The Price of Private Beer in BC

I never have to look very hard to find someone singing the praises of privatization. Taking something that's run by the government and turning it over to a private, for-profit business will, they say, result in more variety, lower prices, and an overall better experience for the customer, because when you're in it to make money you can't cut corners and have the government always propping you up. It'll be expressed differently from person to person, but generally, that's what the most common arguments of its proponents tend to boil down to--that it's usually in everyone's advantage for something to be privatized.

I've never put much faith in arguments like that, because they never quite seem to accord with reality. In my experience, privatization instead tends to see prices go up and service quality decline, especially when you're dealing with an effectively captive market like healthcare and electricity supply, because "inexpensive products" and "high-quality service" are often treated as barriers to the true goal of every for-profit company, namely "make as much money as possible." Look at the ongoing healthcare crisis in the United States, for example, to see what happens when the profit motive takes over a social necessity, and you run into issues like $10,000 yearly deductibles--making it easy to pay an private insurance company $750 a year in premiums, and still have to pay all your own medical expenses out-of-pocket--and people with certain conditions being unable to get their own coverage because they would cost the company too much, even if they're willing and able to pay.

Today, though, I'm not interested in health insurance; rather, something that requires plenty of people to have health insurance if they use it enough--beer. Beer and liquor are hard to define, in some respects; nowadays, while a lot of people might call them luxuries, when it comes to society as a whole they're effectively necessities. Civilizations have been lubricated by alcohol for thousands of years, way back to the days when beer was the only reliable way to get water that wouldn't sicken or kill you. North America's historical love-hate relationship with alcohol has left a patchwork of differing supply mechanisms from coast to coast. Some are public, some are private, and together they provide the possibility for interesting data points on whether privatization is good.

In British Columbia this is a major issue, though it seems to have been slipping beneath notice as of late--the besieged Liberal government has been taking fire for its recent moves to sell its liquor distribution system to the privately-owned company Exel Logistics, ostensibly out of a desire to balance the budget--because after all, why have a consistent inflow of cash when you could have one quick payday that won't come again and will leave future paydays even poorer? There's a lot of sketchy business in the background of this deal, and I for one have no doubt that the BC Liberals are getting ready to burn down the house before they're annihilated in next year's elections.

But I was curious--particularly in regard to claims I've heard from the government as well as privatization proponents that it would mean cheaper prices for British Columbians. Does that really stand up? I decided to go find out.

It's always good to be able to illustrate an abstract concept.

One thing I had to get used to upon moving here was that beer and liquor sales are not a government monopoly, as they are in Ontario through the LCBO. While we do have the BCL, the LCBO's government-run counterpart, there are also a wide variety of private liquor stores, many of them attached to bars. In downtown New Westminster, while there's only one BCL outlet--and it's practically as far west as you can go while still being in downtown New West--there are three private sellers on Columbia Street and another one in River Market, and those are only the ones I know about. This variety gave me the chance to do some direct price comparison: both within BC and without, because ever since I arrived it's seemed like beer is rather more expensive out here than it is in Ontario.

Recently I stopped in at one of my local private sellers and noted down the prices of some of their wares, craft brews and national brands. I then ran them against the BCL and LCBO websites. Here's what I found.

Product	BC Private Store Price	BCL Price	LCBO Price
Hopworks IPA	$8.00	Not available	Not available
Innis & Gunn Canadian Cask	$6.35	$4.99*	$4.95*
Driftwood Ale	$7.30	$5.00	Not available
Twilight Summer Ale (6-pack)	$19.95	$15.99	Not available
La Fin du Monde	$8.30	$6.50	$4.95
Sleeman Cream Ale (6-pack)	$15.15	$11.99	$10.95
Big Surf Laid Back Lager (6-pack)	$10.35	$7.79	Not available
Cariboo Honey Lager (6-pack)	$9.95	$7.99	Not available
Molson Canadian (6-pack)	$14.95	$11.69	$11.50
Chimay Blue Cap	$5.05	$3.99	$2.80**
Hobgoblin Ale	$4.45	$3.50	$3.45

*prices are based on listing for Innis & Gun Canada Day 2012 on BCL and LCBO websites
**price is based on Chimay White Cap, the only variety sold by the LCBO
All prices listed are before tax.

Admittedly, it's only one data point--but it's a data point that matches up with the general sense I've gathered over two years of buying beer in this province. I'm sure there are others. Although LCBO prices trend slightly lower than the BCL's, that may be chalked up to vagaries like differing tax rates. When it comes to the private store, though, everything is more expensive than it is at the BCL--maybe only a dollar or two more, but that sort of thing adds up over time.

Sure, there's the convenience factor as well--but it's convenient the way a convenience store is more convenient than a supermarket. It may be right there, but it doesn't necessarily have everything you need. While there are private stores in Metro Vancouver with a widely varied selection, carrying beers I can't find anywhere else--Firefly near Broadway and Cambie in Vancouver, and the Central City Liquor Store on the other side of the SkyBridge, are the two big ones I know of--most private sellers I've visited are small and with very limited selections, particularly when it comes to single bottles or cans.

Privatization of the existing liquor distribution system wouldn't only mean that that state of affairs would become the norm--prices would go up even further from what the private stores charge now, because Exel Logistics wants to extract as much money as possible from the drinkers of British Columbia.

Don't believe the story that the folks in Victoria are trying to sell you--it's all foam, no substance. Take a closer look for yourself, and ask yourself who really benefits when the profit motive is brought in.

Over the Waves and Far Away

Everyone has their own way of dealing with criticism. Some ignore it, some invite it, and some pay attention to what their critics say to improve themselves for the next time. Then there are the people who've let a modicum of power go to their heads, people who think that because they're in charge they therefore define reality. People like, say, Keith Ashfield, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the minister responsible for the Canadian Coast Guard.

You may recall that among the multifarious provisions of the recent Conservative omnibus budget bill was the closure of CCGS Kitsilano, a Coast Guard base at the foot of the Burrard Bridge and adjacent to the heavily-used waters of False Creek and English Bay. Responsibility for ensuring the safety of Vancouver's waterways would therefore devolve to CCGS Sea Island, a hovercraft base adjacent to Vancouver International Airport. Time and again, when the issue came up in the media, this was the talking point that the government rallied around - that since there were two Coast Guard stations reasonably close to each other, one of them was therefore superfluous.

Following on from that, Minister Keith recently announced a funding boost of $100,000 to the Royal Marine Search and Rescue Auxiliary - an organization that I wasn't able to find anything out about, as the only hits for it on Google are for news articles talking about this funding boost. So what is the RMSRA? I have no idea, but Minister Keith obviously thinks that a thousand C-bills are enough to let it step into the spot the Coast Guard is vacating.

Minister Keith likewise has a message for his critics, here - namely, that claiming the impending closure of CCGS Kitsilano will put lives at risk is instead "propagating false information." I wish I could be that confident, that certain at times. It makes me wonder how Keith puts his pants on in the morning on account of the massive, hairy, swinging cojones he must have to make a statement like that with a straight face.

How long will it take them to get here, again?

Let's take a look at the numbers. Under the Conservatives' plan, the hovercraft of CCGS Sea Island will be the primary search-and-rescue vehicles for the entire Lower Mainland; in addition to their current area of responsibility in the Strait of Georgia and Fraser delta, they'll now also have to deal with people in distress on the waters in Burrard Inlet, False Creek, and English Bay. The Vancouver Sun reports that according to Minister Keith, "the closure of the station in no way endangers people using Vancouver-area waters" - but is that really the case?

The fact is this: the two stations are about eleven kilometers apart as the crow flies, but that's not much of a help, since those hovercraft are not exactly built to go roaring up Granville Street. By water, the rough distance is more like twenty-five kilometers, with potential straight-line paths complicated slightly by the breakwaters that keep Richmond from drowning. The two hovercraft stationed at Sea Island, CCGH Siyay and CCGH Penac, are faster than almost anything else on the water with maximum speeds of eighty-nine and eighty-three kilometers per hour.

At pedal-to-the-metal maximum speed, Siyay would need about seventeen minutes to cover the distance from CCGS Sea Island to CCGS Kitsilano; Penac would be only slightly slower, at eighteen minutes. In both cases, in case of trouble that's almost twenty minutes before any search and rescue activities can even begin, and since I doubt it's feasible for a hovercraft to be burning at maximum speed for the entirety of its run, it could well be even longer.

A lot can happen in twenty minutes, especially if what's already happened is serious enough that you've called the Coast Guard.

My own opinion on this is simple - it may not happen tomorrow, this year, or next year, but sooner or later someone will die on Vancouver's waters because, for whatever reason, the Coast Guard could not make it in time. On the water, seconds can count - and should that come to pass, it is this current government and Prime Minister Stephen Harper in particular who will bear responsibility for such death. We know, after all, where the buck stops in the Harper Government.

A Girl Thing Down the Memory Hole

Long ago, back in a far-off and golden time that some of us call "the 1990s," people like Bill Nye appeared regularly on our television sets to tell us that science rules. But there was a problem here; more and more people came to the realization that scientific fields were disproportionately male, that a lot of women just didn't seem to be that interested in science.

It's an issue that people and organizations have been trying to crack for years. Yesterday, the European Commission - that is, the European Union's executive branch - launched a minute-long teaser advertisement for its "Science: It's a Girl Thing" project, launched as a well-intentioned effort to convey that science, well, rules... that it's okay for women to be interested in it. It's sad that something this basic is a necessary message in this day and age, but the fact is that for decades and centuries, women were told that science was off-limits to them. There's a lot that needs to be done to make up for our unenlightened, white-dude-focused past.

As for the European Commission's offering, well... what was apparent from the start was that it must have been conceived, scripted, designed, and produced entirely by traditionally-minded men. I mean, if you want to get women interested in science, you've got to appeal to what they're already interested in, right? Women love makeup and high heels, don't they? Focus on the high heels, make it look like a fashion commercial! And pink! Don't forget pink, women love pink. Just slather it everywhere! And where there's the word "science" at the end, replace the I with a lipstick applicator!

It's the sort of thing you'd expect to find accompanying an Onion article, but it was completely sincere. It took so much flak from the internet, all of it justified, that by 4:30 PM Pacific Time yesterday the original video had been made private on YouTube. What the European Commission forgot, though, is that the internet never forgets.

Brought to you by the same people who thought it was a good idea to create a fiscal union without a political union.

Look at that. Just look at it. Ignore the fact that until the very end, if you encountered this on television you wouldn't have any living idea what this was trying to sell you; hell, I don't watch TV anymore, maybe commercials honestly do look like this now. Consider instead the layers that this had to pass through to go from concept to realization. Consider the number of people who would have had to weigh in on this, consider this, sign off on this before it appeared on YouTube.

You have to ask yourself, how could they be so stupid? Not only that, but in asking, you realize the scope of the problem. I, personally, have difficulty believing that women were involved in creating something something so facile, so patronizing, so utterly vacuous. What I would expect to find is that the European Commission tendered the work to some public relations agency, and this pink-slathered mess is the result.

This is the sort of thing we can't forget. They would like it, they'd like it very much, if it would just slip away down the memory hole and be quietly forgotten. But this sort of thing is the problem: Ouroboros-like, it tries to encourage women to study science by itself encouraging the perceptions that discourage women from studying science. It was made by people whose hands are made of ham - they are ham-handed.

At least it's not all for the bad. It can be argued that the European Commission did, in fact, conduct a scientific experiment to determine whether people get pissed off when women are condescended to in the guise of extending a helping hand. In that case, EC, I'd like to see your error bars.

What the CBC Means to Me

It's just another data point that the verbal assurances of the Conservative Party aren't worth the air molecules that got shook around so you could hear them. Nearly a year after finally seizing a majority government that may well owe its existence to a campaign of electoral fraud, the knives are coming out in Ottawa. Foreign aid? Cut. Military expenditures? Cut. Even Katimavik has been cut, and hell, I didn't even know Katimavik was still around; I thought Mulroney had got rid of it twenty years ago.

However, some of the biggest cuts were reserved for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which is one hell of a way to honor its seventy-fifth anniversary. Specifically the CBC is facing a 10.4% cut, which will see its funding go down by $115 million in 2015 compared to 2012's outlay. Its budget is literally being decimated. Contrast this with what happened back in May 2011, when Heritage Minister James Moore assured us that the Conservatives "believe in the national public broadcaster. We have said that we will maintain or increase support for the CBC. That is our platform and we have said that before and we will commit to that." That's the great thing about the internet; it really bricks up the memory hole.

Already the usual suspects are coming out of the woodwork in regard to this. The other day Larry Miller, MP for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, appeared on Sun News to complain about how the CBC cuts didn't go far enough and bemoan that it was only a cut of 10% over three years, rather than a 10% cut per year. James Moore has already changed his tune, saying that the CBC "can be run more efficiently," which really smells like gravy to me. Are claims of the gravy train at the CBC soon to follow?

I involve myself in this because I believe the CBC is important, that it has an important place in our society and that it is key to the development of Canadian arts and culture - and if you're thinking of dismissing that as some Dipper bullshit, keep in mind that James Moore said, essentially, the exact same thing back in May. Though I still regularly read CBC News on its website and wander through the CBC Archives from time to time, it's been a while since I've watched CBC on TV or listened to it on the radio - in my defense, my rabbit ears can't pick up CBC and the antenna on my radio is thoroughly busted. But it wasn't always like that.


Let's go back, say, fifteen years - Earth, 1997: specifically Barrie, Ontario, in a house that was within sight of the CKVR transmission tower. Though the station had rebranded itself as "the New VR" in the first stage of a process that eventually led to the modern CTV Two network, it had been a CBC affiliate before that and at that point still simulcasted a fair bit of CBC programming. I had a cheapass CRT television balanced on top of my dresser, and thanks to the broadcast tower's proximity I didn't need rabbit ears to pick up the signal - not that rabbit ears would have been worth much; there weren't any other broadcasters in Barrie, and I wasn't going to be able to pick up a signal from Toronto with them.

I was still able to get things I considered worth watching, though. At 4 PM, I think, there was Jonovision - Jonathan Torrens' 90s talk show for teens - and I believe it was at 5 that Family Matters came on... you know, the show with Urkel. Sandwiched between them was a show that really stuck with me, not the least because it was made in Halifax and, for me, at the time Halifax was a distant and exotic place full of wonder and mystery: Street Cents.

This was a show targeted at teenagers, built around the idea of instilling wise consumer practices - knowing how to not be taken advantage of in the marketplace, how to spend your money intelligently, and to look beyond the claims of advertising and gauge the products themselves in order to make a more canny customer in a capitalist world. There are clips of it scattered all around YouTube, and even a full episode or two. I like to think that the show played a part in making me the overly suspicious bastard I am today. One laudable thing about it, which I can't recall if it even registered with me at the time, is that it aired commercial-free; what "commercials" existed were parodies and sendups. It existed to be a consumer review and education show for teens, and the presence of commercials would have led to a difficult balancing act - it's a bit more difficult to pass judgement when the judged are, in part, paying your bills.

A show like Street Cents, in the form the CBC broadcasted it, would never air on a major network... a major commercial network, that is. The only other place in North America I can imagine it landing on would be PBS - another public broadcaster like the CBC, which aired cherished childhood shows like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? and Reading Rainbow, and which has itself regularly come under attack from the Republicans. Really, can you imagine that kind of show on CTV, say, or NBC? Not only occupying precious time that could be filled with another goddamn celebrity dancing show, but not even generating any commercial revenue?

Some critics of the CBC attack it as a "state broadcaster," as if that was enough - this is bullshit, and an obfuscation of the truth. The CBC receives support from the government, but it isn't an arm of the government, and I think that's the key as to why the Conservatives dislike it so much. If the CBC really was a state broadcaster, the Conservatives wouldn't be cutting its budget - they'd be using it to parrot their messages from one end of the country to the other. When it comes to state broadcasters in Canada, where "state broadcaster" means "a broadcasting organ firmly loyal to the state and always acting to advance the interests of its leadership," you need look no farther than the Sun News Network - practically Canada's own Pravda.

James Moore may have been shooting smoke back in May, but that doesn't mean he didn't stumble onto the truth. The CBC is important; it is a key Canadian cultural institution. Its government funding allows it an independence that could give it power if only it was done right - power to look deeply into things without worrying about whether this story will offend that major advertiser. In an ideal world, the CBC wouldn't need to wade into the ratings battle with the commercial networks. The ideal would be for the CBC to be supported by television license fees, such as Japan's NHK, the BBC, and practically every other public broadcaster in the Anglosphere. But it would never fly, not now. Politicians in Metro Vancouver received death threats when they aired the possibility of taxing vehicles; what do you think the uproar would be if the government decided it was going to start taxing TVs?

The CBC continues to play an important role in Canada. The fact that the Conservatives hate it so much only gives it all the more reason to stick around, I think.

Funding for this post was also provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the National Science Foundation, and the financial support of readers like you... no, not really. But that'd be nice.

A Den of VIPRs

At this point, it's unlikely that we'd be able to go back to the way things were twelve years ago; too many variables have changed, too many vested interests have entrenched themselves. It's difficult to project a near-term future where the security theatre that's become increasingly dominant in the West in general and the United States in particular will take a step back - instead, what's easiest to see is a future where that security theatre keeps moving forward, grimly and relentlessly, and in the name of security it may stamp freedom into the dust.

On the face of it, Canada and the United States responded to the September 11 attacks in similar ways; where the US set up the TSA under the Department of Homeland Security to take over airport security, which up until then had been overseen by one of the airlines using that airport, Canada established CATSA. The airport experience in both countries is broadly similar; airports on both sides of the border have pornoscanners, though you won't necessarily have to go through them, and while they didn't made me take my shoes off in the screening lines at Vancouver or Fredericton, that's been the case in Toronto and Los Angeles. The liquid restriction rule, intended to prevent binary explosives like in Die Hard With a Vengeance being brought on board, is universal, which for me just makes Amtrak that much more attractive for cross-border travel.

There is, however, one key difference; it's right in the names. CATSA is the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority; it's specifically responsible for security in airports, and nowhere else. The TSA is the Transportation Security Administration, and while many people consider it to be just the agency that deals with airport security, its actual bailiwick is "[to protect] the Nation's transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce."

That's right, the TSA's authority isn't just limited to airports, but extends to all transportation systems within the United States... which is rather a large point of responsibility, don't you think? It's also a rather unsettling one when you take into account issues of the sort that were raised in the Orange County Register's editorial of December 28th, which shines a light on the TSA's moves after ten years to expand their presence outside the airports. Right now there are twenty-five Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response, or VIPR, teams active in the United States.

What are they doing, you might ask? Well, according to NewsChannel5 of Nashville, back in October some of them were in Tennessee, establishing security checkpoints at two bus stations and five Interstate weigh stations in the state - giving Tennessee the somewhat dubious honor of becoming the "first state to fight terrorism statewide," as the headline rather bombastically puts it.

I'm sorry, sir or madam, but federal regulations dictate that no person may travel outside their homes with unscreened liquid in excess of 100 mL in a clear plastic bag. Please exit your car for secondary screening.

This is how it starts - not with a bang, but with a whimper. This is how control is extended. This is where police states begin. Sobriety checkpoints are one thing, but these are something else again; if anyone had suggested establishing security checkpoints on the highways to combat terrorism twenty years ago they would have been dismissed as a lunatic, and from 1992 to 2012 we get the entrenchment of lunacy as policy. How far can this go? Will security checkpoints along the highways, in metro stations and train stations, and on the streets be facts of life? Will there be something that, although it would never be called as such, acts like the internal passports of the Soviet Union - something to justify the warnings of "your papers, please?"

I'm thankful that, for now at least, Canada's version is specifically limited to airport security. There have also been pushbacks in the United States; in 2011, Amtrak ordered VIPR teams off its property for a time in response to some of these searches. Freedom of movement is an integral right in a free and open state, and while these random security checkpoints on previously open routes are justified by the spectre of terrorism, the real threat is what this sort of thing normalizes. Ten, twenty years from now - who knows?

Plus, that's if there isn't another major attack. If terrorists strike the United States again in a big way, all bets are off.

Failing Kyoto After Failing Canadians

I'm not particularly proud to be Canadian right now. It didn't take very long after Dear Leader Harper's mouthpiece announced, mere hours after returning from the Durban conference, that Canada would become the first country to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol for the finger-pointing to start. Much of it is coming from the European Union, China, and India - understandably so, when you consider that by its actions, the government of Canada obviously doesn't care about what other countries think of it. Sure, Harper has since reared up on his hind legs and jawed about how he wants to work to create a solid framework that includes everyone and doesn't give China and India a free pass. It seems to me that he's chosen the most ass-backwards way of going about it. Why should China or India get on board with anything Canada wants now? Canada has demonstrated that it's a delinquent quitter.

Fingers are also being pointed from within the country, too, and one such point particularly infuriated me - from the Globe and Mail, Stephen Gordon's short but stunning "Don’t blame the politicians, Canadians killed Kyoto."

You hear that, Canadians? It's your fault. Yours alone. Your fault that back in 1997, Canada took on emissions reductions targets it had little hope of reaching... because of course that's the platform Chrétien ran on, wasn't it? Your fault that Stephen Harper is a relentless skeptic of Kyoto - I wouldn't be surprised if he was a full-on climate change skeptic, if only because so many people on that side of the spectrum have built this insane conspiratorial structure that betrays either their lack of understanding of the science involved, or their willingness to gamble with the future of the world. Your fault and not the government's. I mean, the people elected the government, so obviously, the people are responsible for what the government does, right?

What a world that would be to live in. Doesn't bear much resemblance to this one, though.

Who cares about the future, anyway? Industry is where it's at.

The fact is, it is at the government's feet that this responsibility should be placed, both because of what it has done since 2006 and as the successor of previous governments. Canadian governments have rarely done anything that was of wide-scale, environmental value, or ever really considered the long-term consequences of their decisions. In fact, it was the government - under the aegis of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation - that helped start the suburban explosion in Canada. It was the government that planned and built Ontario's highway systems, which through the magic of induced demand created a vast demand for use which had not been there before. It was the government that let the passenger rail system wither on the vine. It was the government - specifically, the Ontario government, but reflective of government actions nonetheless - that cancelled Toronto's Eglinton West subway project in 1995.

Sure, Canadians have "chosen" to live a lifestyle based on high per-capita carbon dioxide emissions. Really, though, how much of a choice was it for many people? Myself I count as lucky - I don't own a car, I rely exclusively on public transportation for getting around, and according to my latest bill from the City of New Westminster, over the last two months my apartment has consumed 191 kilowatt-hours of electricity - contrast this to the average consumption in the Lower Mainland, roughly 1,483 kilowatt-hours per two months. Granted, my laundry use isn't reflected in those figures, but somehow I doubt that thirty-four minutes of washing machine time and an hour of dryer time would significantly alter those numbers.

As I said, though, I'm lucky, because I had the freedom to choose to live in an area that met my requirements in this regard. A lot of people aren't. Perhaps they live in places that don't have good access to public transit and thus require them to drive, no matter what the person may want. Perhaps they did have a good thing going once, but their job relocated from downtown Vancouver to Langley or Surrey. Perhaps they're just trapped where they are and don't have the financial resources to do anything else.

The government, and past governments, could have made it easier for Canadians to choose to live lifestyles based on low carbon emissions. They didn't. The ultimate responsibility lies with the government, and to say otherwise is to give it a free pass from its misdeeds. The government is supposed to look beyond the everyday that the ordinary people are focused on; it's supposed to look ahead and work for the future.

It failed.

They're Whipping Attawapiskat

So, Attawapiskat.

Maybe you've never heard of it. It's a First Nations community on the shore of James Bay. A couple of weeks ago, hardly anyone outside of northern Ontario would have heard of it, but now it's rampaging across national news. I myself heard about it a bit earlier than when it broke into the headlines, from a post on Boing Boing talking about the dire straits the community was in - with winter approaching and its shelter inadequate when you consider just how cold it gets in northern Ontario in December, the town declared a state of emergency and for days the Feds did nothing. Which I'm sure is totally in keeping with how the Constitution gives the federal government "exclusive legislative authority" over First Nations and their lands, just like the census and the military and Canada Post. I was hesitant about making a post on the matter, because to be perfectly honest I'm not really up to speed on this subject and was unwilling to stumble into making an ass of myself.

Now, though, things have changed. Earlier this week, the federal government announced that it was taking direct control of Attawapiskat's funding and organizing an audit to figure out how the $90 million invested in it - since 2006, mind you; the government has been particularly careful to avoid noting the timescale involved, but the Attawapiskat First Nation's audited schedule of funding from the year ended March 31, 2011 is pretty clear in that the total amount of federal funding received for that year was $17.6 million - considerably less than an F-35, in other words.

For me, it's not surprising that the government's first reaction seems to have been "seize control" - Harper acting dictatorial is, honestly, nothing new. It's not surprising but it is extremely regrettable; in my mind, seizing control of finances in situations like this should require the presentation of a great deal of evidence justifying it, whereas from what I've seen in the media, the government's takeover of Attawapiskat's finances has been more along the lines of "we think you're misappropriating funds, so we're just going to take over right now."

Not just for that reason, though. Also because it feeds into the extremely negative historical precedent that seems to have been established with regard to the federal government versus the First Nations. What I get from the government's actions is the sense that, yet again, it's telling us that "those Indians just can't look after themselves."

sigh

The history of Canada's treatment of its First Nations population is a sad and sorry one, a centuries-long litany of theft and abuse with the ultimate goal being for the First Nations, as a distinct group, to cease to exist. I'm not editorializing here - this was stated explicitly in 1931 by Duncan Campbell Scott, at the time Canada's Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs. Here's a relevant quote from his The Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada:

"It is the opinion of the writer... that by policies and activities such as have been outlined, the Government will in time reach the end of its responsibility as the Indians progress into civilization and finally disappear as a separate and distinct people, not by race extinction but by gradual assimilation with their fellow citizens."

Incidentally, the idea of a government official in 1931 referring to Natives as "fellow citizens" is something of a laugh in its own right - "second-class citizens" would be more appropriate; after all, it was not until 1960 that First Nations people were allowed to vote in federal elections while retaining their treaty status. 1960! This isn't deep-past stuff; this is within Prime Minister Harper's own lifetime! That doesn't sound much like equal citizenship to me - and if it's not equal, what the hell kind of citizenship is it anyway?

My point is that I feel the government has a particular responsibility to the First Nations, considering the role the Canadian government has had in, bluntly, fucking the First Nations for practically as long as there has been a Canadian government. The fact that it's not the current government that did those things is immaterial - it is still the Government of Canada, and by dint of being Canada's government, still bears the responsibility to set things right.

This should have been a time for the government to walk carefully - but I'm forgetting myself. This is Stephen Harper's Majority! The government doesn't have to give a fuck about anything aside staying in power, because what are you going to do about it, huh? Four years is an awfully long time.

The United States of Flat-Tax-Land

We've got barely more than a year until the keys to the White House are up for grabs again, and in my following of the news a peculiar meme has once again emerged among the vying Republican candidates. Not only emerged, but held aloft - the flat tax. I remember it primarily from the presidential campaigns of Steve Forbes, who kicked around the idea in 1996 and 2000 before being crushed into fine powder. Today its main standard bearers are Herman Cain, who first brought it to the table in a big way through his 9-9-9 plan, and Rick Perry, who seems to have a greater affinity for the number 20.

The flat tax represents a stark departure from the income tax codes in place throughout the Western world, commonly seen as byzantine mazes that are impossible for any one person to understand and which were purposefully designed to confuse people into paying as many taxes as possible. Personally, I use computer assistance programs to prepare my taxes, so I'm not too sure about that. By contrast, proponents of flat taxes like to say it would be simple enough "to fit on a postcard." So this weblog has more than enough room! Under a flat tax, filers pay one specific, particular rate - Rick Perry's optional flat tax, which is a weird as hell way to try going about implementing one, would be a firm 20%. That is, aside from a few specific, enumerated deductions, you pay 20% of your income in taxes and that is that, no matter how much you make. That's it at its core.

Today more than twenty countries around the world have flat taxes in place, though disproportionaly focused around the Eastern Bloc and concentrated in the former Soviet Union, with Russia leading more than half of the ex-Soviet states in the establishment of flat tax systems. Whether these taxes are responsible for economic growth is a difficult thing - after all, correlation doesn't equal causation, and a lot of the flat tax countries are only twenty years removed from communism. It's too bad there's no real laboratory for economic science.

Flat tax supporters make a lot of noise about how fair it is. But, the more I think about it, the more it becomes obvious that that's not really the case at all.

That tax wasn't flat, but the sign was pretty ragged.

If the concept of a flat tax is simple, let's run with it to the degree that my conception of the concept will allow. Take the example of... Examplevania, a small republic that has thrown out its old financial jargon and instituted a 20% flat tax code. For the purposes of this hypothetical, and to keep things simple - because, you know, simplicity is one of the reasons why everyone is so agog over the flat tax - Examplevania does not have any substantial deductions. Rick Perry's plan, by contrast, allows "$12,500 per person and mortgage interest, charitable donations, state and local taxes for those earning as much as $500,000 a year." Let us also assume, for the purposes of this hypothetical, that Examplevania has no sales taxes; presumably it's sitting on its own tar sands or something. Now let's look at five Examplevanians chosen purely for their annual income, from the high strata of society to the lowest.

Examplevanian #1 earns $304,000 per year. Taxes of 20% work out to $60,800.

Examplevanian #2 earns $152,000 per year. Taxes of 20% work out to $30,400.

Examplevanian #3 earns $76,000 per year. Taxes of 20% work out to $15,200.

Examplevanian #4 earns $38,000 per year, putting him or her squarely in the lower middle class or upper working class. Taxes of 20% work out to $7,600.

Finally, on the ground floor of this particular ladder, Examplevanian #5 earns $19,000 per year, most likely in some soul-crushing customer service job with a monolithic, uncaring company. Their taxes of 20% work out to $3,800 over the course of the year.

Now, on the face of it, you may be tempted to say that it's fair - isn't it? Everyone is paying the same percentage of their income, paying what they can toward the maintenance of the state and of civil society. This is where people can easily trip up; by focusing in on the rate of tax itself, rather than what's left after the taxman has gone off again.

So let's look back in on our Examplevanians. Once the return's in the envelope, Examplevanian #1 is out more than #4 and #5 combined make in a year, but is still left with $243,200. Examplevanian #2 has $121,600 for booze and exotic vacations, and Examplevanian #3 has $60,800 left over.

As for #4 and #5? #4 ends up with $30,400, and #5 is left with $15,200 to get them through the year.

The percentage is the same, but even the same percentage carries more weight on smaller numbers than it does larger. The difference between $200,000 and $300,000 of liquid capital boils down to differences in comfort - whether Examplevanians #1 and #2 will visit this or that gourmet restaurant, take this Caribbean cruise or that Alaskan one, and so on. It's a question of quality.

For Examplevanian #5, it's something quite different. Look again at that number, $15,200. For an entire year, that's it - and that works out to $1266.66 per month. I know cities where rent alone is more than that per month; hell, while I was pricing apartments in Toronto before moving out west, a $1000/month single-bedroom apartment was cheap - and living in rented basements will only scoop a couple of hundred dollars off the top of that. That doesn't even factor in food, transportation, or emergencies. What's more, this is only considering the Examplevanians as completely independent, responsible only for themselves - what happens when you bring family in? What happens when Examplevania's economy collapses, and Examplevanian #5's soul-crushing clerking job is the best they can find to support not only thesmelves, but others?

It's poverty any way you slice it, but what makes it worse is the idea that this is somehow more "fair." The more important thing, the thing to really consider, is how is this equal?

Now that the money's parcelled out, what happens? That depends a hell of a lot on the national character of Examplevania. If it's one that accepts a robust social safety net that includes good health coverage, unemployment assistance, inexpensive or free public transit, and other such programs - that recognizes the responsibility of citizens to contribute to the construction of an equal and harmonious society - Examplevanian #5 still isn't living the easy life, but at least is living easier. If it takes more after the "fuck you, got mine" ethos that appears to be dominant in the modern Republican Party, well... I suppose #5 could try to get a second job selling bootstraps.

The biggest problem we have to deal with today, I think, are the institutionalized, systemic inequalities that exist throughout the West in general and in the United States in particular. Chasing flat taxes isn't going to fix this; after all, many of the flat tax proponents have made it clear that it's just part of a goal to drastically draw down government spending as a whole. We need something better.

Flying the Flag Ragged

If things in May had gone a bit different, and the map of Canada hadn't been painted quite so blue, Air Canada's flight attendants could well be on strike right now. Whether or not the situation would have hashed out the same way is an academic, but if Canada had continued to be run by a hamstrung minority government the same way it had been since 2006, my own suspicion is that the government would have stood back and let it happen, if only to keep the Liberals and NDP from making noise and possibly precipitating yet another election.

However, this is the world in which the Conservatives have a majority, and so much like Chretien's Liberals from 1993 to 2001, what the Opposition does is irrelevant; they don't have enough bodies to throw into the gears of government. So, as the Vancouver Sun reported on Wednesday, there was really nothing preventing Labour Minister Lisa Raitt from asking the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to take a look at the proposed contract that's the source of the acrimony between the flight attendants and Air Canada management - "to determine whether a disruption of service would pose a health and safety risk to the public," and while that investigation is going on, Air Canada is obligated to continue services "to the extent necessary to prevent an immediate and serious danger to the safety or health of the public."

Which means, in simple English, no strike for you.

I don't like the idea of governments involving themselves in labor disputes, outside of very narrow areas. For issues like transit strikes, like the one the Toronto Transit Commission held back in 2008, I can understand the necessity of government intervention; Toronto as a city literally could not run without its public transit system, and police, fire, and EMS departments provide services so critical that a universal, sustained job action on their part would mean that people would die - but there are ways to square the circle in these cases, to undertake a job action without putting people at risk.

I think most people would agree that Air Canada flight attendants are not in quite the same position as police, fire, and EMS services. No one will die if they don't get their miniature can of pop or package of Bits and Bites at 35,000 feet. Yet, nevertheless, the federal government feels compelled to ride to Air Canada's rescue, to yet again prop up an airline that's built itself with so many tax dollars, it shouldn't rightly be considered a private company.

It would be ridiculous if it wasn't so transparent.

An Air Canada Airbus A321 is ready to take on baggage at Toronto Pearson International Airport in December 2009.

Here's what I think - the Conservatives, flush with a sense of power now that they have the majority they'd been chasing for five years, want to make an example of the Air Canada flight attendants. Remember the postal strike a few months ago? That dragged on seemingly for weeks, and any back-to-work legislation would have needed Opposition support. Well, it's a different world now. What was once an issue between the employer and the workers has now been complicated by the government, that organization that's supposed to represent the interest of all the people, taking sides and standing back-to-back with management.

The Conservatives can spin whatever rhetoric they want about this, but that's all it is - rhetoric. Legislating an essential service back to work, whether or not it's officially called that, is one thing - this is entirely another. Flight attendants do not represent an essential service in that sense of the term. The planes can still be loaded, fueled, and flown. The government has no business sticking its nose into this. The idea that a suspension of Air Canada services would pose a "pose a health and safety risk" to the public is ludicrous - I'm sure WestJet would have loved the opportunity to fill the gap. I have thus far been unable to find an airport where the only scheduled flights are flown by Air Canada; thankfully, our national flag carrier does not monopolize the friendly skies.

I suppose the Conservatives really are friendly to business, all right. From their conduct we can infer that they're also hostile to the workers who make those business work.

They Have A Strange Definition of "Internal"

It's times like these that make me glad that my family hasn't had anything to do with the United States since my ancestors left/were kicked out of (the history is not crystal clear) New York state after the Revolution. Over the past few months, news has been bubbling up in the broadsheets here regarding a tightening of loopholes in US tax law and the hardening of requirements for American citizens living abroad to file their taxes. August 31st marked the deadline for Americans in Canada to send their returns to the IRS.

That's right; if you're the holder of an American passport, you're legally obligated to file a tax return with the Internal Revenue Service every year, regardless of whether or not you live or work or make any money whatsoever in the United States. This stands in opposition to the tax practices of... well, every other country on Earth except Eritrea. If you're Canadian and living abroad, unless you have revenue coming in from Canadian sources, you have no obligation to pay income taxes.

This is a bit of a problem for the many, many dual citizens or expatriate Americans who are living in Canada - in 2006 there were over three hundred thousand American-Canadians reported, and estimates of American part-time residents and landed immigrants up here go as high as two million. For some of these "American-Canadians," American citizenship - which is acquired at birth if you're born in the United States or certain territories subject to its authority, or if your parents are citizens - is a legal quirk at best, something irrelevant to their daily lives.

There's more to citizenship than the legal aspects - citizenship is a state of mind. Is a "citizen" who carries another country's passport, has lived in that country for 99% or more of their life, and who has spent every working day in that country really a citizen in anything more than a legal term? Well, yes. That's why these legal issues crop up so often. That doesn't mean it's just, though. A recent opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times has something to say about that.

Now, some might say that this is their own fault - that American-Canadians like, say, Margaret Wente should have known that moving to Canada as a teenager and getting citizenship as a young adult doesn't nullify duties to the US. Some might say something like, "Ignorance is no excuse. It was their responsibility to know the laws that affected them and follow them. If they don't like it they can give up their American citizenship."

Yeah, about that...

Look at all these sweet, sweet United States dollars. The IRS wants these, oh yes they do. Good thing I have no obligation to them.

The process of renouncing United States citizenship is fairly simple, but the State Department website is specific that a citizen's renunciation "may have no effect whatsoever on his or her U.S. tax or military service obligations," so there are no guarantees that a renunciation would get the IRS off an ex-citizen's back. What makes that note even better is that it comes only two paragraphs after the explanation that anyone who renounces American citizenship can no longer enjoy any of the rights and privileges that come with that citizenship, "as this would be logically inconsistent with the concept of renunciation."

Yet the rabbit hole goes even deeper than that! In the right circumstances, you don't even have to be an American at all to have an obligation to the IRS. I pulled this straight from their website:

• A nonresident alien individual engaged or considered to be engaged in a trade or business in the United States during the year. You must file even if:
  
  • Your income did not come from a trade or business conducted in the United States,
    
  • You have no income from U.S. sources, or
    
  • Your income is exempt from income tax.

So even if you don't live in the United States, even if you're not a citizen of the United States, the IRS still reserves the authority to extract revenue from you despite your externality. Incredible, isn't it? This goes out the window if "U.S. source income is wages in an amount less than the personal exemption amount" - but in keeping with the byzantine nature of the IRS that I have absorbed osmotically through decades of exposure to American culture, I cannot actually determine what this amount is.

I understand the basic intent of the law - as well they should, the US government wants to stop wealthy Americans and corporations from hiding their income in tax havens and thus acting as financial parasites. But this is a long dragnet, and the people it's intended to catch will also have the most resources to escape it; it's people like everyday American-Canadians, the people it wasn't intended to catch, that will have to deal with the worst of it - all for a country they left behind. A lot of these people wouldn't even owe taxes to the IRS at all; the problem is more that they did not file tax returns.

To me, it's arrogance. People who do not live in a country, who do not personally profit from the services of that country, should not be responsible for paying the general costs of that country even if they're a citizen. I could understand if the US wanted to levy, say, a "consular tax" on their expatriate citizens, because such consular services are the only ones they would use; say, if they need to be evacuated from some kind of trouble spot. The only real niggle in this is the issue of expatriate voting - not something I'm going to address at the moment, though I recognize it is an issue. But responsibilities and privileges should go both ways.

Keep Metro Vancouver's Cities Free

It's simple: people like building things. Creation is one of the central drives of humanity, and it's a good thing too, because otherwise nothing would ever get built. We take sand and rocks and wood and we build cities. The problem arises when people put those acts of creation on a pedestal; when the creation becomes the most important thing, without sparing a thought for the consequences of that creation - whether or not the thing would have been better left unbuilt.

These days, we don't see many new cities rising up out of nothing; where "new" cities appear, it's usually through old ones. The pattern stretches back centuries; Vancouver didn't always have its modern borders, after all. Yet for the past ten years, Metro Vancouver has been the largest metropolitan area in Canada that has not experienced - or, more to the point, been forced into - municipal amalgamation. Yesterday, through Tenth to the Fraser, I found a week-old but still disturbing article on Vancity Buzz proposing the "consolidation" of Metro Vancouver - that is, the awkward shoving-together of the independent cities of this part of the Lower Mainland in the name of "efficiency," or to create more pleasing maps.

"When tourists fly into Vancouver, the first ground they touch is Richmond, not Vancouver. And when tourists want to experience the beautiful outdoors they visit the North Shore, not Vancouver," writes Vancity Buzz's Token White Guy. "Consolidate interconnected municipalities and redraw boundaries. Such reorganization will allow for more use of shared resources and reduce the inefficiency of having so many municipal governments."

I had no idea that it was so hard on tourists to cross so many invisible municipal borders. Please, won't someone think of the tourists? While we're at it, who needs independent municipalities capable of paying close attention to their citizens and dealing with local problems when we could run the whole show from Cambie and Broadway?

Even better - amalgamation would simplify transportation... transportation that's handled by the same regional entity anyway, but let's not think about that for a second! New Westminster would have its not-elaborated-upon "transit issues" resolved by amalgamating with Vancouver and Burnaby - perhaps this is meant to mean the shelved United Boulevard extension that New Westminster didn't want anyway - while Burnaby "will benefit by gaining downtown New Westminster and gain a promising tourist face." Because why should Burnaby develop its own downtown or tourist face when it can just piggyback off a city that did?

Am I in favor of this? Short answer: no. Long answer: nooooooooooooooooooo!

This is where New West starts, and don't you be forgetting it.

Let me just say that I can understand some Vancouverites, specifically long-term Vancouverites who haven't lived in another major city, talking seriously about amalgamation. It's an intellectual exercise to them; they've never lived through it. They only know about it on paper. Me, though, I'm from Toronto. Even if I wasn't living within its borders on January 1, 1998, I am well aware of what it was like when the six cities of Metropolitan Toronto were dismantled - despite a non-binding referendum in which 70% came down against amalgamation - to form the present megacity, and what happened afterward. Witness also the example of Montreal, where the twenty-seven cities of Montreal Island were forcibly amalgamated by provincial fiat; when the Quebec Liberals came to power in 2003, they gave those former cities the chance to hold de-amalgamation referenda; of the twenty-two that did, fifteen bolted and are now independent once again.

I have no reason to suspect that the experience would be much different in Metro Vancouver. Different cities need different things, and people in different places have different priorities. I'm pretty sure that an amalgamation into Vancouver would be seen by many people in the outer cities as a way for Vancouver's "downtown elites" to impose their bike lanes and their ways of thinking onto their communities; it's arguable that this sort of thought, and the pushback against it, was one of the factors that allowed Rob Ford to win the mayoralty of Toronto last year on a solid base of ex-suburban support. Had Metropolitan Toronto endured, Rob Ford might have made a fine mayor of Etobicoke - but he also would not have been in the position to demolish the planned Transit City LRT network, or work on closing libraries from one end of Metro to the other, and so on.

The experience of Toronto, particularly over the last year, demonstrates that the more authority is consolidated and concentrated, the more power an individual has to reshape the subject of that authority. Independent municipalities are a natural bulwark against that. The city government of New Westminster can work toward what it considers to be good for New Westminster; but if it isn't, at least the spillover effects are minimal beyond New Westminster. Checks and balances are important in government - in my mind, it should be an extraordinary situation if we're thinking about removing them.

Practically as an afterthought, the writer suggests that another option is expanding Metro Vancouver's power by giving it control of things like policing and transit operations... which would, effectively, make it into what Metropolitan Toronto was before the amalgamation. This would make a lot more sense. We already have a regional transit provider in the form of TransLink; I wouldn't be surprised to see a Metropolitan Vancouver Police Department in some future time. Things like policing and transit, these are issues that transcend city boundaries, and in a highly-urbanized area like Metro Vancouver, it makes sense for them to be dealt with in a regional way.

That doesn't mean we should only focus on regional matters. There are very good reasons to think locally, to govern locally. A local government is far more responsive to local issues; a single government, especially when perceived as being geographically or culturally remote, leads to social friction.

Municipal amalgamation is a subject that should be approached very carefully. In an ideal world, no amalgamation would go ahead without the citizens of the cities involved voting in favor, preferably strongly in favor. However, if a future amalgamation of Vancouver presents itself in the same manner as in Toronto and Montreal, it won't matter what we think. In both circumstances, the amalgamations were pushed through by the respective provincial governments without regard for the opinions of the people affected by the reorganization.

People pushing amalgamations often say they're chasing efficiencies. Yet life is more than just a well-oiled machine.

A Tale of Two Taxes

What a difference a couple thousand miles of ocean can make.

Taxes have always been a delicate subject in the United States. If you're a rich person in the United States your taxes have been falling for a while, from a postwar high of 92% on the $250,001 bracket in 1952, the rates started falling precipitously under Reagan and Bush and now stand at 33%; not quite as low as the 1920s, but give them time. Now President Obama is preparing to announce a new "Buffett tax" tomorrow, and though only limited details have so far made their way to the wild, expectations are that it's going to be levied on those making more than a million dollars a year in order to help close the United States' staggering budget gap. Cuts and cuts and more cuts can only go so far without new revenue.

Predictably the Republicans, the party of all those "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," are already drawing their lines of battle against it. The first shot across the bow was the accusation that it's "class warfare" - because, really, asking those with extraordinary means to pay into the society that enabled them to realize those means is functionally identical to the proletariat laying siege to the gated communities of the bourgeoisie - followed up by claims from House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan that "it punishes job creation and those people who create jobs."

I can see it now, those wealthy job creators sitting in their offices, going over the numbers and coming to the sobering conclusion that they can't afford to install granite countertops in their vacation home in the Hamptons. Obviously there's only one rational response - create jobs in countries that don't "punish" job creation... just like they've been doing for decades. Obama's going to have a brutal fight on his hands to get a tax like this to his desk without it being so watered down you could wipe the ink off the bill with a sponge; but it seems that Republicans are committed to ensuring that the weight of taxes settle disproportionately on those who have the least resources.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg - junior partner in the ruling Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government - has been giving whatever assurances he can that the 50p tax rate - that is, a 50% tax rate on those bringing in more than £150,000, the wealthiest 300,000 out of the UK's twenty-nine million taxpayers. When it was introduced in 2010, it was expected to raise £2.4 billion in the first year; and with the Eurozone in peril, every quid matters. Though critics originally, and still, are concerned that the tax isn't effective - though we won't know one way or another until the spring, when the Treasury will release its results - Clegg has said that it wouldn't be "morally or economically right" to end the tax unless it's replaced by a different one that further reduces the weight of taxation on Britain's poorest.

So far as I know, nothing official has been heard thus far for what the Government will do if the 50p tax turns out to be a damp squib. Nevertheless, there's been speculation that it would be replaced by a 1% tax on homes valued in excess of £2 million, less tax relief on pensions, and so on. So, you know, alternatives.

This stands in stark contrast to the proposed solutions from the peanut gallery in Washington. Sometime I have to wonder if George Bush's "read my lips: no new taxes" was not a political statement but some kind of ritual ensorcellment that binds Republicans to that commitment unless the spell is broken.

In this case, the difference between the United Kingdom and the United States appears to be one of rationalism versus emotionalism. The senior partners in the present UK government are conservatives, but they're still willing to tax those who can afford it while working toward bettering the lot of society itself. In the United States, anyone who wants to raise taxes on the wealthy has to hack through a jungle of "fuck you, got mine," and society is left to fend for itself.

Power Is A Tricky Thing

Power is a tricky thing. It's one of our basest natures to seek power, to accumulate more and more of it, so that we and our family might be secure or so that we can reshape the world according to our ideas of how it should look or because of the sheer rush of having power over others. The pursuit of power is behind practically everything in human history, and it's led us to no shortage of dark places. With that in mind we should be careful to whom we entrust the reins of power, and always wary of those who actively seek it with good reason to believe that they will find it.

I know this might sound a bit hypocritical considering that a year ago I was running for Mayor of Toronto. I qualify that because my campaigning was pretty much entirely limited to this weblog, and next to candidates like Ford and Smitherman and Joe Pantalone, I didn't expect to even come close to winning.

Keeping tabs on who has what power becomes particularly important in government. There are always people jockeying for position, seeking to favor themselves and their group over the other guys, governments looking for leverage against oppositions and oppositions probing for weak spots to bring the government down. They have to be watched carefully, because if they think they can get away with a something they're apt to try to run away with the legislature.

This is particularly important now. With Wisconsin the focus of what little news coverage there is that isn't following Charlie Sheen, governors in other states are able to practically hide in plain sight, and push through their own "dream bills" while no one is looking. Take, for example, Missouri's SB 222, which modifies the state's child labor laws and "eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen," which will of course absolutely not have any negative consequences!

Or, more to the point, look at Michigan - where Republican governor Rick Snyder and the Republican majorities* in the state House of Representatives and Senate are working to push into being the "Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act." Sounds bloodless enough, right? Don't forget that one of the arts of politics is coming up with new names for odious things. Tocqueville said that, I think, or something like it - or someone else did.

Regardless! Do you want to know what this bill does? Well, in a process vaguely consistent with its name, it allows Michigan's financial authority to review the financial problems of a municipal government or school district - and based upon this review, the Governor can declare that government or district to be in a state of "financial emergency," which would require the appointment of an emergency manager "to develop a financial and operating plan for the local government."

It's a dark road that Michigan will go down if it follows what's in this bill.

Sounds understandable enough, right? Just wait. Once this emergency manager has been appointed, he or she has the authority to modify, terminate, or renegotiate any contracts entered into by the municipality, and - if you thought what was happening in Wisconsin was just on its own - the personal authority to "reject, modify, or terminate the terms of an existing contract or collective bargaining agreement (CBA)." This is given its own bullet point.

Oh, and that's not all. These appointed, unelected emergency managers, presumably answering to the Governor of Michigan, are also granted the power "to disincorporate or dissolve the municipal government with the approval of the Governor; or recommend consolidation with another municipal government."

...

It's been fourteen years, but I still remember how wildly unpopular the forced amalgamation of the cities of Metro Toronto was - that didn't stop the government from doing it anyway, because it was convenient for Mike Harris. And even then, the Conservatives couldn't turf the Metro councillors out of power just like that.

Some people - I don't think I'm assuming overmuch when I suggest "Republicans" - may not think this is particularly serious, that this is nothing more than a government taking drastic action to avoid some grim meathook future. That is total disingenuous bullshit. Michigan is set to codify not only union-busting legislation, but city-busting legislation, and if you think this won't be abused you're delusional. The contents of that bill go way, way beyond what any government should have without proper oversight and civic involvement. Just read it! The definitions, processes, and functions are absolutely opaque - this could be very easily abused. By anyone, come to that - what some people forget is that their guys won't be in power forever. Just watch this.

We need to keep a firm eye on our governments - because down in the States, it looks like they're getting ready to run off with them.

* Would "The Republican Governor and His Republican Majority" make a good name for a band?

State Your Name, State

Ever since the 1970s, the picture of political fault lines in Canada has been rather simple - the borders of Quebec. It's the only province that's actually attempted to separate from Canada, and future histories often include an independent Quebec and multiple Canadian provinces joining the United States as a result. It seems to me that it's commonly American authors that project this - as if Quebec is the glue that holds Canada together. As a Canadian, I can say that's not so. Personally I would prefer to see Quebec remain an integral part of Canada, but an independent Quebec would not lead to Canada's collapse. I tend to agree with Will Ferguson's ideas on this in Why I Hate Canadians - that "separation would bring the regions of Canada closer together, like a trauma survivors' support group."

But it's an interesting thing to speculate about, nonetheless - the hows and whys and whethers of Canada coming apart at the seams, and what's left when the dust clears. It's something that's been rattling around in my brain ever since I moved out west. While I consider the idea of Ontario seceding from Canada faintly ridiculous - I'd find it far more believable for provinces to secede piecemeal until Ontario is the last one standing, to get away from Ontario if nothing else - I'm not the first one to consider the possibility of the western provinces going their own way. Hell, there have been political parties dedicated to the concept.

The only question I have is this - what the hell would you call the result?

It's an important question - they'd have to replace the marker at the Blaine/Surrey crossing, you know. It says "Canada" on the other side.

Quebec has it easy - they wouldn't have needed any time to pick out a name upon gaining independence; just "Republique du Quebec" would have worked out perfectly. Indeed, if individual provinces separate, there's no real need to select a new country name. The problem arises in the event of multiple provinces separating and making a go of it themselves as a new unified state, when there's no unified term that already describes them.

Take British Columbia. On its own, it might not have the best shot at independent statehood... but if things have got so bad in Ottawa that BC is voting to lower the Maple Leaf, Alberta is likely several steps ahead. It's not a massive leap to suggest that in this hypothetical future, Alberta and British Columbia choose to go it alone together - thus introducing the issue of a unified name. So far as I am aware, at least, there's no existing geographical or political term that describes BC and Alberta alone.

The Transhuman Space setting did this as part of its background, breaking up Canada into its constituent parts. The union of Alberta and British Columbia was called... the Union of Alberta and British Columbia. This is what you get when there's no existing terms to apply - uninspired names. Plus, what the hell would a citizen of that country call themselves? An Albertan and British Columbian? An ABCer? A Unionist? It would be so much easier if Washington and Oregon could be brought in - then the resulting state could use Cascadia, simple and clear, but the US government would likely have words about that particular arrangement.

So what else is there? Something like Pacifica, which does not really sound like a state name that could be taken seriously - and besides, it doesn't describe the Alberta half of the new state at all. Perhaps the Republic of the Rocky Mountains would work better - there's shared geography right there - but again, what do you call its citizens? Rocks? Rockies? Mountaineers?

It might be easier, in the end, to echo the naming conventions of the Civil War, where no one stopped being American just because of national borders. "Canada" is a geographical expression as much as it is a nation - a western state could easily call itself something like, say, the Allied Provinces of Canada.

Personally, I hope this is something I never have to worry about. But it's interesting to consider.

Who Supports the Sports?

I've never been that into sports. Sure, I collected baseball cards as a kid and cheered on the Jays' World Series wins in 1992 and 1993, but it was less out of a deep, abiding interest and more because I was a socially awkward ten-year-old, and an interest in baseball is right on the contract for being a ten-year-old boy. It's not something I follow at all anymore - hell, it was only within the last month that I discovered the Minnesota North Stars moved to Dallas eighteen years ago. Though I will admit that I was sorely tempted to brave the crowds at Wrigley Field the first time I was in Chicago. It's not something that's important to me, but I recognize its broad and long-standing appeal in the population at large. Sports speak to something primal: they've been with us from the beginning.

Modern-day organized sports, on the other hand, is something else entirely.

Yesterday the Globe and Mail ran an article from John Allemang asking a simple question: "if arts and culture are publicly funded, why not sports arenas?" I know enough about sports to know that this is a third rail, and it's a complicated issue besides. It stems from recent noises that have emanated from Ottawa recently, suggesting that the federal government may assist in the financing of a new hockey arena in Quebec City - part of their cunning plan to lure the Nordiques back home from Colorado. Government involvement in cultural affairs is not new; there are many such venues that get some government support, from arthouses to science fiction magazines.

As sports do occupy a major place in modern culture, it's easily arguable that sports facilities should only be entitled to a share of that same funding. I can see that point... but for me, there's only one fly in the ointment.

How many sports venues are currently owned by for-profit corporations, explicitly as profit-making endeavors?

Chase Field, a publicly-owned sports venue in Phoenix, Arizona

As a member of the Torontonian diaspora, the example of SkyDome still stings. Back in the late 1980s, what was then one of the most technologically advanced stadiums in North America - just look at that dome! - cost $570 million to build, with the cost split between the governments of Metro Toronto, Ontario, and Canada, as well as twenty-eight Canadian corporations - corporations that, incidentally, paid $5 million in 1980s dollars for stadium exclusivity, and so you could be sure you wouldn't get any Pepsi products at the dome. The big problem is that there were extensive cost overruns, enough so that the Dome wasn't making enough money to pay them off - so, ultimately, its debts were paid off by the provincial government in 1994, from provincial revenues, and sold into private ownership for the bargain basement price of $151 million. When Rogers bought it in 2004, it paid the princely sum of $25 million.

Ontario's tax dollars at work.

Given that experience... there are limited circumstances where I'd be okay with tax revenue going to support a sports venue. If it's done in conjunction with private partners, and it's the for-profit private partners that are on the hook in case of cost overruns - as was the case with Chase Field in Phoenix - and if a share of the revenues go back into the public purse, I could conceivably be for it.

What I'm not for is the subsidization of profit-seeking corporations with tax dollars. Taxes should be used for delivering public services - water supply, electricity, space exploration (at least until private corporations find a profit motive out there), infrastructure, public transit, and so on - and even then, we have to remember to keep our priorities in order. Look at the example of Arlington, Texas - at 380,000 people it is the forty-ninth largest city in the United States, and it does not have a public transit system. Why? Perhaps part of it has to do with the fact that the requisite share of Arlington's sales tax revenue, which appears to be one of the only real options for funding mass transit in Texas, is instead going towards paying off the debt for building Rangers Ballpark in Arlington and Cowboys Stadium.

Governments shouldn't be the ones left holding the bags for these places unless they're the only ones that get the money when times are good.