[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Zoupa]

Yeah, I'm sure Ontario cops are super happy that the code civil doesn't apply to their province.

[Neil]

Yeah, I'm sure Ontario cops are super happy that the code civil doesn't apply to their province.

I'm sure they are.

[Barrister]

Let's talk on the gun registry.  I can't find much info on this, so I require help from our lawyer friends.

Quebec got the Feds to stop destroying data, so that, eventually, it could create it's own gun registry.  Ok, I get it.  I don't agree, but I understand the reasoning behind the judge's ruling.

But Ontario asked for the same, yet it was rejected and the data are now destroyed.

I totally understand why a ruling in a Quebec court will not apply to Ontario, despite it being about Federal law, but what I don't understand is how two similar cases get opposite verdicts?

A little research turns up this court decision:

http://canlii.ca/en/on/onsc/doc/2012/2012onsc5271/2012onsc5271.html

It turns out the Government of Ontario did not ask for the long gun data, rather it was a private group that applied to maintain the data.  And that of course is a huge difference.

[viper37]

that's what you get from 3 lines in a newspaper

Thanks BB

[Jacob]

Interesting piece on the place of facts in Canadian politics: http://allangregg.com/?p=80

The guy was a pollster for the Conservative party for more than a decade, for whatever that's worth.

[Neil]

That there is a left-wing kook.  After a quick scan of the article, he seems supportive of the gun registry and the Quebec students, and then goes on with more 'hidden agenda' nonsense.  The first one I can have some sympathy for, since many people are tricked by the police chiefs, but the second two are signs of kookiness.

[Barrister]

Interesting piece on the place of facts in Canadian politics: http://allangregg.com/?p=80

The guy was a pollster for the Conservative party for more than a decade, for whatever that's worth.

He was a pollster for the PCs, not the Conservative Party.

Sorry, the long diatribe about Orwell and 1984 just lost it for me.  I couldn't read it any further.  I assume at some point he must have started talking about Harper?

[crazy canuck]

The guy was a pollster for the Conservative party for more than a decade, for whatever that's worth.

Its actually worth very little.  I forget the details but there was a big falling out between the two back in the day and he has had a chip on his shoulder ever since.

What did you find interesting about the article.  Like BB I gave up after a few paragraphs of hyperbole and diatribe.

[Barrister]

The guy was a pollster for the Conservative party for more than a decade, for whatever that's worth.

Its actually worth very little.  I forget the details but there was a big falling out between the two back in the day and he has had a chip on his shoulder ever since.

What did you find interesting about the article.  Like BB I gave up after a few paragraphs of hyperbole and diatribe.

He was a senior strategist for the PC 1993 election campaign, and was responsible for the ad mocking Chretien.  He left party politics afterwards.

[crazy canuck]

The guy was a pollster for the Conservative party for more than a decade, for whatever that's worth.

Its actually worth very little.  I forget the details but there was a big falling out between the two back in the day and he has had a chip on his shoulder ever since.

What did you find interesting about the article.  Like BB I gave up after a few paragraphs of hyperbole and diatribe.

He was a senior strategist for the PC 1993 election campaign, and was responsible for the ad mocking Chretien.  He left party politics afterwards.

Ah yeah, now I remember.  I think it was more like he was fired...

[crazy canuck]

Finally someone is calling Suzuki on at least some of what he has been saying lately. From an opinion piece in the Globe

Popular environmentalist David Suzuki has described conventional economics as a form of brain damage. In a documentary called Surviving Progress, he quotes a fictional economist by saying, "who cares whether you keep the forest – cut it down. Put the money somewhere else. When those forests are gone, put it in fish. When those fish are gone, put it in computers."

Beyond tarring the economics profession, he displays a perplexing lack of understanding of basic economic concepts. First of all, none of the rules taught in undergraduate economics course advise the owner of a resource to deplete it as quickly as possible. Perhaps he was confused with the Tragedy of the Commons problem, where lack of private ownership causes a resource to be overused.

If so, then he is correct that renewable resources can be depleted to extinction unless the proper institutions are established. The work of economists such as (but not limited to) Arthur Pigou , Ronald Coase and Elinor Ostrom looks at ways in which common property resources can avoid a tragic ending. Economists studying the commons problem are not advocating resource depletion any more than oncologists are advocating cancer.

"But if you ask the economists, in that equation where do you put the ozone layer? Where do you put the deep underground aquifers of fossil water? Where do you put topsoil or biodiversity? Their answer is 'oh, those are externalities'. Well then you might as well be on Mars, that economy is not based in anything like the real world," Dr. Suzuki goes on to say.

Dr. Suzuki's remarks on externalities were clarified in an interview given to the magazine Common Ground: "I won't go into a long critique, but currently nature and nature's services – cleansing, filtering water, creating the atmosphere, taking carbon out of the air, putting oxygen back in, preventing erosion, pollinating flowering plants – perform dozens of services to keep the planet happening. But economists call this an 'externality.' What that means is "We don't give a shit." It's not economic. Because they're so impressed with humans, human productivity and human creativity is at the heart of this economic system. Well, you can't have an economy if you don't have nature and nature's services, but economics ignores that. And that's an unbelievably egregious error."

The idea that economists do not care about externalities is a strange one, given how prominently they are featured in economics textbooks. An externality is, simply put, a spillover effect. It is the unintended costs or benefits from a transaction or decision experienced by third parties (that is, they were external to the decision). It does not mean phenomena that are external to economic modelling or things outside the interest of economists. Since, as Dr. Suzuki points out, the world is full of externalities, the concept is crucial in economic research.

The use of externalities goes well beyond introductory textbooks, as they permeate nearly every field of economic research. Prof. Coase won a Nobel Prize in part for his Coase Theorem on externalities and Prof. Ostrom won the 2009 prize for her work on how common property resources can be managed at the local level. In every year of the past five, Nobel prizes have been given to economists who feature externalities prominently in their research: Leonid Hurwicz (2007), Paul Krugman (2008), Ostrom (2009), Peter Diamond (2010) and Thomas Sargent (2011).

Dr. Suzuki is certainly entitled to his opinions on the value of economic modelling. It is ironic, though, that the David Suzuki Foundation uses a great deal of economic modelling in its research. Why would a foundation, co-founded by and named after Dr. Suzuki, base its research on a fake science with flawed values?

Dr. Suzuki's ill-informed comments on the role externalities play in economic analysis does not hold up to scrutiny. He owes economists an apology.

Mike Moffatt is an assistant professor in the Business, Economics and Public Policy group at the Richard Ivey School of Business.

[Jacob]

Ah yeah, now I remember.  I think it was more like he was fired...

I was mislead about his credentials

[Josephus]

Canada's economic recovery not so rosy, Economist says:

http://www.economist.com/node/21564219

CANADA'S ruling Conservatives like to boast that their country weathered the world recession better than any other G7 member. Though they tend to attribute this success to their own policies, one of the main causes was Canada's conservative corporate culture. Its banks had barely dabbled in subprime mortgages when America's housing market imploded.

That caution, widely seen as a virtue during the financial crisis, now looks problematic in a recovery that is at risk of choking. In 2010 and 2011 Canada's GDP grew by an average of 2.8% a year, more than America's and than the economies of other rich commodity-dependent countries like Australia, New Zealand and Norway. The OECD now predicts it will grow by 1.9% in 2012, the same as New Zealand and less than the other three countries.


This slowdown is partly owing to lower prices for Canada's resource exports, weak demand for its goods from Europe and a strong currency. But home-grown factors have also played a part.

First, the government launched a stimulus programme in 2009 to prop up the economy. In 2010-12 its deficit averaged 5.1% of GDP. It is now retrenching. Stephen Harper, the prime minister, has promised to close the gap by 2015 via spending cuts alone. Total public expenditure in 2012 is forecast to be 5% below its 2009 peak.

Meanwhile, consumer spending has been spurred by a housing boom that is often compared to America's pre-crisis bubble. The central bank has kept its benchmark interest rate at 1% for two years, encouraging Canadians to pile up debt, particularly in mortgages. In Toronto house prices have risen by 8.3% in the past year. Mark Carney, the bank's governor, has issued repeated warnings about these growing liabilities. Consumers' ability to borrow and spend may be nearing its limit.

That leaves businesses as the last potential source of continued growth. Unfortunately, their penchant for accumulating rainy-day funds was only reinforced by the tumult of the recession. Their cash hoards now amount to 30% of GDP, three times the historical average. They have not stopped investing altogether—private-sector non-residential investment has almost recovered after falling by 21% in 2009—but they are not spending nearly enough to compensate for declining consumption and government outlays.

Moreover, Canadian private investment is divided evenly between machinery and equipment, which boost productivity sharply, and structures that store and transport goods, which have less of an impact. In the United States structures account for a far smaller share. This discrepancy may simply be a result of Canada's dependence on natural resources such as oil, which requires pipelines. But it means that the country's investments yield fewer gains in productivity than those south of the border do.

The government is doing its best to talk firms into investing. Mr Carney has demanded they start spending their "dead money", which earns little interest thanks to his low rates. "Their job is to put money to work," he said recently, "and if they can't think of what to do with it they should give it back to their shareholders." Jim Flaherty, the finance minister, sounded almost plaintive when he reminded a group of executives last month that the government had reduced tax rates, cut red tape and increased tax incentives to encourage them to invest. "Ultimately, it is up to you in the private sector to take advantage of all of these strengths and to invest, to create jobs and to grow our economy," he said. For now, however, their entreaties seem to be falling on deaf ears. Michael Holden, an economist at the Canada West Foundation, a think-tank, says that urging firms to move faster was like "people who honk at the car in front of them in a traffic jam".

The government is not relying on moral suasion alone. It has redoubled efforts to sign trade and investment deals to diversify Canadian exports away from slow-growth markets, where 85% of them are now directed, and towards racy Asian economies. Last month Canada and China signed an investment-protection pact.

Officials could also push education reform to encourage schools to train bolder executives, though that has not been a priority so far. Bill Currie of Deloitte, a consultancy, says Canada could produce managers more comfortable with risk by making university courses for businesses and engineers broader and more creative, and by teaching more economics in secondary school. But Mr Carney and Mr Flaherty will be long gone by the time such projects bear fruit. Just now the bully pulpit is all they have got.

[crazy canuck]

Canada's housing "bubble" has nothing to do with the reasons the Americans had their bubble.  How can the article at once say that our banks are too conservative but then a few paragraphs later say "many" say we have the same problem as the Americans.  In fact the article goes on the criticize businesses for being too financially secure!

The article mentioned but then ignored the real reason behind the projected slower growth - its because our dollar is so high.  And why is it so high - because we are considered a safe haven compared to many other economies.  Pretty poorly reasoned and articulated article.

[Josephus]

Or you're just disagreeing with it cause I posted it. It is a fairly right wing magazine, The Economist, you know.