[BRIEF NOTE] More on Canada's Greens

The Green Party of Canada that I wrote about last week is now going to appear in the televised leaders' debate despite the initial opposition of most of the other established federal-level parties.

A Globe-CTV poll released this morning shows strong support in key battleground ridings for Green Party Leader Elizabeth May's participation in the televised debates for the Oct. 14 federal election campaign.

The poll was conducted Tuesday and Wednesday by the Strategic Counsel in 45 of the most hotly contested ridings from Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia when debate was raging about whether she should be included.

On Wednesday, the broadcasters consortium reversed its earlier decision and invited Ms. May to the Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 debates.

The broadcasters made the change after Prime Minister Stephen Harper and NDP Leader Jack Layton both backed down from their opposition to Ms. May's involvement.

The Globe-CTV poll, released today, found 74 per cent of respondents in the B.C. battleground ridings, 73 per cent in the Ontario battleground ridings, and 67 per cent in the Quebec ridings polled support Ms. May's participation in the TV debates.

It's heft helped it get this position. Former (Progressive Conservative) Prime Minister Joe Clark wrote that "[i]n the 2006 general election, the Greens won 665,940 votes, nearly 5 per cent of the total," and that" [p]olls published this month by Segma, Ekos and Environics indicate that support for the Greens runs between 7 per cent and 10 per cent, even though the party has never been allowed to make its case in a national leaders debate."

Today in The Toronto Star that, Thomas Walkon wrote while the Green Party could be in a position to take votes from the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party, it could also threaten the Conservatives.

Unlike their European cousins, Canada's Greens are not consistently left-of-centre. They do talk of raising taxes on the wealthy. But they would also reduce government debt and cut the payroll taxes that small business owners hate.

They oppose corporate subsidies (as Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper once did). Like many small-c conservatives, they support a tax reform that would allow more women to stay at home.

May herself once worked as a political aide in former prime minister Brian Mulroney's Conservative government. Two years ago, she publicly lauded Mulroney as Canada's greenest prime minister.

She may not necessarily appeal to Harper's hard-right base. But she could interfere with his plans to woo centre-right and former Progressive Conservative voters.

Who knows what could happen after that?

Many voters, having heard of May, will want to see how she performs. If she does half the job she did on Sunday in her televised response to Harper's election call, they may well be impressed.

"Now is the time to wake up," she said then, in a forceful speech delivered without script or teleprompter. "To all of you who are disenchanted, dispirited, disappointed and disillusioned, this is the time for you to wake up and realize that the leadership does not exist at the series of podiums (of the other party leaders) you just watched this morning.

"The leadership is the people of this country. Because, in a democracy, the people are in charge."

So let us see what happens. In 1991, thanks to his performance in a televised debate, a relatively unknown British Columbian named Gordon Wilson managed to catapult his traditionally lacklustre provincial Liberal party from 7 to 30 per cent in the polls and win it official opposition status.

Wilson was later ousted as leader. But his party continued on to become, in 2001, B.C.'s government.

Which it still is.

[LINK] "Sovereign wealth funds: Political influence in an era of new money"

As Carl Mortished writes, sovereign wealth funds are being used to influence the course of nations. What's one notable offender? Norway.

They could be a menace, these sovereign wealth funds - too rich, too powerful and too political. Pumped up with their petrodollars, who knows how they will use their financial muscle to influence the running of our greatest companies.

Well, we now know because one of the biggest petro funds has just smacked Rio Tinto, the Anglo-Australian miner, but the surprise is the identity of the investor and the reason for its confrontation with Rio's management. Norway's Government Pension Fund has accused Rio of causing severe environmental damage in Indonesia through its 40-per-cent stake in the Grasberg copper and gold mine in West Papua. After failing to influence the company's investment in the mine, operated by the U.S. miner Freeport-McMoRan, the Norwegian fund decided in April to sell its Rio shares, a stake worth £500-million ($940-million).

This week, the Norwegian Finance Minister added insult to injury with a humiliating rebuke, publishing its findings that the Grasberg mine would cause "severe long-term environmental damage" in West Papua.

[. . .]

This is not the first time that Norway's sovereign wealth fund has jousted with corporations. Freeport was earlier excluded and the fund has excluded several arms manufacturers, notably British Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, France's Thales and EADS, the European aerospace company. Wal-Mart faced Norway's moral opprobrium over its labour practices in developing countries.

This is more than just snooty stock picking because the Norwegians seem to genuinely want to change company policy - and it gets very political.

Kerr-McGee, the American oil company, was excluded over its exploration efforts in Western Sahara. Following an invasion by Morocco, the territory has been locked in dispute for decades between the Moroccan military and the Polisario Front, the liberation army of the Saharawi people. The Norwegian fund decided that Kerr-McGee was in violation of international law for accepting Morocco's shilling but the oil company got the message, ended its exploration activity in Western Sahara and the Norwegians reinvested in Kerr-McGee.

[LINK] "Declaring Public Services 'Essential' Leads to Higher Wage Costs"

People like me who remember the recent TTC strike and wanted to declare the TTC an essential service that could not be disrupted by strikes should probably remember this news article.

TORONTO, Sept. 11 /CNW/ - Designating public services as "essential" may be aimed at protecting public safety by guaranteeing service availability, but it can be costly to the public purse, according to a report released today by the C. D. Howe Institute. Evidence from across Canada shows that declaring a ublic service to be essential drives up negotiated wage increases by 13 percent, drives up hourly wages by up to 0.8 percent and does not necessarily
reduce strikes or other job actions. To draw these conclusions, reported in "No Free Ride: The Cost of Essential Services Designation," Policy Analyst Benjamin Dachis examined 6,721 public sector contract settlements involving at least 500 employees over the last 30 years, and reports on what happens when services are designated essential. Toronto City Councillors are set to debate whether to ask the province to designate the Toronto Transit Commission as an essential service: Dachis says policymakers should weigh the cost of that designation against the uncertain benefits of service continuation.

The report is available at: http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/ebrief_62.pdf