Geoff in the News...

PM asked to help man jailed in Spain
November 5, 2011 - 4:30am By BRIAN MEDEL

Digby rally for his release attracts 200

DIGBY — Friends and family of a Nova Scotia man languishing in poor health in a Spanish prison pleaded Friday with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to intervene.
Philip Halliday has been imprisoned for nearly two years and has been in excruciating pain for most of that time.
Halliday, 54, was arrested Dec. 21, 2009, off the coast of Spain along with the rest of the crew of the freighter Destiny Empress, on which he worked.
They’re all charged with drug trafficking. Halliday says he didn’t know there was a shipment of 1.5 tonnes of cocaine worth an estimated $625 million on the freighter.
He was the only Canadian on board, along with a British captain, an American and several Romanians.
Halliday was very ill in prison with a gallbladder problem but finally had surgery for gallstones last March. Now he has liver and kidney diseases but still needs his gallbladder removed.
Some 200 people chanted for Halliday’s release as they marched Friday afternoon from Digby’s fire station to the town’s waterfront bandstand for a rally in support of the well-known former fisherman.
"It’s time to stand up for Canadians in prison abroad," said Halifax West Liberal MP Geoff Regan, who attended.
"It’s time to say to Spain, give this man a chance to clear his name or send him home."
Regan called on Harper to stand up for Halliday now.
Local MP Greg Kerr, a Conservative, couldn’t attend the rally as he was in Yarmouth to make an ACOA announcement.
Halliday’s niece, Annette LeBlanc, said the family is worried about her uncle.
"My uncle is an honest man and he is a victim in this awful nightmare. The truth will emerge, but I feel that my uncle cannot afford the time."
Digby’s Liberal MLA, Harold Theriault, said he has known Halliday for most of his life.
Both were fishermen until Halliday, like Theriault, got out of the industry. Halliday became a seaman.
In February 2009, the Destiny Empress sailed from Shelburne to Antigua, but the vessel arrived in Trinidad in July because someone there was expected to lease the ship, said Halliday’s wife, Sheree.
Her husband left the vessel temporarily and flew home to Digby, where he worked as a carpenter for a while, she said in an interview last year.
The rest of the crew stayed behind to perform minor repair or refit work on the 45-metre ship, she said.
Halliday returned to the Destiny Empress in November 2009 when it was still in Trinidad.
The freighter then sailed back to Antigua to refuel because fuel was cheaper there, she said.
After that, the ship sailed to St. Vincent, where crew members had a vacation before departing for Spain on what was to be a 14-day crossing, Sheree Halliday said. She said the Destiny Empress was unattended during that St. Vincent stay.
Spanish authorities stopped the ship off the coast of Spain on Dec. 21, 2009. Halliday was charged the next February with trafficking in cocaine.
Looking out from the waterfront bandstand into the crowd Friday, Sheree Halliday said she saw tears, smiles and people listening intently to what was being said. She said the rally has given her hope.
"I think it will do exactly what we were hoping it would do," she said, flanked by her sons Cody, 26, and Darren, 24. "It will provide Philip with help.

Budget office raps ACOA
November 5, 2011 - 4:30am By PAUL McLEOD Ottawa Bureau

Agency didn’t meet even one financial disclosure benchmark

Halifax West Liberal MP Geoff Regan says a lack of disclosure for ACOA has been a chronic problem with the government. (TIM KROCHAK / Staff / File)
OTTAWA — The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency is one of the two worst departments in the federal government for mid-year financial disclosure, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office.
ACOA is now cutting 42 jobs as it tries to reduce costs by five per cent. Who is losing their jobs, why, and what the impact will be is exactly the kind of information Parliament hoped to receive in the department’s quarterly financial report.
Instead, ACOA was one of only two out of exactly 100 government departments and agencies that failed to meet every benchmark for disclosure in a report released this week by the budget office. The other was Natural Resources Canada.
Two main issues were that ACOA did not explain how it was handling an across-the-board federal budget freeze, or extra cuts that ACOA and a dozen other departments had to deal with on top of the freeze.
Departments such as Public Works and the Treasury Board Secretariat provided details of how many positions would be cut and what impact it would have on that department.
By comparison, ACOA’s report contains vague terminology such as: "The agency has taken several measures to address reductions already approved through previous budgets and sunsetting initiatives in order to effectively manage financial and human resources, within the context of the operating budget constraint."
ACOA also got failing marks for not providing line-by-line budget updates "as most others did" and for not explaining why budget amounts varied from year to year.
ACOA spokesman Richard Gauthier said the department was surprised by the budget office’s findings, and staff are looking into why it received a poor appraisal.
He said a large part of the low score is likely due to ACOA not having finalized its cost-savings plans at the time the quarterly report was released in late August. The department notified staff in October that 42 positions would be cut.
Lack of accurate financial reporting has long been a problem, said the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page.
"Parliamentarians have repeatedly asked for more details regarding how austerity measures, including the operating budget freeze, have been implemented, which the government has declined to provide," Page said.
"When the government fails to provide this information, Parliament’s ability to hold the government to account is undermined."
This is the first time quarterly reports have been required. There had been past clashes on the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates when MPs expressed exasperation at not having enough information to oversee departments.
Sen. Hugh Segal, a Conservative, ended up proposing a bill to fix the problem by requiring all departments and agencies to file quarterly financial updates. The government agreed, but the requirements ended up being more lax than Segal’s bill would have imposed.
When the budget office examined the reports, it graded them on five categories. Of the 100 departments and agencies, all but 10 failed at least one category.
Halifax West Liberal MP Geoff Regan has served on the government operations committee and says this lack of disclosure has been a chronic problem with the government.
"It’s vital that (MPs) have access to information, and it’s vital that the public be able to dig into these things, and media dig into them, to find out what the government’s up to," Regan said.
"Joseph Howe fought for responsible government 160 years ago. If you cannot get good access to information about how government is spending money, then how can you have responsible government?"
ACOA was found to have provided insufficient information in four of the five categories, and the fifth was not applicable because ACOA did not have any large swings in spending.
Reporting on the impact of the budget freeze was the biggest information black hole. Fewer than one-quarter of departments and agencies adequately broke down how they were coping with the freeze, according to the report.
Page said he hopes other departments will follow the Treasury Department’s lead and outline specific impacts of cost-cutting in their next reports, due at the end of this month.
"From a power of the purse and accountability perspective, one of Parliament’s most important responsibilities is to approve budgets for every department and agency," Page said.
"In this regard, it needs basic information on why budgets are changing and how programs are being implemented and if there are delays."

Government must do better job of investing in innovation

If not, our standards of living will stagnate and weâll be unable to afford important programs such as healthcare as the baby boom generation enters retirement.

“Discoveries in theoretical physics have driven huge practical innovations in fields like computing and electronics.” That was a phrase in a recent article noting that the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo had lured world-renowned theoretical physicist Xiao-Gang Wen away from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He will be the inaugural BMO Financial Group Isaac Newton Chair in Theoretical Physics. There is no question that most people associate computers and electronics with job creation, but how many of us, even fans of The Big Bang Theory TV show, really comprehend that basic research in areas like theoretical physics can lead to more jobs and better lives for Canadians?

The fact is, if the current government does not do a better job of investing in innovation and encouraging private investment and thereby increasing our productivity, our standards of living will stagnate and we’ll be unable to afford important programs such as health care as the baby boom generation enters retirement.

Economists often argue that one of the best ways to increase productivity is to reduce the tax burden on corporations.  The theory goes that when more money is left on corporate balance sheets, companies will increasingly invest in the kinds of technologies, machinery and research efforts that lead to productivity gains.  In fact, reducing the corporate income tax rate remains the Government of Canada’s chief strategy to spur innovation. Reality, however, doesn’t always follow theory. 

Between 1995 and 2000, when Canada’s combined federal/provincial corporate income tax rate was 44.6 per cent, Canada averaged a reasonable 2.26 per cent annual growth in GDP per hour worked.

Since 2000, that tax rate has dropped to 28 per cent and the federal capital tax has been completely eliminated.  Labour productivity growth over that same time period, however, virtually stalled out at 0.75 per cent annually.  

As if to drive home this point, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty recently stated that, “Quite frankly, we have unacceptably low levels of support for R&D and innovation in many parts of the Canadian private sector.”

By comparison, the United States’ corporate tax rate has remained much higher, at close to 40 per cent, but American business investment in machinery and equipment per worker, particularly information technology, has continued to dramatically outpace Canadian business. The same applies to business led research and development efforts.

So what gives?  If corporate tax cuts have failed to get Canada’s business sector to make the necessary investments to improve Canada’s innovation and productivity, what more can the government do?

Improving access to post-secondary education and investing in basic and applied research are two vital components to increasing productivity, and building the kind of long-term prosperity Canadians expect and deserve. Yet Canada continually under-invests in areas like Aboriginal education, which has contributed to very low undergraduate and graduate program enrolment rates for this community.

Budget 2010 made the scholarships that PhD and post-doctoral students receive fully taxable.  This is not particularly helpful at a time when Canada trails many other nations in the awarding of advanced degrees. The United States for example, awards twice as many masters degrees and one-third more PhDs than Canada.  Meanwhile, the federal government has just cut 1,500 graduate scholarships.

Another obvious area the government can help is with investment in critical infrastructure.  As Statistics Canada points out, “Between 1962 and 2006, roughly one-half of the total growth in multifactor productivity in the private sector was the result of growth in public infrastructure.”  Today, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities estimates that the country suffers from an infrastructure deficit of well over $100-billion.  Vital trade routes such as the Champlain Bridge in Montreal have fallen into a state of utter disrepair.

The government should also strive to provide the kind of certainty that businesses need in order to make medium and long-term plans.  Take for instance, the climate change file which obviously has an impact on business investment decisions.

In early 2008, the government promised to table greenhouse gas regulations by the end of the year.  By the end of 2008, the government was instead promising to implement a cap and trade system.  Earlier this year, cap-and-trade was jettisoned in favour of a “sector-by-sector” approach to regulating emissions.  Of course, there are no details available about which sectors will have to do what.  If all that sounds confusing, just imagine trying to create a medium- to long-term business plan that incorporates all the possible scenarios.

Finally, public sector investment in R&D has remained quite strong in Canada. But the government is poised to slash five per cent from departments and agencies across the board including our three granting councils. Maxime Bernier, minister of state for small business and tourism, recently pointed out that the new GDP growth forecasts mean that the government will have to cut 10 per cent to have any chance of hitting its balanced budget target date of 2014.  If we are at all interested in boosting Canada’s innovation, creating jobs and offering the opportunity for Canadians to have better lives, then surely the mantra towards our granting councils should be jobs, jobs, jobs, not cuts, cuts, cuts.  

Liberal MP Geoff Regan, his party’s industry critic, represents Halifax West, N.S.

news@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times

Online: http://www.hilltimes.com/opinion-piece/policy-briefing/2011/10/03/government-must-do-better-job-of-investing-in-innovation/28349

Ongoing support from the Liberal Party to Stop the Meter

The half-a-million Canadians who stood up for the Internet by signing and sharing the Stop the Meter petition received some support from the Liberal Party today.

Hon. Geoff Regan, Industry and Consumer Affairs critic and MP for Halifax West, sent out an email and a tweet to his pro-Internet constituents today, asking them to sign the Stop the Meter petition, and stating that he will stand up for an open and affordable Internet.

On behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada, Regan made proposals relating to Internet speed and access in Canada, such as providing 100% high-speed Internet connectivity for all Canadian communities by 2012. Regan also suggested a future of Internet openness in which "traffic management remains neutral with open sharing of legitimate technologies, ideas and applications."

Regan believes that the Canadian Government needs to "adopt a digital strategy that incorporates open Internet, digital training and encourages innovation" and that Internet metering (usage-based billing) will only stifle competition in the Internet service industry, and run counter to the interests of the Canadian public.

We at OpenMedia.ca are pleased with the Liberal Party's ongoing efforts to Stop the Meter and happy to hear the majority of Canada's major political parties voicing their support for an open and affordable Internet.


DFO plans to eliminate 275 positions

Chronicle Herald
By STEPHEN MAHER Ottawa Bureau
Wed, Jun 8 - 4:54 AM

OTTAWA — Fisheries and Oceans Canada expects to get rid of 275 positions as a result of cuts announced in the budget tabled Monday, a spokesman for the minister said Tuesday.

The department, which reported 11,030 employees in its 2009-10 annual report, ought to be able to handle the cuts — 2.5 per cent of its payroll — through attrition, which is expected to be four to six per cent annually until 2013-14, when most of the savings are projected to be realized.

"The thesis is that attrition will be able to look after any impact on employment," said Erin Filliter, director of communications for Keith Ashfield, the new minister of fisheries.

The government announced cuts of $57 million to Fisheries and Oceans when Budget 2011 was first tabled in March, but it explained the cuts in vague bureaucratic language, promising, for instance, to find $14.7 million in savings by aligning "program activities with core mandate."

In spite of repeated requests for details, the government declined until Tuesday to explain how it would save the money.

The department still won’t explain the cuts in detail, in part because it has yet to communicate the plan to Fisheries and Oceans employees, but Filliter provided some information.

The government will seek to cut $17 million by "moving towards a multi-year fish-management plan, where stocks are stable."

That means the department will spend less money counting fish where it believes stocks are healthy, and stop making annual changes to the total allowable catches for some species, although Filliter could not immediately say which stocks might be affected.

Former fisheries minister Geoff Regan, the Liberal MP for Halifax West, said cutting fisheries research is risky.

"Advances in technology have made it easier and easier to capture more fish more quickly," he said. "The lesson of the ’80s and early ’90s was you need to have science to tell you what’s happening."

Without new information, the government risks repeating the overfishing that led to the disastrous collapse of the cod stocks on the Grand Banks, he said.

"Can you imagine how much worse our groundfish fishery would have been if that had been the case in the early ’90s?" he said. "Let’s say they waited five more years before they closed the fishery."

The department will also seek to save money by cutting processes where there is overlap with other departments, said Filliter.

"For environmental assessments, for example, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, which is part of Environment Canada, does environmental studies, which can often be duplicative to what is done by (Fisheries and Oceans)," she said.

The government can save money by terminating the Loran-C signal, a radio-based navigation system that has been rendered obsolete by the spread of the GPS.

The department plans to consolidate coast guard dispatch in Halifax, moving positions from Quebec City and St. John’s, N.L.

"We have technology that allows for us to have a dispatch service in one location," she said.

The cuts announced in Budget 2011 are just the first stage of the Conservatives’ plan to return the federal budget to balance by 2014. A cabinet committee is seeking ways to slash spending by $4 billion a year.

The opposition is warning that the Conservatives’ cuts will hurt.

"Until the Conservative government outlines where it plans on saving that $4 billion, the fishermen of Newfoundland and Labrador, the fishermen of Eastern Canada, will all be on pins and needles, waiting for the axe to drop," said new Newfoundland NDP MP Ryan Cleary in budget debate on Tuesday.

Filliter said the government can find savings.

"The prime minister said anybody who thinks you can’t find a billion dollars to save in Ottawa should give their head a shake, and he’s absolutely right," she said.