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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   33778 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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In Canada, pretty much everything of note policy-wise is decided at the provincial level, minus international affairs/defence and building cross-provincial infrastructure. The federal government's biggest role is collecting taxes and then distributing it to the provinces. Even the biggest federal projects enacted in the last few years has been childcare (and soon?!?) dental deals which again, amounts to giving cash to the provinces to spend on specific things.

However Canada's political culture is obsessed with the federal government, as well as the United States. So we have a very unproductive public discourse. Take the convoy truckers; the COVID restrictions they were protesting against were almost all provincial (except the federal border restrictions, but we were just mirroring the US and even if we had struck ours down it wouldn't have made a difference). Yet it was the federal government and Trudeau who was the target of the protests. It's not like they were going to protest against the mainly conservative Premiers.

Yes, janitors, like most working class professions, feel sympathetic to the average voter, but that sympathy gives them political power disproportionate to what the free market may otherwise dictate.

I'm aware of this issue. Certainly there are specific public sector unions which use their position to extract excessive concessions from the government. But this union's raises in the past decade combined were less than inflation last year. They have not been milking the province for all they could get. To have the government refuse to negotiate with them and just impose a unilateral contract on them is galling. If the PCs had wanted to they could've just enacted back-to-work legislation, schools would remain open, and arbitration would take care of it and get a fair-ish deal for everyone.

The federal government has the power of taxation which effectively gives it control over areas that are supposed to be under provincial jurisdiction. For example, healthcare is under provincial jurisdiction, but the federal government taxes every province and transfers the money only to those provinces with free public health insurance meeting its requirements. Provinces don't have to go along with this, but if they didn't then they would have to pay a heavy price, which the federal government can raise if needed.

Take the convoy truckers; the COVID restrictions they were protesting against were almost all provincial (except the federal border restrictions, but we were just mirroring the US and even if we had struck ours down it wouldn't have made a difference). Yet it was the federal government and Trudeau who was the target of the protests. It's not like they were going to protest against the mainly conservative Premiers.

The federal government is responsible for foreign policy. Thus, going to Trudeau to demand he remove federal border restrictions and also negotiate their removal on the other side is actually the correct course of action.

pretty much everything of note policy-wise is decided at the provincial level

Criminal code, environmental regulations, and border control (import/export) are all federal. Those are really powerful policy levers, especially because the former and latter effectively dictate how provinces run their economies; inter-provincial trade is not a driver of provincial economies to the same magnitude Canada-US trade is.

Anyway, since the current balance of political power in Canada tends to favor the economically-unproductive resource-poor parts of the country (as in, every province east of Ontario, though Quebec is a special case), the economically-productive ones tend to get real pissed off when they start going to culture war.

Like imposing that border restriction was- if the US border control had the same functional effect (and I agree that it did- most truckers were vaccinated anyway), then imposing a symmetric one was unequivocally "because fuck you". And in this light, it's also noteworthy that the places the protestors overwhelmingly came from have had effectively zero political representation in the Federal government since 2019 (the Liberal party has approximately zero seats west of Toronto, and because there are no votes but party line votes in Canada when it comes to anything of real consequence, this functionally equates to "entirely shut out of government").

As such, I believe that the fixation on the Federal government for political ills (and the protests worked against Provincial governments anyway- AB and SK lifted their restrictions more or less as the protest began) was and continues to be the correct choice.

But this union's raises in the past decade combined were less than inflation last year.

Though the union seems to be asking for annual wage increases of 11.7%. I'd imagine this is a 5-year contract. So the average will go from $48k to $80k. And this would be what every other union asks for. Basically doubling Ontario's expenditures.

All the more reason to engage in negotiation or arbitration, as expected, rather than pushing the constitutional “FU” button.

As a taxpayer, I want my government to use every reasonable tool available to keep costs down. Why should the government negotiate if it doesn't have to and if it might result in them overpaying their employees?

Is deploying this provision "reasonable"?

A government is more effective when it is predictable and accountable. Following the Charter is more predictable than breaking with it at random points. Waiving the potential for judicial review is a blow to accountability--at least from my American perspective.

More broadly, I think there's merit to some of the rights being suppressed here, and that it's unjust for the government to say they're protected up until they're suddenly not. That's not a right, but a privilege. I would be worried about a law which "notwithstandinged" Section 10 to deny me legal counsel, or Section 12 to decide that torture is fine just this once, or Section 2 to demand I convert to a religion. Freedom to form contracts isn't as sympathetic, but it's important nonetheless.

What recourse, if any, should the government have when the courts go rogue and start inventing rights that never existed before at the taxpayers' expense? Your argument seems to rely on the assumption that it's important to protect rights just because the Supreme Court decided it was protected by the constitution.

I'm not saying that it's good the government va always override the constitution on most matters. But I do think that it is good in this case, because allowing public sector unions to strike is harmful.

Edit: misread your quote.

But this union's raises in the past decade combined were less than inflation last year.

Workers as a whole in the US saw a 2.5% decrease in real average hourly earnings from Sep '21 to Sep '22 according to the BLS thanks to inflation.

Would it have been better if employment law had a clause that automatically indexed all wages to inflation? I suspect not, as it would necessitate price increases that will further fuel inflation and possible bankruptcies and wholesale job losses for price elastic sectors. Instead, we have what I think tends to be healthy free-market reallocation of human capital, with some businesses reducing hours or closing because they are not profitable enough to increase wages to market levels, while others with higher ROCE manage to attract and retain workers. Even in sectors with high union membership, like teachers and cops, you see news headlines of teacher or police shortages that in turn force cities to raise wages or offer higher starting bonuses. That seems more politically palatable and less likely to be corrupt and inefficient compared to wholesale strikes.

So why not let the janitors vote with their feet if they feel underpaid, just like the average US worker?

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