Climate Change: The same problems everywhere

Here in Aotearoa, our right-wing, ATLAS-network-backed government is rolling back climate policy and plotting to raise emissions to allow the fossil fuel industry a few more years of profit. And in Canada, their right-wing, ATLAS-network-backed opposition is campaigning on doing the same thing:

Mass hunger and malnutrition. A looming nuclear winter. An existential threat to the Canadian way of life. For months, the country’s Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has issued dire and increasingly apocalyptic warnings about the future. The culprit? A federal carbon levy meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

In the House of Commons this month, the Tory leader said there was only one way to avoid the devastating crisis: embattled prime minister Justin Trudeau must “call a ‘carbon tax’ election”.

Unlike our ETS, Canada's carbon tax is fully and directly rebated - meaning most people actually profit from it. Like our (sadly repealed) clean car discount, its the polluters that pay. But Canada's Conservatives and their far-right fossil think-tank backers have used waves of misinformation to pollute the infosphere and try and hide this fact. If they succeed, not only will Canada fail to meet its climate targets - most Canadians will actually be financially worse off. But you wouldn't know it from the institutional liars on the right.

...and all so a dying industry can eke out a few more years of profit. But technology change - solar and the electrification of transport - is going to bury them eventually, if policy doesn't first. The problem is that that may be too late to avoid horrific damage.

The "R" word

The world is currently going through a surge of inflation - some of it due to the ongoing breakdown in the global supply chain, some of it due to disruptions to oil and food supply due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but much of it due to pure corporate profiteering. And in Canada, the leader of the left-wing NDP has suggested a solution: taxing and redistributing those excess profits:

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh says the Liberal government should respond to the rising inflation crisis by taxing excess corporate profits and redistributing the money directly to Canadians, with “ordinary families” receiving as much as $1,000.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Singh said: “We see clearly that corporations are making these massive profits, they’re making record-setting profits, and their record-setting profits are directly contributing to the cost of living going up.”

If companies were just increasing their prices to meet rising costs “then their profits would be similar to previous years. But they’re not,” Singh said.

This seems to be a fair and effective way of ameliorating the problem. So, how about it Labour? Or is "redistribution" a dirty word for you?

Another abusive prorogation in Canada

Something from a few days ago: Canada is showing us exactly how not to do Westminster democracy, with another abuse of prorogation powers to suspend Parliament and kill a corruption investigation:

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is facing accusations that his decision to prorogue parliament is little more than an attempt to cover up an ethics scandal – and walk away from his duties during a pivotal moment in the pandemic.

On Tuesday afternoon, Trudeau asked Julie Payette, governor general, to prematurely end the current parliamentary session. He vowed to resume on 23 September with a speech from the throne, followed by a confidence vote.

The move to “reset” the government because of Covid comes amid committee investigations into the WE charity affair, in which Trudeau and former finance minister Bill Morneau face accusations of an improper financial relationship with the international development organization. Both men have apologized for not recusing themselves amid apparent conflicts of interest.

Prorogation will suspend all government business, including the investigation.

This isn't the first time this sort of abuse has happened. Back in 2008 then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued parliament to prevent the opposition from voting out his minority government, then did it again a year later to impede an investigation into Canada's collaboration with foreign torturers. Trudeau of course promised to end such abuses. But as usual, he lied.

So how do you stop it? We simply don't do this sort of thing in New Zealand. And partly that's because we've just got out of the habit, and moved away from this monarchical business of the monarch summoning Parliament every year in favour of the House controlling its own calendar, and away from monarchist ceremony (in the form of an archaic "speech from the throne") every time the government wants to make a major policy announcement in favour of the Prime Minister simply making a Ministerial statement or calling a press conference and telling us (or maybe, a mini-budget). Similarly, we don't need it - as Trudeau claims is the case in Canada - in order to hold a confidence vote: there are several scheduled throughout the year as part of the regular budget process, and the government can hold one whenever it wants. We don't even need it now to bring back Parliament during an adjournment in an emergency: the Speaker can do that themselves. The only time the Governor-General ever summons Parliament now is after elections, or in the never-happened-yet case of an emergency after it has been dissolved, and both of those are governed by statute - that is, by Parliament. Canada could learn from this, and adopt similar arrangements. And their constitution would probably be a lot healthier for it.

New Fisk

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Canada's electoral system is broken

Canadians went to the polls today in parliamentary elections, and appear to have re-elected blackface wearer Justin Trudeau. Unfortunately, they use first-past-the-post, and they've provided a perfect demonstration of how unfair this system is:

Party	Seats	% Seats	% Vote
Liberal	157	46.4%	33.1%
Conservative	121	35.8%	34.4%
Bloc Québécois	32	9.5%	7.7%
New Democratic Party	24	7.1%	15.9%
Green Party	3	0.9%	6.5%
Other	1	0.3%	2.4%

[Results from Elections Canada]

Yes, the Liberals got fewer votes than the Conservatives, but about 30% more seats. Meanwhile the Bloc got 50% more seats than the NDP on half the vote, while the Greens a sixth of the seats they were entitled to. While I don't like the Canadian Conservative party, I think they will be well-justified in feeling cheated. Not that they'd come out ahead in coalition talks, given that no other party likes them, but the Liberals are going to have a much easier time of support negotiations than they should.

Results like this make it clear: Canada needs a fair electoral. It needs proportional representation, so that every vote counts.

Oh Canada

Canada is having an election in the next few months, and (perhaps because their Prime Minister is so nice and reasonable) they have a party running on a platform of Trumpism and climate change denial. But there's a twist: the latter means that it will be illegal for anyone in Canada to state the scientific fact that climate change is real:

A pre-election chill has descended over some environment charities after Elections Canada warned them that discussing the dangers of climate change during the upcoming federal campaign could be deemed partisan activity.

An Elections Canada official warned groups in a training session earlier this summer that because Maxime Bernier, the leader of the People’s Party of Canada, has expressed doubts about the legitimacy of climate change, any group that promotes it as real or an emergency could be considered partisan, said Tim Gray, executive director of the advocacy group Environmental Defence.

The Canada Elections Act dictates that advertising by third parties, like environment groups, can be considered partisan if it promotes or disputes an issue raised by any party or candidate during the campaign period, even without mentioning that party or candidate by name. If the ad campaign on that issue costs at least $500, the third party has to register as such with Elections Canada.

Fortunately, they repealed the clause which would have made it illegal for anyone else in the world to talk about climate change.

Obviously, this is a nonsensical position. If a politician says the sky is green or that 2+2=5, everyone gets gagged from saying otherwise, in any context, unless they include a promoter statement? If a politician says they don't believe in the germ theory of disease, no-one else can say "wash your fucking hands"? In NZ, we avoid this problem by a "may reasonably be regarded as" clause, which rules out such silliness. Canada's definition of "election advertising" does not include such a clause. Of course, its still subject to the affirmation of freedom of expression in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and you'd think that would imply a reasonableness test. But the only way to find that out is to get prosecuted and challenge it in court. Which is simply a terrible way to do electoral law, especially given the consequences for getting it wrong (notably, charities face deregistration if they engage in "partisan political activity" - a definition which until now hasn't included environmental advocacy).

Hopefully Elections Canada will reverse this obviously unreasonable advice. If not, well, I guess we'll find out what civil disobedience to electoral law looks like.

New Fisk

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Sanity in Canada

Canada has taken a major step towards ending America's insane "war on drugs", by legalising recreational cannabis use:

Recreational cannabis use in Canada is to become legal after the Senate approved the legislation.

The measure is expected to come into effect in two or three months, with the exact official date to be set by the government. Prime minister Justin Trudeau has previously emphasised that the Cannabis Act will be implemented without delay.

The landmark agreement, making Canada the first G20 country to legalise recreational use, came to pass after the Senate voted 52 to 29 to approve the legislation.

It means adults will soon be allowed to carry up to 30g of dried cannabis (or its equivalent) in a “public space”, which includes personal vehicles. Those caught with more than 30g could face up to five years in prison. It will remain illegal for one adult to sell cannabis to another, unless they are a licensed retailer.

Exactly what that means will vary from province to province, but one thing which is guaranteed is far fewer arrests, far less police time wasted on how people choose to entertain themselves, and far fewer lives ruined.

Meanwhile in New Zealand, the government has promised to give us a vote, but not to be bound by the result. Which shows us how deceitful and dishonest they are on this issue, and how committed they are to perpetuating the persecution of recreational drug users.

When extension becomes effective refusal

I've had a lot of bad OIA experiences, and my fair share of Ministers and officials playing games with extensions to delay access to documents until an issue is out of the media. However, I've never had anything as bad as this Canadian requester, who had an agency give itself an 80 year extension on an Access to Information Act request:

A federal institution has given itself what may be the longest-ever time extension to respond to a citizen's request under the Access to Information Act — at least 80 years, which will delay the delivery of documents to 2098 or beyond.

"I may get those records in my next lifetime," 70-year-old Michael Dagg, the requester and longtime user of the act, said in an interview.

Dagg asked Library and Archives Canada (LAC) for files from Project Anecdote, an RCMP investigation into money laundering and public corruption that was launched in May 1993.

No charges were ever laid in the massive probe, which concluded in 2003. The voluminous Mountie files were eventually turned over to the government archives.

"You will note the extensive list of responsive records … and we will need up to an 80-year minimum (bringing the due date to the year 2098)," LAC advised Dagg in writing last week, warning that consulting other departments would add more time.

This seems to be the longest AIA extension in Canadian history, and it effectively amounts to a refusal. There's good reason - the file is 780,000 pages, so there's a lot to go through and redact - and in New Zealand it is likely that it would simply be refused as requiring substantial collation and research. That at least would be honest; instead Library and Archives Canada is pretending that they're going to grant the request, while pretty obviously having no intention of doing so in practice - the files will be released when they would be required to be made public under public records law, and not before. Which means this "extension" is simply an official exercise in deceit.

A weird way to do electoral reform

When New Zealanders voted for electoral reform in 1993, we knew exactly what we were voting for. A royal commission had looked at the alternatives. An initial referendum had narrowed the choice down to MMP. And Parliament had already passed the law enabling the new electoral system to come into force if people voted for change, so we knew exactly how many MP's we'd be getting and the rough shape of electoral boundaries.

They do things differently in Canada. In 2017, voters in British Colombia elected (under FPP) an NDP-Green coalition government. That government has just announced a referendum on proportional representation, the third in the province's history. But while they've decided everything about the referendum - a postal vote, with 50%-plus-one required for success, and no turnout requirement, they haven't actually decided what form of proportional representation they'll be voting on. The actual referendum question will be decided later, by regulation. And the referendum won't be binding - instead, if it passes, the legislation will have to be passed (and new electoral boundaries decided) before the next election.

This isn't the first time British Colombia has been here. In 2005 and 2009 they voted on adopting STV. In 2005 it won a majority, but the government had strapped the chicken by requiring 60% support, ensuring the continuation of first-past-the-post. In 2009, STV failed, largely because the lack of information of electoral boundaries allowed real fears about representation of rural areas (which would have required multi-member districts larger than some countries). While the current British Colombia government apparently favours MMP - they've been paying attention to how it works in New Zealand - failing to nail down the details of the system could leave them with the same result.

Canada's spies illegally retained metadata

Another day, another story about illegal spying. This time from Canada, where the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was found to be illegally retaining the metadata of innocent third-parties who called (or were called by) the targets of interception warrants:

When CSIS intercepted the communications of innocent people between 2006 and 2016 “all” the metadata related to those communications was retained in a controversial database, a top secret memo obtained by the Star suggests.

The document relates to CSIS’s Operational Data Analysis Centre (ODAC) and a now-discontinued program that stored data intercepted from the service’s targets — and people who were in contact with them at the time.

The Federal Court ruled in 2016 it was illegal for the service to indefinitely keep data on people who posed no threat to Canada’s national security — such as the family, friends or coworkers of CSIS targets — for future analysis.

Apparently CSIS claims it doesn't know how many people it illegally spied on in this manner - a simple database search apparently being beyond them. But its highly disturbing. These people were innocent, deemed irrelevant to any national security investigation. And yet their information was retained indefinitely for future mining. That's been stopped now, but it makes you wonder what else they're doing.

It also makes you wonder whether it is happening or has happened here. While New Zealand law has always required irrelevant information lawfully gathered under an intelligence warrant to be destroyed, its obviously open to game-playing about what's considered "irrelevant". And even if it is irrelevant for national security purposes, it can always be passed on to other agencies, either foreign intelligence services or the New Zealand police, if it "may assist" in their jobs. And given the "collect it all" mindset of the spies, they may very well decide that even the most innocuous information may assist one of these agencies, if not now, then at some indeterminate stage in the future (perhaps when a hypothetical incident occurs, and they ned to do network analysis to find any suspicious links). In the wake of the Canadian discoveries, I think our spies owe us some answers on this.

New Fisk

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Justice for Canada's stolen generations

Between 1965 and 1984, Canadian authorities stole thousands of First Nations children from their parents in an attempt to eradicate their culture. Today, the victims of that attempted genocide finally won the right to compensation:

After a bitter legal battle that has lasted nearly a decade, a Canadian judge has ruled that the government is liable for the harm inflicted on thousands of First Nations children who were forcibly removed from their families and adopted by non-indigenous families.

Between 1965 and 1984, around 16,000 indigenous children were fostered or put up for adoption in an episode which became known as the “Sixties Scoop”.

Ontario superior court justice Edward Belobaba’s ruling Tuesday found in favour of survivors of the operation and their families, who argued that the forced removal robbed the children of their cultural identity and caused emotional damage that has resonated for generations.

“There is … no dispute that great harm was done,” Belobaba wrote. “The ‘scooped’ children lost contact with their families. They lost their aboriginal language, culture and identity. Neither the children nor their foster or adoptive parents were given information about the children’s aboriginal heritage or about the various educational and other benefits that they were entitled to receive. The removed children vanished ‘scarcely without a trace’.”

The victims are aiming for C$1.3 billion in compensation. Hopefully they get it. But that's not enough. There's a name for "forcibly transferring the children of a group to another group in order to destroy it, in whole or in part": genocide. Canada is a party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the surviving architects and footsoldiers of this policy need to be prosecuted for it.

Another spy agency caught illegally hoarding metadata

The Canadians aren't just spying on journalists. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has been caught illegally hoarding metadata:

A Federal Court judge says Canada's spy agency illegally kept potentially revealing electronic data about people over a 10-year period.

In a hard-hitting ruling made public Thursday, Justice Simon Noel said the Canadian Security Intelligence Service breached its duty to inform the court of its data-collection program, since the information was gathered using judicial warrants.

CSIS should not have retained the information since it was not directly related to threats to the security of Canada, the ruling said.

"Ultimately, the rule of law must prevail," Noel wrote, adding, "without it, the actions of people and institutions cannot be trusted to accurately reflect the purpose they were entrusted to fulfil."

There's shades of GCHQ here, which was recently found to have spied illegally on the public for 17 years. And it really makes you wonder whether the New Zealand SIS or GCSB are doing the same thing here. Five Eyes agencies share techniques and strategies, and if one has been doing something for a long time, its a good bet that the others are too. Clearly there's a consensus among the Five Eyes that mass domestic metadata surveillance is a useful counter-terrorism tool. But our Parliament has never approved such a thing, and it seems to go well beyond the particularised suspicion the warrant mechanism has been sold to us on. I think we need some assurances that our intelligence agencies are not doing this. And if they won't give such assurances, we can only conclude that they are guilty and need to be shut down.

Canada spies on journalists

Another week, another example of police spying on journalists - this time in Canada:

Rights campaigners are among those sounding the alarm over the erosion of press freedom in Canada after it emerged that police in Montreal had spent several months monitoring the phone of a journalist in order to identify his sources.

La Presse, one of Canada’s oldest and largest newspapers, said on Monday that at least 24 surveillance warrants were obtained by Montreal police to track the phone of columnist Patrick Lagacé. The warrants enabled the force’s special investigation unit to track Lagacé’s whereabouts using the GPS in his phone, as well as monitor incoming and outgoing text messages and calls.

The revelations left Lagacé shaken. “I was appalled,” he said. “I was living in the fiction that police officers wouldn’t dare do that, and in the fiction that judges were protecting journalists – and hence the public – against this type of police intrusion.”

Lagacé isn't alone. It turns out that Quebec police have spied on at least six other journalists (and another one today), all in an effort to uncover their sources, often for the dubious purpose of shutting down leaks. All of these cases of spying would have been judicially authorised, though as with the Hager case here there are natural questions about whether they disclosed all that they should have done in seeking the warrants. The Quebec government has set up an inquiry to try and get the issue out of the media, but the fundamental problem is that Canadian (and New Zealand) law allows this sort of spying in the first place, with no special protection for the public interest work journalists do. The solution is to write those protections into the law, rather than just relying on caselaw, to create a strong presumption against police and spy agencies interfering in the work of the media.

New Fisk

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Climate Change: Carbon taxes work

Climate change deniers and fossil fuel shills like to claim that putting a price on carbon will "destroy the economy". They're wrong:

In 2008, the British Columbia Liberal Party, which confoundingly leans right, introduced a tax on the carbon emissions of businesses and families, cars and trucks, factories and homes across the province. The party stuck to the tax even as the left-leaning New Democratic Party challenged it in provincial elections the next year under the slogan Axe the Tax. The conservatives won soundly at the polls.

[...]

The tax, which rose from 10 Canadian dollars per ton of carbon dioxide in 2008 to 30 dollars by 2012, the equivalent of about $22.20 in current United States dollars, reduced emissions by 5 to 15 percent with “negligible effects on aggregate economic performance,” according to a study last year by economists at Duke University and the University of Ottawa.

The tax made fuel more expensive: A gallon of gas, for example, costs 19 United States cents more. It encouraged people to drive somewhat less and be more careful about heating and cooling their homes. Businesses invested in energy efficiency measures and switched to less polluting fuels.

Of course, British Columbia did it right, recycling the revenue into reducing other taxes. And as a result, public support for the carbon tax has increased. They could still do better (e.g. by recycling into emissions reduction as well), but the core policy lesson stands.

Its also a picture of what might have been. Up until 2005, we were on track for a carbon tax with revenue recycling. But Winston Peters and Peter Dunne vetoed it after the 2005 election. And so now we're saddled with an ETS which simply doesn't work, and sees us effectively spend hundreds of millions a year subsidising pollution.

New Fisk

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Elections matter

An example of how elections matter: yesterday, Canada elected a new government. And today, its pulling out of the US bombing campaign against Iraq and Syria:

Canadian Liberal prime minister designate Justin Trudeau has confirmed that Canada will withdraw its fighter jets from the US-led mission against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

In his first news conference following the sweeping majority Liberal victory in Canada’s federal election, the visibly fatigued leader said he had spoken with US president Barack Obama in a phone call during which he discussed his intention to pull Canada’s fighter jets out of the anti-Isis campaign.

[...]

He did not set out a timeline for the withdrawal. Canada currently has six CF-18 fighter jets taking part in the US-led bombing campaign. They were due to remain in the region until March 2016.

Good. And hopefully they'll stay out. Meanwhile, it seems the trick is to force political candidates to make foreign policy commitments, so they can then be held to them.

O Canada

Canadians went to the polls today in federal elections, and voted to kick out Stephen Harper and replace him with a Liberal majority government. Good riddance. Harper was a polluting warmonger who had eroded Canadians freedoms; he'd tried to win another term by running on a platform of intolerance and racism (as suggested by his Australian election advisors, Crosby-Textor, who have built a business on running such campaigns). Hopefully his defeat will be a lesson to other Canadian parties not to try that again.

Meanwhile, the result is once again a reminder of how messed up Canada's archaic electoral system is: on current results, the Liberals are winning 56% of the seats on 41% of the vote, the NDP are getting 10% of the seats on 18% of the vote, and the Greens are getting 0.3% (1 seat) on 3% of the vote. Canada has been a three-party system for a long time, and its voting system needs to catch up: they need proportional representation.