Are there no workhouses?

Some holiday cheer from the Canadian neo-liberal think tank, Frontier Centre for Public Policy :

 Transcript :

"Labour laws in Canada are supposed to protect workers from exploitation and ensure their safety. But they are not always helping teenagers who are entering the workforce for the first time. Most provinces require that anyone younger than 16 or 14 obtain a permit to work or have written permission from their parents. Children under 12 are almost never allowed to work unless they might be helping on a family farm.  Teens who do work face many restrictions, including how many hours and which hours they're allowed to work. 

Some of these rules seem rather unnecessary. In Alberta, 12 to 14 year olds are forbidden from working more than 2 hours on a schoolday. Two hour workshifts four days a week are more disruptive than 4 hour shifts two days a week.
Minimum wage laws also make it more difficult for young people with no experience to find their first job. In the UK there's a lower minimum wage for people between the ages of 18 and 20 and for those under 18.  

Teenagers who live at home are often able to accept lower wages than adults.
It's time for governments to show more consideration for the needs of young people when developing labour policies."

Yes, why aren't more 12 year olds working four days a week for less than minimum wage?

I first got interested in FCPP back in 2007 when the Cons tapped them for policy advice on electoral reform. This was amusing because FCPP didn't seem very keen on electoral reform, although they were pretty big on private health care, denying the existence of climate change, disbanding the Canadian Wheat Board, and promoting bulk exports of water to the US.

Harper liked them well enough to give a guest speech at one of their fundraisers in Winnipeg in 2009 . This was the same year FCPP and the Fraser Institute co-sponsored the first Canadian tour of Lord Christopher "Global Warming is a Hoax" Monkton 

Currently on their main page they are featuring one of their research fellows, Wendell Cox,  also a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and Heartland Institute, and author of The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big-Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy.

Our media seem pretty comfortable quoting and reprinting them. From just the past few days :

CBC : 'Greenpeace dropout' Patrick Moore defends Kinder Morgan pipeline

   Climate change denier and not founder of Greenpeace Patrick Moore is environment chair at FCPP

Financial Post : When emissions disappear, so do jobs

 by a senior FCPP research fellow

while Global News is running a half-hour weekly podcast on Alberta politics with the VP of FCPP 

Yet somehow I'm not seeing any big media interviews and guest spots with Michael Harris of Party of One or Donald Gutstein of Harperism  - two authors who have recently written about how think tanks repackage neo-liberal ideas for easy public consumption through a media chain.
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RevCan : From Hayek to birdwatchers

The Broadbent Institute released a study yesterday suggesting Canada Con Revenue Agency tax auditors are targeting critics of the Harper government about their allotted 10% political activities while letting right-leaning groups off the hook. How very timely.

David Akin : 

"The group reviewed tax filings of 10 right-leaning charities, including the Fraser Institute, the Montreal Economic Institute, and Focus on the Family, and found that in each of the past three tax years, none of them declared spending anything on political activity."

Say, what? Focus on the FamilySpankingGaysAbortion Canada has forsworn all political lobbying out of their $9.4M mansion of many rooms in Langley,BC? When did that happen? Must have been some time after FotF CEO Darrel Reid left them to become Steve's director of policy and deputy chief of staff in the PMO from 2007 til 2010, followed up by his two year stint as VP of the Manning Centre. Easy enough to overlook FotF's public support in 2013 for Mark Warawa's abortion reach-around I guess. 

And Charles McVety's Institute for Canadian Values? No political activity there at all last year : 

“We, the undersigned, appeal to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Minister of Justice, Peter MacKay, to create legislation to protect our country’s little boys and girls from the horrors of prostitution.” 

they said in a petition protesting the Supremes having shot down previous anti-prostitution legislation. There was also another petition and presser to protest against Christian schools being forced to have "homosexual clubs" if anti-bullying legislation was passed.

Who else we got in the "No political activities" check box ?

Fraser Institute : Political activities? Ha ha ha ha.

Energy Probe Research Foundation? Hey, that's the tanky run by National Post columnist Lawrence Solomon!  Self-described as “one of Canada's leading environmentalists”, Mr. Solomon wrote a book called "The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud" based on his many denier NaPo articles.
Broadbent Institute quotes EPRF :

“Energy Probe was one of only two ‘pressure’ groups cited by the inaugural edition of The Canadian Encyclopedia for being effective in influencing our country’s policies. …EPRF also influences policy decisions. Our views are heard by provincial and federal legislative committees, environmental assessment boards, and other regulatory agencies when we testify at hearings on a wide variety of pressing issues.”

Macdonald-Laurier Institute : New kids on the block and Hayek devotee Brian Lee Crowley's other venue. Reducing business taxes, reducing government spending, privatizing the healthcare system, and "working toward a common security perimeter with the United States". Jim Flaherty did them a start-up fundraiser in 2010.

Montreal Economic Institute. Teamed up with the Fraser Institute a few years back to co-sponsor "International Leadership by a Canada Strong and Free", written by Mike Harris and Preston Manning :

" no reason to avoid action on our urgent national interest in pursuing a formal structure to manage irreversible economic and security integration with the United States."

As it happens, five of those ten think tanks the Broadbent Institute says the CRA is averting its eyes from - the Fraser Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, the MacDonald Laurier Institute, the Frontier Center for Public Policy, and the Montreal Economic Institute - all receive funding from Peter Munk of Barrick Gold through his Aurea Foundation. The heads of those 5 tanks are all members of the Mont Pelerin Society,  aka Hayek's "dealerships" , or what Donald Gutstein explains as the think tanks that repackage neo-liberal ideas for easy public consumption through a media chain: 

• Michael Walker, founding Senior Fellow of the Koch-funded Fraser Institute; 
• Brian Lee Crowley, founding President of Atlantic Institute for Market Studies and Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute;
• Peter Holle, President of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy;
• Michel Kelly Gagnon, CEO of the Montreal Economic Institute

Now I know what you're thinking - Jeez, Alison, a grand unified field theory conspiracy of birdwatching and Hayek? Is the Mont Pelerin Society going to become the new Bilderberg boogieman? Birds of a neo-liberal or libertarian feather flock and fund together - so what? 

Well, given that Harper has shuttered research stations, closed science libraries, muzzled scientists and public servants, gutted StatsCan, frozen FOI requests, and sidelined Parliament, his own MPs, and the national press -- given all that, if he is also successful at chilling out any organized charity opposition in the public sphere, then Hayek's so-called "dealerships" will be one step closer to entirely pwning promedia for forming public opinion.

My own theory? Whereas the rw tankies all marked the box "political activities" with "0%", the birdwatchers et al dutifully filled theirs in - making life just that much easier on CRA auditors.

FYI - Here's the CRA's guidelines for what constitutes political activities :

• i. explicitly communicates a call to political action (that is, encourages the public to contact an elected representative or public official and urges them to retain, oppose, or change the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in Canada or a foreign country);
• ii. explicitly communicates to the public that the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in Canada or a foreign country should be retained (if the retention of the law, policy or decision is being reconsidered by a government), opposed, or changed; or
• iii. explicitly indicates in its materials (whether internal or external) that the intention of the activity is to incite, or organize to put pressure on, an elected representative or public official to retain, oppose, or change the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in Canada or a foreign country.
• iv. explicitly no bees

Ok, so I made that last one up.

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Harperism : From Harper and Hayek to Koch and Coyne

Neo-liberalism : trickle-down, deregulating, deunionizing, globalizing free market privatization of government.

When Stephen Harper was studying under the "Calgary school" in the 80's, he became so enamored with the neo-liberalism of Austrian philosopher Friedrich von Hayek - guru to Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, the Chicago boys, the IMF, and the WTO - it formed the basis of his 1991 political economics thesis. 

Why, wondered Harper at the time, did the conservative revolution of Thatcher and Reagan bypass Canada and what could be done about it?

Happily, the Mont Pelerin Society - founded by Hayek and Milton Friedman of the Chicago School, and featuring Charles Koch CEO of Koch Industries as a board member - was there to help, founding and funding a plethora of free market think tanks in Canada via the corporate-funded neo-liberal prototype, the Institute of Economic Affairs in London UK. 

The Charles Koch Foundation on their Fraser Institute grant funding page :

"Since its inception twenty-five years ago at a series of conferences hosted by Milton Friedman and Michael Walker [executive director of the Fraser Institute from its inception in 1974], the Economic Freedom of the World Index has been used as a reliable measure of economic freedom in countries around the world."

As Donald Gutstein explains in Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada, this transformation was achieved through what Hayek called *professional second-hand dealers* - "newspaper columnists and editorial writers who parrot reports by neoliberal think tanks such as the Fraser Institute, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Frontier Centre for Public Policy, Montreal Economic Institute, and Atlantic Institute for Market Studies."

As it happens, the heads of all those think tanks he mentions :

• Michael Walker, founding Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute; 
• Brian Lee Crowley, founding President of Atlantic Institute for Market Studies [Atlantica!!!], and Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute;
• Peter Holle, President of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy;
• Michel Kelly Gagnon, CEO of the Montreal Economic Institute

are themselves all members of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Funding to link think tanks, politicians, and journalists comes from corporations and U.S. donors, but also Canadian billionaires like Peter Munk of Barrick Gold and his Aurea Foundation.
DeSmogBlog : 

The Aurea Foundation was founded by Peter Munk, the head of Barrick Gold, and is a major funder of a small but influential network of free-market think tanks in Canada, including: The Fraser Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, the Frontier Center for Public Policy, the Montreal Economic Institute and the MacDonald Laurier Institute.

Gosh, same bunch again.

National Post columnist/CBC political analyst/Manning Centre for Democracy advisor Andrew Coyne is a director at Aurea Foundation, along with former National Post editor Ken Whyte and, up until he became Stephen Harper's chief of staff, Nigel Wright.  

Hayek devotee, former advisor at the federal Department of Finance in 2007-8, and Coyne's friend, Brian Lee Crowley of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute is also particularly ubiquitous in promedia. Crowley has written regular columns for the Ottawa Citizen and G&M (where he spent two years on the editorial board) expounding on subjects dear to Harper : why all of Canada benefits from the tarsands, why we need more foreign investment, the benefits of two-tier healthcare and tankers off the westcoast, and why inequality is no biggie because poverty is a matter of character.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty hosted a private fund-raising dinner for Macdonald-Laurier Institute, advising invited corporate executives that he was giving MLI his personal backing and "I hope you will consider doing the same."

Charlie Smith at the Georgia Straight interviewed Gutstein two days ago :

"Gutstein makes the case that neoliberalism is far more sinister than simply having a desire for smaller government. A central tenet of his new book is that Harper is undermining democracy by marshalling the power of government to create and enforce markets where they’ve never existed before.

“He’s gradually moving the country from one that’s based on democracy to one that’s based on the market, which means that the decisions are not made by our duly elected representatives through the laws that they pass and the regulations that they enact,” Gutstein says."

Coyne responded : 

You can buy Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada directly from Lorimer Publishing. 

Book launch with expert panel on issues raised by the book and hosted by the author - Wednesday October 8, 5:30 to 7:30pm at SFU Harbour Centre 

OK, if you must have a sneak peak, here's a few pages on former Liberal leadership hopeful Martha Hall Findlay at the Calgary School of Public Policy advising Harper how he could successfully dump supply management without losing any votes in order to ease Canada's entry into the investor rights deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. 
The "second-hand dealers" went absolutely apeshit for that one.
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Edited @ 11:15 for clarity

Monday update : Well this will help to cloister the second hand dealers....

The Tyee : Postmedia could soon own almost every English newspaper in Canada. What could possibly go wrong?

Tyee also has an excerpt from Gutstein's book up today : Meet the people who made possible Stephen Harper's reign.

which in turn leads to this from Andrew Mitrovica :  The Hill media war chorus clears its throat … politely
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Haiti and the 'Devil's Curse'

with Peter Hallward, Anthony Fenton, and Danny Glover

"As thousands of tons of desperately needed food, water, and medical supplies piled up behind the airport fences-and thousands of corpses piled up outside them-Defense Secretary Robert Gates ruled out the possibility of using American aircraft to airdrop supplies: "An airdrop is simply going to lead to riots," he said. The military's first priority was to build a "structure for distribution" and "to provide security."

On Tuesday, a doctor at a field hospital within site of the runways complained that five to 10 patients were dying each day for lack of the most basic medical necessities. "We can look at the supplies sitting there," Alphonse Edward told Britain's Channel 4 News."

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Haiti - Five days later

updated below

The Haitian government has signed a memorandum of understanding formally transferring control of the Port-au-Prince airport to the US. From the Guardian :

"Flights seeking permission to land continuously circle the airport, which is small, damaged and with a single runway, rankling several governments and aid agencies. "There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti," Jarry Emmanuel, air logistics officer for the UN's World Food Programme, told the New York Times. "But most of those flights are for the United States military. Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed. We have got to get those priorities in sync."

France ­protested when an emergency field hospital was turned back. The foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said the airport was not for the international community but "an annexe of Washington", according to France's ambassador to Haiti, Didier Le Bret.
Brazil was also indignant when three flights were not allowed to land.

The Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières complained about flights with medical staff and equipment which were re-directed to the neighbouring Dominican Republic."

Obstructing assistance from other countries, refusing to allow people to escape, and sending in the military ... and right about now I'm guessing you're remembering the US relief efforts following Katrina.

Toronto Sun : Canada to take lead building 'New Haiti'

On January 25th, given he has nothing else to do til the Owelympic photo event, Steve is hosting a Haiti 'reconstruction' conference in Montreal for leaders from 16 countries which make up the Group of Friends of Haiti . While you're at it, here's something you guys can reconstruct ...

"In 1995, the IMF forced Haiti to cut its rice tariff from 35% to 3%, leading to a massive increase in rice-dumping from the United States. As a 2008 Jubilee USA report notes, although the country had once been a net exporter of rice, "by 2005, three out of every four plates of rice eaten in Haiti came from the US."

During this period, USAID invested heavily in Haiti, but this charity came not in the form of grants to develop Haiti's agricultural infrastructure, but in direct food aid, furthering Haiti's dependence on foreign assistance while also funneling money back to US agribusiness."

Tuesday update. It's now been a week since the quake. It's probably safe to assume that more people will die from infection and going without food, water, or medical care for a week than died in the initial quake. Aid groups still being refused permission to land at the airport .... but wait! Headline in today's Star : Canada rides to the rescue in Haiti
2,000 more soldiers flooding into Haiti with navy ships to help with security, relief

CBC : "About 7,000 UN military peacekeepers and 2,100 international police are in Haiti. Ban said Monday he asked the UN Security Council to add 2,000 troops and 1,500 police.
About 180 tonnes of relief supplies arrived Saturday, but scores of people on the street say none of it is reaching them.

Geneva-based Doctors Without Borders said: "There is little sign of significant aid distribution."

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