The Canadian Parliament has passed a resolution asking that the white supremacist group the Proud Boys to be declared a terrorist organization.
I don’t think that this could happen in the US, because the Republicans see the Proud Boys as a critical part of their base.
Joe Biden has shutdown the Keystone XL pipeline:
One of President Biden’s first acts upon taking office was to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, the long-debated project to transport crude from Canada’s oil sands to the United States.
But Canadian officials, notably in Alberta, the province where the pipeline originates, are not giving up so fast.
The nearly 1,200-mile Keystone XL was intended to carry crude oil from Canada to Nebraska, where it would connect with an existing network to deliver the crude to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.
In canceling the pipeline, Mr. Biden took some of his first steps toward reversing the legacy of the Trump administration, which revived the project after it was rejected by President Barack Obama in 2015.
Good.
Elections have consequences.
Airbnb went to the Canadian government looking for Covid aid. The Canadian government made moves to end Airbnb’s tax evasion instead.
For the uninitiated, this is called, “Good government,” and we need to see more of this:
It’s about to get a lot more expensive to stay at short-term rentals in Canada as Ottawa announced a new tax on Airbnb and other short-term accommodation platforms.
“In order to ensure that the GST/HST applies consistently and effectively with respect to supplies of short-term accommodation in Canada facilitated by platforms, the Government proposes to apply the GST/HST on all supplies of short-term accommodation in Canada facilitated through a digital platform,” according to the federal government’s fiscal update released on Monday by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland[1].
Platforms themselves will now be required to collect and remit those taxes in cases where property owners fail to do so.
“In these circumstances, the accommodation platform operator would be deemed to be the supplier of the short-term accommodation,” the update reads. “This approach recognizes their necessary and fundamental role in making these supplies, and limits administrative and compliance costs for the parties involved.”
One reason that short-term rentals have been cheaper than hotels is because hotels had to collect and pay sales tax while Airbnb didn’t.
Provinces or British Columbia, Quebec and Saskatchewan already apply a sales tax on Airbnb accommodation.
………
The tax will come as a major blow to Airbnb, who had asked for the government to bail out the platform’s hosts in April.
The Parliamentary Secretary for Housing Adam Vaughan dismissed that request with one word: “No”.
Good.
Police in Ontario are investigating graffiti on a monument to an SS division as a hate crime.
I can understand that someone spray painting, “Nazi war monument,” on the side of a ……… well ……… Nazi war monument ……… might constitute vandalism, but it’s not a hate crime, it’s truth in labeling.
It appears that as a result of this controversy, a number of Canadians have become rather upset about the cenotaph in a Ukrainian cemetary to the 14th SS Division as well, so perhaps the end game may involve taking this item down.
I’m sure that some Canadian-Ukrainians would object to that, claiming that this is their heritage, but, much like people claiming Confederate heritage in the United States, I don’t give a crap what they think:
An incident involving graffiti spray painted on a monument to those who fought in Adolf Hitler’s SS is being investigated as a hate crime by an Ontario police force.
Someone painted “Nazi war monument” on a stone cenotaph commemorating those who served with the 14th SS Division. The monument is located in Oakville in the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery.
The division, made up of Ukrainians who pledged allegiance to Hitler, was part of the Nazi’s Waffen SS organization. Some members of the division have been accused of killing Polish women and children as well as Jews during the Second World War.
………
But researcher Moss Robeson, who has written articles on Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis, provided details about the graffiti and the monument on Twitter, prompting questions about why Halton Regional Police think members of the Nazi SS can be the subject of hate crimes.
In response to questions from this newspaper, Const. Steve Elms, spokesman for Halton-Regional Police, cited a section of the Criminal Code that noted those communicating statements in any public place inciting hatred against any identifiable group could face imprisonment not exceeding two years. “This incident occurred to a monument and the graffiti appeared to target an identifiable group,” he explained in an email to questions about how a hate crime could be perpetrated against members of the SS.
If this reminds you of people in the “Blue Lives Matter” movement claiming that protests against the police is a hate crime, not only are you very perceptive, and likely quite likely devastatingly attractive as well.
The 14th SS Division, also known as the Galizien Division, was formed in 1943 when Nazi Germany needed to shore up its forces as allied troops, including those from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Russia, started to gain the upper hand and turn the tide of the war. In May 1944, SS leader Heinrich Himmler addressed the division with a speech that was greeted by cheers. “Your homeland has become more beautiful since you have lost – on our initiative, I must say – the residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name – namely the Jews,” Himmler said. “I know that if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles, I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.”
………
There are allegations members of the 14th SS Division took part in killing hundreds of Polish civilians in 1944 in the village of Huta Pieniacka. Some Ukrainians dispute that the SS division took part in the killings or they argue that only small elements from the unit – and under Nazi command – were involved. Others argue the SS members were heroes who fought against the Russians.
………
Bernie Farber of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network said there is a need for Halton Regional Police to better educate themselves on what constitutes a hate-motivated crime. “Yes, it’s destruction of property for sure,” Farber said of the graffiti on the monument. “But a hate crime? Far from it.”
The monument to the 14th SS Division was also in the headlines in 2017 when the Russian Embassy in Ottawa posted images on its Twitter account pointing out the “Nazi monuments” in Canada.
BTW, after the furor, the Halton Regional Police are now investigating the graffiti as simple vandalism, and the police chief is wondering why there is a Nazi monument in the first place.
Whoever put that graffiti on the monument may see it coming down now.
There are now indications that Gabriel Wortman, who engaged in a wade ranging shooting spree in Nova Scotia resulting in the deaths of 22 people, was a confidential informant being run by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. (RCMP)
He had accumulated an extensive accumulation of illegal weapons while having accusations of domestic violence lodged against him.
Additionally, he received a massive (Can$475,000.00) cash transfer 2½ weeks before the shooting.
Experts say that this all points to his being an undercover asset of the law enforcement agency:
The withdrawal of $475,000 in cash by the man who killed 22 Nova Scotians in April matches the method the RCMP uses to send money to confidential informants and agents, sources say.
Gabriel Wortman, who is responsible for the largest mass killing in Canadian history, withdrew the money from a Brink’s depot in Dartmouth, N.S., on March 30, stashing a carryall filled with hundred-dollar bills in the trunk of his car.
………
Sources in both banking and the RCMP say the transaction is consistent with how the RCMP funnels money to its confidential informants and agents, and is not an option available to private banking customers.
The RCMP has repeatedly said that it had no “special relationship” with Wortman.
Court documents show Wortman owned a New Brunswick-registered company called Berkshire-Broman, the legal owner of two of his vehicles (including one of his police replica cars). Whatever the purpose of that company, there is no public evidence that it would have been able to move large quantities of cash. Wortman also ran his own denturist business and there is no reason to believe it also would require him to handle large amounts of cash.
If Wortman was an RCMP informant or agent, it could explain why the force appeared not to take action on complaints about his illegal guns and his assault on his common-law wife.
A Mountie familiar with the techniques used by the force in undercover operations, but not with the details of the investigation into the shooting, says Wortman could not have collected his own money from Brink’s as a private citizen.
“There’s no way a civilian can just make an arrangement like that,” he said in an interview.
He added that Wortman’s transaction is consistent with the Mountie’s experience in how the RCMP pays its assets. “I’ve worked a number of CI cases over the years and that’s how things go. All the payments are made in cash. To me that transaction alone proves he has a secret relationship with the force.”
Without some sort of law enforcement or intelligence service involvement, I cannot imagine that he could have been able to do any of this.
There have been a number of infamous instances, Whitey Bulger being the most prominent, where law enforcement assets have gone onto commit notorious crimes.
I think that this is one such case, and the RCMP will never come clean about it.
Because Corona Virus is the least of the dangerous diseases coming from the USA.
Now they are getting mass shootings:
On an overcast Nova Scotia morning, flags fluttered at half-mast and memorials sprouted up like flowers, as families and friends learned of losses, a province grieved, and a country struggled to comprehend the staggering toll of Canada’s deadliest shooting.
RCMP now say there are “in excess of 19 people” dead, and that number is expected to rise further. Police are investigating, and also mourning one of their own, RCMP Constable Heidi Stevenson, who was killed in the attack.
“I know this is a challenging time for Nova Scotians and that there are so many unanswered questions,” RCMP Chief Superintendent Chris Leather said at a press conference in Dartmouth on Monday. “I want to reassure you that we are working hard to find out as much information as possible in the days and weeks to come. We will be in this for months to come, I am sure.”
The perpetrator, who has been identified by police as 51-year-old Gabriel Wortman, was shot by police in a gas station parking lot in Enfield, outside Halifax, around noon on Sunday.
In the small community of Wentworth, which lost four residents to the violence, Lisa Owen and Darrol Thurier sat in front of their house on Monday, holding back emotion as they looked down the road toward where their neighbours’ house had been.
The couple who lived in the home, Sean McLeod and Alanna Jenkins, are missing, their cars torched and their house burned to its foundation.
Jeebus.
Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party looks set to win 156 in Canada’s house of commons, significantly better than the the 121 currently netted by the conservatives.
He’ll need support from the progressive NDP (~25 seats, down from 39) and the Quebecois BQ (~30 seats up from 10) to form a coalition government.
One hopes that what are likely to be his new coalition partners can successfully push to move Canada away from the extraction economy.
Trudeau has been the tar sands industry and the TransCanada Corporation’s bitch in his last term.
They have just updated the algorithm to eliminate US drug prices from their calculations because they are completely out of line.
Pharma is unamused, but they can go and Cheney themselves:
The Canadian government on Friday announced final regulations to reduce patented drug prices it said would save Canadians C$13.2 billion ($10 billion) over a decade, overriding heavy opposition from pharmaceutical companies.
………
The new rules, described in a statement by Health Canada, were largely in line with a December 2017 draft. They came after months of delay prompted speculation the government would back down in the face of industry lobbying or simply run out of time before Canada’s October election.
………
Under the new rules, Canada will change the countries the federal drug price regulator, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB), compares domestic prices to, dropping the United States and Switzerland where prices are highest, and let the agency consider the cost-effectiveness of new medicines.
It will also force drugmakers to disclose some confidential discounts to the PMPRB, which sets maximum prices.
………
Global drugmakers, including Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co and Amgen Inc, argued against the draft plan.
Petitpas Taylor said the new rules would lay the foundation for a new national pharmaceutical care program. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is expected to announce a program to cover the cost of prescription drugs for some or all Canadians, but the program’s scope is not yet clear.
Good.
Big pharma needs to be taken down.
No site blocking, no elimination of safe harbors, and no automated content filters:
The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology has published its long-awaited review of Canada’s Copyright Act. The review, which serves as guidance for the Government, rejects a non-judicial site-blocking regime and keeps the current safe harbors intact.
Late 2017 Canada’s government requested the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology (INDU) to carry out a thorough review of the Copyright Act.
After dozens of hearings, where it heard hundreds of witnesses and reviewed input from various stakeholders, the final review is now ready and published in public.
………
Related proposals suggested narrowing the ‘safe harbor’ for online service providers (OSPs). This includes changes to sections 31.1 and 41.27 of the Copyright Act, including abolishing these altogether.
While the Committee acknowledged the “value gap” problem for rightsholders, it stresses that the rights of Internet users should be taken into account as well.
………
The Committee finds it questionable, for example, that online services would be required to take down or de-monetize content, without allowing the uploader to respond to allegations of copyright infringement. That appears to refer, indirectly, to the EU’s Article 17.
Instead of making any concrete suggestions, the Committee recommends keeping an eye on how the EU deals with this issue, and draw lessons from this approach. Ultimately, however, any changes should be in the best interests of all Canadians, which is summarized in two recommendations.
“Recommendation 21: That the Government of Canada monitor the implementation, in other jurisdictions, of extended collective licensing as well as legislation making safe harbour exceptions available to online service providers conditional to measures taken against copyright infringement on their platforms.”
“Recommendation 22 That the Government of Canada assert that the content management systems employed by online service providers subject to safe harbour exceptions must reflect the rights of rights-holders and users alike.”
Moving onto enforcement against traditional pirate sites, the Committee reviewed input from various stakeholders who suggested the introduction of a site-blocking regime.
“The fight against piracy should focus more on large-scale, commercial infringers, and less on individual Canadians who may or may not understand that they are engaged in infringement,” the Committee notes, adding that it sees value in pirate site blocking.
To this end, the Telecommunications Act could be revised to streamline the blocking process. However, creating a separate regime that would bypass the courts, as several rightsholders have suggested, goes too far.
Considering the fact that these sorts or reviews are dominated by the monopolists who want absolute and control, with user rights, history, and the public good be damned, this is a remarkably good outcome.
The cost of publishing has fallen off a cliff in the past few decades, and I do not see how the public interest is served by increasing the power of license holders.
The deal is that incentives like copyright are supposed to encourage people to overcome the barriers to publishing, not to create ever expanding opportunities for looting by rentiers.
Saab is tendering an offer to Canada for JAS-39 Gripens.
The Trudeau government has been decidedly cool on the expensive to buy and expensive to operate F-35, and the Gripen offers much more flexibility and much lower life cycle costs:
Saab is ready to sell the Canadian government 88 Canada-built Gripen fighters should Ottawa require home-built aircraft.
The Swedish combat aircraft manufacturer cautions nothing is finalised and its offer will ultimately reflect Canada’s formal request for proposal (RFP). The company expects the final RFP to be issued around midyear by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF).
“As we have demonstrated in Brazil, and depending on the requirements of a customer, we can build fighter jets in countries other than Sweden,” says the company. “Gripen is the world’s most-modern multi-role aircraft and a perfect match to Canada’s operational requirements for NORAD defense and expeditionary missions. It is proven to operate in any climate, from arctic to desert.”
………
The RCAF issued a draft request for proposal in October 2018 to an exclusive set of five potential suppliers to replace its Boeing CF-18A/B Hornet fleet.
The suppliers included Dassault Aviation, maker of Rafales; Saab, maker of JAS 39 Gripens; Airbus Defense, a major partner in the Eurofighter joint venture, which makes Typhoons; Lockheed Martin, maker of F-16s and F-35s; and Boeing, maker of F/A-18 Super Hornets and F-15E Strike Eagles.
My guess would be that Canada would go with the F/A-18 EF, as it is the most straightforward path from the earlier models CF-18s.
Additionally, Canada has long expressed a preference for a twin engine aircraft.
Still, if the bottom line is cost, the Gripen makes a lot of sense.
No, not Central American’s fleeing violence and poverty, it’s Americans who are going to Canada to flee extortionate drug prices:
A “caravan” of Americans living with Type 1 diabetes made its way across the U.S. border into Canada over the weekend in search of affordable medical care in a country where they can get the “exact same” life-saving drugs for a dramatically lower price.
“We’re on a #CaravanToCanada because the USA charges astronomical prices for insulin that most people can’t afford,” tweeted caravan member Quinn Nystrom as she shared updates on the journey.
Nystrom was among a group of Minnesotans who piled into cars on Friday to make the 600-mile journey from the Twin Cities to Fort Frances, Ontario, where she said insulin, the hormone patients with Type 1 Diabetes rely on to regulate their blood glucose levels, can be bought for a tenth of what it costs in the U.S.
The caravan was organized as part of a campaign launched under the banner “#insulin4all” to call on the U.S. government to regulate the cost of life-saving drugs, including insulin, and make medication affordable for anyone who needs it.
Insulin has been public domain for nearly 100 years.
The fact that Pharma has still found a way to charge exorbitant rents, and that our government facilitates this, is an indication of a deep and systemic problem.
Alphabet, the parent of Google, has a subsidiary called Sidewalk Labs, pitched a redevelopment project on the Toronto waterfront.
Well, their proposal has now been leaked, and their plans involve tax-kickbacks from the city and control over an area 10 times larger than they would develop:
Plans for a high tech Toronto community led by an Alphabet Inc.-backed entity should be scrapped, say politicians and prominent Canadian business and technology leaders.
In the wake of a leaked report last week that revealed Sidewalk Labs’ interest in laying claim to developer fees and taxes usually routed to the city in exchange for funding Toronto’s waterfront transit, longtime critics of the project said it is time to revisit whether the project should continue to move forward.
………
In addition to funding a light rail transit line, the latest round of ideas floated by Sidewalk includes plans to provide infrastructure to a waterfront area bigger than, but surrounding, Quayside.
City councillor Gord Perks, who represents the west-end Parkdale-High Park neighbourhood, has long fretted about Sidewalk’s data privacy policies, lack of transparency and desires around solid waste and transportation, but considered Thursday’s revelations around it wanting to fund a light rail transit line a “confirmation of our worst fears.”
“The three governments who are involved should halt the process with Google and go to the public and say we have an area of land as big as the downtown, what would you like to do?” he told The Canadian Press.
………
Among those who were calling for the project’s cancellation Monday was Bianca Wylie, the co-founder of the advocacy group Tech Reset Canada, who has long been advocating for the project to end.
“It should absolutely be shut down, but the reason for that isn’t what was in the plan. It’s the process,” she said. “There has been inadequate transparency from the very beginning.”
Despite Sidewalk hosting several meetings to collect public feedback, Wylie has long worried about the company being secretive with its plans — its transit ideas were only shared after slide decks containing the concepts were leaked to media — and is concerned about the breadth of topics Sidewalk has been lobbying all three levels of government on.
………
Developer Julie Di Lorenzo, who resigned from the Waterfront Toronto board over the project, also cast aspersions on the integrity of the project and its future.
“They are trying again to act like a master developer of hundreds of acres of lands that belong to The City of Toronto and its residents. Its outrageous,” she told The Canadian Press.
“Those monies belong to our democratically elected governments and property owners. Every time Sidewalk shows us a map, the land area they ‘need’ gets bigger.”
This is what happens when you get so rich that you start to belong your own bullsh%$.
It appears that Doug Ford, Ontario Premier and brother of the late crack smoking mayor of Toronto, is implacably opposed to such a deal, which segues nicely into the sort of, “Culture wars against latte liberals,” politics that he has promulgated.
Green energy campaigners in Canada applauded a precedent-settiing Supreme Court ruling on Thursday which ordered the bankrupt Alberta-based oil and gas company Redwater Energy to clean up its failed wells instead of leaving the task to the public.
Observing the “polluter pays principle,” the 5-2 ruling overturned two earlier decisions by lower courts which had sided with a federal law stating that insolvent companies could prioritize paying back their creditors over fulfilling their environmental obligations.
“Bankruptcy is not a license to ignore rules,” Chief Justice Richard Wagner wrote in the ruling, which was celebrated as one that would set a new precedent for the entire country.
“The Supreme Court of Canada has prioritized paying clean up costs before creditors when extractive companies go bankrupt. This outcome reinforces the growing understanding that polluters are responsible for their clean up obligations,” said the Pembina Institute, a think tank focused on clean energy and environmental policy.
Indeed.
I would argue that corporate bankruptcy generally serves to provide too much protection to companies and management.
In addition to ecological damage, how about allowing the claw back of sky high executive pay, private equity management fees, etc. as a part of bankruptcy proceedings.
Canada has formally apologized for turning away the St. Louis, and its 907 Jewish refugees, in 1939:
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized for the government’s decision in 1939 to turn away a ship full of Jewish refugees who had escaped Nazi Germany.
“Today I rise to issue a long-overdue apology to the Jewish refugees Canada turned away,” Trudeau said Wednesday in a speech to Parliament
Canada denied asylum to the 907 German Jews on board the MS St. Louis when it arrived on its shores. Cuba and the United States also denied entry to the refugees and, after they returned to Europe, about one-quarter of those on board died in the Holocaust.
“In 1939, Canada turned its back on 907 Jewish refugees, deeming them unworthy of a home, and undeserving of our help. Today, I issue an official apology on behalf of the Government of Canada to the passengers of the MS St. Louis and their families for this injustice,” he said in both English and French.
“While decades have passed since we turned our backs on Jewish refugees, time has by no means absolved Canada of its guilt or lessened the weight of our shame,” he said.
Words now are cheap.
I’m not sure how to make things right, or if it is even possible, but hopefully some lessons learned.
Google is spending a lot of time on its “Smart City” project in Toronot, but it appears rather likely that their promises of respecting resident privacy is a sham, since privacy expert Ann Cavoukian has abruptly resigned from the project, and issued a scathing letter stating that her concerns are being ignored:
Ontario’s former privacy commissioner has resigned from her consulting role at a company that is preparing to build a high-tech community at Toronto’s waterfront, citing concerns that a privacy framework she developed is being overlooked.
Ann Cavoukian resigned from her role from Google sister company Sidewalk Labs on Friday to “make a strong statement” she told Global News.
“I felt I had no choice because I had been told by Sidewalk Labs that all of the data collected will be de-identified at source,” she said.
But last Thursday, at a meeting, she said she found out that wasn’t the case with the company, which invested $40 million to develop technology for a downtown Toronto smart city project.
“Sidewalk said while they would commit to doing it, the other parties involved in these new entities they’ve created…they couldn’t make them do it,” she said.
………
Former Blackberry co-CEO Jim Balsillie called the project “a colonizing experiment in surveillance capitalism.”
………“Your personal information, your privacy is critical. It is not just a fundamental human right. It forms the foundation of our freedom,” Cavoukian said.
Google is evil, and it, and Facebook, and the rest of the Silicon snake oil sales men who try to make their money off of your personal data, need to be regulated aggressively.
Because they have just legalized recreational marijuana use nationwide.
You might also consider investing in ice cream sammiches:
Canada is to become the second country in the world to fully legalise marijuana, after the senate approved legislation paving the way for recreational cannabis to be legally bought and sold within the next two or three months.
“We’ve just witnessed a very historic vote that ends 90 years of prohibition,” senator Tony Dean told reporters on Tuesday after the vote to pass the Cannabis Act.
“It ends 90 years of needless criminalisation, it ends a prohibition model that inhibited and discouraged public health and community health in favour of just-say-no approaches that simply failed young people miserably.”
The federal government has said it would give provinces and territories – which are responsible for deciding how recreational cannabis will be distributed and sold – eight to 12 weeks after the legislation is passed to get ready for sales, but the exact date that sales begin will be set by the federal government.
Oh, Canada!
I will have a meal at the Antler Kitchen and Bar, if just because the chef and co-owner had such a beautiful way of dealing with protests from the nut-job vegan crowd:
The vegans planned their protest for the middle of the restaurant’s busy dinnertime shift.
The group of animal rights activists were incensed that Antler Kitchen & Bar, a locavore restaurant in Toronto that says it highlights regional ingredients, served foie gras and farmed meat “meant to run in the wild.” So a group of them stood in front last week chanting “you’ve got blood on your hands,” and holding a banner that read MURDER in hot pink lettering.
Then came the counterprotest.
Michael Hunter, a chef and co-owner of the restaurant appeared in its window with a raw deer leg and a sharp knife, when he began to carve up the meat in full view of the protesters, some of whom later said they were disturbed for days, according to news reports.
“I figured, I’ll show them,” Hunter told the Globe and Mail. “I’m going to have my own protest.”
The episode, which was captured on video by one of the protesters, has since drawn wide attention from local news outlets and social media. The event page created by the activists for their protest has since been inundated with comments, many harshly critical of their cause.
It also appears that this may have actually generated some more business for the restaurant in the long run:
Next time I’m in Toronto I’m dining at Antler. https://t.co/ymcOOu6bSk— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) March 27, 2018
In Ottowa, a New Year’s concert was canceled, and a hockey game was moved indoors because it was too cold for Canadians.
“Too cold for Canadians,” there was a phrase I never expected to say:
First no hockey, now no music. Ottawa has declared that it’s officially too cold – even for Canadians.
Heritage Canada has announced that a New Year’s Eve concert planned for Ottawa has been cancelled because of an extreme cold weather warning.
The party’s cancellation on Friday came after the federal government also moved an outdoor hockey tournament indoors and away from a C$5.6m (£3.3m) temporary ice rink installed on Parliament Hill.
The forecast overnight low for the nation’s capital on Sunday is -29C [-20°F] , nearly 20 degrees [36°F] colder than the seasonal average. Public skating and a fireworks show on the city’s Parliament Hill will go ahead as planned on Sunday night, but Heritage Canada warned revellers have been warned to dress for the weather and “prepare accordingly to prevent frostbite and other injuries”.
My suggestion would be for Canadians to watch the fireworks on TV.
The Canadian government is meeting with some of the country’s biggest labor groups to discuss Nafta as talks on the deal are set to resume.
Labor Minister Patricia Hajdu will meet union leaders Friday in a round-table discussion near Toronto to get input on the North American Free Trade Agreement. It’s the latest sign that labor has the Trudeau government’s ear in talks that could hinge, in part, on Canada’s push to raise working standards in both the U.S. and Mexico.
“That’s an indication of how much we value our labor movement, and we want to make sure as we go into negotiations that the rights of Canadian workers are protected,” Hajdu said in an interview with Bloomberg. “We’ll do everything in our power to make sure of that.”
Nafta talks resume Monday with a partial round in Washington, without political leaders at the table. Canada wants the U.S. to undo so-called “right to work” provisions in some states, while also calling on Mexico to raise labor standards. One of Canada’s top union leaders, Jerry Dias, has met often with the Canadian negotiating team and regularly predicts Nafta talks will fail.
Trudeau has been pushing to add “progressive” elements like labor, gender and the environment into all trade negotiations — a move derided by political opponents as “virtue signaling” that could make it tougher to get a deal. That strategy was a driving factor in the surprise false start this week of trade talks with China, a country that typically shuns the bells and whistles Canada wants in any trade deal.
Those added elements are among Nafta’s sticking points. Canada wants its two North American partners to ratify eight core conventions, including the right to organize, laid out by the International Labour Organization to make Nafta work. “We did put forward a very ambitious proposal on labor,” chief negotiator Steve Verheul told lawmakers this week. While Canada has adopted all eight and Mexico has nearly done so, the U.S. has adopted only two, Verheul said. “The U.S. is resisting that proposal.”
Canada’s call to claw back U.S. “right-to-work” laws, which ban unions from requiring workers to pay dues, is another obstacle. “The U.S. is also resisting that,” Verheul said.
As Yves Smith pithily observes, “Sounds like the Canadians are doing better by labor than our own Democrats.”
The history of the modern Democratic Party does not show meaningful support for organized labor.
When Republicans pass so-called “right-to-work ” laws, Democrats never repeal them, and the Obama administration dropped its support for the Employee Free Choice Act (Card Check) before the last states were called in 2008.
The positions pushed by Trudeau benefit workers in all three of the signatories of NAFTA, so I expect Democrats, or at least the current Democratic Party establishment to vociferously oppose labor justice, because they have sold their souls to big donors.
It appears that the Trump administration wants to effectively gut the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), which would be a very good thing:
U.S. ISDS PROPOSAL WOULD CUT TWO KEY PROTECTIONS: Expect USTR to put at least one of those “poison pills” forward at talks this week. The final U.S. proposal on investor-state dispute settlement comes not only with an “opt-in” provisions that effectively makes the whole process voluntary, but also rolls back two key investor protections private companies have been able to use under the mechanism in past U.S. agreements. U.S. business and agriculture groups have already signaled that a radical departure from the current U.S. approach to investor protections would be forcefully opposed by them.
I don’t expect this to actually happen.
Even if Trump wants to do this, and I think that it is likely posturing, I would expect resistance from Congressional Republicans and the non “Alt-Right” personnel in his administration to make this outcome highly unlikely.