Life in a Graceless State

The Economist has launched a new series, "How to fix democracy."

In the opener, Cass Sunstein, of Harvard law school, considers the rise of the age of political savagery.

DEMOCRACIES DEPEND for their stability on four things. First, well-functioning institutions. Second, the delivery of good or at least decent outcomes for most citizens. Third, norms of reciprocity and forbearance. And fourth, certain character traits among both officials and citizens. While the four are closely connected, the last is the most fundamental.

Sunstein argues that grace, the pursuit of virtue, is the very foundation of liberal democracy. Today, personal grace is endangered by political savagery.

James Madison, the principal thinker behind the American Constitution, focused mostly on institutional design. But in the Virginia Ratifying Constitution, he went in a different direction, and offered a kind of cri de coeur: “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure.”

...In his second inaugural address, delivered near the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln might well have been expected to speak in Manichean terms. Instead he offered a clear demonstration of political grace, which he modeled it for all to see. Lincoln avoided any kind of triumphalism. He did not treat Southerners as enemies. His closing sentence began this way: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.” He projected humility and a sense of his own fallibility (“as God gives us to see the right”).

Emphasising what all of us share, which is mortality, Lincoln asked the nation “to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” In so saying, he echoed his first inaugural address, in which he proclaimed, “We are not enemies, but friends,” and prophesied that “the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone,” would “swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Read the comments section of a political story in any major news source and you'll see precious little sign of the "better angels of our nature." What is on display is the widespread breakdown of social cohesion, a new tribalism fueled by anger, fear and paranoia, a political Lord of the Flies. As I have discussed in several posts this is no accident. We have been groomed to become this divided and, through our division, deeply weakened as a society. In America we are witnessing a society more deeply riven than at any time since the Civil War.

Then as now, the risk of disintegration manifested itself in a kind of Manichaeism, in which citizens see the forces of good as pitched against the forces of evil. In such societies, the only real question, asked about essentially everything, is this: Which side are you on? That question invites personal and political savagery. It makes self-government impossible.

And in this engineered reality of division and hostility, grace is imperiled.

In democratic politics as in daily life, grace tends to produce more of the same. It embodies a commitment to empathy. Gracious winners do not crow or accuse. For that reason, grace makes political compromise possible. Even more important, it makes political learning possible. When people see each other as fellow citizens rather than as enemies, they are more likely to attend not only to different judgments about facts, but also to different moral commitments. Manichaeism becomes difficult or even impossible. It looks thin and tinny, infantile, even pathetic. 

In politics as well as in daily life, savagery has the opposite effect. If members of one political party cry “lock her up” about a political opponent, we have something approaching a declaration of war. If a nation’s president repeatedly calls the press “The Enemy of the People” and a purveyor of “Fake News,” a core democratic commitment is under assault (and members of the press might face physical danger). If political leaders describe those who disagree with them as traitorous or disloyal, or as beholden to “the banks” or to “millionaires and billionaires,” their targets will be tempted to respond in kind. The temptation might prove impossible to resist, producing a cycle of savagery. That cycle can undermine norms and ultimately institutions.

Sunstein's conclusion - we need change, starting at the top.

...It is crucial for political leaders to tackle the problem of savagery head-on—and treat it as urgent. Instead of telling their opponents that they are traitors or fools or hypocrites, or in someone’s pocket, or indifferent to the nation’s welfare, they can address the merits of competing proposals, assuming good faith. They can refrain from attacking people’s motives. Political parties can promote politicians who play by those rules, and call out or diminish the authority of those who do not. The media can give less attention to sensational accusations and more attention to what really matters, which is the likely effects of policies on people’s lives. 

Whatever the short-term incentives of those who are involved in politics and democratic debate, they need to listen to the better angels of their nature. They must aspire to grace.

Big Scandal - In a Very, Very Small Pond

Oh to see ourselves as others see us.

Ask a Washington reporter what he makes of this SNC-Lavalin "scandal." Why, he goes positively weak at the knees - not. I think the foreign press finds our scandal almost quaint and definitely very, very Canadian.

Averting Climate Breakdown Won't Be Easy. It Will Be Hard. But We Still Have a Choice.

Think of it as a question of how much - or how little - you want to live. Allow me to explain.

Those who've been around computers for two or three decades will know what it means when your operating system is no longer supported. It becomes a word processor so long as the computer and your old printer keep running. You do lose your ability to communicate with newer computers or to run new software so, before long, you have to get a new machine.

We're in that same sort of jam with governance. We're trying to stay the same, using the same modes of organization - political, economic, industrial, social, even military - and it's all from the past. 18th century economics, 19th century industrialism, 20th century geopolitics, all the systems that evolved from the onset of the industrial revolution.

All of that stuff worked pretty well right up until the early 70s. That was when our global population reached three billion and mankind began to grow beyond the finite limits of our planet's ecology. That's when the Great Acceleration really kicked into high gear.

We grew. We grew in numbers - from three billion to nearly eight billion today. We grew older - longevity increases have been impressive. We grew larger in per capita GDP a measure of production, consumption and, gulp, waste. We found ways to pilfer the planet's resource reserves - draining aquifers to get water for irrigation, fishing "down the food chain" exhausting one species after the next, contaminating our air, our water and even our soil. We kept finding ways to squeeze the remaining drops of blood out of our rock.

We brought on the scourge of climate change. That's our doing. Our signature is all over it.

That the climate change problem worsened deeply about the same time as the developed world embraced neoliberalism could be a coincidence but not likely. What is neoliberalism but capitalism on steroids, hyper-capitalism, the very engine of exponential growth.

Neoliberalism does not accommodate shrinkage. De-growth doesn't fit the neoliberal paradigm. That's a huge problem yet you won't find any political leaders willing to part from the neoliberal orthodoxy.

We all know that the most optimistic climate change forecasting agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, has told us that any real hope of averting catastrophic or runaway climate change hinges on our willingness to cut existing greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 and to nothing by mid-century.  It's like your doctor calling you into her office and telling you that "this is what you must do if you want to live."

This is where anthropologist, Jason Hickel, comes in.  Hickel sees human survival threatened by our addiction to perpetual exponential growth and the rise of an oligarchy that keeps us on that path.

Last September Hickel demolished the deadly farce of "green growth."

Warnings about ecological breakdown have become ubiquitous. Over the past few years, major newspapers, including the Guardian and the New York Times, have carried alarming stories on soil depletion, deforestation, and the collapse of fish stocks and insect populations. 

These crises are being driven by global economic growth, and its accompanying consumption, which is destroying the Earth’s biosphere and blowing past key planetary boundaries that scientists say must be respected to avoid triggering collapse.

In November, 2016, Hickel made the case for abandoning GDP and the pursuit of three per cent annual growth, an economic system he argues is incompatible with life on Earth.

When it comes to global warming, we know that the real problem is not just fossil fuels – it is the logic of endless growth that is built into our economic system. If we don’t keep the global economy growing by at least 3% per year, it plunges into crisis. That means we have to double the size of the economy every 20 years, just to stay afloat. It doesn’t take much to realise that this imperative for exponential growth makes little sense given the limits of our finite planet. 

Rapid climate change is the most obvious symptom of this contradiction, but we’re also seeing it in the form of deforestation, desertification and mass extinction, with species dying at an alarming rateas our consumption of the natural world causes their habitats to collapse. It was unthinkable to say this even 10 years ago, but today, as we become increasingly aware of these crises, it seems all too clear: our economic system is incompatible with life on this planet.

Last week, Hickel's target was over-consumption, our increasingly rapacious assault on our one and only biosphere. He contends, convincingly, that we're racing toward climate breakdown.

Over the past few years, scientists have been warning that we may fail to reach our climate goals even with the most aggressive efforts, because global economic growth is driving energy demand up at a pace that’s outstripping our ability to install clean power. 

Today the world is producing 8bn more megawatt hours of clean energy each year than in 2000. That’s a lot – enough to power all of Russia. But over exactly the same period, economic growth has caused energy demand to increase by a staggering 48bn megawatt hours. In other words, all that new clean energy we’ve rolled out covers only a small fraction of new demand. That’s why emissions keep rising. It’s like shovelling sand into a hole that just keeps getting bigger.

This problem is going to eventually cripple us. If we continue growing the global economy at existing rates, it will nearly triple in size by the middle of the century. That’s three times more production and consumption than we’re already doing – which will require nearly three times more energy.

...The recent IPCC report points out that to have a realistic chance at staying under 1.5C, we need to scale down energy demand. The scenario its proposes – developed by an international team of scientists – calls for high-income nations like Britain and the US to significantly reduce their consumption of material stuff. 

Right now, rich nations devour 28 tonnes of material per person per year – including everything from fish to forests, plastics to metals. That’s four times more than ecologists say is sustainable. It requires an extraordinary amount of energy to extract, produce and transport all that stuff. 

Hickel discusses immediate measures our governments can introduce - extended warranties on products so that appliances last 30 years instead of just five or ten; a "right to repair" our devices, i.e. smartphones that will presumably require manufacturers to continue to support them during their usable lifespans and, where possible, make them upgradeable.

All of these measures would dramatically reduce material consumption, without any loss to our wellbeing. But to really make it work, we need to get straight to the heart of the issue: put a cap on annual material use and tighten it year on year, down to 8 tonnes per capita by the middle of the century. This will change incentives across the economy – reorienting people and business toward long-lasting, repairable and recyclable products.

Did you get that? We're now at 28 tonnes per capita. We have to cut our resource/material consumption by well more than two-thirds by 2050. What Hickel is championing closely resembles a "steady state economy."

There is a glaring hole in Hickel's prescription - getting global population under control. Total population has already increased three fold during just my own lifetime. We're nearing eight billion and we're told that will grow to twelve billion before it peaks.

Let's not obsess with hurdles. The focus should be on what blocks our path to a viable future. If you can't get this sorted, everything else you may do about appliances and devices or cutting emissions is purely gestural, ineffective and a distraction.

What we have to throw off are the shackles of the neoliberal order ushered in by Reagan, Thatcher and Mulroney. We have to stop voting for people who want to commit us to perpetual, exponential growth. And, yes, that is the standard operating system of the Liberals and the Conservatives. the NDP too for that matter.

It comes down to this: we have to start voting for life and that means we have to stop voting for death. That sounds harsh but it's not. The best part is that it's so cut and dried. You choose A or you choose B but, if you do choose A, the status quo, the continued embrace of perpetual, exponential growth, recognize the madness of what you're doing.

Danneau's Brilliant Idea - The Rubbish Tip for All of Them

Every now and then someone will come up with a really fresh idea that simply grabs the imagination and won't let go.

Someone just like Danneau who, in a comment to the previous post, wrote this:

Disband both Libs and Cons, caution Dippers, then relaunch elections restricting anyone from previous admins from holding office. They had the chance and screwed the pooch.

Since Confederation one of these two gangs has had the reins of power. One gets power for two to three terms then it's the other outfit's turn to reign for two to three terms. That rotation works to their mutual advantage and to our perpetual disadvantage.

Two to three terms in power is about all the public can stand of these legislative hooligans, blackguards and general reprobates.  We get to the point where we can no longer stomach the sound of their voices or the look of their faces. That's when they get to trade places. The new bunch comes in, essentially holding the place for the last bunch until it's their turn to rotate again.

There is this thing called "institutional memory." It's a body of collective knowledge that is passed along from old hand to newbie. "That's the way it's done because that's the way we've always done it." There's a lot of value in that - consistency, predictability, etc. - but might that be a double edged sword? Are old solutions an impediment to the thinking needed to respond to new and unfamiliar challenges?

The Trudeau government has been in power since 2015. They took Ottawa by storm, arriving with a load of fresh faces and new ideas. Then they wasted little time turning old and weary, governing as though Canada was still in the 80s. Neoliberalism, petro-state energy policy, the pursuit of perpetual, exponential growth - barely paying lip service to the crises of the day.

What do you think the vote count would be if this October's ballot listed Conservative, Liberal, New Democrat or "none of the above"?

I think Danneau is onto something. It's time to give federal politics a "purge" (that's not the word I was going to use). No more old men masquerading as young blood. No more inherited institutional loyalties to accountancies (KPMG/Isle of Man), construction contractors (SNC-Lavalin), energy giants, or the corporate media cartel, relationships that can obscure or defeat the public interest.

I think it's time for fresh thinking. What do you think?

That's Refreshing

Britain's Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has interjected a bit of badly needed perspective to this era of non-stop political bloodletting. The business of government is governance in service to the public and, right now, governance is in urgent demand.

Addressing Scottish Labour’s annual conference, Corbyn said his party was not “obsessed by constitutional questions, like the others are. We’re obsessed, absolutely obsessed, with tackling the problems people face in their daily lives”.

In an apparent effort to shift the focus away from his party’s deep divisions over Brexit, Corbyn said the UK’s greatest challenge was global warming. “We are facing a climate crisis. There’s no bigger threat to our future. And fundamentally, the destruction of our climate is a class issue,” he said.

If you want to turf Justin Trudeau this October, do it over what matters most: not Lavalin, not the vaunted "economy," but this government's horrible energy policy that powerfully subverts meaningful action on climate change. Turf them for pretending to be progressive while doing so little that is actually progressive. Turf them for their embrace of neoliberalism in the pursuit of perpetual, exponential growth when the planet already stands hopelessly overgrown. Turf them for pretending we're still in the 1980s instead of on the cusp of the 2020s, a decade that will usher in unprecedented climate change impacts and represents our last, best chance at averting catastrophic runaway global warming.

Step back, take a deep breath and put Lavalin in the perspective it deserves - as a sideshow in a land facing huge and imminent perils.  There is much important work that needs doing.

Jean Chretien, Senior Statesman

Okay, Jean. You know what your guy, the fellow who defines himself in the context of working in your government, is doing.

Your choice, Jean. Either you repudiate this guy or you will be responsible if anything horribly untoward ensues this October.

I'm not even a Liberal. Still, Jean, the only one who can rein him in is you. You gotta choose.  Will it be Justin and your party and our country or this insurgent? The longer you wait to address this, the less the benefit of the doubt. You gotta either wash your hands now or.. well...

Marg Whittles Chuckles Down to Size

After this week, Liberals need something to pierce the gloom. Here's Marg Delahunty at your service.

Let's See, What's on the Liberal Menu Today?

The special today is a shit sandwich served on stale bread with a side of runny hyperbole. Not my sort of thing but Liberals obviously have a taste for it.

Jody, Justin and Gerry - a pack of losers. Depending on your Liberal camp, Jody's or Justin's, one is the best thing ever and the other is the worst thing ever.

Jody, it seems, stumbled across a basket of principle on Lavalin that she certainly didn't have when she and Justin abridged Canadians' Charter rights on assisted dying spelled out so clearly by the Supreme Court of Canada. Both chose to whittle down the public's Charter rights for their perceived partisan political advantage. Fortunately those who are terminally ill and have both the time remaining and oodles of money are still able to get justice but that usually means a costly, drawn out trip to a provincial court of appeal.  For putting themselves and their government above the law these two can both go hang.

Justin tried to peddle the bullshit that Lavalin is all about jobs. No, it's all about Liberal electoral fortunes in Quebec this October. If Lavalin doesn't get federal contracts some other Canadian construction contractor will and those jobs will go to whomever they hire. Lavalin has competition. There are other contractors. Most of those firms, however, are based in either Alberta or Ontario. Can't be having that now, can we?

Liberal Jody or Liberal Justin, both have their acolytes. Some make out Jody to be a hero. The other camp says no harm, no foul. Justin has nothing to apologize for.

The only honest player in this saga is Andrew Scheer. It's his job to find Justin's vulnerability, the chink in his armour, and go for it. He's doing that, sort of, not that anyone outside the Tory camp is paying much attention to him.

The media? Well, if it bleeds, it leads and days of Liberal bloodletting are just the thing. Sure they're rounding on Justin but so what?

I won't be voting Liberal this October but this dreary Lavalin business won't affect that. I didn't need the Lavalin scandal to confirm the incompetence of the Trudeau government.

And, if by some grotesque happenstance, Andrew Scheer prevails in October, I'll blame that on Justin for reneging on his promise to implement electoral reform and put an end to 39% majority government.

In the meantime how about we mop up all the blood on the floor and get back to the business of governing Canada. It's been a while.

Manafort Gets - Almost Off

Team Mueller was hoping that Paul Manafort would get many years in jail, as in the "rest of his natural life." 47 months, that's it.

About that Prosecution Service Tweet

The Public Prosecution Service of Canada fired a shot across Justin Trudeau's bow when it took to twitter today.

Prosecutorial independence is key to our mandate. Our prosecutors must be objective, independent and dispassionate, as well as free from improper influence—including political influence. https://t.co/X8Pn2r2AIK

The PPSC was created by Stephen Harper in 2006.

Despite the timing, PPSC denied the tweet had anything to do with Justin Trudeau's remarks today or Gerald Butts' testimony yesterday.

The spokesperson said the tweet is not related to the SNC-Lavalin controversy and there is no pressing concern about the independence of prosecution in Canada.

Bullshit, bullshit and more bullshit.

If there was no pressing concern about prosecutorial independence and the tweet was not related to SNC-L, then why tweet it today or, for that matter, at all?

If prosecutors want to be free from political influence, as they fatuously claim, a good first step is to steer clear of the political controversy which is what they did not do today with that tweet.

The independence and integrity of the PPSC takes me back to the prosecution of senator Mike Duffy.  The then prime minister and his chief of staff knew Duffy's weaknesses - he was a spendthrift and he was in lousy health. Duffy was told to quit the Senate or they would bury him in criminal litigation.

Without the slightest bit of political interference prosecutors invented the "immaculate bribery" charge. Duffy was accused of accepting a bribe that no one had given, sort of, in an odd way. And then, the political interference free prosecutors ladled on another 32 charges, making 33 in all. When was the last time you heard of anyone having to defend himself on 33 criminal charges?

A prosecutor free of political interference would have chosen three, five, maybe six good charges to prosecute. 33 charges - it does indeed sound like someone is out to bury somebody who might have a wonky heart and be low on pocket change.

Now that might be an unfair smear on the prosecutorial service except for one thing. At trial, a seasoned and highly-respected judge saw straight through it. He dismissed the charges, all 33 of them. It was Duffy 33, Crown no score.

When a defendant is acquitted of all charges, something is wrong. When a defendant is acquitted of all 33 charges - ten, twenty, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, something is way beyond wrong.

Worse still for the totally interference-free prosecutors was Vaillancourt's finding that they had adduced plenty of evidence of criminal activity only the Crown had not charged the real criminals. Oh, my, swallow hard - that's gonna hurt.

And what was the fallout of that? Nothing. Vaillancourt all but spelled out the names of the real criminals. Nothing. The RCMP? Nothing. The prosecution service - you're kidding, right?

So you can believe the PPSC that today's tweet had nothing to do with SCN-L and you can believe that the PPSC is not interfering in the political realm where they have no business meddling, but I'm not buying it. Not for a minute.

Amazon's New Best Seller

The Mueller Report is already an Amazon best seller, even if there's still no sign of it.

Trump stooge, Alan Dershowitz, is writing an introduction to the report that Amazon figures will run to some 960 pages. Amazon is also listing the Washington Post's version of the report that will come in at a comparatively slender 720 pages including background materials from WaPo itself.

And tomorrow might be a red letter day for Mueller indictments. That according to former CIA chief, John Brennan.

Just So We're Clear

Trudeau acolytes are fond of depicting the Lavalin fiasco as something a couple of former employees did in far off Libya a long time ago and those miscreants left SNC-L a long time ago, problem solved. No point beating up SNC-L for ancient history, a distant peccadillo.

You might ask Yanai Elbaz if SNC-L's corruption is ancient history. It isn't for him. In fact he's now just starting to serve a 3 year stretch in the Greybar Hotel after being convicted of pocketing a $10-million bribe to get SNC-L a leg up on the McGill University Health Centre job.

In December the court handed Elbaz a 39 month sentence for what has been described as the greatest construction fraud in Canadian history.

Believe whatever best suits your chosen narrative but SNC-L has a rich history of corrupt dealings and it's not something dredged out of the distant past in a place far, far away.

With Malice Aforethought

"Malice aforethought" - the intention to cause death or grievous harm that transforms unlawful killing into outright murder.

Enter Triton, "the world's most murderous malware." It's out and it's spreading. From the MIT Tech Review:

As an experienced cyber first responder, Julian Gutmanis had been called plenty of times before to help companies deal with the fallout from cyberattacks. But when the Australian security consultant was summoned to a petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2017, what he found made his blood run cold. 

The hackers had deployed malicious software, or malware, that let them take over the plant’s safety instrumented systems. These physical controllers and their associated software are the last line of defense against life-threatening disasters. They are supposed to kick in if they detect dangerous conditions, returning processes to safe levels or shutting them down altogether by triggering things like shutoff valves and pressure-release mechanisms. 

The malware made it possible to take over these systems remotely. Had the intruders disabled or tampered with them, and then used other software to make equipment at the plant malfunction, the consequences could have been catastrophic. Fortunately, a flaw in the code gave the hackers away before they could do any harm. It triggered a response from a safety system in June 2017, which brought the plant to a halt. Then in August, several more systems were tripped, causing another shutdown.

...In a worst-case scenario, the rogue code could have led to the release of toxic hydrogen sulfide gas or caused explosions, putting lives at risk both at the facility and in the surrounding area. 

Gutmanis recalls that dealing with the malware at the petrochemical plant, which had been restarted after the second incident, was a nerve-racking experience. “We knew that we couldn’t rely on the integrity of the safety systems,” he says. “It was about as bad as it could get.” 

In attacking the plant, the hackers crossed a terrifying Rubicon. This was the first time the cybersecurity world had seen code deliberately designed to put lives at risk. Safety instrumented systems aren’t just found in petrochemical plants; they’re also the last line of defense in everything from transportation systems to water treatment facilities to nuclear power stations.

Who is behind Triton? What are they after? How far are they prepared to go? Who knows?

Over the past couple of years, cybersecurity firms have been racing to deconstruct the malware—and to work out who’s behind it. Their research paints a worrying picture of a sophisticated cyberweapon built and deployed by a determined and patient hacking group whose identity has yet to be established with certainty. 

The hackers appear to have been inside the petrochemical company’s corporate IT network since 2014. From there, they eventually found a way into the plant’s own network, most likely through a hole in a poorly configured digital firewall that was supposed to stop unauthorized access. They then got into an engineering workstation, either by exploiting an unpatched flaw in its Windows code or by intercepting an employee’s login credentials.

It could be a state actor - Russia, Iran, North Korea, take your pick - or a non-state actor - terrorists, organized crime, some punks with bad attitudes. Triton is surely an instrument of war and the reality of warfare in the 21st century is that nation states are losing their monopoly on violence as weapons of mass destruction are now reaching just about every rung of the non-state actors. That can make the motivation of the attacker difficult to discern and, without knowing that, it makes identification and prevention even harder.

At the moment the Russian government is the prime suspect but no one can say for sure.

Experts at places like the US’s Idaho National Laboratory are urging companies to revisit all their operations in the light of Triton and other cyber-physical threats, and to radically reduce, or eliminate, the digital pathways hackers could use to get to critical processes. 

Businesses may chafe at the costs of doing that, but Triton is a reminder that the risks are increasing. Gutmanis thinks more attacks using the world’s most murderous malware are all but inevitable. “While this was the first,” he says, “I’d be surprised if it turns out to be the last.”

If It's Intrigue You Want, Ottawa Is Still Small Potatoes.

Rumours abound of plots to topple Justin Trudeau  and pluck some successor out of the ashes of an engulfed Liberal party in time to fight this fall's general election.  Relax, we don't move that fast.

If you're looking for intrigue, focus on the House of Saud where some form of regicide may be afoot as the feeble old king clashes with crown prince and reputed Kashoggi killer, Mohammad bin Salman. Hey, it wouldn't be the first time an impatient heir speeded up a succession.

The unease is said to have been building since the murder in Turkey of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA has reportedly concluded was ordered by Prince Mohammed. However, these tensions increased dramatically in late February when the king, 83, visited Egypt and was warned by his advisers he was at risk of a potential move against him, according to a detailed account from a source.

His entourage was so alarmed at the possible threat to his authority that a new security team, comprised of more than 30 hand-picked loyalists from the interior ministry, was flown to Egypt to replace the existing team. 

The move was made as part of a rapid response, and reflected concern that some of the original security staff might have been loyal to the prince, the source said. 

The king’s advisers also dismissed Egyptian security personnel who were guarding him while he was in Egypt, the source added. 

The friction in the father-son relationship was underlined, the source said, when the prince was not among those sent to welcome the king home.

While the old man wasn't looking:

The crown prince, who was designated “deputy king” during the Egypt trip, as is customary, signed off two major personnel changes while the king was away. They included the appointment of a female ambassador to the US, Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan, and that of his full brother, Khalid bin Salman, to the ministry of defence. 

The latter appointment has further centralised power in one branch of the ruling family.

...The Guardian has been told the king and his team learned about the reshuffle via television. 

The king has been trying to repair some of the damage done to the kingdom by the murder in October of Khashoggi. 

Supporters of the king have been pushing him to get more involved in decision-making, to prevent the crown prince from taking more power.

... “There are subtle but important signs of something amiss in the royal palace,” said Bruce Riedel, a director of the Brookings Intelligence Project and 30-year veteran of the CIA.

It might be a good idea for the old king to avoid unaccompanied trips down those massive palace staircases from here on in. Those flowing desert robes can be a real killer.

They Engineered the Fracture Because It Works.

It has long been my belief that the deeply divided societies that have become standard fare across the West were cultivated. We didn't get into two camps inadvertently. We've been conditioned. Why? Why would anybody want to break down social cohesion at this perilous point in human history? The answer is simple - it weakens us and there are those stand to profit enormously from that very state of affairs. It's the perfect way to suck power - political, economic and social - out of a weakened public, corralled into herds, each viewing the other with anger, fear and suspicion.

Consider this item by Columbia law professor, Tim Wu, from today's New York Times "The Oppression of the SuperMajority."

We are told that America is divided and polarized as never before. Yet when it comes to many important areas of policy, that simply isn’t true. 

About 75 percent of Americans favor higher taxes for the ultrawealthy. The idea of a federal law that would guarantee paid maternity leave attracts 67 percent support. Eighty-three percent favor strong net neutrality rules for broadband, and more than 60 percent want stronger privacy laws. Seventy-one percent think we should be able to buy drugs imported from Canada, and 92 percent want Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. The list goes on.

...In our era, it is primarily Congress that prevents popular laws from being passed or getting serious consideration. (Holding an occasional hearing does not count as “doing something.”) Entire categories of public policy options are effectively off-limits because of the combined influence of industry groups and donor interests. There is no principled defense of this state of affairs — and indeed, no one attempts to offer such a justification. Instead, legislative stagnation is cynically defended by those who benefit from it with an unconvincing invocation of the rigors of our system of checks and balances.

...As the United States begins the process of choosing the next president and Congress, we need to talk more openly about which candidates are most likely to deliver the economic policies that the supermajority wants. Yes, the people can be wrong about things, but so too can experts, embedded industry groups and divisive political factions. It is not a concession to populism, but rather a respect for democracy, to suggest that two-thirds of the population should usually get what they ask for.

The writer is not speaking through his hat. The United States has had democracy engineered out of the political system as the nation transformed, instead, into a plutocracy. That is manifest every day in the workings of America's "bought and paid for" Congress. This reality was powerfully borne out in the 2014 paper out of Princeton by two professors, Gilens (Princeton) and Page (Northwestern).

Most of us realize you can put two dogs in an enclosure and it's highly unlikely they'll attack each other. However, dogs trained to attack won't hesitate to leap at each other's throat. Do the dogs get anything out of that? No, but their trainer does.

Here's Something We Can Learn from Twitter

A team of researchers went to social media to assess how we're responding to climate change. Their findings have just been published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

By studying American tweets, the research confirmed that "creeping normalcy" has taken hold of the American grasp of climate change.  I wrote of this back in 2007, in reviewing Jared Diamond's book, "Collapse."

"First of all, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Second, when the problem does arrive, the group may fail to perceive it. Then, after they perceive it, they may fail even to try to solve it. Finally, they may try to solve it but may not succeed. ...Perhaps if we understood the reasons why groups often make bad decisions, we could use that knowledge as a checklist to guide groups to make good decisions." 

On our difficulty to perceive the onset of global warming: 

"Perhaps the commonest circumstance under which societies fail to perceive a problem is when it takes the form of a slow trend concealed by wide up-and-down fluctuations. The prime example in modern times is global warming. ...as we all know, climate fluctuates up and down erratically from year to year. ...With such large and unpredictable fluctuations, it has taken a long time to discern the average upwards trend of 0.01 degree per year within that noisy signal."

When Diamond wrote that, before 2007, climate fluctuate "up and down erratically from year to year." We're past that point now. Those erratic downward fluctuations haven't been experienced for many years. What remains entirely valid is Diamond's observation that "societies fail to perceive a problem ..when it takes the form of a slow trend."

You would think by now we would know better than to fall for this but you would be wrong and now twitter proves it.

This research shows that people’s experience of weather in recent years (rather than longer historical periods) determines the climatic baseline against which current weather is evaluated, potentially obscuring public recognition of anthropogenic climate change. It also indicates that the "remarkability" of particular temperatures changes rapidly with repeated exposure and provides evidence for a “boiling frog” effect: the declining noteworthiness of historically extreme temperatures is not accompanied by a decline in the negative sentiment that they induce, indicating that social normalization of extreme conditions rather than adaptation is driving these results.

This rapidly shifting normal baseline means warming noticed by the general public may not be clearly distinguishable from zero over the 21st century, with potential implications for both the acceptance of global warming and public pressure for mitigation policies.

Oh, To See Ourselves as Others See Us

Full disclosure: the only reason the SNC-Lavalin scandal matters to me is that it might clear a path for Andrew Scheer's Tories to win the October general elections. That's it. I am not a Liberal, that's behind me. The last 20 years were enough that I'll not return to that fold. I just don't want Chuckles as the next prime minister of Canada.

Viewing this scandal from that distanced perspective, the most interesting part has been to watch Liberals picking at their skin, eating their hair and, at times, showing their true colours. Turns out they're not all as enlightened as they would have us believe in more tranquil moments. And they are pretty quick to turn on each other, sturm und drang.

I was a bit shocked as I read the comments on a particular Justin Trudeau fan page. The attacks on Wilson-Raybould and Philpotts were nasty and sometimes pretty misogynistic. What do you expect when you put that many women in cabinet? Women, they're so easily manipulated. What about that business with the apple in the Garden of Eden? None of these good and loyal Trudeau fans rebuked those leaving these bigoted comments.  No, Jody and Jane were only getting what they had coming. Imagine, mere women speaking out against Justin.

So this, to me, confirms that the Liberal ranks include more than a few bigots. As I let those comments sink in they reminded me of the vitriol I usually associate with the rightwing commentariat, confirming that the latter day Liberals are as tribal as any of these outfits.

The biggest story, however, is the insurgency afoot within the Liberal ranks. There is one person who stands out, a person who seems bent on taking down Justin Trudeau regardless of the lasting damage it may cause the Liberal Party. This individual seems determined to sow as much dissent among the Liberal rank and file as he can. This person is clearly going after the already disaffected Liberal voters.

What is the game? That's an important question with general elections eight months away. Has this individual just been waiting for an opportunity like the Lavalin controversy to pounce? A lot of effort is going into this and it's relentless.

Has this person decided to cut ties with the Liberals, to turn on them? Is this the parting gift? Is this an emotional matter, pent-up anger over being unloved by the Trudeau team, shunted aside?

This is not Watergate nor is the Insurgent either a Woodward or a Bernstein, just a sniper. I've never liked that kind. I didn't like the way they took down John Diefenbaker or Joe Clark. I didn't like the way they took down the best NDP premier BC has known, Mike Harcourt.

I can't imagine how the Insurgent will ever again find a place at the Liberal head table, that is unless the Liberal hierarchy are much more craven than I had imagined.

Not that advice from a defector is particularly wanted but I think the Liberals really need to figure out who they are and just what, if anything, they still represent.  Just as today's Republicans would make Lincoln puke, I think these Latter Day Liberals would be shunned by the likes of Laurier, St. Laurent, Pearson and Pierre Trudeau.

The Great Oceanic Die-Off Now Underway

A new report in Nature Climate Change warns that heat waves are sweeping the oceans causing a die off of sea grasses, kelp and corals, leading to a dangerous loss of marine biodiversity.

It's a very technical paper of the sort utterly unsuited to a blog post. I'll fall back on the digested report in The Guardian, "Heatwaves sweeping the oceans 'like wildfires.'"

The number of heatwaves affecting the planet’s oceans has increased sharply, scientists have revealed, killing swathes of sea-life like “wildfires that take out huge areas of forest”. 

The damage caused in these hotspots is also harmful for humanity, which relies on the oceans for oxygen, food, storm protection and the removal of climate-warming carbon dioxide the atmosphere, they say. 

Global warming is gradually increasing the average temperature of the oceans, but the new research is the first systematic global analysis of ocean heatwaves, when temperatures reach extremes for five days or more.

...The research found heatwaves are becoming more frequent, prolonged and severe, with the number of heatwave days tripling in the last couple of years studied.  ...As heatwaves have increased, kelp forests, seagrass meadows and coral reefs have been lost. These foundation species are critical to life in the ocean. They provide shelter and food to many others, but have been hit on coasts from California to Australia to Spain.

“You have heatwave-induced wildfires that take out huge areas of forest, but this is happening underwater as well,” said Dan Smale at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, UK, who led the research published in Nature Climate Change. “You see the kelp and seagrasses dying in front of you. Within weeks or months they are just gone, along hundreds of kilometres of coastline.”

...As well as quantifying the increase in heatwaves, the team analysed 116 research papers on eight well-studied marine heatwaves, such as the record-breaking “Ningaloo Niño” that hit Australia in 2011 and the hot “blob” that persisted in the north-east Pacific from 2013 to 2016. “They have adverse impacts on a wide range of organisms, from plankton to invertebrates, to fish, mammals and seabirds,” Smale said.

I have great memories of swimming over coral reefs, across acres of sea grass and into kelp forests.  Anyone familiar with them would find the impending loss of these magnificent ecosystems devastating.

Toronto Star - Justin, It's Do or Die.

The Toronto Star editorial board has a message for Justin. Only the prime minister can now stop the bleeding and he has a lot of catching up to do.

It won’t be enough for Trudeau’s former principal secretary, Gerald Butts, to tell his version of events, as he is scheduled to do before the House of Commons justice committee on Wednesday morning.

Or for the Clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick, to go back to the committee and respond to Wilson-Raybould’s assertion that multiple government officials pressured her to give SNC-Lavalin a break in its corruption and bribery case. 

Philpott did not wait to hear these surrogates for the PM before she exited his cabinet. Clearly she did not expect that either of them would have anything convincing to say that would shake her belief in Wilson-Raybould’s narrative. 

No, if Trudeau wants to rally his government and party and reassure Canadians that he and his colleagues acted properly in handling the SNC-Lavalin affair, he must do it himself. 

He must find a venue, perhaps the justice committee itself, and lay out the government’s case. He must stop trying to hide behind slogans and catch-phrases and actually answer Wilson-Raybould’s story, what she called “my truth.” We now need to hear the prime minister’s truth, at length and in detail.

...It would be tragic if the accomplishments of his government were tossed aside because of mistakes in handling the SNC-Lavalin case, and more specifically in how it has botched the fallout from Wilson-Raybould’s departure. 

But at this point those achievements can’t be protected by ignoring or downplaying the substance of Wilson-Raybould’s story. Trudeau has no choice at this point but to confront it directly.

Coming to Your Newsstand Soon

The April Macleans cover. It's going to make that trip to the grocery store a bit of an ordeal for Liberal faithful, especially Justin's acolytes.

I read Paul Wells takedown piece, "Justin Trudeau, imposter." He does put the boots to the prime minister but I'm not sure Wells is entirely unfair. It's not the hatchet job I might have expected from Wells. Read it and judge for yourself.

Well He's Still Got Dame Cathy - I Think.

Do you think Justin made a mistake when he went for that gender-balanced cabinet? So far he's had two prominent cabinet ministers resign, Jody Wilson-Raybould and now Jane Philpott.

You see, guys suck up this sort of thing. Resigning on principle, when was the last time you heard of a guy doing something that rash?

The question now is whether there are others contemplating leaving Trudeau's cabinet.

I had figured this might be one of those messes that, given enough damage control and time, could fade from voters' minds over the summer recess. Hey, it saved Harper's bacon more than once.

Justin is still mulling over J W-R's fate. He's not sure whether to turf her from the Liberal caucus to which, for reasons that are beyond me, she wants to continue to belong. It also appears her riding association expects her to contest the October elections as a Liberal.

It's hard to imagine, after Philpott's resignation, that Trudeau has the cojones to make an example of Jody.

Jane Philpott's resignation will leave no cabinet minister untouched. Others can expect to be forced to explain why they're not acting on principle. The public mood isn't good.

Treasury Board President Quits Trudeau Cabinet.

Jane Philpott has had enough with the prime minister's handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair. The Treasury Board President has resigned from cabinet.

“I have been considering the events that have shaken the federal government in recent weeks and after serious reflection, I have concluded that I must resign as a member of cabinet,” she wrote in a letter posted on Twitter moments ago.

It grieves me to resign from a portfolio where I was at work to deliver an important mandate. I must abide by my core values, my ethical responsibilities, constitutional obligations. There can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them. pic.twitter.com/EwO5dtdgG6
— Jane Philpott (@janephilpott) March 4, 2019

Sitting on the Fence

Venezuela. SNC-Lavalin. Those are just two issues on which opinion is deeply divided to the point where the force of partisanship is inescapable. In my case I end up sitting on the fence, unable to place much trust in either side.

In Venezuela, it seems to come down to a question of which of the protagonists is worse and it's quite possible that they're both lousy human beings manipulating Venezuelans and inflicting suffering on the entire country. That wouldn't be a first for Latin America. Perhaps, eventually, it will be possible to assess the Venezuelan problem on its merits. Perhaps not. You live long enough you'll see that happen from time to time.

On the SNC-Lavalin affair the warring camps contend either that this is a non-event or it's the worst scandal ever. One side picks at Jody, the other tears into Justin. Perhaps I should care. I don't.

Those who would beatify Jody will wait a hell of a long time before I agree. The way she allowed herself to be compromised on the assisted dying law told me all I need to know about her vaunted integrity. Even though it's everyone's Charter Right, something made perfectly clear by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Carter case, Jody, perhaps to accommodate Justin, abridged those rights to condemn many Canadians to either premature death or the prospect of horrific suffering - strictly for political advancement. That was an utterly craven move.

As for Justin, I heard his solemn campaign promises and watched as he reneged on his word again and again and again. He put paid to any notion of his integrity. When I hear lofty pronouncements about Jody or Justin coming from their respective acolytes, my stomach churns a little bit. Either side - it's all crap.

What really pisses me off is how the rest of us succumb to these controversies. They become the "shiny thing" that saps our energy, our time, and distracts us from the real threats of the day - the arms race, nuclear proliferation, climate change and the possibility of triggering a mass extinction of life on Earth.

Jody's barking dogs and Justin's barking dogs are just that - barking dogs. Mole hills are, of sheer tenacity, turned into mountains.

It's the fracturing that's most worrisome. The tear down of consensus prevents us from getting much done on the important challenges of the day. It divides us and makes us angrier and more suspicious of "the other." Christ, haven't we learned anything from watching the neighbours to the south, a divide that Carl Bernstein labels a "Cold Civil War" that could quickly turn hot?

If you want to see chickens with their heads cut off, turn to the live broadcasts from Britain's House of Commons. It's gone from a contest or "remain" versus "leave." That has broken down into so many camps it's beginning to resemble a gathering of Afghan warlords. There's Leave - soft Brexit and Leave - hard Brexit, there's pro-Backstop and anti-Backstop, there's a faction that want another referendum, some who want a snap election, and now there's a group that wants soft Brexit with a popular vote to confirm or reject the deal immediately afterward. The parties each tend to have several of these sub-factions. Theresa May struggles to cajole better terms from the EU even as she has to deal with an insurgency within her own government. That is a truly shambolic Parliament.

Maybe this is how neoliberalism ends. We get so absorbed in nattering that nothing important gets done, we are overtaken by events we were not heeding, and the whole tired business groans and collapses under its own weight.

Bring it on. Sounds like a good time for sitting on the fence.

Why We Cannot Escape Neoliberalism - Ask Machiavelli

Machiavelli would have understood that we've trapped ourselves.

"There are Thousands Like Him"

News cameras devoured footage of Chris Hasson's arsenal - assault rifles, shotguns, pistols, a sniper rifle, ammo boxes stuffed with rounds and a manifesto of those he was out to slaughter - mainly prominent Democrats and news anchors. This from a 49 year old US Coast Guard lieutenant.

A lunatic, of course. A nutter. A "lone wolf" crazy, had to be. Maybe not. Experts maintain there are thousands of Christopher Hasson's circulating in the ranks of America's white supremists.

What is clear, however, is that Hasson was inspired by others who came before him, and that he is likely very far from alone. 

Hasson is the product of both established traditions within white supremacist circles as well as new developments. He was at once inspired by old ideas and determined to go beyond them to create more havoc than any who had come before him.

The year and a half since the Unite the Right far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, ended in mayhem, the death of a protester and political turmoil, has been a rough time for the public facing and ostensibly political arm of the white supremacist movement in America. Those who marched in Charlottesville have to a large degree retreated, fleeing lawsuits, doxxing and personal scandal. Still, while public marches appear to be fewer and fewer, the period since Charlottesville has also been marred by individual episodes of extreme violence, suggesting that the wave of white supremacy that seemed to crest in Charlottesville is not so much receding as just changing in nature.

“I think what we’re starting to see now is people becoming more disheartened and disconnected from mainstream politics,” said Keegan Hankes. 

Hankes is a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center monitoring group, and he says they have been following a spike in far-right violence. “We believe we can expect more violence as people become increasingly frustrated and unmoored,” he said. 

Increased violence from far-right activists at a time when the administration is friendlier toward their goals is not without historical precedent, said the University of Chicago historian Kathleen Belew, the author of Bring the War Home: the White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. Belew explained that the far right’s affinity for Donald Trump might mean more violence during his time in the White House, not less. 

“The last time the movement underwent a major revolutionary turn was under the Reagan administration, during a moment of supposedly friendly state power,” she said.

Structurally these groups are evolving into "leaderless resistance" groups. These are individuals or small cells that are not directly tied to a larger movement where they would be easier to detect and monitor.

The fear is that, should Donald Trump be impeached or even defeated in the 2020 presidential election, these resistance groups could goad/inspire each other to violent terrorist attacks. Carl Bernstein addressed this threat a few days ago:



Across the United States, hate crimes have increased over each of the past three years.  The groups most commonly targeted were blacks and Jewish Americans. This is white nationalist bigotry at play, people who think a lot like many of the extremists Andrew Scheer and Dave Tkachuk embraced on Parliament Hill.

Meanwhile, in Britain, pro-Brexit UKIP, Nigel Farage's old bunch, is also taking a turn to the extreme right.

Membership has risen by about 50% over the 12 months from a low point a year ago, rapidly reshaping the party in the image of its leader, Gerard Batten, who describes Islam as “a death cult” and has appointed the anti-Muslim activist Tommy Robinson as an adviser. 

Conversations with more than two dozen current and former Ukip figures, many of them senior, have uncovered an exodus of more moderate senior members and local organisers, hollowing out Ukip’s ability to fight future elections.

...Members of Ukip’s youth wing have posted antisemitic and other extremist messages online, and there has been a rise in the popularity of news websites pushing the party’s message. 

Analysts warn that with Ukip’s poll numbers rising amid the continued deadlock over Brexit there is a danger the party could soon be reinvented as a street movement, becoming the first significant far-right force in UK politics since the demise of the British National party (BNP).

...The Guardian has seen antisemitic messages posted on an unofficial Ukip youth web group, including one saying that life under Hitler was “better than anywhere else on earth”, and another describing Jews as “hook-nosed masters” who control the media. The member involved has since been expelled.

...Of the 24 Ukip MEPs elected when the party topped the polls in the 2014 European elections, only seven remain. 

Insiders say this change has been reflected at local level, with many party organisers leaving. A source at one of Ukip’s former strongholds, Thanet in Kent, called the party operation there “a shadow of what it used to be”. 

But senior members say this has been balanced by an influx of predominantly younger members, many attracted by Ukip’s tie-up with YouTube personalities such as Paul Joseph Watson, from the far-right US conspiracy theory website Infowars.

What's the message for us? For starters, this is a transnational movement and it's here to stay. It is here in Canada. When the cranks take hold, and they always seem to prevail, they're perfectly adept at transforming a political protest movement into something akin to a nascent insurgency.

Justin Trudeau could do the country a great service if he stopped using CSIS and RCMP assets to surveil lawful pipeline protesters and used those limited resources to track a real danger to our democracy.

The Case for Lowering the Voting Age

I've never been a fan of the idea of enfranchising younger people - until I realized the arguments against it are bollocks.

We've gone along with this notion that until you're 18 (formerly 21), you're not mature enough to be expected to vote responsibly. Below 18 you would be susceptible, easy meat for hustlers and con artists preying on your emotions, your fears. Below 18 you really wouldn't be able to achieve "informed consent."

Really?

Just look at what the grownups have done. They put Trump in the White House. They put Doug Ford in the premier's chair. They elected some hammerhead named Moe. They've bestowed premiership on thugs named Erdogan, Orban, Duterte.

What could those hustlers and con artists do to a 16 year old that they haven't already done with the grownups? Adults today are freely manipulated by fears and paranoia and appeals to their basest instincts, even to the point of voting against their own interests.

What did Trump promise his Gullibillies? Vastly improved healthcare for everybody that would put Obamacare to shame. Lower taxes. Slashed government debt. Oh yeah, and that wall. He hasn't improved healthcare one bit. The bought and paid for Congress won't hear of it. He's lowered taxes, mainly for the few at the top, and he's paid for it by adding about 1.5 trillion to the national debt, a form of indentured servitude for their children. Yet those Gullibillies cling to Trump just like... (your metaphor here).

The fact remains that you can't trust adults to vote responsibly. There's a reason we have such inept government today. That's what the voters are prepared to take. Voters today are largely fine with neoliberalism. They're largely fine with visionless short-term governance. They're largely fine with their politicians ducking the debt we owe to future generations. And their political maturity is better than a 16 year old's, why?

Now, imagine what this year's federal elections might look like if we extended suffrage to 16 year olds. These kids are aware of what's coming their way in the three or four or five decades ahead. They know that we're leaving them to take it in the neck. Frankly I think lowering the voting age would mobilize young people from 16 to 25 to turn out to vote responsibly, to vote for their future.

That would be like a 2X4 upside the head to this moribund political caste we have today. It would probably spark a major interest in climate change - mitigation and adaptation - that we haven't witnessed to date except in hollow campaign promises.

No, it's not 16 year olds I can't trust with the vote. It's 30 year olds and 40 year olds and 50 year olds and 60 year olds and their elders I don't trust with the vote.

Young people have more skin in this game than we ever had. Let them have their say and let our miserable political caste hear their message.

LavScam - Does That Bring Back Memories

Just the name "LavScam" rekindles memories of Liberal scandals past, especially the AdScam or Sponsorship Scandal that condemned the Liberal Party to wander in the desert, unloved, unwanted for a decade.

It revives memories of a prime minister past on whose watch the debacle unfolded. That, of course, would be former prime minister Jean Chretien.

There is among our ranks a former aide to prime minister Chretien who has become a relentless critic of the current prime minister, the fellow who, as far as I can tell, actually coined the term "LavScam."

This same fellow regularly renews his vows of fealty to "the Boss," the former prime minister whom he served.

This naturally invites the question of how Jean Chretien is taking his former aide's scathing and relentless attacks on Justin Trudeau? Could Mr. Chretien have no knowledge of this? Alternatively, does he approve of the attacks on the son of the man he himself served, his successor to the throne, and, unavoidably, their Liberal Party? Is there some bad blood between prime minister past and prime minister present?

Just askin'.

Nikiforuk Tackles SNC-L's Criminality

"The misuse of public procurement processes in the construction industry, the manipulation of the rules governing the financing of political parties and the infiltration of the industry by organized crime have generated economic costs for society as a whole. They have also undermined its democratic foundations, the rule of law and confidence in public institutions.”

- Charbonneau Report

The company is blacklisted by the World Bank for ten years, a decade in which it may not compete for World Bank-financed projects abroad. The company is facing a similar fate in its Canadian homeland. It says it may have to depart, in disgrace, perhaps for London where Brexit-plagued Britain can't be fussy about who and what it lets in.

The Tyee's petro-scribe, Andrew Nikiforuk, explores why the world of mega-projects seems to breed corruption.

SNC-Lavalin now occupies the centre stage of a national political scandal. It’s but the latest for the engineering giant, whose list of bad behaviours is so long that the magazine L’actualité actually called Canada’s largest engineering construction firm “the shame of Quebec Inc.” 

Company executives bribed officials (the code word was “project consultancy costs”) in several countries to secure contracts and also bribed local officials involving a $1.3-billion Montreal “super hospital.” 

In addition, the firm made illegal political party donations to municipal, provincial and political parties on a massive scale. SNC-Lavalin still faces federal charges it bribed Libyan government officials with $48 million while defrauding Libyan organizations of another $130 million.

...The argument for deferring prosecution is that SNC-Lavalin swears it has changed its stripes, imposed guidelines and taken the right ethical courses. The rogue actors have left the company or faced the courts, pleads the company. Better to salvage jobs and business in Quebec than punish a corporation that has learned its lesson and is ready to play fair like its competitors do. 

But that’s not how corruption works. Especially in the type of business SNC-Lavalin pursues. In fact, construction firms have a global habit of behaving badly from Brazil to Newfoundland.

Corruption in the construction business usually requires a trifecta of conditions: political parties hungry for funds, engineering firms hungry for contracts and governments seduced by the political rewards of large projects with poor oversight. Not all of it is strictly illegal. 

In 2011, Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog, laid out the essential details in its latest “Bribe Payers Index” for 19 different business sectors. 

Bribery of various kinds tainted every sector, revealed the watchdog, though agriculture seemed to be the least affected. In contrast, “public works contracts and construction” got the worst score and ranked at the bottom of the list, right next to utilities, real estate and oil and gas firms. 

No huge surprise, given that large public contracts combined with complex engineering frequently make a mockery of schedules and budgets. “This makes it easier to hide and inflate additional expenditure,” explained the watchdog.

...Many Canadians are in denial about how powerfully the mechanism works in our sputtering democracy. But it is alive and kicking wherever political parties fund overscheduled and overpriced construction projects with taxpayers’ money. 

In British Columbia, for example, the BC Liberal Party ordered BC Hydro to buy too much energy from private providers. Then BC Hydro paid too much for the energy it bought by billions of dollars. How much of that money found its way back to the BC Liberal Party? It’s a documented fact that BC Liberal donors tended to get the lucrative contracts to privately provide energy. 

Given that taxpayers pay for the cost overruns and that public employees never get fired for cost overruns, “strong incentives exist for proponents to strategically misrepresent initial budgets to get a project approved, funded and started, knowing that once work begins, few projects are ever halted,” found a University of Toronto report.

...But mega-projects aren’t just unwieldy and overhyped. They can easily incubate corruption. In 2017, a group of University of Leeds researchers called corruption on publicly funded mega-projects “the elephant in the room.” 

...Corruption wasn’t just a matter of rogue individuals; it was contextual, noted the authors, who portray an industry discouraging of whistleblowers. They found engineers didn’t like to talk about mega-projects and corruption in the same sentence. In fact, leading management journals, the very ones engineers read on a daily basis, rarely mentioned the word corruption.

Indignant Liberal partisans struggle to minimize Lavalin's rich history of corruption. It was one deal, a couple of rogue guys, ancient history, a giant nothingburger. Those people ought to read Nikiforuk's account of Lavalin's culture of corruption whether it be in Pakistan, Libya, or at home in Canada. He puts paid to all of the apologists' nonsense.


The Charbonneau Commission, Montreal, 2013.

Over three days of testimony, Yves Cadotte, SNC-Lavalin’s vice president of transportation and infrastructure, explained the intricacies of contributing to political parties. They eagerly solicited cash, said Cadotte, and he would often deliver the money in briefcases containing between $70,000 and $200,000. 

To participate or not participate posed a risk. “That’s the dilemma: not contributing would be a risk that is perhaps intangible,” he said. “Maybe there is no (consequence), but in our mind it’s a risk we don’t necessarily want to take.” 

Cadotte also admitted SNC-Lavalin had broken the law. Given that it is illegal in Quebec for corporations to donate to political parties directly, Cadotte described the company’s “straw men” scheme. Executives would ask middle managers and often their wives to donate $1,000 (the personal limit) to a particular party. The company would later reimburse them come bonus time.

...In 2016, SNC-Lavalin made an interesting deal with Elections Canada called a “compliance agreement.” The agreement noted that SNC-Lavalin illegally donated $118,000 to the federal Liberal and Conservative Parties between 2004 and 2011 using the same straw man scheme. 

The bulk of the money, $100,000, went to the Liberal Party of Canada.

How Lavalin pressured the Liberal government to implement "deferred prosecution agreement" legislation.

Orwellian sounding “deferred prosecution agreements” or “no prosecution agreements” are all the rage in the U.K. and the U.S. When faced with the prospect of prosecuting a large company with many employees for economic crimes, governments can grant leniency with a DPA instead. The company must admit to its wrongdoing and change its behaviour. 

The moral hazard of such agreements is great. “If you do not punish crimes, there’s really no reason they won’t happen again,” Mary Ramirez, a professor at Washburn University School of Law and a former assistant United States attorney told the New York Times.

...A bevy of SNC-Lavalin lobbyists went to work arguing for the addition of a deferred prosecution agreement in Canada’s Criminal Code in 2016. Two years later they got their wish as the Trudeau government included “the SNC-Lavalin clause” in the Criminal Code in an omnibus bill C-74.

Once again Andrew Nikiforuk hits one out of the park while the mainstream media settle for singles.  The Liberal faithful, like their Conservative counterparts, instinctively go into damage control mode, when these scandals erupt. They never turn on the party leadership that has allowed this chicanery to happen. When denial no longer works, there's always somebody else to blame, someone else's reputation to impugn. There's no shortage of that in the effort to smear ex-justice minister Jody.

A Point Well-Taken. The Hopeless Position When an Attorney-General is Also Justice Minister

Ottawa U. Faculty of Law dean, Adam Dodek, hits the nail squarely on the head - it's nigh impossible and fraught with conflicts to appoint one person to serve as both Attorney General and minister of justice.

...this much is clear, and has been for years: Ms. Wilson-Raybould was placed in an intolerable conflict the moment she was sworn in as both minister of justice, a political role charged with developing policy and drafting legislation for the Justice Department, and as the attorney-general of Canada, responsible for providing legal advice to Canada’s executive branch and representing the government in legal proceedings. 

The answer for why the two offices are combined is simple, if unsatisfying: That’s the way it has always been in Canada, and because the combined role is what the law dictates, according to the Department of Justice Act. ...The Justice Department and this combined role, however, has remained largely unchanged since the department’s creation in 1868, with the biggest change coming in 2006, when its prosecutorial arm was spun off into a separate office, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC). Of course, it is this relationship that’s at the heart of the current controversy involving the PPSC, the attorney-general, the Prime Minister’s Office and SNC-Lavalin.

There is no deeper historical reason that the two jobs are fused in Canada, either. In the British parliamentary system, from which Canada inherited its governance structure, the attorney-general and the Minister of Justice (Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice) have always been two separate positions. The British minister of justice is a member of cabinet, while the attorney-general is not, although the latter does attend cabinet meetings.

...Justice ministers are expected to advise Parliament. The Department of Justice Act requires the minister of justice to examine every regulation and every government bill that is introduced in the House of Commons to ascertain whether any of its provisions are inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and to report any such inconsistency to the House of Commons “at the first convenient opportunity.” No minister of justice has ever reported any inconsistency to the House of Commons in the 37 years that the Charter and this provision have been in existence. We should not be particularly surprised by this, given the layers of conflict that Ms. Wilson-Raybould and her successor, David Lametti, find themselves in. 

But justice ministers are decidedly partisan: They develop policy and legislation relating to “criminal law, family law, human rights law, public law and private international law, constitutional law and Aboriginal justice," such as medical assistance in dying, bail reform and more. As attorney-general, they provide the best independent legal advice to their own department and themselves on those same policies. Then, through the justice-minister lens, they are required to report any inconsistencies with the Charter to the House of Commons. We talk about the minister wearing many hats, but these legal contortions are enough to make anyone’s head spin, no matter what sits on top of it. 

Bluntly, this is a clash of loyalties and a conflict of interest. How can the minister and attorney-general provide legal advice on their own policies or legal advice that they have a political interest in promoting? How can they then fulfill their duty to the House of Commons to report any inconsistency under the Charter?

...We need to have a minister of justice who is responsible for justice policy in the same way that the minister of health is responsible for health policy. But it is not apparent that we need a lawyer in this role any more than we need a doctor as minister of health, a farmer as minister of agriculture or a teacher as minister of education. To many lawyers, this statement will be viewed as sacrilegious if not treasonous, but if we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that we lawyers simply have not done a good job creating a justice system that is accessible for Canadians. We certainly do not have a monopoly on good ideas for the justice system. 

We also need an attorney-general who is the legal adviser to government. This person does need to be a lawyer, but she does not necessarily need to be in cabinet. Again, this may sound offensive to Canadian ears but it is the standard operating principle in Britain: the attorney-general is an elected MP who advises and attends cabinet as necessary but is not a member of cabinet. The attorney-general oversees prosecutions and provides legal advice.

Dodek presents a sensible argument. He convincingly makes the case for fixing a mistake we've been living with since 1868, just one year after Confederation. If not now, then when?

Autocracy Ascendant

You can't have an over-populated, resource depleted world ravaged by climate change, under the heel of late-stage neoliberalism and not expect destabilization and people eager to exploit confusion, dislocation and chaos.

By now there can't be many who have no sense of the rise of authoritarianism, strongman rule, and the decline of democracy. But who, where and how bad? That's the business of the World Justice Project which has just released its latest rule of law index. You can also  download the report in pdf.

Scandinavian countries took top honours. No surprises there. Canada came in 9th, behind New Zealand and a smidge ahead of Estonia.  The US did surprisingly well, coming in 20th overall. Coming in 126th and last - you guessed it - Venezuela. Viktor Orban's Hungary placed in the 5th tier standings at 57th place, just ahead of Brazil.

Conspicuous by its absence is Israel. Given that ratings are presented for relatively small countries such as St. Kitts, Sri Lanka, St. Lucia and Barbados, the lack of any mention of Israel is curious but perhaps predictable.

It's important to bear in mind that the report is no more than a snapshot of where we are today. Autocracy is spreading, growing. We are really in the early-onset stage of this contagion.