There is a middle ground on MLA compensation

{A shorter, pithier version of this piece appeared in the Williams Lake Tribune on May 24, 2007---MC .}

The majority report of the Independent Commission to Review MLA Compensation, which recently came up with a new structure for paying provincial politicians in British Columbia, was perfectly competent within the terms of reference that it was given by the government, and it got the sort of result that the government was no doubt expecting. But, as Malcolm X once famously said, a chicken can't produce a duck egg. There is another perspective--one rooted in the theory of democratic and parliamentary government--which I think indicates a somewhat different outcome from the one recommended by two of the three commissioners and put into the legislation introduced last week by the B.C. Liberal government .

By "democratic" I do not mean simply the principle of majority rule. If everyone voted on what they thought everyone else deserved, the result would likely be a reduction in everyone else's pay check. (The fall in aggregate income would likely trigger a major recession.) It also helps little to refer to the mere fact that under a parliamentary form of government MLAs have both the right and the responsibility to vote on their own compensation. (For most of us, that would be highly inflationary.)

Instead, I refer to a sensibility that comes from an historical sense of how a parliamentary democracy is supposed to function, and of the spirit in which a candidate for elected office offers to be a representative of other citizens--i.e. sometimes as a delegate of constituents' wishes to the government; more often than not as representative of party/leader priorities to the constituents; and sometimes as a valued source of independent judgement concerning the public interest. It is difficult to place a market value on these services, since they are really duties of citizenship that we all share. There was no debate about rates of pay for the legislators of Ancient Athens; but today we concentrate the exercise of these duties in a few hands because it is impractical for all of us to engage in the practice of self government in a large and complex society. Hence a need to compensate those who do specialize as representatives, for the hard work and personal sacrifice that they acccept on our behalf.

The government's proposed base level salary of $98,000 per year is the first major increase since 1997, but at 29% is well above the approximately 10% increase in average hourly wages in the province since that time. The Commission was evidently making a different comparison --with legislators in other jurisdictions, and (particularly with respect to the premier and cabinet) senior managers and executives in both the public and private sector.

It is reasonable to ask whether our MLAs have been making enough. B.C.'s provincial MLAs in 2006 earned an annual basic salary of just $76,100 (in contrast, your federal MP earns a base salary of $150, 800), with the premier earning just 40% of what the federal prime minister earns and provincial cabinet ministers making about half of what their federal counterparts make. While the assumption of extra civic duties on our behalf ought not to be motivated principally by money, neither those who are beginning their careers and starting to raise families nor those who are already accomplished in other fields should have to make prohibitive sacrifices. At the very least, it is important that they be compensated for the work that they do in the public service.

So it is just possible that a one-time adjustment of 29% can be justified because an annual income in the $100,000 range reflects the value that we place, or ought to place, on the role of the elected representative in our system of government. The salaries earned by provincial MLAs in Alberta and Ontario are relevant to this determination, as is the old adage "you get what you pay for". To say that being a MLA ought to be like jury duty , composed of a cross section of ordinary British Columbians for low pay, is too extreme a view, unless we wish to discourage professionalism in political careers entirely. (Who wants to serve on a 8-or-12 year jury?) The notion that ordinary MLAs ought to be paid well is also buttressed by the traditional theory of parliamentary government, according to which premiers are merely "first among equals" and that cabinet ministers owe their authority to the legislature, and not the other way around.

On the other hand, the thinking of the "Independent Commission"--handpicked by premier Gordon Campbell, with the word "independent" apparently tagged on by the premier's office for the purposes of political spin--is dominated by standards of executive compensation and the growing gap that it sees between politicians and senior executives. Since this gap is perceived as being greatest at the level of the premier and cabinet, the Commission proposes even bigger raises for them-- to an additional 90% of basic salary and 50% respectively. But while the Commission is certainly right to recognize that "over the past six years, the salary gaps between legislators and other senior managers have widened", it totally omits saying that that is because the gap between senior managers and everyone else has widened. Nowhere does the Commission mention that there is a widespread debate about the justice and fairness of how much corporate executives are paid. Since politicians are not selling their expertise in the market, but rather representing everyone, this fact deserves more importance than the Commission gives it. From my point of view, it suggests that cabinet ministers may only be entitled to the same degree of increase that all members arguably merit. Unless, of course, you believe that Rich Coleman or David Zirnhelt are the public sector equivalents of bank vice-presidents or law firm partners, and that there is nothing wrong with recent trends in private sector executive compensation.

Rafe Mair and David Schreck both argue that since it is a myth that ordinary MLAs have power, they are not underpaid. But it is jarring to the democratic ear to suggest that premiers should be rewarded for concentrating power in their office or that MLAs should be punished for losing it. By that logic we would have to give premier Campbell a multi-million-dollar raise. I think that there are strong reasons for paying MLAs according to the theory of parliamentary democracy rather than according to its actual practice. To do so could help to bring the reality more in line with the theory, by encouraging more citizens to take pride in being an MLA instead of viewing it as a mere stepping stone to cabinet. To do otherwise would be to reinforce and entrench what is at best a regrettable and at worst a deplorable state of affairs.

The Commission does list a range of other factors that it considers relevant to the issue of compensation. These include: long hours, loss of family time and privacy (all of which MLAs surveyed indicated that they had failed to appreciate when they were first elected), loss of income and even job prospects, since "employment or contract work will be very difficult to find due to the stigma associated with having been in public office, this being particularly so if their return to private life follows a change in the governing party." Democratic principle suggests that we should compensate our elected representatives fairly for helping us govern ourselves, in full recognition of the frequently demanding nature of their work. However, that does not mean fully indemnifying politicians for the inherent uncertainty of elections, or for failing to do their homework before they decide to run for office, or for their own lack of prestige in the wider community. A balance must be struck.

Public opinion surveys could have been designed to guide the Commission's findings, but they are used in this Report principally to illustrate the public's "lack of understanding .... of both the duties and levels of MLA compensation." This, combined with the small number of submissions, caused the Commission to be "cautious in interpreting the opinions received when formulating [its] recommendations." Yet the experience of the five -member commission of ordinary citizens set up in 1996 by the Clark government to review MLA pay --to say nothing of the more recent Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform --illustrate perfectly how well ordinary citizens, when properly informed about the issues, can be trusted to give fair and valuable input.

It is probably significant that the lone academic member of the Commission, UBC Business professor Sandra Robinson, dissented from business lawyer Sue Paish and former judge Joseph Wood on the issue of pensions, with Prof. Robinson favouring a less generous package than did the other two. (Unfortunately, her specific reasons have not been published.) In place of the current "Group RRSP" scheme, to which the Government contributes 9% of basic salary (or $6,849) and to which MLAs may contribute up to a matching amount, the Commission recommended the "reinstatement of a defined pension benefit plan" based upon a benefit accrual rate of 3.5% of the highest 3-year average earnings, up to a maximum of 70% of the 3-year average earnings. The taxpayers' contribution would rise to 37% of the members' total current salary. There are also generous provisions for the "retroactive purchase of pensionable years" for MLAs back to May 2005, while "[d]etermination of buy-back provisions for service as an MLA for any years between the termination of the previous defined benefit pension plan [in 1997] and May 17, 2005 should remain within the jurisdiction of the Legislative Assembly Management Committee". According to the Commission, "[a]fter extensive consultation with various pension experts, we have concluded that this pension plan is fair both to members and to the public." According to several observers, this new plan is about twice as rich as the standard BC government pension for public servants working the same number of years.

One would think that the NDP Opposition would seize upon the Robinson dissent and show its solidarity with other public sector workers by explicitly vowing to bring in a standard pension plan for MLAs if it forms the next government. Instead, it has focused upon the least objectionable, but most visible, aspect of the compensation package, the basic MLA salary. Donating their salary increases to local charities may represent a pragmatic response to the "take it or leave it" corner that the Liberals have painted the NDP into, serves as a decent response to a law that probably shouldn't take effect until after the next election, and may help some New Democrats to get re-elected, but it hardly represents an adequate policy for the future. One must ask: if a large increase in deferred (pension)income is acceptable, why is a large increase in current salary income "obscene"?

I suggest that a good MLA salary of about $98,000--$100,000 (taking effect only after the next election), with an additional 30% for cabinet ministers and 60% for premiers, along with a standard public service pension plan appropriate to those levels of remuneration and a generous severance and transition package for politicians who lose their seats in elections, strikes the right balance. Such a package recognizes that we have been under-valuing the services that these citizens have provided, not because they have an expertise that could have been hired by a corporation or law firm at a higher rate of pay, but because they have been performing our duties of self-government for us. Any public-spirited citizen with political ambition--even those with young families-- should be able to accept these terms, whether they represent a financial sacrifice or not. Any public-spirited citizen who chooses not to run for office should see this as a reasonable price to pay for the representation which frees us for other pursuits.

Future revisions of MLA compensation should be linked to a number of factors, the most important being the average rise in incomes and real wages of British Columbians. (I suggest that the formula attach at least 50% of the weight to these variables.) They should also continue to be overseen by "independent commissions", though preferably not ones hand-picked by a premier who has swung wildly from the right-wing populism of his anti-pension days when he was Leader of the Opposition to a right-wing elitism that appears to be more sensitive to executive compensation and golden parachutes. They should be mindful of what the private sector pays and what federal MPs get, but not to the point that they de-link entirely from what is happening to average citizens or to the rest of the public sector. There is a middle ground here, and it also happens to be the one which is most congenial to a healthy democracy.

Government By Voucher?

Rethinking the Welfare State: The Prospects for Government by Voucher
By Ronald J. Daniels and Michael J. Trebilcock. (New York: Routledge, 2005).

{The following piece appears in vol.33 no. 3 of Canadian Public Policy (September 2007). I felt that it was desirable to publish a review of Daniels' & Trebilcock's important book in CPP, where economists and members of the social policy community ought to feel equally at home. In addition, the current issue of The Economist contains an article touting new research from Colombia, Sweden, and several American states showing that education voucher schemes work in raising academic standards---"Free to choose and learn", May 5th pp. 73-74. But, as the following review makes clear, I remain skeptical about vouchers as a panacea that will work wonders without doing harm, at least in B.C. or Canada---MC}

Remaking the Welfare State: The Prospects for Government by Voucher will sit comfortably beside Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom; Arthur Okun’s Equality and Efficiency: The Great Trade-Off; and Osbourne & Gaebler’s Reinventing Government. It rests less comfortably with Janice Stein’s Cult of Efficiency, Joseph Heath’s The Efficient Society; or the critiques by Christopher Pollitt and Donald Savoie of New Public Management. Many students of social policy and the welfare state who think that they already know all of the pros and cons of this subject, or who are prone to dismiss vouchers out of hand, will benefit from a careful reading of this book, if only because it will force them to re-examine their assumptions and sharpen their arguments.

Daniels and Trebilcock begin by pointing out that vouchers (defined as “tied demand-side subsidies”) are simply a policy instrument. As such, they are compatible with any legitimate goal of the welfare state, such as regulation of public morality; building social solidarity; insuring individual risk; promoting economic stability, and providing an equitable distribution of resources. The authors provocatively assert that “a decision to invoke the voucher instrument does not in itself reveal much about the underlying character of the policies being pursued by the sponsoring government” (p.2), and that opponents who think otherwise routinely make an “illogical connection between means and ends” (p.12). Their primary claim is that choice by individual consumers of public services on the demand-side, coupled with competition on the supply-side, with explicit, targeted subsidies following consumers rather than suppliers, ensures that decisions regarding the consumption and production of public services will be made efficiently, and that citizen beneficiaries will be empowered. Their secondary claim is that, where their primary claim does not appear to be borne out by the evidence, “this is often because of design failures” (p.13).

Sharp-eyed skeptics may already see what they consider to be potential cracks in the argument. The authors admit “that is not to say that reliance on vouchers is bereft of any normative content whatsoever” since enabling citizen choice in the consumption of publicly funded goods and services increases “the scope for individual autonomy” (p.2). Could the autonomous citizen-consumers thus enabled (or their suppliers) make choices that are subversive of certain policy goals? While some critics of vouchers may confuse or elide means and ends, advocates of vouchers may too sharply distinguish them, over-simplifying what is an evolving and complex reciprocal relationship between citizens and between citizens and the state. Not all political “voice” is calculated to advance the entrenched interests of public-sector suppliers. And “design failures” could serve as a convenient carpet under which to sweep all kinds of problems—many relating to social inequities and asymmetries of information among putatively equal “consumers”, posing difficulties for regulators of voucher markets at least as daunting as those faced by bureaucrats under current arrangements.

Nevertheless, this book makes the interesting point that many of our existing policies already display degrees of “voucherness”. For example, Canada’s medicare system is in effect a tied demand-side subsidy paid by a single government payer directly to physician and hospital-suppliers on behalf of patients, making it a limited form of voucher which nonetheless restricts consumer choice and supplier competition. Targeted subsidies to students coupled with deregulation of fees could be one answer to perennial debates about how to maintain both quality and quantity of post-secondary education (which can be jeopardized if fees are frozen) and affordability and access to that service (which can be jeopardized if fees are not frozen). The authors tout the opportunity afforded by the “North American void in childcare provision [which] offers policy-makers a clean slate on which to work…comparatively free from the political impediments that often characterize the reform of established government services” (p.144). In these and five other policy fields (food stamps, low-income housing, legal aid, primary and secondary education, and labour market training), they do a thorough and creditable job of showing that “design challenges” can, in principle, be met.

For Daniels and Trebilcock, the identification of basic health care as essentially a Rawlsian primary good only strengthens the argument for vouchers, since “removing the provision of such services from the discipline of the market …introduces a number of perverse incentives for both providers and purchasers” , although they admit that these incentives “are not easily addressed” and that “striking the right balance between efficiency and equity is an extremely difficult enterprise” (p.102) . In general they prefer “managed competition” (i.e. the Clinton plan, or the Dutch system) to either the Canadian “fee for service” or the UK “purchaser /provider split” models, on the grounds that private health plan providers or insurers competing directly for the dollars of end-users, while still being obligated to provide a state-defined minimum level of services, are likely to be both more cost-conscious and better providers of consumer choice than either Canadian doctors and hospitals billing the government or British health care providers relying on historical relationships with District Health Authorities (p.114). They make a good case on the demand side for a universal health card with contributions paid on a sliding scale based on both usage and income, and on the supply side for capitation (lump sums for patient management, with improved incentives for preventative treatment) as the method of payment to physicians.

Yet they also state that “[w]e see no reason why for-profit entities should be prevented from participating in [hospitals] or indeed any other segment of the health care sector” [p.119, emphasis added]. This is a sweeping statement to make in the absence of any discussion of how a voucher-based welfare state might be more exposed to international trade rules (an ironic omission in view of Trebilcock’s recognized expertise in international trade law). My best guess is that the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) Article I:3 exemption for services “supplied in the exercise of governmental authority” would be much less likely to extend to Canadian public services under voucher-based policy regimes because of the way that that GATS provision is defined in Article I:3 (c) in terms of the conditions of supply, i.e. “supplied neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers”. Would Canadian public health and education measures still be exempted from NAFTA national treatment provisions under Annex I of NAFTA after they have been “revolutionized” in the way that Daniels and Trebilcock advocate? A single payer voucher scheme serving clearly defined public ends might meet the Annex II definition of a “social service established or maintained for a public purpose”, although the U.S. Office of the Trade Representative has already made statements which indicate that it would likely have an opposing view. In addition, the NAFTA Chapter Eleven expropriation clause enables U.S. or Mexican companies to bring compensation claims for any “indirect expropriation” of their investments in violation of Canada’s national treatment obligations.

These concerns illustrate the larger point that foreign corporate for-profit suppliers of public services would not just become efficient “instruments” of competitive delivery. They would also become powerful rights-bearing political actors , who would use legal and political channels to advance their own ends, making attempts by government to reverse competitive and private provision or extend public provision more expensive and difficult to do.

In sum , the analysis and evidence presented in Reinventing the Welfare State is sufficiently persuasive to warrant a second look at voucher experiments in post-secondary student aid, labour market training, legal aid, and perhaps daycare. Nevertheless, the case for the over-all superiority of a pure voucher system in the more complex and multivalent areas of K-12 education and healthcare remains unconvincing. Daniels and Trebilcock give an honest accounting of the challenges of avoiding socially negative “tipping points” in program design, calibrating voucher schemes to minimize cream-skimming, extra-billing, opting out, various moral hazards and so on; but perfecting the welfare state may require something more than economic or regulatory acumen. It may take a sense of common destiny and purpose, and an ability to enforce and revise collective will in the public interest. These are democratic qualities, not just political ones, and they could be even harder to come by in a voucher world.

Mark Crawford
Assistant Professor, Centre for State and Legal Studies
Athabasca University

markc@athabascau.ca

Two books that every social democrat, labour activist and self-styled progressive in Canada should read

In the winter of 1995, I taught a course on Comparative Political Economy at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine. One subject stands out in my memory, both because of its poignancy in that historical and geographic context and its relevance to our own: the role of labour in economic policy. Were there still agreeable, meaningful options that latter-day social democrats with a simple, direct, undeceived intelligence could believe in, but that would still serve to distinguish them from their fellow liberal democrats?

I remember being particularly fascinated by the example of the Swedish Labour Organization (LO) and its role in Swedish economic policy making, typically under Social Democratic governments. In the early 20th century, socialists and trade unionists were able to create a strong and unified organization of the working class. Swedish employers responded by creating a highly centralized national employers' association, forcing a comparable parallel centralization on the unions. Paradoxically, the very intensity of class conflict in Sweden had created the conditions for organized class cooperation and peaceful industrial relations.

During the long period of Social Democratic rule from 1932 to 1976, the LO came to exercise considerable power, but its leadership also came to recognize and accept a quid pro quo: that the welfare of Swedes depended not just on the strength of socialist ideas and working class organization , but also (in this small, open export-driven economy), on the operation of a dynamic and competitive capitalist economy that could compete internationally and increase the size of the national economic pie.

The neoliberalism and economic globalization of the past two decades have not left the Swedish model of cooperative social democracy unscathed, but they have not destroyed it, either. This enduring success can be explained in public choice terms. A sufficiently large percentage of the labour force is directly represented in the LO that leaders and members alike can see that by propping up inefficient industry at the expense of more profitable sectors, they end up hurting themselves. The costs of such policies cannot simply be displaced onto others--there are no "others". Hence unions are not only useful in sharing the benefits of growth more equitably, but also in sharing the costs of adjustment and decline more equitably as well. Back in 1994-95, I couldn't help but think how much NDP governments then struggling with the difficult economic conditions in Canada could have benefitted from that kind of industrial relations.

That is why Bob Rae's From Protest to Power: Personal Reflections on a Life in Politics (Viking, 1996) and Janice MacKinnon's Minding the Public Purse: The Fiscal Crisis, Political Trade-Offs, and Canada's Future (McGill-Queen's, 2003) are political memoirs of a particularly instructive kind. They describe social democratic governments attempting to implement their values under the most straitened of economic circumstances. The combination of recession, free-trade adjustment, high interest rates and debt crisis that characterized the Canadian political economy in the early and mid-1990s did not force these leaders to simply adopt the policies of their Conservative opponents, but it did force a painful re-thinking of many cherished beliefs on the left. Foremost among these was the commonly-held view that "globalization" was primarily an ideological construct, and that the unions and NDP governments should simply refuse to go along with it.

Rae claims that when organized labour failed to support his proposal for a "Social Contract" in Ontario that would in effect alter collective agreements to save jobs and reduce public debt, it missed a glorious opportunity to demonstrate to Canadians that unions were not a narrow, self-seeking interest group. Based on the historical success of the Swedish model, I am inclined to agree with him.

"Collective bargaining had shown its strength in dealing with a world of more; the issue was, for both the private and public sectors, how well could collective bargaining respond to a world of less. ...Darryl Bean of the Public Service Alliance of Canada opined that he couldn't see any difference between us and the worst of the Conservatives...[Bob] White asked, "Why can't Ontario just do like the Reichmanns and declare bankruptcy, maybe pay 50 or 60 cents on the dollar?...I learned that the leadership of the public-sector unions were more interested in the "sacredness" of contracts than they were in the importance of jobs, more concerned with protecting the full benefits of survivors than the fate of the people tossed overboard. They, as does Buzz Hargrove, think that this makes them better socialists. I disagree. It puts short-term expediency before long-term solidarity. ...Every social democratic government in existence across the world has had to learn this lesson, and every trade-union leadership has had to come to terms with the consequences. I am convinced that if we had been able to persuade the leadership of the trade-union movement, and the professions, of the necessity and logic and fairness of what we needed to do, we would still be in government today." (From Protest to Power, pp.206-207, 210, 216.)

MacKinnon relates a similar story:

"In 1993 Saskatchewan led the way out of the quagmire with the bold stroke of a four-year plan to actually balance the budget...by leading the way out of the debt trap and doing so with compassion for the less fortunate. ...To my horror, the response to my argument was that there was only one choice that was both politically sensible and would save us from abandoning fundamental NDP principles --default. ...I would have liked to ask Bob White if his idea of default meant offering up the pensions of his members, since many pension plans had invested in what were considered safe government bonds on which White and the others were now proposing that we default." (Minding the Public Purse, pp.115, 118-19, 121).

In crass political terms, the Romanow-MacKinnon strategy can be termed a success because Saskatchewan has continued to elect NDP governments; the Ontario NDP and its Social Contract can be considered a failure (even by Rae's own admission) because of the NDP's resounding defeat in 1995. But arguably both have been vindicated by the contrast between their policies and those of their Conservative opponents. In Saskatchewan, it is plain (if ironic) that the Tories' cynical plan of building hospitals in constituencies where there were more gophers than people helped to create a mess that Romanow and MacKinnon had to clean up. In Ontario, simply applying neo-conservative policies would hardly have softened the blow of losing 300,000 manufacturing jobs between 1989 and 1992; nor could it have saved Spruce Falls or DeHavilland, the restructuring of which were two of the most notable achievements of the Rae government. It might have brought on the Walkerton crisis a few years sooner, however.

In British Columbia, one of the greatest achievements of the Harcourt NDP government was the way it was able to draw upon its strong roots in both the labour movement and the environmental movement in order to hammer out broader social compromises which formed the basis for the land use plans and the government's approach to the treaty process. (The B.C. Liberals had a much flimsier basis for their policies, and still operate far too much according to the wonkish whimsy of Gordon Campbell.) Unfortunately, the NDP's failures also prove the point: labour-environment compromise; an emphasis on consultation, transparency and due process; and a commitment to institutional and constitutional reform in the first half of the nineties gave way to "process is for cheese", "environmentalists are the enemy", and "proportional representation is for losers" in the late nineties. MacKinnon's observations about British Columbia during this period are worth repeating, for they illustrate the costs of abandoning consensus-building, due process, and compromise as guiding principles:

"The resignation of Harcourt and the defeat of Cull in the 1996 election dramatically changed the dynamic of the finance ministers' club. Cull's replacement, a law professor, Andrew Petter, was bright and moderate, but as he readily conceded he was not calling the shots. While Harcourt had run a decentralized ship in which able ministers such as Cull could chart a course and get the backing of both premier and cabinet, the new premier, Glen Clark, ran a much more centralized operation. A demoralized Petter regularly bemoaned his new premier's practice of calling finance officials to his office to vet their recommendations before treasury board meetings, without the courtesy of even informing the finance minister. A finance minister who is not calling the financial shots and does not have the backing of the premier is like a rudderless ship being tossed to and fro by each passing wave.[So that's how the Fast Ferries project got past the treasury board officials!--MC] The advent of Clark also marked a change in British Columbia's approach to the rest of Canada. ...With politics rather than policy driving the agenda, Clark took a much more hard-line approach to Ottawa, a tack that was more in tune with British Columbians' distrust of the east but made reaching compromises difficult, if not impossible..." (Minding the Public Purse, pp. 163-64).

Rae and MacKinnon help us to see that the Bob Whites, Buzz Hargroves, and Glen Clarks of this world, whatever their undoubted merits as negotiators and political combatants, are also increasingly anachronisms. The lessons they hold for governments attempting to navigate the uncertain economic waters of the early 21st century are mostly of the negative kind.

What to Do About Betty Krawczyk

Are any of you really in a quandary about what the justice system should be doing with 78-year-old Betty Krawczyk?

The title of her book, Lock Me Up or Let Me Go, appears to complain about our collective ambivalence on this matter, but I don't see it as very difficult question at all. She tells of her struggle to prevent logging of old-growth forest in the Elaho Valley, and of her time in the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women. Now, she has once again defied a court order, refusing to sign an undertaking not to go near logging trucks until the end of her trial. Elected government, according to Betty, is not doing a good enough job of balancing social, ecological and economic interests and therefore she refuses to obey it. She even refuses to obey courts that have ruled on the law's application to her specific case. Yet she must recognize that we would live in a state of anarchy if everyone could pick and choose which laws to respect; it is not even clear that the trees would be safer in such an environment. She should therefore be willing to accept the consequences of her actions. She should go to jail for contempt of court, and ten months seems a reasonable sentence for a repeat offender like Krawczyk.

With respect to her prison conditions,however, the issues are a bit murkier. Here is what she wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Rich Coleman, in 2003:


"When any women is incarcerated she has a human right to cleanliness. To clean bedding and a clean mattress, to clean clothes and to clean femine (sic) hygiene, to clean food and clean eating utensils, and a space to put her belongings. All of this becomes problematic if not impossible under the conditions of extreme over crowding that is now the norm at BCCW."

Let's see--is she saying that women who are incarcerated are treated differently from how men are treated? Or that they are not, but that they should be, because females need more closet space? Since her view of what ails the world is rooted in an analysis of "male violence", she should clarify--is she a liberal feminist demanding equal treatment (i.e. that men stop treating women like "animals"), or is she a radical feminist complaining that similar treatment (i.e. incarceration according to lower "animal" standards of males) is somehow unfair to the fairer sex?

I get the feeling that, if only life were more comfortable behind bars for women who engage in civil disobedience, Betty would be a happier person. Maybe it is actually her own ambivalence that she is complaining about.--MC

John Kenneth Galbraith, R.I.P.

The late John Kenneth Galbraith has been receiving many backhanded compliments from his eulogists on the political right. His old friend and skiing partner William F. Buckley Jr. repeated this quote, from his review of Galbraith's last book, The Culture of Contentment, in his article "John Kenneth Galbraith, R.I.P." on May 03, 2006:

"It is fortunate for Professor Galbraith that he was born with singular gifts as a writer. It is a pity he hasn't used these skills in other ways than to try year after year to bail out his sinking ships. ...I for one hope that the next time a nation experimenting with socialism or communism fails, which will happen the next time a nation experiments with socialism or communism, Ken Galbraith will feel the need to explain what happened. It's great fun to read. It helps, of course, to suppress wistful thought about those who endured, or died trying, the passage toward collective living to which Professor Galbraith has beckoned us for over 40 years."

Does this accurately describe Galbraith's career? It strikes me as rather odd that we should venerate the economic genius of John Maynard Keynes's macroeconomics, the enormous contributions of Chamberlin and Robinson to incorporating a real-world picture of imperfect competition into microeconomics, Schumpeter's insights into the evolution of modern capitalism, Berle and Means' theory of managerial control, the wit and social acuity or sociologist Thorstein Veblein, or the journalistic style of Henry Luce, and yet not revere the man who best combined all of these various qualities. But I won't regale my readers with an account of Galbraith's life, or re-hash all of the debates about his theories, which are widely discussed on the internet and elsewhere.

Instead, I wish to concentrate on what Galbraith had to say about the central, implicit assumption underlying Buckley's quote: that his brand of liberalism was a "passage to collective living"--in other words, a slippery slope to socialism, a "road to serfdom" in Hayek's phraseology. For a cardinal tenet of all right-wing neoliberals and neoconservatives is that there is no happy medium, no optimal "Third Way" which finds a stable and pragmatic balance between laissez faire and socialism. In stark contrast, John Kenneth Galbraith was the 20th century's original Third Way theorist. Arguing as much against socialists as against conservatives (there is an overlooked comparison to George Orwell here), the young Professor Galbraith once gave a stern Scottish lecture to the more utopian English musings of radical social reformer and biologist Julian Huxley:

"Broadly speaking the choice for postwar social organization lies somewhere between two poles. ...One cannot regulate without impairing the freedom of contract and the control over private property, for private property is nothing more nor less than the privileges which are associated with private ownership. One cannot have perfect individual freedom and at the same time a greater effort to regulate relations between individuals in the community interest. ...So far as individual comfort, health, recreational opportunities and the like are not forthcoming otherwise, the central authority provides them as a matter of course." (Cited in Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics, p. 133, emphasis added). This strikes me as the sensible core of Galbraith's approach to economics: the market delivers much that is of value, but (even in the long run, as Keynes had famously said) it also fails to deliver much that is of value.


While conservatives like George Will and Bill Buckley may see The Affluent Society as condescending and elitist--because it calls into question "consumer sovereignty" in an economy dominated by giant corporations spending billions of dollars on advertising--the twin themes of want creation and the imbalance between public and private goods seem as relevant today as they were when Galbraith's book was first published almost 50 years ago. Indeed, the very successes of conservative politicians in limiting the welfare state have made it so. Had John Kenneth Galbraith simply couched his arguments in the technical language of externalities, market failure, social efficiency, asymmetric information and game theory, no doubt more of his fellow economists would agree.

Milton Friedman, R.I.P.

Why the Liberals Should Have Chosen Bob Rae

{“It’s the delegates, stupid”. When I appeared on CBC Radio's Daybreak program on the morning of Monday Dec.4 to read the entrails of the Liberal Leadership Convention, I had to admit that I was slightly surprised by the results. I shouldn't have been. In the end, neither the leadership debates, nor the length of the campaign, nor the speeches, nor the public opinion polls concerning "winnability", nor the steadily gathering endorsements by MPs and leadership candidates in Rae's favour really mattered much. What really mattered was the swiftness and the discipline of the Kennedy-Dion alliance. Kennedy --despite finishing just 2 votes behind on the second ballot--immediately went to Dion, bringing 92-94% of his delegates with him. Ontario MP Mark Holland, Justin Trudeau, and BC Dion organizer Mark Marissen deserve much of the credit for cementing this deal.

Dion is a decent and intelligent figure, genuinely committed to taking greater action on climate change, but I have been more impressed by the character and intellect, as well as political skills, of Bob Rae. I relished the prospect of him skewering Emerson and Harper over Softwood Lumber and besting Harper in political and parliamentary debate. I liked the idea of someone with Rae's qualities having governed the nation's largest province under the most difficult of circumstances, and then going on to be prime minister--something that never happens in our country, which punishes such "baggage". And I liked the story of the Comeback Kid, which apparently has greater resonance in America than it does here in Canada.}


---A Decima Survey in released November 18, 2006 showed that 37 per cent of respondents said they would vote Liberal or consider doing so if Mr. Rae were the leader, compared with 34 per cent for Stéphane Dion, 33 per cent for front-runner Michael Ignatieff and 31 per cent for Gerard Kennedy. Mr. Rae appeared to have pulled even among Ontarians, who've apparently forgotten or forgiven his rocky tenure as an NDP premier in the province.

---The battle-ready former premier was feared by Conservatives as someone who already had experience bringing down Conservative minority governments. Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, The Order of Canada recipent, chief of staff to Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and former President of The Institute for Research on Public Policy, had this to say on CBC Radio after the Convention: “My feeling, and the feeling of most Conservatives, was that we dodged a bullet when the Liberals failed to choose Bob Rae as their leader”

--- My former boss in the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Tim Armstrong, was a Deputy Minister under 4 Ontario premiers from 3 different parties. Uniquely qualified to compare and assess their leadership qualities in context, he had this to say(I reproduce the article in full) :

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Political mythmaking, Ontario style
The drumbeat theme of those opposing Bob Rae's Liberal leadership candidacy is, "A smart guy, with a terrible record as premier of Ontario." It's difficult to fathom whether this myth is the product of ignorance, malice, or both.

I was appointed as a Deputy Minister by Premier Davis and served under him and his three successors, Premiers Peterson, Miller and Rae. None of those premiers would claim to have achieved perfection. But the suggestion that the Rae government did not live up to -- and in some areas exceed -- the standards and accomplishments of its predecessors on behalf of the people of Ontario is untrue.

When Bob Rae assumed office, the province was faced with an economic crisis -- a deepening recession, unprecedented competitive challenges from a Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., high interest rates, an overvalued dollar and a budget deficit of several billion dollars rather than the surplus predicted by the prior administration. Over 300,000 manufacturing jobs were lost between 1989 and 1992.

When the Rae government approached the end of its term, Ontario led the way in growth among the provinces and had one of the strongest economies in the G7. Surveys showed strong consumer and business confidence.

Private sector investment was back with billions in capital spending. Labour productivity was at an all-time high, as were manufacturing exports. Health-care costs were under much improved control as part of a broader strategy that was reducing the deficit.

My most memorable work with Premier Rae involved the restructuring of Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie and Dehavilland Aircraft in Downsview. From the outset, the premier made it clear that he was determined, in the interests of the employees, the affected communities, and the provincial economy, that both companies would survive. His personal efforts in achieving success exceeded, in dedication, intelligence and shrewd negotiating skills, anything that I had previously experienced.

The costs incurred by Ontario in these restructurings, as well as those extracted from the federal government, have been recovered, many times over, in tax revenues alone. And the dismal alternatives to success -- weeds in the companies' parking lots, padlocks on their gates, and thousands of discouraged unemployed workers, their families on welfare or seeking social assistance -- were all avoided. These achievements were repeated, at Spruce Falls Pulp & Paper in Kapuskasing and other communities across the province, under the Manufacturing Recovery Program, a program designed and implemented with the full involvement of the Premier.

Bob Rae was, from the outset, under attack from many in the business community. After taking office, he faced vigorous opposition from organized labour, principally for his efforts to curtail what he perceived to be excessive wage demands and his commitment to share the necessary cuts in government spending fairly. In my experience in the labour relations field, if you displease both labour and management, you are likely on the right path.

There were other noteworthy achievements during this time. The Rae government successfully promoted the Jobs Ontario program, with increased investment in child care and training; incentives to employers to hire people on welfare and those whose employment insurance had run out; the elimination of payroll taxes on any new employee hired -- policies that, combined, created in excess of 50,000 jobs.

Ontario's welfare system was renewed, focusing on the needs of children living in poverty; the child-care budget was expanded; hundreds of thousands of poor families were removed from income tax rolls; and the new Trillium Drug Plan gave affordable access to all in need of therapeutic drugs.

The Rae government placed a renewed emphasis on aboriginal affairs, leading to the first Statement of Political Relationship between a provincial government and aboriginal leadership, acknowledging the need for government-to-government relations and providing new funding to address native poverty, with emphasis on housing, child care and improved sewer and water facilities.

Finally, as premier, Bob Rae held a deep commitment to the success of our federal system, and in particular, one that would accommodate Quebec's goals and aspirations, without jeopardizing Canadian national unity. He played a leadership role with the First Ministers that produced an affirmative vote in Ontario on the national referendum on the Charlottetown Accord.

Many other reforms were set in motion, many of which have been continued by successive governments. As to the Liberal leadership race, may the best candidate win. But in the process, the trumped-up myth that Bob Rae presided over an ineffective government needs to be put to rest.

Tim Armstrong was Ontario's Deputy Minister of Labour and Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology and was the province's Agent General for the Asia- Pacific region, 1986-1990.

Source: The Hamilton Spectator
Monday, August 14, 2006
by Tim Armstrong
Page A15