 months of the fiscal year.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080328.wbcemerson28/BNStory/National/home

As Emerson weighs options, Tories contemplate hefty loss
The floor-crossing MP has brought real-world experience to cabinet, but many believe he won’t run again

STEVEN CHASE

From Friday’s Globe and Mail

March 28, 2008 at 5:05 AM EDT

OTTAWA — In big amber digits, a counter David Emerson unveiled near Parliament Hill last month tracks the time left before the 2010 Winter Olympics - much the same way the clock appears to be ticking down on the Conservative cabinet minister’s career in federal politics.

If the Vancouver MP bows out before the next election - and Tories privately say there’s a significant probability he will - his departure will be a blow for the party.

Mr. Emerson, a former CEO of lumber giant Canfor Corp., provided the Conservatives with the big-city cabinet talent they sorely lacked when he defected to them shortly after winning his seat as a Liberal in the 2006 election.

His crossing the floor gave the Tories their only seat in Vancouver. It also sent a signal, Conservatives hoped, that urban voters could embrace a party that had failed to make electoral inroads into Canada’s biggest cities: Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Mr. Emerson has yet to reveal whether he will run again in the next election - expected as early as this spring - and his Vancouver Kingsway riding is one of only a handful in the Lower Mainland where the Tories have yet to nominate a candidate for the next vote.

It’s unlikely he’d win in Vancouver Kingsway if he decided to run there as a Conservative. The Tories haven’t won that riding since 1958, and he’d face a concerted effort by Liberals to unseat the man who betrayed their party, as well as from New Democrats seeking to regain a seat they have often held. The Conservatives are prepared to find Mr. Emerson a safer seat in the Lower Mainland to contest, but they’re not confident he will accept the offer, sources say.

Privately, Tories say Mr. Emerson has emerged as a major contributor around the cabinet table, where he brings real-world experience to bear on discussions: know-how from his days in the business world and as a senior mandarin in the B.C. government.

“His overarching job - to be a person who has a view on the broader economic agenda - is extremely valuable and there are few people at the cabinet table who can come close to matching him in that regard,” said Thomas d’Aquino, head of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which represents 150 leading Canadian chief executive officers.

Mr. Emerson is the only minister in Mr. Harper’s 27-member cabinet who has run a major Canadian corporation.

The Tory government has recognized Mr. Emerson’s managerial smarts by steadily giving him more responsibility. In August of 2007 he took over chairmanship of the cabinet’s agenda-setting economic affairs committee from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. And just last month Mr. Emerson assumed the helm of a new cabinet committee to provide more ministerial oversight on the Afghanistan mission.

It’s expertise that is not easily replaced, Ottawa watchers say.

“I think he would be a loss to the cabinet and a loss to the Harper government … if he did not run,” Mr. d’Aquino said.

Mr. Emerson said this month that he hasn’t decided whether to run again. “I am watching the timing of an election and having discussions with my family and the [Prime Minister].”

In an interview in December, Mr. Emerson said he’d decide based on what was best for his wife and children.

“For me it’s been a very positive experience … So, as we get close to an election call, we’re just going to have to make a decision as to what’s in the best interests of the family,” he said. “Whatever [happens], I will try to continue to contribute in some way.”

More comfortable as a senior government mandarin than as a politician, Mr. Emerson justified his defection to the Tories as the best way to keep serving British Columbia from a position of influence.

The Conservatives hoped at the time that his move would attract Vancouver voters to the party, whose support lies mainly in rural and suburban Canada. But while he’s been successful as the Trade Minister - negotiating a truce in the Canada-U.S. softwood-lumber dispute and concluding two free-trade deals - Mr. Emerson’s success in attracting Conservative political support in Vancouver is difficult to discern.

University of British Columbia political scientist Allan Tupper said the controversy surrounding Mr. Emerson’s defection - only weeks after being elected as a Liberal - hurt his ability to establish himself as the public face of the Conservatives in Vancouver.

“For a long time after, he would be followed around by protesters at public events. That’s very constraining,” Prof. Tupper said.

Still, the Tories may be gaining ground in Vancouver regardless of Mr. Emerson. The Tories nearly won Vancouver Quadra for the first time in 28 years in the March 17 federal by-election, coming within 152 votes of the Liberals.

“It was certainly an impressive Conservative showing in Quadra. You can’t discount that,” Prof. Tupper said.

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/407181

Mar 30, 2008 04:30 AM
Thomas Walkom

Milton Friedman, the late, great conservative economist, used to say there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Those who promote so-called public-private partnerships, or P3s, as a panacea for cash-strapped governments, should heed that adage. If the public wants something, it will have to pay. The only real question is how much.

First, let’s be clear what P3 means. Governments and private firms have done business since antiquity. In Ontario, private contractors routinely pave roads and build schools. This is not new.

What is new is the terminology and scope. “Partnership” is one of those fuzzy words beloved by management consultants and politicians. It sounds nicer than “deal.”

But in reality, a P3 is simply a deal between a government and a private firm to build something. Where it differs from a standard construction contract is in the financing.

In a modern P3, such as Brampton’s new Civic Hospital, the private-sector side is responsible for not just building the project but arranging the loans that fund it.

The government, in turn, agrees to repay those loans, as well as all other costs, over time – usually 25 to 30 years.

As always, the money for these repayments comes from taxes. So let’s get rid of the first myth, that P3s allow cash-strapped governments to tap money without bothering taxpayers. The money comes from where it always does – us. We pay now or later. But we pay.

The obvious question, then, is: Are P3s good deals? Does the public pay less by having a private firm borrow on its behalf?

This is an empirical question that is simply answered. The answer is no. Even P3 proponents agree that governments can borrow at interest rates that are one or two percentage points lower than those paid by private firms.

This is not a trivial difference. A one-percentage point interest-rate differential on a 25-year loan will increase total borrowing costs by 28 per cent. A two-percentage differential leads to a 64 per cent cost increase; three percentage points (not impossible in these credit-crisis days) more than doubles financing costs.

Proponents say that these extra costs are more than covered by the intrinsic efficiencies of private enterprise. Yet the evidence suggests otherwise.

As articles in the British Medical Journal have pointed out, P3 hospitals in the United Kingdom are more costly than their purely public counterparts. Government auditors in Australia have found much the same thing.

In Ontario, Highway 407 was trumpeted by both the New Democrats (who started it) and the Conservatives (who finished it) as a P3 exemplar.

Yet, as the provincial auditor has noted, that toll road was the product of a deal that saddled the public with all the risks and gave private firms all the rewards.

The Brampton Civic Hospital, a more recent P3, is lauded by the current Liberal government because it came in at its $550 million budgeted cost.

That’s true. But what’s also true is that this final cost figure (negotiated after Queen’s Park had chosen its private sector partner) was $130 million more than the government’s original estimate.

In short, much fancy footwork goes on to justify P3s. Yet what seems clear from real-life examples is that they rarely save money. What’s equally clear is that governments like them because their real costs remain hidden until years later.

For we who have to foot the bill, that’s not much of an argument.

Thomas Walkom writes on political economy. His column usually appears Thursday and Saturday.

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http://www.thestar.com/Article/407182