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Trying to pick a side in the public servants strike? Heres how I break the situation down.

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While not normally the biggest fan of public sector unions, I have to say that the Public Service Alliance of Canadas position is reasonable, in most respects. The exception is the 30-per-cent increase that 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency employees are seeking. The number is so ridiculous its not even worth examining.

The majority of striking public servants, about 120,000 people, are Treasury Board employees who work primarily in administrative positions. According to the union, most make between $40,000 and $65,000 per year.

The union wants a raise of 13.5 per cent over three years, with increments of 4.5 per cent each year. Lets put that in context. Average annual wages increased by 5.1 per cent in Canada in December, so the PSAC demand isnt out of sync with that. The latest inflation figure is 4.3 per cent, just about what the union is seeking.

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The government is offering nine per cent over three years, so the sides arent miles apart. The matter is complicated by the fact that the union contract expired in 2021. This contract is primarily about covering past inflation, not speculating on future inflation. The government wants to pay only 1.5 per cent for 2021, a year of low inflation, followed by 4.5 per cent for last year and three per cent for this year.

The PSAC also wants the contract to spell out details of how the governments hybrid workplace will play out. Given the governments vagueness and confusion on the topic, thats not unreasonable, either.

The union isnt asking for the moon, but Canadians have to put up with a public service strike.Its difficult to see an issue or a gap that justifies a strike, but the union wanted to bring slow-moving negotiations to a head.

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The Justin Trudeau government has put itself in a weak position when it comes to championing thrift. The government has never seen a dollar that it didnt want to spend. In its last budget, it gave up even the pretence of fiscal responsibility, planning deficits for years to come. This is a government that spends hundreds of millions of dollars on consultants and billions on business subsidies. Its easy to see why public servants with middling salaries would expect their own slice of the infinite fiscal pie the Liberals believe exists.

To make things even more challenging for the government, the prime minister had to defend his latest Caribbean vacation freebee in the House on the eve of the strike. Not a good look, as people like to say.

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Given its usual inclinations, the governments stance on public service salaries is inexplicable. Were it a book-balancing government with responsible spending habits, trying to hold down the federal wage bill would be in character. For the Trudeau government, its astounding.

The government cant credibly claim that the raise the PSAC workers want is unaffordable. Inflation has helped create a tax windfall worth tens of billions of dollars, but the government had other priorities for the money.

If the Trudeau government was concerned about the size of its wage bill, perhaps it shouldnt have increased the number of federal employees by nearly 31 per cent since it took office. Did it not see the salary implications?

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While the strike wont be terribly visible across the country, for Ottawa businesses it will mean a short-term financial hit. People making no more than $375 a week in strike pay are going to spend cautiously, especially when inflation has already left them short.

That inflation isnt going away. While the rate of increase is slowing, the cost of living is still going up. Prices are not going back to what they were. Federal employees want help with that, just like everyone else. The government needs to stop pretending it suddenly cares about money and settle the strike.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa political commentator and author. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com

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Randall Denley: Liberals unconvincing as champions of thrift against striking union - National Post

On the day after Wisconsins nasty and expensive state Supreme Court election, the lead sentence of the Wisconsin State Journals front page election story proclaimed: Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated conservative Dan Kelly for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday, giving liberals a court majority for the first time in 15 years, boosting Democrats bid to toss out Wisconsins near-complete abortion ban and promising to dramatically reshape politics in the battleground state.

Wisconsin Public Radio, meanwhile, said this in its election-night report: Democrats have scored a major off-year election victory in Wisconsin, winning the states open supreme court seat and flipping control of the court to liberals for the first time in 15 years.

Both articles contain a contention that is highly questionable if not objectively false.

Protasiewicz did clobber Kelly by an unheard-of-for-Wisconsin 11-point margin. But in asserting that liberals controlled the Wisconsin Supreme Court as recently as 15 years ago, these news outlets were just repeating a shorthand description that became common during the election.

Heres the headline and subhead of an ABC News story published on the morning of Feb. 19, the day of the primary election that narrowed the field to Kelly and Protasiewicz:

Democrats see a prime chance to take control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court

Democrats, who havent had a majority in 15 years, see concerns over abortion access and voting rights as key opportunities to take back control.

And two days before the election, NPR reported, An election on Tuesday could change the political trajectory of Wisconsin, a perennial swing state, by flipping the ideological balance of the state Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years.

Since the election, the idea that Wisconsin liberals have just gained a court majority for the first time in 15 years has continued to percolate.

Heres The Capital Times in the lead sentence of a piece published April 6: As Wisconsins state Supreme Court shifts toward its first liberal majority in 15 years, a liberal law firm plans to challenge the states voting maps based on the assertion that partisan gerrymandering violates the Wisconsin Constitution.

And on April 13, the State Journal republished an editorial in the Kenosha News that said this marks the first time the court will have a liberal bent in 15 years.

In fact, Wisconsin did not have what could be safely described as a liberal majority 15 years ago and quite possibly ever if you count the many years in which liberal and conservative were not terms commonly applied to Supreme Court justices and contenders.

From 2004 to 2008, the court had three liberal justices, three conservatives, and one justice, Patrick Crooks, who was a swing vote. Yet while Crooks was appointed to a circuit court judgeship in Brown County by Wisconsin Gov. Martin Schreiber, a Democrat, he ran for election to the Supreme Court in 1995 as a conservative, losing in the general election to Ann Walsh Bradley. His campaign was run by Scott Jensen, a former Republican Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly who would later end up being convicted of ethics violations.

Crooks was elected to the court the following year, beating Ralph Adam Fine, and was seen as a reliable conservative for much of his tenure, which ended when he died while still in office in 2015, after announcing that he would not seek reelection the following year. He was replaced by conservative Rebecca Bradley, appointed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and then elected to a full ten-year term in 2016.

In 2004, Crooks joined court liberals in a series of decisions seen as affecting businesses, drawing a hysterical reaction from the states big business lobby, which claimed that Americas personal injury lawyers are racing to Wisconsin to take advantage of these rulings, which the group said in an ad send a clear signal to every CEO and top executive in the U.S. that Wisconsin will be a risky state in which to operate. The ad showed a billboard that proclaimed, Hello, Trial Lawyers! Good-bye Jobs!

Yet despite this heated reaction, Crooks was still considered enough of a conservative that WMC sat back and let him get reelected without challenge in 2006.

Its true that some people called him a liberal but that is far from firmly or clearly established. From his Wikipedia entry: Crooks generally joined the conservative majoritys opinions, especially in criminal matters, but joined the liberal minoritys dissents on certain constitutional issues and matters of court administration. In a 2011 Milwaukee Magazine article entitled Crooks Is Not a Liberal, journalist Bruce Murphy wrote:

Yes, he is considered a liberal and is typically described that way in the media, but in fact, hes a centrist who tends to lean right. Murphy called the identification of Crooks as a liberal the medias error.

Wisconsin Supreme Court watcher Alan Ball, a history professor at Marquette, has backed this up with numbers. In an analysis published a day after the election, he calculated that between 2004 and 2008, when Crooks was a critical swing vote, he sided with the three liberals in 44% of non-unanimous decisions (Table 1)considerably more often than the next closest fourth man, Justice David Prosser, who joined the three liberals in only 11% of non-unanimous decisions during this period.

But still, Ball found, Crooks voted with the conservatives slightly more often than with the liberals. Therefore, he wrote, it seems a stretch to describe the supreme court as liberal during [this] period.

So how long has it been that liberals comprised a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court?

The court has never had a clear liberal majority in the decades that Ive covered it, Ball told me in an email last fall. In the 21st century there have been years when it has leaned conservative when there have been three liberals (Abrahamson, AW Bradley, and Butler, for example, or, currently, AW Bradley, Dallet, and Karofsky) and periods when it has been heavily conservative most recently, the Gableman and Kelly years.

Thus, if a liberal prevails in next springs election, the court will be clearly liberal for the first time in living memory, Ball wrote. Given these stakes, I imagine that the upcoming race will completely shatter all spending records for judicial elections in Wisconsin.

He got that right. The estimated $50 million that was sunk into the states Supreme Court race on behalf of the two candidates, in nearly equal measure, is five times the previous record for a Wisconsin Supreme Court race and more than three times the record for a judicial race anywhere in the United States.

When Protasiewicz is sworn in this August, liberals will comprise a Wisconsin Supreme Court majority for the first time in at least four decades.

Just ask liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, the courts longest-tenured member.

Ive been on the court for twenty-eight years, and Ive never served with what is labeled a liberal majority, one that sees the role of government and democracy the way that I do, Bradley told journalist Dan Kaufman in an article published April 12 in The New Yorker.

In other words, despite all the advertising and national media attention, the issue of control of the court by liberals is an even bigger deal than what youve often been told.

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Liberals haven't controlled the Wisconsin Supreme Court for a lot ... - Wisconsin Examiner

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie lashed out at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday, arguing he was not handling his conflict with Disney like a "conservative."

Christie made the comments during an interview with Semafor, saying DeSantis was using the government to bully businesses like Disney. DeSantis' conflict with Disney stretches back more than a year, when the company sought to oppose the governor's education reform bill.

"I'm a conservative, and I believe the job of government is, in the main, to stay out of the business of business," Christie said. "I don't think Ron DeSantis is a conservative, based on his actions toward Disney.

"Where are we headed here now, that if you express disagreement in this country the government is allowed to punish you?" he continued. "To me, that's what I always thought liberals did, and now here we are participating in this with a Republican governor."

WAR OVER THE CORPORATE KINGDOM: DESANTIS' NEW BOARD SPARS FOR CONTROL WITH DISNEY

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie argued that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is "not a conservative" due to his ongoing war with Disney. (Photo by WADE VANDERVORT/AFP via Getty Images)

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has feuded with Disney for more than a year, and he has threatened to remove some of the company's priviledges in Florida. (Photo by CHENEY ORR/AFP via Getty Images)

DISNEY'S REEDY CREEK IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT TO GET NEW NAME, GOVERNOR-APPOINTED BOARD

DeSantis is currently in a battle over the development rights for the area surrounding Disney World, known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Disney was able to block DeSantis's efforts to take over control of the district by signing a development deal earlier this year, something the governor has vowed to undo.

Nevertheless, Christie argued DeSantis had essentially been outmaneuvered.

"That's not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi and negotiating our next agreement with China, or sitting across from Putin and trying to resolve what's happening in Ukraine, if you can't see around a corner that Bob Iger created for you," Christie said. "I don't think that's very imposing."

DeSantis's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

The area around Disney World is the subject of a major legal battle between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Disney Corporation. (Getty Images for Disney Dreamers Academy)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

For his part, DeSantis argues Disney "usurped" control over the improvement district, and he announced on Monday that the state legislature is drafting a bill to reassert control over the area.

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Chris Christie bashes Ron DeSantis over war on Disney: 'I thought that's what liberals did' - Fox News

Canberra Liberals MLA Mark Parton has become the second in his party to publicly announce his position on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, putting him at odds on the issue with fellow MLA Jeremy Hanson.

Mr Parton, who has Noongar heritage, said he had initially leaned towards voting no after speaking with people involved in that campaign, but later changed his mind.

He said he came to the decision to vote yes after conversations with First Nations Noongar community members in Western Australia.

"I believed that I would have probably fallen on the no side, and that was based on early conversations with Jacinta Price and others," Mr Parton said.

"But the more conversations that I had, particularly with the people from my mob, from the Noongar mob in Western Australia, the more conversations I had and the more I looked into it, I just could not in my heart vote no, I just couldn't."

Mr Parton discovered his Aboriginal ancestry last year, and said on Wednesday he did not identify as Aboriginal, but the revelation had prompted him to delve deeper into the historical experiences of Indigenous Australians.

"The crimes that were committed against Aboriginal Australians in that period, I just can't fathom now," he said.

Mr Parton said he felt a Voice to Parliament would mark a positive steptowards reconciliation in Australia.

"We have as a country come to understand our Indigenous past and come to accept and embrace First Nations people more and more and I just see this as a part of that process," he said.

Mr Parton's view is also at odds with the Liberal Party at a federal level, after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton earlier this month confirmed he would oppose the Voice to Parliament.

In March this year, Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee said the Canberra Liberals would not take a position on the Voice and would instead allow elected members to vote freely.

The party's deputy leader Jeremy Hanson became the first ACT MLA to announce his opposition to a Voice, saying he had concerns it would create "race-based constitutional division".

"I think putting something in our constitution that separates people by race is a backwards step," Mr Hanson said.

"I've met with Jacinta Price, who's obviously a very strong campaigner on the no side of the referendum, and you know if Jacinta wants me to do something to support that case, I am very happy to do that."

Mr Hanson said he had spoken with Indigenous people locally on the issue, but not with those from the yes campaign.

"This isn't just a matter for the Indigenous communities, it's a matter that affects all Canberrans and all Australians and all Australians will have a vote," he said.

"Obviously the Aboriginal community has a view but that is not a single view, there are a lot of different opinions within the Indigenous community about what should happen with the voice."

Mr Parton said he respectedMr Hanson's personal decision on the matter.

"We actually had a discussion in the assembly yesterday, Jeremy and I, where we were thinking of doing a video on it together about our different points of view," he said.

"This is an issue all Australians are being asked to vote on and all you can expect from people is that they examine the issues and make a decision one way or another and Jeremy has gone through that process and for him has fallen on the no side and that's fine."

Mr Parton said he believed the decision was one that all Australians should be able to vote freely on without judgement.

"Don't be angry with people for voting one way or another, this is a referendum, the prime minister has seen this issue as so important that every adult Australian is being asked for their opinion, some will be yes and some will be no, and it's not an answer that you can be wrong on."

Mr Parton said while he would be voting yes, he would notbe campaigning for the change.

"I don't see myself campaigning vigorously in this space," he said.

"I don't think it's for me to tell you or anyone else how to vote on this matter.

"Its not the space that I operate in primarily, I think there was some interest from journalists because of my indigenous background but I don't see myself campaigning in this space".

Mr Parton said he did not believe a Voice to Parliament would resolve all of the issues faced by First Nations Australians, but was hopeful that constitutional recognition would help unite Australians.

"I live in the hope that it won't divide, that it will bring us closer together," he said.

Link:
Canberra Liberals MLA Mark Parton says he will vote yes to an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, putting him at odds with party colleague - ABC News

For years, Justin Trudeaus Liberal government has whitewashed concerns about and refused to terminate a $14-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The Trudeau government is now actively working to secure yet another contract between a Canadian arms manufacturer and an antidemocratic Gulf state. This time the prospective buyer is Qatar.

As with the Saudi deal, the pending agreement with Qatar signals the Trudeau governments prioritization of Canadas military-industrial base over its purported concerns about human rights and progressive values. It is also yet another reminder that Canadas geopolitical and military priorities are not motivated by concerns for advancing liberal democracy, despite lip service that Trudeau pays to that claimed objective whenever it is convenient.

Finally, the deal further belies the Trudeau governments representation of itself as a reluctant bystander to the Saudi exports. Liberal ministers have repeatedly suggested that they wanted to find a way out of the deal, but lamented that they were hamstrung by the fact that killing it would carry the cost of the full value of the contract. If Trudeau truly cared about keeping Canadian-made weapons out of the hands of authoritarian states never a credible proposition in the first place then his government would not be actively lobbying for a new deal with a similarly antidemocratic regime.

Ahead of his visit to the FIFA World Cup in Doha last year, International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan was instructed to lobby for a potential deal between the Canadian division of General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) which exports light-armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia and the Qatari military. In a briefing note prepared for a meeting with Qatars foreign affairs minister and deputy prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, Sajjan was told to explain that Canada was pleased that GDLS is interested in working with the Qatari Military for the supply of light-armored vehicles (LAVs) as well as other opportunities.

This partnership would bring Canada and Qatar significant benefits, the briefing note added. Canada sincerely hope[s] to see this opportunity for cooperation between our countries realized. Sajjans itinerary also indicates that the day before his meeting with Al-Thani, the Canadian minister attended a closed-door meeting with the Canadian Business Council in Qatar at the Canadian embassy, where he was expected to meet GDLS representatives. Further details about the LAV deal, including if and when it will be finalized, have not been disclosed.

Light-armored vehicles are recognized for their versatility by arms monitoring experts, and have been used by governments to quash domestic unrest, such as the Bahrain government during the 2011 and 2012 protests.

The revelation that this kind of deal has been in the works did not come as a surprise. Qatar was added to Canadas Automatic Firearms Country Control List (AFCCL) in August 2022, suggesting that a major deal was under discussion, as reported by theGlobe and Mail last December.

Qatar is undergoing a massive investment in its armed forces. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), arms imports to the Gulf state spiked by 311 percent between 2013 to 2017 and 2018 to 2022, making it the third-largest importer in the world between 2018 and 2022. Indeed, Sajjans briefing note ominously stated that Qatars military modernization is motivated in part by a desire to develop comparable capabilities to western nations, especially for purposes of multi-national deployments and inter-operability. This assessment reads like diplomatic speak for the type of foreign interventions that have led to massive bloodshed and destabilization in the region.

Qatar initially deployed one thousand troops to support Saudi Arabias murderous bombing campaign in Yemen, contributing to a war whose death toll resulted in an estimated 377,000 deaths by the end of 2021. Following a diplomatic row with the Saudis that emerged in 2017, Qatar withdrew its forces from Yemen, where the war now, thankfully, looks to be coming to an end. However, Qatar has a track record of meddling in other regional conflicts, such as in Libya and Syria.

In addition to its rising militarization, Qatar has a dire domestic human rights record. In particular, its poor treatment of migrant foreign workers came under scrutiny during the World Cup, with reforms that were promised ahead of the tournament failing to end the exploitation and abuse. According to Amnesty International, the Qatari state criminalizes same-sex relationships, stifles critical voices, and maintains laws that require women to seek permission from male guardians to make basic life decisions. Concerns about advancing human rights were absent in the list of objectives laid out in Sajjans strategic overview for his visit to Qatar.

Importantly, arms deals such as the proposed LAV agreement are not struck to simply bolster armories Qatar already has a surfeit of international suppliers and weapons and the profits of the arms industry. Such deals are also key to gaining political leverage and regional power projection. By pressing for such a deal, Canada is evidently seeking to strengthen its diplomatic ties with an authoritarian state in a region where past Canadian influence has helped fuel misery and violence.

The pending deal with Qatar follows a similar and highly controversial agreement between GDLS and the Saudis. Despite Canada and Saudi Arabia being locked, at least publicly, in a diplomatic spat since 2018, the Canadian-made LAVs have continued to flow apace to the Saudi monarchy. As of last year, the value of exports to the kingdom reached hundreds of millions of dollars per month. In 2021, Saudi Arabia was by far Canadas largest non-US arms export destination, with sales totaling $1.7 billion.

The LAV deal with Saudi Arabia was first arranged in 2014 under the watch of then prime minister Stephen Harper who has shamelessly bragged that he is proud of having brokered the deal but was given the final green light by the Trudeau government. A 2016 document explaining the Liberal governments decision to go ahead with the deal stated that these proposed exports are consistent with Canadas defense and security interests in the Middle East. The document further claimed there was no evidence to suggest that the LAVs would be used by the Saudis to commit human rights abuses, despite the kingdoms dire humanitarian record and campaign in Yemen.

The document also stressed the size of GDLSs industrial operations within Canada, stating that the company anchors Canadas defense industry cluster in southern Ontario, and supports a supply chain of over 500 Canadian firms. But apart from the industrial value of the deal and its bolstering of Canadas arms industry for the specific benefit of supplying the Canadian Armed Forces the document called Saudi Arabia an important and stable ally and even praised it for countering instability in Yemen.

In March 2018, the Trudeau government continued to defend the deal, with the prime minister himself stating that our approach fully meets our national obligations and Canadian laws. Five months later, public-facing relations between the two countries soured dramatically when then foreign minister Chrystia Freeland called on the Saudis to immediately release dissidents Samarand Raif Badawi from jail (a call which, it turned out, had been part of a longer push for their release behind the scenes). Despite an aggressive public reaction from the Saudis, however, the LAV deal was unaffected.

The Trudeau government came under even more pressure when the Saudi monarchy ordered the brutal assassination and dismemberment of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. By this time, the prime minister had begun blaming the previous Conservative government for making it very difficult to suspend or leave that contract, even as he insisted that he was looking for a way out of the deal. Trudeau stated that he could not divulge details about the contract but hinted that I do not want to leave Canadians holding a billion-dollar bill.

The steep cost of terminating the contract became an oft-repeated talking point by Trudeau government ministers, even as they temporarily suspended new export permits for military goods to Saudi Arabia and announced a review of the existing deal in response to the killing of Khashoggi. GDLS itself, apparently spooked by mounting public criticism of the LAV deal, warned the Liberal government that canceling the agreement would cost billions in financial penalties and jobs.

As it turned out, GDLS had little to worry about. In 2019, a Global Affairs Canada briefing note for Freeland claimed that officials found no credible evidence linking Canadian exports of military equipment or other controlled items to any human rights or humanitarian law violations committed by the Saudi government. Despite acknowledging reports that older Canadian-made LAVs had been deployed along the Saudi-Yemini border, the note claimed: There are no confirmed reports of Canadian-made military equipment being deployed by KSA on Yemeni territory. This statement would be rebutted by arms monitoring group Project Ploughshares and Amnesty International.

In 2021, those groups published a report that picked apart the Trudeau governments flawed analysis of the deal and accused it of violating international law by arming the Saudi monarchy. There is persuasive evidence that weapons exported from Canada to KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia], including LAVs [light-armored vehicles] and sniper rifles, have been diverted for use in the war in Yemen, the report found. The Trudeau government, the reports authors explained, was using an intentionally narrow focus to study the risks of the deal that completely misse[d] the mark on Canadas obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty (which Canada acceded to after Khashoggis death).

However, more pressing concerns appeared to be at play in the Trudeau governments decision-making. Notably, the 2019 briefing note stressed:

Canada-KSA bilateral tensions and the moratorium on the issuance of new permits are having a negative impact on Canadian exporters Engagement by departmental officials with 20 companies that have a history of exporting to KSA suggests that approximately $2 billion in trade has been affected since August 2018.

In April 2020, with public attention conveniently diverted by the chaos of the pandemics first wave, the Trudeau government lifted its temporary freeze on new permits for military exports to Saudi Arabia and announced it had renegotiated some of the terms of the GDLS deal. At this point, the Liberal government revealed for the first time that it would be responsible for the full $14-billion value of the deal if it terminated the agreement. This added a concrete figure to the well-rehearsed talking point that portrayed Trudeau as having his hands economically tied on the matter. And so the exports continued.

The pending deal with Qatar, likely to be the next authoritarian destination for a large chunk of Canadas arms export industry, flies in the face of Trudeaus cheerful branding of Canada as a world champion for human rights. But it also counters his governments claims that it was reluctantly bound by the risk of steep economic costs if it canceled the deal with Saudi Arabia. Just like the Saudi deal, the push for a new deal with Qatar shows that the demands of the arms industrys profitability trump respect for democracy and any desire to end human suffering.

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The Trudeau Liberals Can't Stop Themselves From Selling Arms to ... - Jacobin magazine