On March 24, 2005, the following items were tabled in the Quebec National Assembly.
Copy of a letter, dated 24 March 2005, he sent to Mr. Jacques Saint-Laurent,Chairman of the Commission d’accès à l’information, asking him to investigate the conduct of Mr. Thomas Mulcair, Minister of Sustainable Development, the-environment and Parks, during Routine Proceedings, at the sitting of 22 March 2005.(Sessional Paper No. 1702-20050324)
Copy of a letter, dated 24 March 2005, addressed to Mr. André Dicaire, Secretary General of the Government, by Mrs. Line-Sylvie Perron, Executive Assistant to the Leader of the Official Opposition, concerning the observance of sections 30 and 33 of the the Act respecting Access to documents held by public bodies and the Protection of personal information.(Sessional Paper No. 1703-20050324)
On March 22, 2005; Thomas Mulcair, then Minister of Environment, failed yet again to present the necessary documents, requested by the opposition, to explain his actions in several matters. This put him in contempt, and the matter would eventually make its way to the Supreme Court. (1) It might have been simpler just to buy a big black magic marker, like the one that Harper used when he was found in contempt, and produced heavily redacted documents. But Mulcair dug in his heels, citing cabinet confidentiality. His reputation for obstinance was well known. Michel David in Le Devoir spoke of that reputation when in opposition, stating that "he literally horrified his opponents" with his "brutality or vulgarity", earning him the moniker, "pit bull". (2) David had hoped that Mulcair would be a "green pit bull" fighting for the environment, but it was not to be. Instead Mulcair fought for the economic interests of the multinationals. In fact, one of the debates held on the day in question, centred around the appointment of William J. Cosgrove, to chair the public hearings on the environment. In that position, Cosgrove could select his own people to conduct the assessments, a red flag given who Cosgrove was. He was President of The World Water Council, a group calling for the privatization of water services worldwide, and promoters of public-private partnerships, to control not only the environmental concerns, but the selling of water in bulk, to multinational corporations. Maude Barlow, a foremost authority on the issue of water, has attended protests against the World Water Forums , held every three years, run by the WWC. In 2009, she was interviewed by Democracy Now during the event held in Instanbul.
They [the WWC] basically say that they are the collection of people around the world who care about water, and they come together every three years to have this great big summit. And every single year, the police presence gets more and more like the World Trade Organization, every single year, from the very beginning, when there was none, to this. But basically, the World Water Council, which puts this on, is really the big water corporations and the World Bank and some UN agencies and some northern development agencies, some academics, the odd small NGO — small as in, you know, NGOs, but really, it is the corporations, and it’s a big trade show. That’s what this is about. They’ll put on sessions on gender and water, but they don’t mean any of it. This is really about one development model for water, and that’s the privatization model. And that’s what they’re promoting, and that’s what their consensus is, and they refuse to include the notion of the right to water and, of course, the public trust into their documents.
Mulcair not only said that "he does not share the fears of people like Maude Barlow", but that he found no problem with using PPPs to monitor water safety. Steven Guilbeault of Greenpeace told Le Devoir:
"one wonders what ideological alignment the new president of the BAPE gives commissions of inquiry when they have to decide on the adequacy of public facilities where PPPs are concerned, works that touch water in one way or another or, for example, on projects small private stations. Ultimately, one wonders if it is not a government strategy to reduce the moral authority of the BAPE, which annoys many developers.
Despite being called a conflict of interest, since Cosgrove worked for corporations trying to privatize the world's water supply, he was allowed to stay in that position until 2007, and Mulcair would continue to allow PPPs to flourish, even in the building of a highway. I am a huge fan of Maude Barlow. A respected voice on progressive issues and supporter of the NDP, when they were too. But did she ever think, during her many protests of the WWC, that it's president was once lauded as hero (March 22, 2005) by the current leader of the NDP? It defies logic. She has spent decades fighting for something, not realizing that she was held in such low esteem by Thomas Mulcair, who got his talking points from a man inside the walls, protected by soldiers, that kept her on the other side of them. I wonder how many times her name was brought up?
"Minister Mulcair, concludes Jacques Boivin [vice president of the of the Quebec Association for a World Water Contract] has just shown his true colors ...it will not be economic development that respects ecosystems but ecosystems that must comply with the requirements of economic development.
So he is different from Stephen Harper, how? Sources: 1. CANADA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC, DISTRICT MONTREAL, Citizens Committee of the peninsula-Lanaudière c. Quebec (Attorney General), 2006 QCCS 4861, SUPERIOR COURT; No: 500-17-023251-047, August 24, 2006 2. Green Pitbull, by Michael David, Le Devoir, December 7, 2004
In it he questions Mulcair's logic and math, when discussing agriculture and supply management.
Incoherence is the expected thing from Mulcair. His arithmetic seems a bit off. Supply management nationally provided 16.9 per cent of farm-gate cash revenue in 2014 and 17.0 per cent the prior year, so Mulcair must have been referring only to Quebec. In that case gross revenue from milk, egg and poultry sales in Quebec was 2.55 per cent of Canadian farm cash income. Employment allegedly created by the system can be almost any number depending on how creatively it is defined.
Conflicting views and just making stuff up when he can't answer a question, is actually a trademark of Mulcair's, and was long before he hijacked the NDP.
Environmentalist and water expert, Mario Desrosiers, said in 2005, after yet another deceit of Mulcair's when he tried to deny that he had fired the Environmental watchdog:
How can we give credibility to the words of a minister when his statements are different from one newspaper to another or from a television program to another or simply false.(1)
Mulcair dismissed that and the hundreds of other concerns, by claiming that they "stem from emotional reactions"
Since the media is content to go along with his view of his record as environment minister in Quebec, I'm running a series of articles, that reveal what actually occurred. There was no principle, no commitment and certainly no logic.
Instead, what we see is a systematic attempt to privatize and deregulate, and just like Stephen Harper, much was done under the cloak of secrecy. He, along with other members of the Quebec Liberal government, were actually sued, and part of the Plaintiffs' case dealt with the difficulty to access information. (2)
The defence presented, was that they might expose things that shouldn't be exposed. Not unlike the Harper government calling everything a "cabinet secret". In one incident, Mulcair held off a group seeking an audience for a full year.
Mulcair's Pig in a Poke
When in the Quebec government, Thomas Mulcair would often mention the fact that he helped to draft the terms of NAFTA. In his promotion of bulk water sales, he suggested that "the environmental laws protecting water are considered barriers to trade." (3)
Also a barrier to trade was a moratorium on hog farming, imposed by the Parti Quebecois, to keep the mega barn, multinational corporations, from over farming and contaminating the water supply.
When the pubic first became aware of Mulcair's intent to lift the moratorium, there was a great deal of opposition. In 2003, he promised that a full environmental assessment would be done. It was, concluding that the ban should not be repealed. Mulcair lifted it anyway, favouring corporate interests over public safety.
"By authorizing new hog barns, the government is giving municipal officials and citizens a fait accompli.It is preparing for the worst crises than previous ones, since people feel cheated.The BAPE gave them hope and yet nothing changes, "says Gilles Tardif of the Citizen Coalition. "The Environment Minister Thomas Mulcair, seems to have turned into the minister of pig development," adds Tim Yeatman ... citizens have just elected candidates who campaigned against hog farms projects.
The groups are outraged that the government ignored the recommendations of the BAPE in regard to the protection of the environment and risks to the health of people drinking from artesian wells."Despite clear evidence to the effect that the spreading of pig manure, slurry is not adequately controlled to prevent the pollution of watercourses, the Liberal government seems to be unconscious," says Martine Ouellet Vice President of the Coalition Eau Secours. (4)
The major issue in Quebec is the ever-expanding hog industry, and its impact upon the environment and rural communities. In the fall of 2003 The Quebec government released its report on a public consultation process which recommended fundamental changes to hog production in order to make it sustainable in Quebec. A moratorium on hog production expansion followed, installed until new regulations and policies could be implemented, but was lifted prematurely in December 2004. Since then, grassroots community groups have been calling on the province to heed the Canadian Medical Association’s resolution to ban the expansion of the hog industry until the inherent risks of industrial hog farming are understood and the appropriate solutions.
So while Thomas Mulcair is travelling the country, attacking Stephen Harper for not protecting our waterways, he himself clearly has no concern. He will do just what Harper does. Deregulate his way to more corporate profits.
In fact, one man actually had to go on a public hunger strike, lasting 18 days, just to get Mulcair to address a water pollution concern in his community.(5)
To honour NAFTA, he dishonoured the people he was supposed to protect, by not ensuring that they would enjoy a safe environment and clean drinking water.
The NDP are calling for change, but with Mulcair as prime minister, I'm afraid it would just be more of the same.
Sources:
1. Mulcair is Irresponsible and Insults People, By Mario Desrosiers, Chairman of the Citizens Committee Presquîle - Lanaudière (CCPL), October 11, 2005
2. CANADA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC, DISTRICT MONTREAL, Citizens Committee of the peninsula-Lanaudière c. Quebec (Attorney General), 2006 QCCS 4861, SUPERIOR COURT; No: 500-17-023251-047, August 24, 2006
3. Mulcair is Pleased to Have a New Debate, The Press, Charles Cote and Mario Clouthier, June 16, 2004
I imagine SNC Lavelin is browsing the Harper Garage sale, as we speak, where everything not nailed down (and even stuff bolted to the floor) will be on the market. Cheap. Real cheap.
The Harper government has been releasing a lot of new policies the past few days, hoping everyone is too busy with the Holidays to notice. But one of them should be getting our attention.
He and his colleagues did the same in Ontario when with the Mike Harris government. Valuable prime real estate was almost given away to his party's campaign contributors. Real Estate that we cannot afford to buy back.
A couple of examples from the Ontario Legislature debates at the time:
... I believe people should take responsibility for their actions, and today I want to speak to you about your actions in connection with some land deals in Ontario. In particular, on June 16, 1998, the Ontario government sold a piece of land in Brampton for $1.27 million. Six days later, that property was flipped for $3.92 million. That meant the taxpayers lost out on over $2.5 million in connection with that deal alone.
... Let's go on to the next deal. On March 29, 1999, the Ontario government sold land in Mississauga for $1.92 million. In November, that parcel was flipped for $4.39 million. From the speculator's perspective it was a flip, but from the taxpayers' perspective it was a flop. In that particular case, they lost out on $2.4 million.
... Here's another deal now. On March 3, 1999, you approved a sale of government property for $5 million. According to industry standards, that property should have been sold for $10 million.
I don't believe that this is the way to go, but we already know that what the neocons want, the neocons will get, so we must make a few demands, before the gavel is dropped. Not that they'll listen to us, but we should at least try.
1. That the Crown corporations are sold only to Canadian buyers.
2. That all jobs are protected and the unions kept intact. We are losing all of this country's good union jobs and it's going to have a devastating affect in the long term.
3. That all sales are transparent and Canadians are kept in the loop.
4. That prices given reflect fair market values, not fair to Conservative contributors' values. Canadians are not interested in Flaherty's buddies having a "flipping" good time ... again!
Not happy with simply selling off Canada, Harper is also determined that others will follow suit.
In more than two decades, we lost 900. In just four years, Harper has released 600 companies from their commitment to our country. He's no doubt subsidizing most of them with our money.
One by one they’ve toppled: Stelco, Dofasco, Inco, Falconbridge, Noranda, Domtar. Since Stephen Harper took power, more than 600 Canadian companies have fallen into foreign hands.
... Community leaders say they have hollowed out Canada, stripping the nation of its industrial icons and destroying livelihoods. This week, the consequences of one of the biggest foreign takeovers of the Harper era are playing out in Sudbury. In 2006, Inco, which had provided five generations of miners with a middle-class income, was taken over by the Brazilian multinational Vale.
The new owner publicly promised not lay off any workers for three years. It also made explicit commitments to Ottawa’s investment review agency. They have never been revealed. Shortly before reaching the three-year mark, Vale announced it would lay off 423 Canadian workers; 261 in Sudbury and 162 at its other locations in Port Colborne and Voisey’s Bay. The next month, it said it was shutting the Sudbury mine for eight weeks, beginning June 1, 2009.
... Is Vale meeting its undertakings to the government? It’s hard to tell since Ottawa insists on keeping them confidential. Should Canadians ask whether this is the future they want? Yes.
As Canadians from coast to coast line up for hours awaiting H1N1 flu vaccinations amid continuing short supply and growing public concern, tens of thousands of patients registered with at least one private Toronto clinic can make appointments to receive shots for themselves and their family members.
Medcan, a private clinic in downtown Toronto, bills itself as a “preventive health-care clinic” and provides extensive medical, counselling and nutritional services, including its signature service: A comprehensive, head-to-toe “executive” medical checkup that costs upward of $2,000.
And now, the 40,000 patients in Medcan's database are also eligible to make appointments for the sought-after H1N1 vaccine. Medcan received a shipment of 3,000 shots of adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine from Toronto Public Health Friday, and the clinic's medical director James Aw said phones have been ringing off the hook and e-mails piling up with requests for appointments.
The clinic won't charge for the H1N1 vaccine, but is only offering it to its clients - all of whom must undergo the $2,300 head-to-toe medical checkup as a prerequisite for joining the clinic's patient roster.
I've been kind of tracking a story since there were first rumblings about Stockwell Day and the Reform-Conservatives, planning to open private, for-profit penitentiaries. This is naturally part of their so-called 'law and order' agenda.
But they couldn't expect American firms to move in with our crime rate so low. Solution. Mandatory sentences and send children to jail. That will fill them up quicker. But do we really want something like the incarceration and rehabilitation of prisoners being based on profit?
Will guards be properly trained? Will they be unionized and assured fair wages and benefits?
The above video outlines why these prisons fail, and we should all fight this move. I know it's part of the dismantling of our government by Stephen Harper, a long time dream of his, but this is absolutely not the way to go.
On April 27, 2006, the Ontario government announced the end of a bizarre venture. Canada's first large privately run prison, a 1,200-inmate maximum-security superjail in the cottage country north of Toronto, was a failure and would be taken over by the province.
The Penetanguishene-based Central North Correctional Centre was a striking attempt at getting in on the controversial private-prison craze that has swept the United States, where for-profit businesses now run approximately 150 prisons housing about 150,000 inmates.
Ontario's five-year experiment with the concept, launched with much fanfare in 2001 by Robert Sampson–at the time the law-and-order Tory correctional services minister–ended amid revelations of flawed security, inadequate prisoner health care, and higher reoffending rates once the privately housed inmates were let back out into the world.
Today, Sampson has secured a gig with the Stephen Harper Conservatives leading a federal panel reviewing Canada's prison system. Its mandate includes finding "opportunities for savings including through physical plant realignment and infrastructure renewal".
Does the choice of Sampson mean the feds want to privatize Canadian prisons? Stockwell Day, the federal public safety minister, says no. "The question of privatization is not on the table," he told journalists after Sampson's appointment last April. But some critics aren't so sure. "We have to be very vigilant to see where this review is going and how broad it gets in terms of an agenda around privatization," NDP MP Libby Davies (Vancouver East) told a reporter.
Len Bush, national representative of 15,000 provincial prison guards in the National Union of Public and Government Employees, is also skeptical about Day's denial. "He's not actually come out and said, 'No, I won't privatize.' We would welcome him saying so. It looks to us that this is their direction, even though they're not in a situation where they feel they can say it publicly," he said on the phone from his Ottawa office.
Sampson submitted his report to the government on October 31, but it remains under wraps. In late October, though, news leaked from the Sampson panel suggesting that it was preparing to scrap statutory release, the virtually automatic discharge of prisoners under conditions similar to parole after they've served two-thirds of their sentences. Instead, "you'd have to show why you deserve to be released [at the two-thirds point]," a Canadian Press story quoted an unnamed source "familiar with the panel's report" as saying. "It'll put more people in [prison], so they're going to need more resources."
This has stoked the privatization fears: that the Harper government's law-and-order agenda could unleash a crisis of overcrowding in prisons, and guess what the magical solution will be? Private prisons. There is just one catch: crime experts say all this–dramatically increased prisoner numbers, possible privatization of prisons, and get-tough measures, including increased and mandatory sentences–will probably make Canadian communities less safe, not more.
At first glance, the plan may seem reasonable to some: make wrongdoers show they've changed. What could be wrong with that? It would force some to shape up, right? Wrong. Such a change would create instant havoc in already overcrowded provincial and federal prison systems by adding up to 30 or 40 percent more inmates virtually overnight, according to Neil Boyd, an SFU criminology professor who spoke to the Georgia Straight from his Bowen Island home.
The change in the statutory release rule could suddenly add another 2,200 prisoners to the federal corrections system, which currently houses 12,000 inmates–an increase of almost 20 percent, Anthony Doob, a criminology professor at the University of Toronto, estimated on the phone from his office. "The math is pretty straightforward. You could create a crisis almost overnight by changing parole practices."
Combined with other tough crime measures being proposed by the Harper government, a sudden tsunami of inmates would also swamp provincial prison systems, since many of those affected are those with sentences under two years.
"It [the increase in inmates] will come as a rude surprise to the provinces," said Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, speaking on his cellphone from a conference in Toronto. "The feds will crack down on crime, but the provinces will be punished."
In October, Harper introduced his Tackling Violent Crime Act, Bill C-2, into the House of Commons, complete with a shopping list of ideas courtesy of the U.S. law-and-order lobby, including mandatory minimum sentences for certain offences and harsher penalties for gun crimes. Harper declared the bill a confidence motion and said he'd accept no amendments to it, meaning the government will fall should it be defeated by the opposition–unlikely, since the Liberals desperately want to avoid an election.
Criminologists and prison guards say the actual result of the Harper crime package will probably be not safer communities but, rather, private prisons in which the bottom line is king, not inmate rehabilitation.
With five to 10 years needed to build a new prison from conception to construction, coupled with Harper's ideological predisposition to outsourcing government programs, Jones said it's not a big leap to privatized prisons coming to Canada in a big way. "Our anxiety is they're going to grow the prison population so quickly, they will be left with few options."
Creating a crisis to push through a controversial change is straight out of the playbook of Mike Harris's Conservative government in Ontario when it privatized the Penetanguishene prison, NUPGE's Bush said. "The strategy of the Harris government was to create a crisis and bring privatization forward to deal with the crisis," he said. "You take an overcrowded situation, add more people, and you create a crisis. We were hoping the experience elsewhere would have taught them."
The U.S. experience with privatized prisons is full of cautionary tales. After federal and state authorities brought in tougher law-and-order crime laws (among them the infamous "three strikes" statutes)–like the mandatory minimum sentences now being proposed by Harper–in the 1980s and '90s, the American prison population quadrupled, from 500,000 in 1980 to 2.2 million today. (Another 4.8 million Americans are out on parole or probation, meaning a total of one in 32 adult Americans is under the control of the justice system in one fashion or another.)
It's a myth, however, that the explosion in inmate numbers was about getting violent, hardened criminals off the street. Instead, the crackdown disproportionately targeted marginalized people and small-time drug offenders.
Authorities turned to private companies to build and run many prisons. The largest operator by far is the Nashville, Tennessee–based Corrections Corp. of America, with 65 facilities under management, including 40 it owns outright, that house 72,000 inmates. Business at CCA is booming. Since 2000, its shares have shot up from $4 to almost $29.
But an independent study of CCA in 2003 found the company had failed to: provide adequate medical care to inmates, control violence in its facilities, and prevent a rash of escapes. Civil-rights violations have also been raised in hundreds of lawsuits against CCA by prisoners and their families, including several that revolved around inmate deaths. The study, cowritten by the U.K.–based Prison Privatisation Report International and the U.S. community group Good Jobs First, also said CCA tried to keep down costs by paying staff poorly, which resulted in high turnover and mistreatment of prisoners. Substandard conditions also had resulted in prisoner protests and uprisings, while several CCA guards had been convicted of drug trafficking inside the facilities.
A low point for the company came in the late 1990s, when it agreed to a payment of $2.4 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by prisoners at its Youngstown, Ohio, prison who said the facility was unsafe after a rash of stabbings. "It's been a nightmare,"
The plague of scandals at CCA and other private prison operators prompted Business Week to publish a story in 2000 titled "Private Prisons Don't Work" that said "the industry's heyday may already be history."
But while U.S. authorities step back from the ailing crime policies of the 1980s and 1990s, the John Howard Society's Jones sees the Harper government embracing the same troubled approach. " This government seems enthralled by the Bush administration," he said, noting that Harper's crime policies "seem to reflect a close study of the American model".
Jones said the Harper crime agenda is likely to fall heaviest on marginalized people, just as the measures did in the U.S. "Police go where the pickings are easiest. It will fall disproportionately on marginalized, mentally ill, and minority youth. You will not see more Conrad Blacks in jail," he said. "It's not about justice; it's about acting Old Testament."
"There's just no support for the idea that punishment will get the social safety we want. We should be looking at success stories," Boyd said, pointing to European countries that have promoted crime prevention and improved social housing over incarceration.
In fact, that's exactly the approach that was favoured by a crime prevention council within Canada's Public Safety Ministry when it reviewed corrections policy back in 1996. The council's study, which is posted on the ministry's Web site, doesn't mince words in its criticism of U.S. mandatory minimum sentencing as a failed model that did little to reduce crime rates while merely increasing the prison population.
"Not only is the cost of automatic incarceration brought about by this policy inordinately high, but it does little to stem the ongoing tide of new offenders," noted the study, titled Money Well Spent: Investing in Preventing Crime. "Minimum mandatory sentencing requirements rely upon the false assumption that people who are contemplating a criminal act–youths in particular–go through a rational process of planning their act and weighing the consequences of being apprehended."
As for Harper's plan to tighten parole eligibility, U of T's Doob said the notion goes against everything that's known about the importance of transitioning prisoners into society through supervised programs like parole and halfway houses. "Probably the worst thing you could do is hold a guy his whole sentence and then give him a bus ticket with no job, no program, and no controls."
Jones is also flabbergasted. "The evidence is clear that incarceration is the last resort. Most people do not benefit from it and a number of people get worse. Prison is an expensive way to make bad people worse."
Jones also is alarmed about privatized prisons making a return. "The staff [in private prisons] has less training. They employ harsher measures because they're cheaper; the conditions deteriorate. The inmates eventually get out, so it passes on the costs of dealing with them to future governments and generations. The issue is they're going to be worse when they get out."
Doob agreed, saying the evidence on privatized prisons is clear: "The data that exists in various countries suggests there are real problems in the ways that private companies run these things."
Harper apparently isn't even finding many allies within the Correctional Service of Canada, even though it is likely to enjoy a massive budget increase to accommodate the new inmates. Jones said senior corrections officials see Harper's regressive policies as reversing years of hard-won policy gains in areas like parole and crime prevention.
"When the tide turns so dramatically, they [corrections officials] see their work as being undone," he said. "It turns back the clock on 40 years of progressive corrections policy."
Well guess what folks? Harper is going to do what Harper wants to do and Harper wants an American style private prison system. Living in Kingston, I am very concerned. We are blocks from a federal prison and there are several others in the vicinity. Up to now I haven't really worried about it, but I will now.
There have been several protests recently about the Reform-Conservatives' decision to close down the farms and sell the land. These farms were a very important part of rehabilitation. I suppose though they would cut into the profit of the corporations poised to take over.
The Conservative government plans to bring in an American-style prison system that will cost billions of taxpayer dollars and do little to improve public safety, according to a report released Thursday in Ottawa.
"It tramples human rights and human dignity," University of British Columbia law professor Michael Jackson, co-author of the 235-page report, titled A Flawed Compass, told reporters.
Moreover, there is "a near total absence of evidence" in the government plan that its measures will "return people to the community better able to live law-abiding lives," said co-author Graham Stewart, who recently retired after decades as head of the John Howard Society of Canada.
Their report provides a scathing review of a government blueprint for corrections called A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety. A panel led by Rob Sampson, a former corrections minister in Ontario ex-premier Mike Harris's Tory government, drafted the plan, which is being implemented by the Correctional Service.
In addition to constructing super prisons and implementing work programs, the program will eliminate gradual release and deny inmates rights that are now entrenched in the Constitution.
However, Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan said the plan is not based on a U.S.-style prison system at all. "I don't know where that suggestion comes from," he told CBC News in an interview.
"We don't have a capital program for creating and building new prisons right now, so attacking the government is a little odd."
Rather, "the changes we're proposing [are] to improve our system, protect society more and make sure offenders get the help they need," particularly mental illness treatment, Van Loan said.
The government wants to create an incentive system for prisoners to participate in rehabilitation programs, "because that's important for not just the safety of society, which is … the most important principle, but also for the prisoner to integrate into the community ultimately," he said.
The current practice of statutory release is the "wrong approach," he added.
"That means somebody has a nine-year sentence; at six years, even if they're not participating in their programs, they're automatically … released into society."
But Jackson said the plan undermines public safety by making prisons more dangerous places and constricting inmates' reintegration into society.
By keeping prisoners locked up longer, the plan places an enormous financial burden on taxpayers, he added.
Perhaps worst of all, Jackson said, it "will intensify what the Supreme Court has characterized as the already staggering injustice of the overrepresentation of aboriginal people in the prisons of Canada."
A recipe for prison violence: Jackson
By stressing punishment rather than rehabilitation, the plan ignores lessons of the past, which led to the prison riots and killings that dominated Canadian news in the early 1970s, Jackson said.
"My greatest fear is with this road map's agenda and its underlying philosophy, we will enter a new period of turmoil and violence in Canadian prisons," he said.
"I do fear that prisons will become more abusive, prisoners will become more frustrated and that we could go back to a time not only when the rule of law was absent but a culture of violence is the dominant way in which prisoners express their frustrations."
Stewart called the blueprint "an ideological rant, which flies in the face of the Correctional Service's own research of what works to rehabilitate prisoners and ensure community safety."
"The fact is that you cannot hurt a person and make them into a good citizen at the same time," Stewart said.
The government has already allocated hundreds of millions to the plan, even though it has had no input from either Parliament or the public, according to the report.
Despite all the claims that Stephen Harper doesn't believe in science because of his religion, he very much believes in the value of science. Why else is he selling it off?
Now running the National Citizens Coalition from the inside, every single thing they campaigned on, is being brought to fruition.
He once said that when he got through with Canada, we wouldn't recognize it. Who knew that it would only take 3 1/2 years to turn us into a country most of us clearly no longer recognize.
On June 6, 2008, the Treasury Board released the long-awaited report of the Independent Panel of Experts studying the transfer of federal government laboratories to academia and/or the private sector. Following up on the government’s intentions outlined in the 2007 federal budget, the panel identified five “early candidates” for transfer. The first two will be Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Canadian Cereal Research and Innovation Laboratory in Winnipeg, and Natural Resources Canada's Geosciences Laboratory in Ottawa. From August to December 2007, the panel scoured the world for models of government S&T commercialization via “major programs of privatization of both regulatory and non-regulatory laboratories and/or through creation of new government agencies that have special authority to pursue private-sector-like activities.”
The range of initial transfer arrangements envisaged for Canada spans private-sector involvement to outright divestiture. But the end product is clear: the “partnerships” are to be “the initial arrangement in an evolving relationship” intended to move government science facilities from “a joint sponsorship arrangement involving government to one in which the federal government is no longer involved in ownership, governance or management.” The report is nothing less than a roadmap for dismantling government science. The identification of five initial candidates for transfer is only a preliminary step. The panel received proposals for transferring government labs in a vast range of areas: “agriculture; agri-food; horticulture; viticulture; fisheries and aquaculture; environment and ecosystems;ocean systems; health and biological sciences; medical devices; geosciences; space and earth observation; mining; nanotechnology; photonics; forestry; water systems.” “Nearly all” of the 56 proposals received were considered to be potential candidates in the long-term federal strategy for divestiture of federal science, not simply those identified as “highly ranked proposals” relatively close to finalization. Among the “promising” submissions were those that envisaged “a proposed divestiture by government of physical assets, human resources or intellectual property (e.g., data resources) or personnel, by transfer to non-governmental entities.” The panel is keen to see the process push forward. In order to generate momentum, the panel solicited proposals for lab transfers, although there was insufficient time for interested parties to submit fully developed proposals.
As an indication of the haste with which the government would like to move, the five ‘early candidates’ for transfer were unanimously recommended by the panel because they can be transferred in 12 months. Within a year – slightly more than the time that has elapsed since the 2007 budget first indicated the government’s interest in transferring government labs – the government would like to see “completion of the necessary legal agreements to effect the new governance and management arrangements; the identification of the administrative and scientific leadership of the new entity, and the formulation of an integrated research program and detailed business plan.”
What the panel has explicitly not attempted to achieve is greater opportunities for federal scientists to collaborate with research peers within and beyond the federal government. If this were so, the panel would have recommended removing existing impediments standing in the way of joint research, such as restrictions on research funding and the ability of government scientists to lead collaborative research projects.
In fact, the panel is quite explicit that the myriad “examples of useful collaboration and networking” that currently exist are fatally flawed by the fact that they are “not-for-profit, cooperative arrangements”, that they contemplate no changes in the employment status of personnel, and involve no change in ownership of assets or sources of funding. Rather, the report seeks to shed government ownership and management of assets, personnel and programs.
The report must be viewed in the context of the government’s larger policy direction and philosophy.The present government is determined not simply to promote the needs of industry within government, but to restrict and reduce the capacity of government to exist independently of, and potentially to interfere with, private industry.
From his days as president of the right-wing National Citizens’ Coalition, Stephen Harper has been captivated by the goal of diminishing government to the point where it can be “drowned in a bathtub.”
From the sale of government buildings to the $1.3 billion Public-Private Partnerships fund created in the 2008 budget, privatization forms an integral part of the government’s conservative philosophy of deregulation, and permanently diminished government spending and functioning.
With respect to government science, in the conservative mindset, there is no justification for government occupying profit-making opportunities or competing for resources with private entities. The public sector must not compete with the private sector, and for-profit laboratory services is a growing industry. Rather than viewing the recruitment and retention challenge facing federal science-based departments and agencies as an opportunity to improve the attractiveness of federal scientific careers, the report sees the problem as the federal sector squeezing out private industry in the competition for scarce talent, with the solution lying in making federal government talent available to academia and private industry.
But the government also understands that non-regulatory science is closely connected to, and an important precondition of, regulatory science and the regulatory capacity of government. This is precisely why the erosion of public science is a starting place and part of a larger attack on the regulatory capacity of government.
In the panel’s view, the question whether to transfer federal labs is not a question of whether federal labs are regulatory or non-regulatory in nature, but rather those “which the federal government does not require exclusive ownership and operational control”. Quite appropriately, the panel noted the close interrelationship between non-regulatory and regulatory science, advocating privatization of regulatory labs as well as non-regulatory labs that provide “critical input” to regulatory functions. Indeed, the very presumption that government is the natural and most appropriate provider of regulatory science is “too broad a generalization.”
What then can we expect in the near future? The panel’s report suggests procurement rules should be circumvented in establishing the new partnership arrangements, given the time, energy and costs associated with observing procurement rules. In this light, it is ironic that the panel’s report speaks glowingly of the United States Department of Energy’s National Laboratories.
The DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration is responsible for administering the contract for managing the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. For over 50 years, the two labs have been operated by the University of California; in the 1990s, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recorded numerous performance problems at the labs, including “cost and schedule overruns on major projects ... and violations of nuclear safety rules that resulted in overexposure of some workers to radiation at both laboratories.”
Facilities management has also been an area of GAO scrutiny and concern, since aging facilities have led to increased need for maintenance and repairs.
Procurement, property management, emergency management, and other mission support activities have been ongoing areas of GAO primary sources of concern. Problems with contract administration and project management led the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 1990 to designate the DOE as “a high-risk area for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.”
The government faces real challenges in its bid to dismantle government science. A hint of the bumpy ride ahead is contained in the panel’s distaste for the way in which government lab privatization has been characterized.
Employing the word ‘transfer’ was “not conducive to constructive dialogue with some stakeholders” because it did little to conceal the government’s intention to disassemble government science. Happily, euphemisms like “inter-sectoral S&T integration” and “alternatives to sole government ownership and control” allowed the panel to generate a more positive “and even enthusiastic” tone for consultations.
As a sign of more intractable problems that may lie ahead, the panel notes that “non-federal parties are generally unwilling to undertake ownership of federal laboratories without long-term funding to defray the cost of operating and maintaining the facilities. Moreover, the opportunities for full transfer are limited by the fact that some federal laboratories undertake science activities that do not fit with the interests and capabilities of academia or the private sector.” The problem is a familiar one in the annals of privatization, but a common solution available to government is to prepare the labs for transfer by making them attractive to academia and the private sector – much as AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Limited) is currently being prepared for sale to the private sector.
The reason for the government’s haste is clear: opposition to this sort of move is inconvenient, and Canadians have learned to be sceptical of the claims made for privatization. Indeed, the Ontario government of Mike Harris – representatives of which now occupy cabinet positions in the federal government – met its demise partly on account of failed experiments in privatization. But only time will tell whether sufficient concern coalesces in order to reverse the dismantling of government science.
This means that our health and safety will be determined by profit - not our actual health and safety.
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