When Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks write their sequel to The Trouble With Billionaires, let’s hope they’ll help us understand why the 1 per cent whine even when they win.

Take Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of one of the world’s largest private equity firms, the Blackstone Group; worth $4.7 billion, Mr. Schwarzman is the 52nd richest person in America. He describes his business philosophy candidly: “I want war, not a series of skirmishes. … I always think about what will kill the other bidder.” He sees Wall Street locked in fierce battle with President Barack Obama which he once described, yes, as a war: “It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

Mr. Schwarzman eventually apologized for his language – but not for the sentiment behind it. The heinous act that provoked him to compare the U.S. President to Hitler? Mr. Obama’s attempt to prevent billionaires like Mr. Schwarzman from paying tax at a lower rate than Warren Buffett’s secretary.

What’s particularly noteworthy here is that despite the success of the Occupy movement in putting inequality on the international agenda, it can safely be reported that just about everywhere, the 1 per cent are still laughing all the way to the bank. In fact they own the bank. Just a little south of here, the Bank of America was bailed out by American taxpayers to the tune of $45-billion. It claimed a pre-tax loss of $5.4-billion and so paid no taxes for the past two years. In one of those years, it dished out executive bonuses and compensation worth $35-billion. Could I make this stuff up?

The bargain between the 1 per cent and the governments of the 1 per cent is clear: huge tax breaks for the big boys, austerity for the 99 per cent. Can you handle more figures? Since the geniuses on Wall Street gave us the great crash of 2008, American banks received $7.7-trillion in bailout money and British banks $1.3-trillion. Yes, trillion, in both cases. To offset those losses to the public purse, the United States will cut public spending by $2.4-trillion in the next decade and Britain $128-billion. In Britain this will include almost half-a-million lost public sector jobs.

It’s time to resurrect the biting formula given us years ago by John Kenneth Galbraith, an earlier generation’s Paul Krugman: private affluence, public squalor.

Canada merely proves the rule. Despite our ever-receding kinder/gentler reputation, Canada is actually becoming more unequal faster than most other countries. There’s an elephant in the room here (as elsewhere) that’s almost always ignored. As economists Sam Gindin and Paul Kahnert report in the April CCPA Monitor, there’s far more wealth in Canada today than ever before. Per capita GDP is 50 per cent higher (adjusting for inflation) than 30 years ago. Yet most of that wealth has been transferred to the richest Canadians through tax cuts and government subsidies.

Since 1980, the ultra-rich have increased their share of the national income from 8.1 per cent to 13 per cent, a shift of $67-billion. Here’s a strange coincidence. The combined federal and provincial deficits now run at about $65-billion annually. So let’s see now. If taxes on the super-rich had stayed at their 1980 level – when no well-heeled Canadian was exactly suffering from cruel and unusual tax torture – there’d be no federal or provincial deficits today. Interesting.

Privileging the few and hurting the less privileged has been very much a non-partisan tradition in Canada, from Bran Mulroney through Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin to Stephen Harper. Between 2000 (Chrétien-Martin) and today, corporate taxes have been reduced to 15 per cent from 29 per cent, but instead of putting their extra profits into productive business investments Canadian corporate leaders have engorged themselves on their $500-billion windfall. Looking at the Harper government record alone, from its first year in office in 2006 to 2013-14, tax cuts will cost the government – that’s us, the citizenry – $220-billion, creating the very deficits that are now used to justify government spending cuts. Interesting.

But if the 1 per cent are still winning the brutal class war, the 99 per cent are not yet surrendering. Portents of hope are everywhere. France, of course. Britain, where the austerity-obsessed Tory-Liberal coalition got smashed in municipal elections last week. The United States, where Mr. Obama is framing Mitt Romney as the candidate of the 0.00001 per cent.

And if you sometimes fear that Occupy was just a dream, look hard and you can still find evidence across the United States of its existence. In fact there are mini-Occupies all over the country – Occupy Colleges, Occupy Our Homes, Occupy the Securities and Exchange Commission, even an Occupalooza organized by Occupy Fullerton, which seems to be a town in California.

In Canada too there’s a revival of protest. Of course most controversial are the Quebec students. But whatever you think of them – and I for one believe their protests have become counter-productive – it’s obvious these young people are amazingly committed and tenacious; that’s the spirit that the 99 per cent need.

Voices-Voix, a non-partisan coalition of civil society groups and NGOs disappointed by the Harper government, is revving up its collective clout against the government. Canada can also now boast of Doctors for Fair Taxation, Lawyers for Fair Taxation and Faith Leaders for Fair Taxation. (Anyone who needs extra motivation should take a gander at Kevin O’Leary’s treatment on CBC TV not long ago of a serene and knowledgeable Tanya Zakrison, a surgeon representing Doctors for Fair Taxation.)

A couple of weeks ago 15,000 protestors demonstrated in Toronto against the McGuinty government’s attack on Ontario’s public-sector workers. Along with ever-lower taxes and an end to government regulation of the corporate world, destroying the trade-union movement has for decades been a key objective of the 1 per cent.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has now accomplished what the majority everywhere are fighting for. She actually forced the minority Liberal government, anxious to avoid an election, to agree to a small surtax for the 23,000 Ontarians who declare earnings of more than $500,000 a year. If I were advising Ms. Horwath, I would mobilize those crusading doctors and lawyers for fair taxation and make equality and fairness my campaign cry in the forthcoming Kitchener-Waterloo by-election.

I don’t think either American or Canadian billionaires have to sell off too many of their private jets just yet. But they shouldn’t be too complacent, either. The rich world is due its Spring Revolutions too.

< http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/gerald-caplan/update-on-the-class-war-1-winning-99-regrouping/article2430024/singlepage/#articlecontent >

Imagine being refused a job, an apartment or public service due to your race, disability or sex. How hard is it to enforce your human rights? Six years ago, the McGuinty government’s Bill 107 made controversial changes to human rights enforcement. You likely don’t know that a poorly publicized government-appointed independent review has asked the public if these changes make things better or worse.

Before Bill 107, you could take your case to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Its job was to enforce the Human Rights Code, to investigate human rights complaints, to screen out frivolous or meritless cases and to try to negotiate settlements. If it decided a complaint had merit and couldn’t settle it voluntarily, its job was to publicly prosecute the case at theHuman Rights Tribunal.

Six years ago, to speed up a slow, backlogged system that needed reform, Bill 107 privatized human rights enforcement. It took the Human Rights Commission out of screening, investigating and prosecuting individual discrimination cases. It makes discrimination victims investigate and litigate their cases at the tribunal without the commission’s help.

Does Bill 107 make lives better for victims of discrimination? Far from it.

It created a huge void for discrimination victims by taking the Human Rights Commission out of individual cases. The government promised free lawyers for all claimants. Yet its new Human Rights Legal Support Centre only represents a fraction. Far too many unrepresented claimants encounter respondents (those accused of discrimination) armed with lawyers. The tribunal reports that 81 per cent of respondents have a lawyer at mediation but only 32.9 per cent of claimants have any representative when filing a claim.

The Liberal government promised human rights hearings within one year. The tribunal set a goal to achieve this in only 75 per cent of cases. Its average time to complete cases is 372 days, but most of those never have a hearing.

Individuals can’t themselves investigate and litigate complex systemic discrimination cases. The Liberals pledged that the stripped-down Human Rights Commission would effectively combat systemic discrimination by bringing public interest cases to the tribunal and intervening in individual cases. To date the commission has brought only one public interest case and intervened in only 73 of the thousands of individual cases. Also, the government hasn’t established the promised anti-racism and disability secretariats, ignoring its own legislation.

Liberals also promised more accessible human rights but instead created new barriers. A discrimination victim who wins at the tribunal risks having to pay thousands of dollars in legal costs if their win gets overturned by the court due to the tribunal’s own legal errors. Would a blind person likely take on the TTC today, to force it to call out bus stops, when the new Legal Support Centre is statistically unlikely to take their case, the TTC is ready to spend $450,000 on lawyers, and the applicant could be stuck with a huge court cost order because a win at the tribunal was based on the tribunal making legal errors?

The government said Bill 107 would address the backlog. Yet its transition process unfairly led 885 cases to vanish in the system.

Liberals promised fair hearings. Yet they gave the tribunal power to override legislation designed to ensure fair hearings and allowing it to pass controversial and complicated rules.

We hope this current Human Rights Code Review will recognize these amply-documented problems, and make strong recommendations to improve Ontario’s troubled human rights system. Many from equality-seeking communities want the government to keep its broken promises about Bill 107. They want the government to require the tribunal to obey legislation designed to foster fair hearings, and to restore the Human Rights Commission as a stronger public interest voice at the tribunal. Discrimination victims should be given the option of asking the Human Rights Commission to investigate and publicly prosecute their case if there’s enough evidence. Discrimination victims want results. They don’t care if they get it through hearings or through mediations.

Do you like the TTC announcing bus and subway stops, even if you’re sighted? Imagine if under this new human rights system, no one wanted to risk taking on big organizations like the TTC without the backing of a public prosecutor to win that and other accessibility measures. Is that the human rights enforcement system we really want?

David Lepofsky is a blind Toronto lawyer, activist for reforms for the rights of persons with disabilities, and twice successfully won human rights cases before Bill 107 to force the TTC to announce bus and subway stop announcements.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1175822–it-s-tougher-than-ever-to-enforce-your-human-rights-in-ontario >

One year on, we can say that Stephen Harper has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. If there was room to doubt what was achieved by five years of minority government, after a year of majority Conservative rule it is now clear: total national confusion.

Transition houses are full of women whose health and well-being are threatened due to violence, addictions, poverty, compromised life skills and a host of other issues. The focus, though, of them and us, men vs. women, is a disturbing trend.

Can we not agree that “hurt people hurt people”? The ones who do damage are the ones who are damaged themselves. If energies and money focused on this, rather on alienating and criminalizing an entire gender, we may come closer to dealing with the real issue – hurt people hurt people.

I work in the field and have learned that the men who have offended have their horrific stories to tell, too. We either explode with our mismanaged feelings or we implode. All of society suffers, regardless of gender.

I want B.C. to be a safe place, not just for women, but for men, too. When a man is abusive to a woman, he is also harming himself because he carries what he has done within him. I want schools to teach ethical behaviour and the value of humanity in kindergarten. I want parents to teach the innate value and worth of human life in their homes. I want men to stop being violent toward women and I want women to find their power to live their lives without it, but I believe that will only happen when men and women alike feel safe and valued.

Doreen Stobbe, Campbell River

< http://www.timescolonist.com/Violence+problems+transcend+gender/6537423/story.html#ixzz1tRjad2ub >

Their last hope is Frances Lankin. And they’re no longer sure whether she’s a friend or a foe.

Two months from now Lankin and Munir Sheik, co-chairs of Ontario’s social assistance review will release their blueprint. Their aim is to turn the province’s threadbare, demeaning welfare system into a modern income security system.

Initially, the 880,000 people who depend on social assistance — which includes welfare and disability support — regarded Lankin, former president of the United Way of Greater Toronto, as their champion in the corridors of power. She knew they couldn’t live on the province’s meagre allowance. She knew they needed affordable housing and child care. She knew the system stripped them of their privacy and their dignity.

But in recent months, doubts have set in. The commission’s discussion paper in February was vague and unsettling. Last month’s provincial budgetwas ominous. And the rumours they’re hearing scare them.

Last week, three Torontonians who live on Ontario Disability Support (ODSP) met at a supportive housing agency to share their concerns. All have mental disorders. All agreed to use their real names regardless of the stigma or the possibility of reprisals.

“I used to think the goal (of the review) was poverty reduction,” said Youssef Camara. “Now I think it will produce the reverse. I truly believe people will be worse off a year from now.”

Camara has severe clinical depression. Until last month he was working for a non-profit agency. Then his contract expired. He is looking for a new job but it’s hard to find an employer who will take a risk on a worker whose illness could flare up anytime and last for months.

That unpredictability, he explained, is why people with psychiatric disorders worry about the commission’s suggestion that disability support recipients deemed capable of working should be required to look for employment.

Sandra Smith, who has schizophrenia, figures she could work two days a week. Her medication, Risperidone, saps her energy and has other side-effects (insomnia, muscle stiffness, irritability).

Michael Koo puts his limit at 20 hours. And they might not be weekly. His disease, bipolar disorder, is cyclical.

“If the government wants us to work, why doesn’t it hire us to work with mentally disabled clients? It’s already paying us,” he pointed out. (ODSP recipients get a monthly benefit of $1,064.)

Camara wants to know who will decide which ODSP recipients are capable of working. “We don’t need another layer of bureaucracy.”

Last month’s budget heightened their fears. It froze welfare rates and halved this year’s promised increase in the Ontario Child Benefit.

(Last Friday, Premier Dalton McGuinty, hoping to win the support of the New Democratic Party, proposed an amendment that would give disability support recipients a 1 per cent increase in November. With inflation running at 2.2 per cent, this would still mean a drop in their buying power.)

“Why does this government consider it progress to move a person from severe deprivation to working poverty?” Camara asked rhetorically. His answer: “The intent of everything they do is to shrink funding.”

“It’s not just us,” Smith stressed. “More and more families are falling into poverty. It’s scary.”

Now they’re hearing speculation that Lankin and Sheik will propose that Ontario Works (basic welfare: $599 a month) and Ontario Disability Support ($1,064) be collapsed into a single program. That alarms them. They need the extra money for medications, supportive housing and transportation to hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices.

Oppressive and unfair as the current system is, they can’t afford to lose what they have. And they don’t trust Lankin — or anyone else — to keep them whole.

As the conversation ended, they tried to explain what it’s like to be poor and disabled in Ontario. “It’s like you’re always being judged and found guilty of some crime,” Koo said. Smith gave it a name: “the crime of being sick.”

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1166017–hopes-fade-for-humane-welfare-system-in-ontario >

The surest sign that the scramble was on to avoid a pointless provincial election came last week when the New Democrats dropped their misguided proposal to cut home-heating bills. The deal-clincher came on Monday when Premier Dalton McGuinty bowed to NDP Leader Andrea Horwath’s demand for a 2 per cent surtax on incomes above $500,000.

This move, plus McGuinty’s decision to shift $317 million into child care, hospital funding, welfare and disability payments at the NDP’s behest, was calculated to save the Liberal minority government. Still, it makes what was already a credible budget — given Ontario’s bleak fiscal realities — a better one.

The last thing Ontarians wanted or needed was a snap election. Horwath skilfully traded her support for budget fixes that will help some of Ontario’s most vulnerable.

The wealth surtax is projected to affect a mere 0.2 per cent of taxpayers and will raise $470 million next year. But the money won’t go to new programs as the NDP wanted. McGuinty plans to use it, conservatively, to pay down the deficit.

“We all gave a little bit,” said McGuinty, calling the surtax a “sensible compromise” to make minority government work.

It’s more than that; it’s good policy. But the only reason he’s agreeing to it now is that recent polling has shown it to be a popular idea. Support for higher taxes for the very wealthy runs in the 80 per cent range. There are few things that any government, anywhere can do to generate public support numbers like that.

Indeed, if the Liberals had been bold enough to ask the wealthiest to shoulder more of the burden last fall perhaps they could have picked up a couple more seats and secured a majority government.

Asking the very affluent to contribute more makes sense at a time when everyone else, including the poorest, are being forced to make sacrifices.

But if it’s the right thing to do now, it would have been the right thing to do during last October’s election. And yet no one dared to risk their political skin on it. Both the Liberals and the NDP campaigned on a promise not to raise personal income taxes, only to revisit the issue when the election dust settled. Now they’re busy cutting deals to protect their own interests, acceptable though the outcome is.

The downside for McGuinty is that he is now exposed to attack by Tim Hudak’s Conservatives for raising taxes, yet again, after vowing not to do so. That’s a price the premier is prepared to pay. He’s probably also banking on Hudak coming across as a one-trick tax-cutting pony, while others are trying to make the legislature work.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/1166693–dalton-mcguinty-and-andrea-horwath-have-cut-a-sensible-deal-to-avert-an-election >

More than 15,000 protesters from labour unions and community organizations across the province rallied outside Ontario’s Legislature Saturday afternoon to vent their fury over the minority Liberal government’s austerity-focused budget.

“We’re sending a signal to Dalton McGuinty that the budget he’s introduced is grossly unfair,” said Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, the group responsible for organizing the “Day of Action” event.

A sea of flag-toting protesters arrived by the busload early in the afternoon to demonstrate against the proposed budget, a belt-tightening fiscal blueprint that calls for wage freezes for more than a million public servants and pension plan changes as a way to rein in the province’s multi-billion-dollar deficit.

Gathered on the grassy stretch facing the Legislature, the group of public servants and other labour supporters jived to a Bob Marley cover band as union and community group leaders prepared to take the stage for speeches, sporadic cries of “Shame, shame on McGuinty!” filling the air.

“McGuinty has gone too far. We need to support the public sector,” said Don Guest, a Brantford-based millwright and United Steel Workers member.

“They need to step back. Touching pensions, it’s just not the right way to go,” added Cephas Kotei, a Dufferin Peel Catholic District School Board employee and president of CUPE Local 1483.

The rally then shifted from the Legislature to the streets as the throng of protesters marched toward Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood. A handful of cement trucks, parked near a construction site on Bay St., honked their horns as protesters marched by, eliciting cheers from the crowd.

The protest came just three days before a crucial budget vote that, if defeated, could see Ontarians headed back to the polls for the second time in six months. The Progressive Conservatives under leader Tim Hudak have said the proposed budget fails to create jobs and control spending, and have vowed to vote against it.

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, one of more than a dozen speakers at Saturday’s event, called the proposed budget “profoundly flawed” and told to the crowd she planned to continue to press McGuinty for further concessions prior to Tuesday’s vote.

“When this budget was introduced, we saw a lot of things that we certainly did not like. This budget left workers behind. It left people who are looking for work behind,” she said, bystanders chanting “Vote it down! Vote it down” as she left the stage.

The New Democrat leader later told reporters she hoped to avoid another election, but said her party still had a number of unmet concerns.

Horwath said she was “pleased” with McGuinty’s announcement of a number of budget-related concessions on Friday, including the plan to put $275 million toward child care and the disabled. But her party hoped for further compromises, including a wealth surtax of two percentage points on incomes above $500,000, she said.

With hours before Tuesday’s vote dwindling, Horwath said she planned to meet with McGuinty on Sunday to review her party’s concerns.

“I’ve been very, very careful not to have a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude in this process,” she said. “All we want to see is a little bit of fairness. The very least we can ask for is that the very top earners in Ontario put in a little bit more when times are tough.”

“Corporations should be paying their fair share,” added Ryan, noting he hoped Horwath would “stick to her guns” in the coming days.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1165889–thousands-descend-on-queen-s-park-to-protest-mcguinty-budget >

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper says charities that engage in too much politicking should be denied tax subsidies, he’s right.

There’s no good reason why environmental groups that oppose oil pipelines should be able to finance their activities, in part, on the backs of the general taxpayer.

The problem with Harper’s dictum, however, is that it’s not broad enough. He’s only putting the boots to charities that his Conservatives don’t like.

Parliament should end the tax subsidies going to all charities. Period.

That would include cutting off not only dubious charities, such as the right-wing Fraser Institute, but organizations that probably do some good, like the United Way.

The original idea of having the public subsidize charitable organizations was well-meaning.

Charities used to be organizations that engaged in uncontroversial good works, such as helping widows and orphans.

And so governments provided a tax break. Registered charities were given the privilege of issuing charitable receipts to donors. Those donors, in turn, could deduct a portion of their gift from the income tax they owed — money that, in the end, had to be made up by someone else.

In practice, that meant the public in general ended up subsidizing charities chosen by individual taxpayers.

Sharp-eyed entrepreneurs, particularly among those who want to influence public opinion, sensed the gravy-train potential and began to apply for charitable status — usually under the pretense of fostering education.

The upshot is that if I give $100 to the Red Maple Foundation (which is a charity publishing the pinkish This Magazine), you’re on the hook for $15 of that amount — regardless of what you think about pinkos or magazines.

Similarly, you and I are both on the hook for a portion of $2.8 million in so-called charitable donations that the Fraser Institute raised in 2010. Its donors too received charitable tax receipts.

I don’t know about you. But I resent having to subsidize an organization that spends much its time fulminating for neo-liberalism.

For the same reason, I have no interest in helping to fund the Canadian Constitution 2005 Foundation, which agitates against medicare.

And I really find it irritating to have my tax dollars subsidize the Manning Foundation for Democratic Education. It’s a training school for Conservative operatives started by former Reform leader Preston Manning that offers “certified programs in political management” as well as “faith/political interface programs.”

I have the funny feeling that I’m helping to teach young Conservatives how to manipulate robocalls.

That foundation, incidentally, is a subsidiary of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, an unabashed Conservative front.

Former New Democratic Party leader Ed Broadbent’s new Broadbent Institute hasn’t yet asked for charitable status. When and if it does, I reckon many will resent subsidizing it too.

The Douglas-Coldwell Foundation, another NDP front, already has charitable status. But according to its latest public tax filing, it raises little money and does less.

So what is to be done?

The simplest answer is to scrap charitable tax receipts entirely. Distinguishing between real and bogus charities is an almost impossible task. Even established charities can be controversial.

Some fund medical testing on animals. Others promote birth control.

If real charities like the United Way need public funding, they should apply for grants up front — as does, say, the CBC.

And bogus charities?

Let me put it this way: If you want to finance Preston Manning’s world view, go to it. Just don’t ask me to chip in.

< http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1165402–walkom-stephen-harper-s-attack-on-charities-doesn-t-go-far-enough >

Think of it as a shield against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, adopted 30 years ago this week, protects us all. Time and again, Canadians have invoked it to challenge overbearing government power, to expand freedoms including that of free speech and of the press, to right wrongs and to remedy inequality. It is one of our great treasures.

Indeed Canadians put it on a par with such icons as Confederation itself, and universal health care. And for good reason. We look to the Charter for guidance on the political, legal, social and ethical issues that define our lives.

It’s a shame, then, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have no great regard for the Charter, seeing it as a Liberal political legacy that “limits democracy” by empowering unelected judges to review the decisions of Parliament, legislatures and bureaucrats. There will be no official celebratory bash in Ottawa on Tuesday, despite the Tories’ attention to other, less relevant aspects of our history.

The Charter was adopted on former prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s watch when the Constitution was repatriated from the United Kingdom on April 17, 1982. Queen Elizabeth II attended a ceremony on Parliament Hill to sign the documents that transformed us from being a parliamentary democracy to a constitutional one.

Since then the Charter has reshaped Canadian society in big ways and small, bringing sweeping and at times controversial change. “On balance,” says Peter Hogg, one of the nation’s most respected constitutional scholars, “we have improved our country’s governance” by having it. At root, the Charter empowers the people, he told Lawyers Weekly in a recent interview. That is its great, enduring value.

Every schoolchild by now knows that it guarantees the right to free expression and association, to freedom of the press, to vote, to life, liberty and security, to freedom from discrimination, and more. But fewer are aware of what that means in practice.

In recent years the Star and other media have successfully invoked the Charter to shield responsible journalism from defamation lawsuits, providing for a stronger, more informative press.

Just this past Friday the Supreme Court cited it in holding police who conduct wiretaps more accountable for notifying people who are under surveillance.

Since the 9/11 attacks the Charter has been used to temper needlessly draconian anti-terror laws. And to affirm the worth of human life by preventing the extradition of suspected criminals who might be executed. The Charter has been invoked in regard to Quebec secession, to raise the bar to breaking the country. It has forced police and prosecutors to meet higher procedural standards in criminal cases, reinforcing the presumption of innocence. It has been used to stop discrimination against gays, to permit the wearing of religious symbols, and to effectively legalize women’s freedom of choice in abortion.

The Charter has been invoked, as well, in causes that range from minority language rights to aboriginal rights, Sunday shop closings, refugee cases, assisted suicide, extradition to torture, prostitution, censorship, collective bargaining, tobacco advertising, and more.

Under a series of vigilant judges who did not hesitate to strike down bad laws, or to “read in” rights when justice required, the Charter has come to affect most aspects of our lives.

As Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé once put it, memorably, the Charter “stretched the cords of liberty” and enfranchised us all.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/1161574–at-30-the-charter-of-rights-has-reshaped-our-society-for-the-better >

It was a throwaway line in Jim Flaherty’s budget; a throwaway institution in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa.

Deeply buried in an attachment to the 2012 budget was a one-sentence announcement that the National Council of Welfarehad been axed.

For a few days anti-poverty activists thought low-income Canadians had been spared. By the time they discovered the truth, all they could do was mourn the demise of another once-proud social agency.

Since 1962, the National Council of Welfare had held up a mirror to the nation, highlighting the pockets of poverty and warning policy-makers of the consequences of neglecting those in need. It gave non-profit groups the facts they needed to speak credibly about hardship in a land of plenty. It tracked the emergence and growth of a crack in society between the comfortably well-off and the struggling. And it brought together social policy thinkers to find solutions to poverty — or at least keep the debate alive.

Now it’s gone. Kellie Leitch, parliamentary secretary to the minister of human resources, dismissed the loss offhandedly. “We are putting our policy resources to best use and reducing duplication,” she said, pointing to Campaign 2000 and Canada Without Poverty as high-profile non-profit organizations serving the same role.

Actually they don’t. They don’t have a government mandate “to advise the (human resources) minister on matters concerning poverty and the realities of low-income Canadians.” They don’t have the resources to buy Statistics Canada’s unpublished data. They don’t have the statutory authority to create opportunities for the poor to participate in the national decision-making process.

But Leitch’s rationale scarcely mattered. Everybody working in the field knew the real reason the Conservatives dumped the agency was that it was an unwanted piece of Liberal baggage. They hadn’t listened to it in years. They didn’t want to be nagged about poverty, inequality or social responsibility.

Scrapping the council saved an easy $1.1 million.

Only one MP, New Democrat Carol Hughes, challenged the decision in Parliament.

There was no outcry from the provinces. They were happy to keep their own actions out of the spotlight. Ontario just froze its welfare rate at $599 per month and halved this year’s increase in the provincial child benefit.

The Star was the only media outlet that reported the death of the National Council of Welfare. Other newspapers and broadcast outlets — even the publicly owned CBC — didn’t consider it newsworthy.

That left the churches, food banks and social agencies to protest. But most of them are so overwhelmed coping with surging demand in the face of dwindling donations that they can’t afford to engage in advocacy.

Moreover, they’re weary.

They fought to save the long-form census, the best source of information on living conditions in Canada, and lost.

They fought for decent social assistance rates and lost.

They fought for the 60 per cent of jobless workers excluded from the employment insurance system, only to be told by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley: “We do not want to make it lucrative for them to stay home and get paid.”

There are still reasons — albeit tenuous ones — for hope.

Last week, Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair told business leaders face-to-face: “The NDP is going to do everything it can to create a Canada that is more prosperous, as long as it is more prosperous for everybody.” Liberal Leader Bob Rae affirmed his party’s commitment to reverse the “stunning growth” of income inequality. And the courts drew a line in the sand. Judge Sandra Simpson of the Federal Court issued an injunction preventing the government from proceeding with one of the measures in its budget: a drastic reduction in social assistance to First Nations communities. The move would cause “emotional and psychological stress amounting to irreparable harm for some recipients,” she said.

The Conservatives can keep tossing away the fixtures of a compassionate Canada. But they can’t turn this into a nation of throwaway values. Only Canadians can do that.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1160732–harper-throws-national-council-of-welfare-on-the-scrap-heap >