Public Works has responded with a public statement claiming that project includes not only design but also a significant amount of preparatory work that accounts for 30% of the total project budget.

The government’s response to the CBC report: “This “design then build” plan will help mitigate cost and schedule risks in the build contract. Reducing design and production uncertainties up front also reduces risk for the Canadian taxpayer over the long term.”

The government news release also highlights the commitment to create high-skill jobs in Canada. If the project goes according to plan, proponents of the plan have suggested that it could revitalize Canada’s moribund shipbuilding industry. Residents of Canada’s west coast will remember this refrain well from the 1990s. Will the Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships program be Stephen Harper’s own Fast Ferries Scandal?

Fast Ferries Controversy

In 1994, the NDP government of British Columbia announced an ambitious plan to rebuild Canada’s shipbuilding industry, creating jobs, skills and using the domestic market as a launching pad to compete on the world stage. A $210 million contract for three high-speed catamarans for use on the high traffic routes connecting Vancouver Island and the mainland was the beginning of a ten-year capital plan that would meet the needs of BC Ferries and offer development opportunities across the province.

By the time the ships were ready in 1999, the cost of the project had more than doubled to $450 million. Worse yet, technical problems with the design led to service delays and the ships required costly repairs. A 1999 Auditor General report on the project effectively sunk the BC NDP’s chances for re-election and the party was reduced the two seats in the 2001 provincial election.

The report’s key findings concluded: “The decision to build fast ferries was not supported by sufficient information and analysis to demonstrate that the ferries would meet either BC Ferries’ needs or the government’s public policy goals in a cost-effective manner”

BC Liberals have frequently attempted to restoke the controversy throughout their three terms of power. Former premier Gordon Campbell conducted a scorched-earth fire sale of the assets in 2001, selling them below scrap value. The issue remains fodder for attack ads from the Liberals, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and other right-wing groups and a millstone for current NDP leader Adrian Dix’s in his election campaign.

Despite the technical problems and financial overruns, there were significant achievements from the program. Over 350 workers received training from the project, including international welding certification. The BC Shipyards Workers General Federation lists the fast ferry program as “the only real bright spot for B.C. shipyards throughout this long period of uncertainty” since the 1980s.

More recently, in 2011, BC-based Seaspan won an $8 billion shipbuilding contract, part of the federal government’s plan to refurbish Canada’s navy, while promoting a Canadian shipbuilding industry. The BC government responded by creating a shipbuilding workforce table to help coordinate the local industry and workforce and touts the contract as a major opportunity for the province. The project figures centrally in the BC Liberals campaign as evidence of their economic acumen. Ironically, it was the Fast Ferries Program that built the capacity in British Columbia for Seaspan to be in a place to bid on the federal contract. Without the Fast Ferries, it is unlikely that the province would be projecting a billion dollar per year shipbuilding industry. This point is glossed over by both the BC media and Liberal premier Christy Clark.

 Comparisons and lessons

 Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur (Change the name and the story is about you). – Horace

In 2009, the federal government announced an ambitious plan to rebuild Canada’s shipbuilding industry, creating jobs, skills and using the domestic market as a launching pad for building an industry that could compete on the world stage. Already there are apparent cost overruns and, in the case of the Irving Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships contract, a lack of transparency. There are close parallels between Fast Ferries and the patrol ship design contract.

There is a major difference in how the project is being portrayed in the media and its political effects, at least up to now. While the Fast Ferry controversy dominated headlines in British Columbia for several years, thus far no major corporate-owned media has covered the cost controversy at Irving. As yet, the corporate and political elite in Canada still clings to Harper’s Conservative government and is unlikely to abandon it over a few unexplained hundreds of millions of dollars.

 While the laissez-faire economy was a product of deliberate state action, subsequent restrictions on the economy started in a spontaneous way. Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not. – Karl Polanyi

This parallelism further underlines the irony, that despite the laisez-faire rhetoric, the Harper Conservatives, no less than the BC NDP, rely on government intervention to stimulate the economy. As University of Manitoba political economist Radhika Desai points out in her recent book Geopolitical Economy, industrial development has rarely occurred spontaneously and, in all but the most unique circumstances, has required state support for private industry, particularly to launch expensive and complex industries like shipbuilding.

This has been especially true at moments of economic crisis. In times of turmoil, even the most ardent supporters of the laissez-faire liberalism rely on state intervention to keep the economy moving.

The differences between political parties are not a matter of which party supports intervention in the economy, the myth of free-market conservatives versus free spending socialists notwithstanding. All governments get involved with the market. The differences come down to how which interests that intervention supports: is it primarily oriented to increasing profits, or does it work to improve the rights and conditions of working people and reduce inequality.

Pro-cooperation groups like Leadnow have drawn in thousands of supporters across the country, and leadership candidates for both the NDP (Nathan Cullen) and the Liberals (Joyce Murray) have run on cooperation platforms. The cooperationists contend that given the status quo, the Conservatives are likely to remain in power after the next election in 2015 because of ongoing vote splitting.

On the other side, the apparatchiks of both the NDP and Liberals have held steadfast against cooperation. They have claimed that the cultural and political differences between their parties are vast and that cooperation would turn off voters and benefit Harper’s Conservatives. And, on the left, many progressives oppose any collaboration with the Liberals  that will further undermine the already centrist and increasingly corporate NDP.

Historical perspective is useful in judging alternatives. History offers examples of when the left and centre have cooperated and when they have stood apart. The four historical examples below, part of an ongoing series, looks at collaboration between centrist and leftist political groups and interests.

Canadian Welfare State (CCF/NDP and Liberals; 1926-1984)

For many decades, through the middle of the 20th century, minority governments were common in Canada. Beginning in the 1920s when Mackenzie King introduced Canada’s first national pension system, Labour, CCF and then NDP MPs helped prop up Liberal governments in return for modest welfare reforms. Pensions, healthcare, unemployment insurance and federal housing grants are the legacy of this period.

While some of these gains were substantial, progressives voices were the junior partner to Canadian financial and manufacturing capital. Waves of concessions and compromise left workers without an autonomous voice once the system fell apart during the long recessionary period of the 1970s. Workers were unable to organize to defend themselves from wage restraint, free trade and globalization.

China (Communists and the Kuomintang; 1925-1927 and 1937-1949)

Since the early 1900s, Chinese workers, students, the educated middle class and business owners had collaborated against foreign power and imperialist influence in China. Actions included mass demonstrations, boycotts and strikes, by both worker and owners, such as during the May Fourth Movement of 1919, spurred by terms of the Versailles Treaty that gave the Shandong Province to Japan. The strikes and other mass actions succeeded in increasing political consciousness among the workers and strengthening workers organizations.

Nationalism, as an alternative to imperialism, united the people and, by the 1920s, united two political parties: the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and the Communist Party of China. Sun Yat-sen, a social-democrat and leader of the Kuomintang until his death in 1925, had established a constitutional government in Canton Province, with financial support and advice from the Soviet Union and in collaboration with the Communist Party of China.

The two parties then organizing against the warlords who controlled most of the country outside Canton. Communist and nationalist armed forces led by the Chiang Kai-shek began the Northern Expedition, a march that culminated with the defeat of the warlords and an alliance that brought most of China under the control of the national government. However, once victorious over the warlords, the Kuomintang turned against the Communists. In the Shanghai Massacre of 1927, thousands of workers were killed, wounded and arrested, communists were expelled from the Kuomintang, and workers’ organizations were prohibited. Communists moved into the countryside to begin war against the Kuomintang.

At the time of the Japanese invasion in 1937, the nationalist Chinese government was weakened from fighting the communists and by corruption within the national government and army. Both the communists and the nationalists resisted the Japanese, but the communists were better able to mobilize people’s support than the unpopular nationalist government. The two groups collaborated, in a more limited sense than in the 1920s, in that they tactically agreed not to attack each other while fighting Japan.

Successful resistance to the Japanese strengthened support for the communists, led by Mao Tse-tung. Mao received the support of not only peasants and workers, but also many from the educated middle and business classes who saw him as more effective than Chiang at fighting the Japanese. Militarily stronger and with more popular support by the end of the war, the communists were able to defeat the Kuomintang, despite U.S. interference, and form the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

British Free Trade Debate (Chartists and Liberals; 1840s)

In the 1840s, the antagonism between British workers and manufacturing capital was growing and becoming more visible each passing year. Still, the two classes continued to share common interests against the landlords who politically and economically dominated the country. Landlord hegemony was most powerfully represented in a set of duties on grain imports called the Corn Laws. These duties kept out foreign grain and increased land rents. Workers opposed the high of food the system imposed. Manufacturers realized that augmented bread costs increased the cost of labour and reduced their profits. Workers, through their Chartist movement, had their own demands for political representation, as well as economic demands for a shorter working day. However, in 1846, workers largely supported the manufacturers to help end the Corn Laws.

The end of the Corn Laws meant the destruction of tenant farmers marginal land. In Ireland, agricultural production collapsed as a result, combined with a deadly potato blight. Hundreds of thousands perished in the resulting famine, and millions more fled, while the country continued to export food which the local population had no resources to pay for.

Meanwhile after achieving the repeal of the Corn Laws, Chartism and parliamentary reform faded into the background. Its leaders gave up or became isolated on the fringe of minority politics in England until the socialist revival of the1880s.

France, Second Republic (workers and the bourgeoisie; 1848)

In February 1848, a coalition of workers and small shopkeepers overthrew the monarchy of Louis-Philippe in France. At first, the workers’ demands for full employment, greater economic equality and poverty reduction found common cause with liberal demands for constitutionality including electoral reform and ending court favouritism for privileged sections of the commercial classes.

However, within months, the business owners turned on the workers. Elections on May 4 installed a government favourable to big business. Workers feared their small gains would be erased. When workers in Paris threw up barricades in June, the National Guard, supported by the state and all the workers’ former allies suppressed the movement with force. More than 3,000 workers were killed and 15,000 deported without trial during the repression that followed.

The defeat of the workers also crushed the liberal aspirations of the earlier period, as dictatorial power becomes concentrated in the figure of Louis Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoleon. Revolutionary agitation continued, but the workers were increasingly isolated. Throughout this period, they continued to rely on leadership from the more organized and educated classes to disastrous effect.

“The proletariat … attempts to press forward again on every occasion, as soon as the movement appears to make a fresh start, but with ever decreased expenditure of force and always more insignificant results. As soon as one of the social strata above it gets into revolutionary ferment, it enters into alliance with it and so shares all the defeats that the different parties suffer one after the other.”

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

Bonaparte was successfully able to play each class off one another. In the end, business was willing to forsake its liberal ideals in favour of economic expediency, while the French workers movement was stalled for 20 years.

We welcome alternative viewpoints and analysis and other examples on the pros and cons of collaboration. Comment below or email mudandwatermail [at] gmail.com.

* Thank you to Victoria songwriter Carolyn Mark for inspiring the title of this essay. Her album, The Pros and Cons of Collaboration, is available from Mint Records.

The presentation, excerpted below, refers to the Final Report on Southwest Rapid Transit Corridor: Stage 2 Alignment Study. At the March 20 meeting, city council decided to approve a route through heritage urban wetlands for the second stage of the rapid transit system. This is Concept 1B in the final report. Councillors Eadie, Havixbeck, Orlikow, Smith and Swandel voted against this route.

Rapid Transit Alignment
Alan Freeman, March 20

Transit is both critical in its own right, and pivotal to development, poverty reduction, and emission control. This investment, like any other, should be considered in such a way that

(1) benefits can be fully realized
(2) needless detriment can be avoided
(3) unavoidable detriment can be limited and compensated

My main concern is that a sound transit investment depends not just on land costs but ridership projections. If an investment leads to less than the hoped-for change in ridership, that alters its true cost to the public. This may show in later fare hikes or subsidies.

My second concern is that the link between investment in transit and expected development works both ways. Development usually benefits a city in its own right, and transit investments help secure those benefits. But the investment also depends on development, because that’s what produces the extra fares which ultimately pay for it.

The less sure we are about the development, the more Transit-Oriented Development turns into Development-Oriented Transit. The report leans heavily on prospects for new development. A sound decision should be based on existing, known developments. This allows for flexible dialogue around legitimate concerns about the impact on open areas, because development options would remain genuinely open.

My third concern is unintended traffic effects. When assessing how new transit affects ridership, planners expect new systems to be attractive because journey times are shorter. But transit decisions are comparative. In London the bus and Congestion Charge strategies were integrated; we had to make it easier to travel by transit – and harder to travel by car.

When Rapid Transit takes buses off the roads, paradoxically it makes it easier to travel by car. This can unexpectedly reduce ridership. This makes the argument against lane reduction on Pembina less persuasive. Restraints on alternative traffic routes may well be needed to secure the shift to transit that you want.

My final concern relates to the way impacts are assessed. Every piece of heritage, every patch of land or waterfront, every piece of the jigsaw that makes up our culture in the broadest sense, is as much a part of our infrastructure as a bus or a snowplough. If a part goes missing, we all lose; not just the people next door but everyone in the city, and their kids, and their kids too. That is a cost – a hidden cost, but a real one.

The British Treasury requires every public authority to assess all possible impacts, positive and negative, of any new investment. That requirement is not standard for Winnipeg or Manitoba planning decisions.

A proper accounting for all costs and benefits should become a normal part of planning and public dialogue. It should begin at the functional stage of this project and include the environmental impact of all options, including the options of enhanced protection of urban open spaces and supplementary traffic management. This will ensure that Winnipeg’s first full Rapid Transit pays off in every sense of the word.

Alan Freeman is an economist who has lived in Winnipeg since December 2011. From 2001 to 2011, he worked in the economics unit of the Greater London Authority (UK), on culture, the living wage and economic development. He provided economic and planning projections for many London transit plans, including major extensions to the bus network and the Congestion Charge, evaluating projected transit revenue, job and wealth creation, and environmental impact.

“It was the day of the Budget announcement, when we learned of the demise of the NRTEE. This had come as a complete surprise to everyone and the natural reactions of staff were of shock, fear, and dismay. Yet that same night staff worked until midnight to ensure we met a deadline commitment we had made for the following day to the government, the same government that hours before had told them that they were no longer needed.” - Jim McLachlan, Acting President, National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy

In last year’s budget, the federal government announced the closure of the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE). Then last week, the Conservative government told the appointed panel of academics, former bureaucrats and environmental experts that its website is being shut down and its papers destroyed. The organization was also ordered not to publish a retrospective paper called Reflections from Past Leaders of the NRTEE.

Last year, the Toronto Star reported that foreign affairs minister John Baird said the government was killing NRTEE over its support for a carbon tax. The government also said that it can rely on free advice rather than pay for expertise on environmental issues.

Since 1988, NRTEE has brought together independent experts to debate and plan Canada’s environmental and economic strategy. According to its governing Act, the purpose of the Roundtable is to act as “catalyst in identifying, explaining and promoting, in all sectors of Canadian society and in all regions of Canada, principles and practices of sustainable development”

The Roundtable played a leading role in many important environmental issues over the last 25 years including water, biodiversity and climate change. As an independent body reporting to the Prime Minister, it has provided solid evidence-based advice to inform policy for both industry and government. The closure of the National Roundtable is expected to save the government $5 million per year.

Cy Gonick with Geoff Bickerton

On Saturday night, Winnipeg celebrated the 50th anniversary of local magazine Canadian Dimension. The event, at the Fort Garry Hotel, included an extended roast of Cy Gonick, the magazine’s founder, editor and publisher.

Canadian Dimension, a magazine for people who want to change the world, was first published in 1963 from the basement of Gonick’s home.For 50 years, the magazine has influenced political thought and ideas across Canada and Quebec, with feature articles and columns from emerging and established authors and activists. Canadian Dimension provides essential media space for leftist political discussion that is absent in the corporate newspapers, magazines and broadcasters that predominate.

On Saturday, Gonick was celebrated by his family, friends and colleagues for his dedication to the magazine and for his support for its writers and editorial collective members. He was toasted and roasted as a feminist, Aboriginal solidarity activist, environmentalist, labour unionist, low-wage boss, taskmaster and rock singer Frank Black’s double. Speakers included Jim Stanford of CAW, Leo Panitch of York University, Clayton Thomas-Muller of Indigenous Environmental Network and local songwriter-satirist Sara Kreindler.

Canadian Dimension is published six times a year from Winnipeg. The March 2013 issue includes special anniversary content.

Listen to our interview: Lucy Sharratt, coordinator, CBAN, March 11, 2013

Forage Genetics International, an American biotechnology company, has applied Monsanto’s genetically modified Roundup Ready technology to alfalfa. Now, the company is a step away from receiving approval for selling GMO alfalfa in Canada. Conventional and organic farmers in Canada widely agree that GMO alfalfa is an economic threat.

Alfalfa is a high protein hay widely used by farmers across the prairies as livestock feed. It is also essential for building up the soil due to its nitrogen fixing properties. It is an essential tool for organic farmers who do not use synthetic fertilizers on their land.

This important crop is threatened by the proposed introduction of GMO alfalfa. Like other GMO crops, it is certain to spread through bee pollination and by many other means, contaminating neighbouring fields if it is introduced into the environment. Even worse, because alfalfa is a perennial, the GMOs will grow back year after year and be difficult to control.

Farmers in Manitoba have resisted the introduction of GMO alfalfa until now. Now, the agri-chemical industry is pushing hard to see the introduction of GMO Alfalfa in Ontario, effectively pushing this unwanted crop in through the back door on prairie farmers.

The National Farmers Union has called a national day of action on April 9 to stop the introduction of this unwanted crop.  Actions and information sessions will be held outside MPs offices across Canada. To find out more, visit www.cban.ca or listen to our March 11 interview with CBAN coordinator, Lucy Sharratt.

The livelihoods of small-scale farmers and farmer workers have often been precarious, but increasingly those who produce food are also experiencing food poverty. Akram-Lodhi reports that there are more than 925 million people in developing capitalist countries who are chronically malnourished and another billion who don’t know if they’ll get their next meal, the majority of whom are peasant farmers or landless labourers. This is documented in the book through personal stories, supported by detailed information on changing agricultural markets within developing countries, to show the increasing pressures that multinational food processors and distributors are able to exert on subsistence farmers.

Haiti is the hungriest country in the Americas. The United Nation’s World Food Programme reports that rural households in Haiti spend almost 60 per cent of their income on food and chronic malnutrition affects 24 per cent of children under age five years. But as Akram-Lodhi reports, many small-scale farmers in Haiti have to stop farming to look for work in urban centres because they can’t compete with the prices charged in Haiti for U.S. food imports. The United States subsidizes the domestic production of certain crops, like rice, and then dumps the surplus, at a discounted price, in countries like Haiti. Global inequities in agricultural policy mean U.S. farmers are supported at the expense of Haitians, who are further disadvantaged by IMF-imposed tariff reductions in the 1990s and the rising price of imported agricultural inputs such as fertilizer.

Hungry for Change: Farmers, Food Justice and the Agrarian Question was published by Fernwood Publishing in 2013.

In speaking of their tenure at the agency, the six men describe the state’s culpability in the deteriorating security conditions for Israel and Palestine. The strength of the film is the directors’ candour in criticizing Israel’s prime ministers, past and present, for the ongoing occupation and in describing the suffering for Palestinians living under Israeli control, including the massive scale of preemptive arrests, curfews, interrogations and other security measures. This is supported by archival film footage of hundreds of men and boys being arrested or detained – some in their underwear, many handcuffed, all appearing humiliated by their situations.

The directors of Shin Bet also blame Jewish settlers – their provocations, plots, political influence and violence – for deteriorating state security. The film includes footage of settlers protesting in support of extreme right-wing politics. This extremism includes the plot by the Jewish Underground to blow up the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to stop peace talks between Israel and Egypt and the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

Far-right extremism is described in the film as the biggest obstacle to a Palestinian state and to long-term peace for Israel. B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, reports that there are more than 500,000 settlers living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and that Israeli governments have had a systematic policy to encourage Jewish migration to the West Bank. The Jewish settlers are privileged by living in the Occupied Territories with all the rights of Israeli citizens, exempt from the system of military law that applied to their Palestinian neighbours.

In an interview with Democracy Now, Moreh said that before 1984, few Israelis even knew that Shin Bet existed and that it had the authority to kill suspected terrorists. In 1984, Shin Bet director Avraham Shalom ordered the execution of two prisoners, following the hijacking of an Israeli bus. Shalom, one of the directors who participated in the film, had to resign when photographs of the executions where made public. In the film’s interviews, the directors who came after Shalom are critical of the actions of the role of Shin Bet, the prime minister and Israeli Cabinet in authorizing the killing of captured prisoners. However, this is contrasted later in the film by the 2002 assassination of Hamas’s Salah Shedadeh in Gaza by aerial bombing, an action that killed at least 11 civilians and wounded dozens more. Shalom compares this action to the 2008 U.S. air strike in Afghanistan that killed 47 civilians on their way to a wedding and questions the morality of current anti-terrorism airstrikes.

The Gatekeepers opened in Israel on December 27, but prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he will not watch it. The film won a Los Angeles Film Critics Association award and was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary.

In its Bill 18 newsletter, SCHS claims that the new laws will “privilege some students while excluding others.” In fact, it does the opposite. All students will have the right to create anti-bullying groups that foster awareness and understanding. No school will be able to use religion as an excuse to ban an anti-bullying group that its students want to organize, such as a gay-straight alliance or similar groups that promote respect for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

SCHS says that parents send their children to independent schools with the expectation of certain values and principles being upheld. But, the Province of Manitoba’s school standards supersede parental values or expectations. The provincial government regulates all schools, funded and not, to ensure that children are receiving an education that is at least equivalent in quality to that of public schools. Children receive a higher-quality education when they are better protected against bullying of all forms, including homophobia. In Manitoba, private schools do not have the right to choose lower standards for their students.

This bill does not prevent students and their families from practicing their religion of choice. What it does is enhance efforts to ban all homophobic religious doctrine from elementary and secondary schools, while mandating institutional support for students who ask for help in fighting homophobia in their schools. The reaction of provincially-funded private schools like SCHS to these measures provides an opportunity to reconsider why any public funds are going towards these institutions.

Recommended reading: MTS president responds to criticism of provincial anti-bullying efforts

Successful rehabilitation of the land is why the federal government should continue to manage the land, rather than go ahead with the current divestment scheme. Prairie grassland, if left unprotected, will once again be threatened by over-grazing and cultivation, and may face new threats from industrial development, including the oil and gas industry. But over the next six years, the land will be transferred to provincial control and then, for some of the pastures, to private buyers. In Saskatchewan, the provincial government has said that the land will be sold at ‘market values’ based on recommendations from an advisory committee of cattle producers and other industry representatives and then, obfuscating conventional understanding of market land values, the same government says that the land will not be sold to the highest bidder.

In Manitoba, 24 community pastures will revert to provincial control by 2018. The provincial government, which has been surprisingly quiet on this issue, has not made a public promise to protect the community pastures for all citizens. Last year, the Manitoba Beef Producers created a non-profit entity, the Association of Manitoba Community Pastures, that has provincial authority to manage at least ten of the pastures. But there is no long-term guarantee that a non-profit industry organization or a cash-strapped provincial government won’t sell the land in the future.

And it’s not just beef producers that have a stake in the land. Saskatchewan First Nations are interested in the federal pastures as a means of resolving outstanding land entitlement claims with the government. In Manitoba, the Métis community of Ste. Madeleine was destroyed in 1935 to create one of the pastures, with no financial compensation to Métis farmers. In his recent book The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King states that Métis farmers in Ste. Madeleine had worked the land since 1900 but were still considered squatters and did not have the same legal standing of white farmers who were compensated for loss of land.

In an interview with Mud and Water Radio, Marianne Hladun of the Public Service Alliance of Canada said that federal government should be consulting with First or Métis Nations before the land is sold to any investors. Download the complete interview with Marianne Hladun.