A licence to extend the state's power

This seems like a good day to share my Sept. 11, 2002, column from the Vancouver Sun. 

There's something at once wrong and frightening about the fervent celebration of the attacks on the United States one year ago.

Wrong, because it rests on the false pretence that Sept. 11 was a defining moment that changed everything, for everyone.

And frightening because it is being used to justify mindless conformity, an erosion of individual rights in favour of the state -- and even war.

It was a terrible day. But most people have placed that devastating event into some appropriate place among the other terrible and joyous moments that define a life. About 40,000 children were born in B.C. last year. For those families, 2001 won't be the year the World Trade Center was destroyed; that pales beside the wonder of a new life beginning. About 315 British Columbians killed themselves last year. For those families, it will be the year that someone was lost, and something in them died, too.

The attacks were terrible. But they were not different in purpose or effect than the decades of horrors that the current generation has witnessed.

Even their scale is not beyond comparison. Some 3,000 people died last Sept. 11. Twenty times as many died when the second bomb fell on Nagasaki; twice as many died in Bhopal after the 1994 Union Carbide disaster; about the same number of people in Africa will die of AIDS while you are at work today.

Last Sept. 11 was an awful day, but everything didn't change because of it. We still go to work, look for happiness, slide into despair. We raise our children. Just like always. And one year later, I am much less frightened of a terror attack than I am of the governments supposedly on my side.

The state -- Canada or Afghanistan, America or Iraq -- always wants to increase its power over the people. It's not sinister; if you are in charge of keeping order, then you will want to make that task easier -- surveillance cameras on every corner, fewer legal right for citizens. But it's an imperative that means citizens must always be prepared to push back.

For a year governments have been using Sept. 11 as a licence to extend the state's power. And an uncertain public has failed to push back.

Airport security may have needed upgrading, perhaps through improved training. But a $24-per-ticket surcharge is taking $400 million a year from travellers' pockets and has wounded regional airlines and the communities they serve. The take from Vancouver alone is enough to hire more than 600 extra security staff; the need has never been demonstrated.

The federal government likewise made no effective case for $8 billion in increased security spending over the next five years, money it could never find to help Canada's poorest children or reduce the tax burden.

And now the U.S. is pressuring Canada to spend more on defence, even after a 10-per-cent increase this year. (The Americans spend $400 billion a year on their military, more than the next 25 countries combined. To match their level of per-capita spending, Canada would have to more than triple its defence budget.)

Sadly, it's not just about money. The Bush administration quickly passed the "USA Patriot Act" (the name, commanding mindless acquiescence, should sound alarm bells.) Americans lost rights they had treasured for 200 years. The right to legal representation, to a speedy and public trial, to protection from unjustified searches -- all gone. Americans can now be jailed indefinitely and secretly, without a trial.

Canada didn't go as far. But the prime minister can now outlaw groups based on secret evidence. Police gained the right to arrest someone who has broken no law on the suspicion that person is involved in terrorist activities. You can now be jailed for refusing to answer police questions.

And then there is war. Canada fought in Afghanistan, to little obvious effect. And now we are being asked to fight in Iraq, not because of anything that nation has done, but because the U.S. believes Saddam Hussein may some day do something. This is not a war on terrorism; it's a beating for a nation the U.S. simply wishes had a different leader.

Enough. Everything did not change in a few terrible hours one year ago. We have rights and freedoms and values worth defending, and a commitment to the rule of law that should not be abandoned when a government finds it convenient.

We will betray our past and our future if we allow ourselves to be defined by a single day of terror.

The dangerous Mr. Scheer

[The Run is The Tyee's election newsletter - you can subscribe here. I wrote this for a recent edition.]

Andrew Scheer’s harmless schtick has worked for 15 years as he’s avoided doing doing anything notable while climbing the political ladder. Now he wants to be prime minister. And his policies would be dangerous.

My long career has included stints writing newspaper editorials, a form with its own clichés. A favourite is the anguished cry “How many more must die before…” followed by whatever the writer wants to see happen, from a neighbourhood stop sign to global disarmament.

It works because politicians do make life-and-death decisions, from sending troops to war to raising speed limits. It’s part of the job.

But Scheer’s campaign promises, despite his genial blandness, seems particularly deadly.

Consider Scheer's response to the opioid crisis, which killed 4,588 people last year. It ignores evidence, and apes the Harper government’s wilful blindness to reality. Scheer promises to invest in treatment and recovery, yet another education campaign “highlighting the benefits to young Canadians of staying drug free” and promises money to cities to pick up needles.

All good. But not a word about keeping people alive, from safe consumption sites to expanded access to poison-free drugs to wide distribution of naxolone kits to reverse the effects of overdoses.

Which means more people will die as a result of government policy. In B.C., research has shown that without those measures more than twice as many would be dying of overdoses.

Overdoses killed 4,588 Canadians last year. Scheer’s policies would condemn more people to preventable deaths. (The other parties’ positions have their own huge flaws, but none are quite so indifferent to the human toll of the opioid crisis.)

Scheer has pledged to cut Canada’s foreign aid budget by 25 per cent, claiming falsely that he could find the $1.5-billion savings by ending aid toward relatively well-off countries “like Italy, Brazil, Turkey and hostile governments like Iran.” That’s not true, as John D. Cameron and Robert Huish pointed out. Aid to those four countries totals just $13 million. Cutting $1.5 billion would require ending development aid for desperately poor countries, which means deaths, decline and deteriorating world security. (After three years in Honduras, I left impressed by our contribution and convinced most Canadians would be proud of the work being done on their behalf.)

Do we even need to talk about the climate crisis? Scheer’s phoney climate plan was, I wrote in The Tyee, an attempt to pretend to care about the issue, with no goals, no commitments, no real actions. It’s a climate plan for people who don’t believe climate change is an issue.

Which again means more preventable deaths in Canada and around the world.

Finally, a brief warning about Scheer and women. He claims access to abortion would not change if the Conservatives take over. Anti-abortion groups don’t believe him — they helped Scheer win the leadership and are staging a national campaign to elect Conservatives in swing ridings. Scheer, one major group says, is “arguably the most pro-life leader the Conservative Party of Canada has seen since John Diefenbaker.”

But even if you accept Scheer’s claims, you should be worried that he’s the choice of people who want to limit women’s rights. An August poll in the U.S. dug into attitudes around abortion. It included 10 questions on attitudes on various aspects of women’s equality. Things like “are women too easily offended,” “does access to birth control affect women’s equality,” “is the way women are treated in society an important issue”

And across the board, people who favoured limiting access to abortion also rejected the idea that gender equality is an issue that needs to be addressed. And those people — or their Canadian counterparts — are cheering for a Scheer victory.

I’ve been involved in covering about a dozen federal elections. Often, the differences between parties aren’t really that great.

Not this time. 

My Tyee piece: Budget’s inequality measures a start, but more progress depends on us

Governments don’t talk about inequality much these days. The B.C. government’s Throne Speech didn’t even include the word.

And while the provincial budget took useful steps to address growing inequality, it also showed how decades of anti-tax rhetoric have limited governments’ options — at least if they hope to get re-elected.

Take the BC Child Opportunity Benefit, the initiative most clearly targeted at inequality.

It’s an important step. The benefit — up to $1,600 for a family’s first child, $1,000 for a second and $800 per additional child — will make a huge difference for poor families, and society when it’s launched in October 2020. The single greatest determinant of life outcomes is childhood poverty. A small amount of extra income can mean sufficient food, needed medicine, a trip to the library or better child care and a lifetime of savings for society.

And the government’s approach is more sensible than the 2015 BC Liberal program that it replaces. That provided less money — a maximum of $660 a year — and only for children under six, while the new program extends support to 17. 

More importantly, the Liberals’ program wasn’t aimed at the children and families who needed it most. A single parent working full-time at minimum wage got the same benefit as a family with an income of more than $100,000.

Which is simply stupid based on any pragmatic cost-benefit analysis of the program.

The budget offers a more sensible, effective and progressive approach. 

If you're interested enough to read the rest, head here to The Tyee.

Six things to know about the legislature scandaL

Congratulations if you’ve mostly skipped the flood of news reports on the legislature scandal.

It’s been entertaining, if you’re the kind of person who stops to look at car crashes. But despite all the noise, we know very little.

Here’s the Quick Notes version, and six things you need to know in order to understand what’s happening.

To start with, the facts. On Nov. 19, Speaker Darryl Plecas called a meeting with the three house leaders — Liberal Mary Polak, New Democrat Mike Farnworth and Green Sonia Furstenau. He told them the RCMP were investigating possible wrongdoing by Clerk Craig James, who is effectively the CEO of the $80-million legislative apparatus, and Sergeant-at-Arms Gary Lenz, the chief of security. Two special prosecutors had been appointed on Oct. 1, he said…

You can read the rest — and I hope you will — at The Tyee here.

Will Ottawa’s news fund be wasted keeping Postmedia afloat?

I wrote about the federal government's plan to support news media in The Tyee today.

"I can swallow my scruples and accept direct government funding for journalism. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that.

But the federal government’s new plan looks like it could easily do more harm than good.

The government’s recent economic update announced it would spend about $120 million a year for five years to support “a strong and independent news media.” That’s on top of a $10-million-a-year announcement last year.

Details are to come in the budget early next year, so it’s tough to judge the plan.

But it’s a bad sign that Postmedia CEO Paul Godfrey was among the first to praise the agreement, saying the failing corporation was looking forward to government funding. Unifor, which represents about 12,000 media workers, was also enthusiastic... "

You can read the whole column here. (And find lots of other great reporting and commentary.)

Why I voted for proportional representation

I spent 10 years in the legislative press gallery, a front-row seat for the spectacle of  B.C. politics. 

It was mostly — not always — horrifying. Cynical, dishonest and hyper-partisan, an unending election campaign. Collaboration was not impossible, but the system made it really difficult. MLAs, mostly good people, behaved badly. It was sad and infuriating, and demeaning for everyone involved.

That’s first-past-the-post. 

So why keep a failed system when we have a chance to try a different, probably better, way of electing MLAs and governments? And with the option to change back after two elections?

The campaigns advocating for the status quo mostly attack proportional representation, rather than presenting the benefits of the current system.

The most repeated positive claim is that the current system produces stable governments. And if stability is all that matters to you, then you should probably vote against change in the referendum. 

But first-past-the-post consistently delivers governments supported by a minority of voters. Yet they govern as if they have the support of a majority.

In Ontario, the Doug Ford Conservatives won power with 41-per-cent support. In Quebec, the right-leaning Coalition Avenir Québec took power with 37-per-cent support. In Alberta, the NDP formed government with 41 per cent of the vote.

In each case, the winning party — actually, the winning premier — governs with absolute power for four years, even though most voters rejected its policies.

That’s not the only, or most serious, problem with the current system.

The defenders of the status quo say it encourages moderation as parties try to construct a “big tent” to attract voters with a wide range of views. 

In practice, that means a party of the centre-right, like the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, strives to draw social conservatives, hard-line right-wingers and anti-immigrant voters into its “big tent” with policies — or slogans or signals — those groups can support. 

It’s a dangerous dance. At some point, those factions could take over. And the whole process is based on duplicity — signalling to those groups that the party will advance their agendas, with little intention of actually acting.

Defenders of the status quo warn vaguely about the loss of local representation. 

But MLAs don’t really matter in the current system. The premier’s office tells them what to say and do. 

Every BC Liberal MLA voted for the Clone Speech  crafted by a few people in the premier’s office after the last election. The desperate attempt to cling to power meant MLAs were asked to betray every principle they had campaigned on. 

And they did. Liberal MLAs all voted to adopt the NDP platform. Not one dissented. They followed orders from the premier’s office, and abandoned their constituents. 

That wasn’t an aberration. Journalist and professor Sean Holman counted every vote between April 2001 and May 2012 in the B.C. legislature as part of the research for his documentary Whipped. (Well worth watching.)

And in 99.75 per cent of votes, MLAs followed the party line.

That’s first-past-the-post.

The campaign for the status quo has been based on fear-mongering about the rise of extremist parties in Europe. Politics and policy should be left to the leaders and backers of two strong controlling parties, they argue, or British Columbia’s government will be hijacked by racists.

I have more faith in my fellow citizens. And is it bad to have extremist parties seeking voters’ support?

Tommy Douglas was considered extremist, so much so that the RCMP spied on him for decades. Women campaigning for the right to vote and civil rights advocates were called extremists.

Racist parties are bad. So are those who would deny others their rights.

But a party that campaigned on the need to treat climate change as an existential threat might be considered extreme, yet could represent the interests of many voters. Parties that advocated measures to ensure every child in the province could grow up free from the lifelong burden of poverty, or one that committed to advance the interests of northern British Columbians, or Indigenous people might be seen as extreme. But if voters support them, they should be heard.

Defenders of the status quo also argue the referendum process has been a gong show.

They’re right.

But I’m voting for proportional representation despite all that. Because this might be the only chance to try for a better democracy — with an escape clause after two elections.

I would think many people would agree that the current system is broken. Our governments do not reflect our values or priorities.

Proportional representation is no miracle solution. But it might be better, and I’m keen to give it a try.

My Tyee column: Skip the Dishes lawsuit signals need for new employment laws

If governments were doing their jobs, a Skip The Dishes food delivery driver wouldn’t have to sue for basic employment rights.

Charleen Pokornik, who started driving for the company in Winnipeg two years ago, says the company is wrongly claiming the drivers are independent contractors, not employees. 

Increasingly, jobs have been changing — and generally for the worse. More part-time work, more people on short-term contracts instead of permanent jobs, and more people scrambling to earn an income through self-employment. 

Skip the Dishes — like Uber and an expanding number of similar app-based businesses — is contributing to an erosion of workers’ rights and ability to bargain the terms of employment. They’ve been good at branding their business model — remember the “sharing economy” enthusiasm? 

But really they’ve found a way to sell a service while avoiding employment laws and taking advantage of people who have few work options.

A decade ago, a restaurant would have employed a delivery driver. The pay would have been low, but at least minimum wage, and overtime pay and other basics would have been guaranteed under employment law. 

Companies like Skip the Dishes dodge all those requirements. Delivery drivers are independent contractors, the companies claim. That means no protection under employment standards legislation or labour codes. As a result, drivers report earning less than minimum wage. (Just Eat CEO Peter Plumb receives a $1.2 million base salary, plus up to $4.2 million in bonus and stock.)

The proposed class action lawsuit would challenge the claim the workers are independent contractors.

It’s hard to predict the outcome. The rules for determining whether someone is an employee or contractor have been in place for decades, and in B.C. were last reviewed 20 years ago. 

“Some of these tests include how much direction and control the worker is subject to, whether the worker operates their own business and has their own clients, whether the worker has a chance of profit or a risk of loss, whether the work they are doing is integral to the business and whether there is an ongoing relationship,” the B.C. government summarizes. 

The summary also notes: “The Act is intended to protect as many workers as possible. When deciding if a worker is an employee or an independent contractor, one of the main questions to ask is ‘whose business is it?’”

And this is clearly Skip the Dishes’ business, not Charleen Pokornik’s.

Skip the Dishes has a 2,600-word courier agreement new drivers must accept, and it’s almost entirely focused on confirming the contractor relationship. It also attempts to bar drivers from organizing. “Any claim you may have must be brought individually… and not as a representative plaintiff or class member, and you will not join such claim… or participate in a class action lawsuit, collective or representative proceeding of any kind.”

“It seems that we need more clarification,” Sean MacDonald, a professor at University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business, told the CBC. “There’s a lot of curiosity how this will all go down, because it will affect a lot of the players in the gig economy.” 

MacDonald is wrong. We don’t need more clarification. We need governments to change the laws to protect workers in a changing economy.

It’s not surprising that Uber, Lyft, Skip the Dishes and others have seized the opportunity. They have found a way to make money by meeting consumer needs while exploiting weaknesses in labour laws.

The industry argues it offers workers the chance to choose their own hours. Companies tout the independence of workers and argue their model allows people to work around demands of a full-time job or family responsibilities.

But the reality can be different. New York City has just decided to freeze the number of drivers for taxis and app-based ride services and set a minimum wage. That was based in part on a study that found about 60 per cent of app-based drivers were working full-time and 90 per cent were immigrants. About 85 per cent were making less than the proposed wage the city council had set, linked to the state minimum wage.

Across the U.S., a study found Uber drivers were paid about US$9.21 an hour on average after expenses, less than minimum wage in many cities where they operate.

The whole purpose of employment standard laws and labour codes is to level the playing field and balance the power of workers and employers. The rules establish minimum standards, based on social, economic and political consensus. They allow workers to organize to increase their bargaining power. They ensure the most desperate or vulnerable are protected from exploitation.

But in B.C. and across Canada, the rules are badly outdated.

The issue isn’t about whether app-based companies should exist. It’s about ensuring basic workplace rights are not undermined by their business models. Doing that might make them slightly less profitable, but it doesn’t threaten their existence.

And it would mean people like Charleen Pokornik don’t have to take on corporate giants in court to get a fair deal for workers.