–Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer is slowly becoming one of my favourite people on the Hill these days. With the current government doing everything that it can to hide reality behind political spin and bread and circuses, Page seems to be able to cut through. It is too bad that it is not making the headlines the way that it should.

We’ve entered into another era of deficit hysteria, with governments and the business community making deficit elimination their top priority and shunting aside almost every other goal. | rabble.ca

“Icelanders resoundingly rejected on Saturday a $5.3 billion (£3.5bn) plan to pay off Britain and the Netherlands for debts spawned by the collapse of an Icelandic internet bank at the height of the global financial crisis.

Results returned from around 83,500 ballots – or more than 40 per cent of the total ballots expected – counted so far showed that 93 per cent of voters said No in the referendum, compared to just 1.5 per cent who said Yes.”

–National Graduate Caucus of the Canadian Federation of Students responds to Budget 2010.

–Canadian Federation of Students respond to Budget 2010.

–National Aboriginal Caucus of the Canadian Federation of Students’ response to Budget 2010.

–The CLC’s response to Budget 2010.

–The CCPA’s response to Budget 2010.

–National Union of Public and General Employees response to Budget 2010.

–Canadian Union of Public Employees response to Budget 2010.

–Public Service Alliance of Canada response to Budget 2010.

“The Budget contains no big surprises but is still a big disappointment. Despite the fact that unemployment is and will remain very high, economic stimulus measures effectively end after this year. A few very small new investments in jobs and skills will be made, but they do not amount to even the beginnings of a strategy to build a new economy. There will be a temporary extension of EI work-sharing, but about 500,000 unemployment claims filed during the Great Recession will still be exhausted. Corporate tax cuts continue, and are even modestly increased in this Budget, so the burden of deficit reduction will fall on government programs.”

Andrew Jackson (CLC chief economist) provides a summary of the budget analysis at rabble.

What the EU leaders meant by “solidarity” in their appeal to the gods was not that they were going to pour public money into Greece, as they poured it into their troubled banks, but that they intended to squeeze the money owed the banks out of the Greek people. | Diana Johnstone

“As it turns out, whether the company is Canadian or not doesn’t matter. As long as there are US investors or shareholders, a Chapter 11 case can be brought. In other words, this NAFTA provision is much less about trade between countries, and much more about the privileges of capital to trump the rights of citizens and governments.”
Canada needs to get out of NAFTA ASAP.

-So I guess the debate is supposed to be cathartic or something.

–Aid is a strange thing, it has been used as a political tool by the imperialist nations and it regulation has been used as a tool by democratic and undemocratic government receiving aid alike. What the USA is doing in Haiti is not exactly new, but it is extremely telling of the priorities that they have there and the necessity of an alternative plan.

–Students need to mobilise to fight this increase. The University of New Brunswick is wasting millions of dollars on projects that have nothing to do with their primary mission, but at the same time are raising fees on students. With wages in New Brunswick at the low end of the national scale and debt-levels among the highest in the country, students cannot deal with fee increase from an administration that refuses to put students first.

Young people entering the world of work today live less well than preceding generations–and think more radically about the world around them. Adam Turl examines the evidence and the reasons for it.
Also: One story from “Generation Debt”

Adam Turl analyzes the deteriorating conditions facing young workers.
“The coming generation of young workers faces much more difficult conditions–but their ideas are being shaped by a broad discontent with capitalism.”

Adam Turl reviews a new book that tells the story of how Wal-Mart became the biggest–and meanest–employer in the U.S.

By Murray Dobbin | Hardly a week goes by without some other unnerving revelation about the character, or rather the lack of same, of the Prime Minister.

“Over the weekend Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez inaugurated some of the new government run hypermarkets which are taking the place of the recently nationalised Exito hypermarket chain, announced the possibility of buying 80% of another, related, supermarket chain…”

“At the inauguration, Chavez said that products previously obtained by the old Exito hypermarket, “when speculation reigned in that shop”, could now be sold for up to five times less, for “fair prices”. Discounts will average 40% less than the normal market price, with 14% discounts on already regulated food, 18% discounts on non-regulated products, and other discounts on white products, electronics, and other household items.

“The oligarchy tried to create a scandal over the expropriation of this hypermarket…but the real outrage is what they were committing against their workers and the people. Further, they tried to create a fuss at the world level, that didn’t come to anything,” Chavez said.”

-Viva