Making Canada Relevant Again- The Economic Super-Thread

[Edward Campbell]

Colin Robertson offers some useful and timely advice in this opinion piece which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/world-insider/rather-than-get-even-canada-needs-to-get-smart-on-keystone/article18319477/#dashboard/follows/?click=drive

Rather than get even, Canada needs to get smart on Keystone

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

Colin Robertson
Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Apr. 29 2014

Disappointment, frustration, even anger, are natural reactions to the Obama Administration’s Good Friday decision to delay, again, permitting the Keystone XL pipeline.

It belittles the Administration’s promise of fair and timely process. It’s a rebuke to a loyal ally who is also America’s biggest customer.

Extending the process for more review, even with the Nebraska challenge, rings hollow especially, as TransCanada’s Russ Girling observed, “after more than 2,000 days, five exhaustive environmental reviews and over 17,000 pages of scientific data.”

The more likely reason: the White House calculation about the midterms and the contribution in money and campaign enthusiasm of the environmental movement.

There will be a Canadian temptation to ‘get even.’ Resist it.

The United States accounts for 70 per cent of our trade and more than one third of our economic output.

Even without Keystone, oil is getting to U.S. refineries through existing pipelines and, increasingly, by rail and truck. That pipelines are the safer means of transport is acknowledged in the State Department’s environmental assessment.

Rather than get mad, we need to be smart.

The Obama Administration likely will rag the puck on the permit until after the November elections. Meanwhile, our allies in Congress will continue to push. Most Americans favour the pipeline.

At home, we need to turn our energies to constructing east-west pipelines and terminals so we can get our oil and gas to tidewater.

With U.S. energy production rising, some Americans believe Canadian energy is unnecessary. They are wrong.

The U.S. imports 8-9 million barrels of petroleum daily; one-third from Canada. American reliance on Canadian oil is increasing (in January we supplied more than OPEC). But we need to get it there.

We also pay the penalty inflicted on a captive supplier to a sole market. Dependence on the U.S. market could result in the ‘managed trade’ situation endured on softwood lumber until we opened an alternate market with Asia.

Unlike most presidents, Barack Obama seems not to appreciate the strategic importance to the U.S. of Canada.

Since Franklin Roosevelt and Mackenzie King parleyed at Kingston in 1938, the dynamic of Canada-U.S. relations has revolved around our security and economic partnership.

The U.S. wants a reliable security partner.

We upped our game on security after September 11. We spent billions creating a security perimeter. Our collective security credentials are demonstrated in Afghanistan, Libya and now in the Ukrainian crisis.

In return, we expect a reliable economic partner.

Prime Minister Harper’s border access initiative has made progress but it lacks the sustained senior-level U.S. commitment demonstrated during the ‘Smart Border’ process.

As a teachable moment, Keystone recalls the Carter Administration’s failure to ratify the East Coast Fisheries Agreement in 1978.

The lesson then was the necessity to engage Congress directly.

Under Ambassador Allan Gotlieb, we took our case directly to Capitol Hill and into the districts. We would no longer rely on a feckless Administration.

Not traditional diplomacy, it still advances our interests in Washington.

The conditions for ‘getting it done’ in Washington have ‘evolved’ again.

Politics are polarized making it harder to find compromise. Messaging through social media is instant and driven from every point. The rise of big money, supported by two Supreme Court decisions, increases the power of special interests to the detriment of deliberative, consensus-driven public policy.

We need to recalibrate our game.

For corporations, the lesson is that social engagement – explaining projects to the community – is here to stay.

For government, strengthen our outreach effort to complement the work of Ambassador Gary Doer and our diplomats. Every minister travelling to Washington should call on Congress.

Encourage more congressional outreach by MPs like Rob Merrfield. In June, the interparliamentary caucus , re-energized by co-chairs Janis Johnson and Gord Brown, host their U.S. counterparts in Ottawa. The Halifax International Security Forum agenda always has a place for U.S. senators.

Second, get to know the potential 2016 candidates and their staff so they know more about Canada.

We also need to know more about the United States. It’s time for a serious parliamentary study; the last comprehensive report was in 1978.

Third, engage more at the state level – targeting state legislators and, especially governors.

In 2010, the premiers met the governors to smooth the path to procurement reciprocity. Why not another meeting around the logistics of continental supply chains? Or carbon pricing? Or fracking standards?

Cutting our consulates was a mistake. Aim for a presence in every state for the 2016 presidential election.

Keystone is delayed, not doomed. Learn from this episode. Lift our game in the United States.

A former diplomat, Colin Robertson is vice president of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute and a senior advisor to McKenna, Long and Aldridge LLP.

I think his three points: 1. "We need to recalibrate our game," 2. We need to educate American legislators, including candidates for office, and 3. We need to "engage more at the state level – targeting state legislators and, especially governors," are all good, but the big point I take away is that we must press on with East > West Coast and West > East Coast pipelines to open the world to our resources.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Simplistic and undoable I know,

But I think we should just turn off the taps for a couple of weeks.

Pretty hard to rag the puck when there's no ice

 

[Edward Campbell]

Simplistic and undoable I know,

But I think we should just turn off the taps for a couple of weeks.

Pretty hard to rag the puck when there's no ice

I understand the frustration with President Obama and e.g. the Tides Foundation and so on, just as you understand, recceguy, the futility of your idea ... but, futile or not, it's a bad idea. (Which is why I'm replying, because others might not understand as well as you do.)

Three points ...

    First: As Colin Robertson reminds us the US matters to us. It matters far, far more than any other country ... it matters more than any of our provinces because it accounts for fully ⅓ of our economic output.

    Second: We are a trading nation and we want to be a bigger and better one; the very worst thing we could do for our reputation as a reliable trading partner would be to try ~ and we would, certainly, fail ~ to punish a customer.

    Third: Oil is a fungible commodity - there is a global supply and it is an (almost) free and fair market. If we stop production the only effects will be a temporary rise in prices and the diversion of some tankers. The American people would
    hardly notice ... not enough to force a change in policy.

We need to be smarter ... with the Americans, to be sure, but, more importantly with ourselves: with provinces, with first nations, with interest groups and so on. Building pipelines is not a major engineering challenge, it is a public relations and economic and political challenge.

 

[GAP]

Besides, retaliating by cutting off the oil only plays into the "Ban the Tar Sands" crowd's mantra....it's more fun to see them frustrated....

 

[Brad Sallows]

The "bumptious, ill educated American neo-cons" are no worse than the Blue team, then.  At no point during the brief period they held sufficient votes to pass anything they wanted did they pass the tax increases (which they have whined about incessantly) necessary to support desired levels of spending.

The US deficit was -$158B in 2002, -$378B in 2003, -$413B in 2004, -$319B in 2005, -$248B in 2006, and -$161B in 2007.  In 2006 and 2007 I was reading articles projecting a surplus in 2008 and 2009.  The US doesn't have a tax rate problem: it has a spending problem, and an employment suppression problem.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Our economy is inextricably linked to the USA; trade with America is worth more, to every Canadian province, than is inter-provincial trade; we are, in many, many respects the 51st, 52nd, 53rd, 54th and 55th American states (ON, The Prairies, BC, QC and Atlantic Canada in that order according to recent data); the flow of trade between Canada and the USA is unprecedented in world history; it is vital to both countries ... so, consider this, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/us-business/detroit-windsor-bridge-could-become-canadas-white-elephant/article18454586/#dashboard/follows/

Why the Detroit-Windsor bridge could become Canada’s white elephant

BARRIE MCKENNA
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

Published Sunday, May. 04 2014

It risks becoming a very expensive bridge to nowhere.

At issue is the long-planned, and even longer-discussed, new bridge linking Windsor and Detroit – one of the busiest border crossings in the world. The whole project is slated to cost $3.4-billion.

But all of it – the span, a Canadian customs plaza and highway links on both sides of the border – could become the largest white elephant in Canadian history.

The problem? The Obama administration is balking at paying the $250-million needed to build its own customs plaza on U.S. soil.

And without a U.S. government presence, the entire project would be a dead end – an elaborate boat ramp and fishing pier on the Detroit River. The $1.6-billion Herb Gray Parkway, linking Highway 401 to the new bridge, would be lonely monument to the long-time federal Liberal cabinet minister, who died recently at age 82.

Never in the long history of the Canada-U.S. border has one country not built their own border station.

But this is no ordinary bridge project. So anxious to get the vital artery built, Canada has already agreed to front or guarantee virtually all the cost, including a highway on the U.S. side.

And now the Americans apparently want Canada to pay for the U.S. customs plaza, discreetly suggesting Ottawa could pay itself back from future tolls on cars and trucks crossing the bridge. It’s a little like your neighbour expecting you to pay for his new driveway, front door, doorbell and burglar alarm.

U.S. officials insists they never agreed to pay for the plaza. Ottawa may have assumed they would, but it’s not in writing.

“I am not aware of any promises to fund that,” new U.S. ambassador Bruce Heyman said in his first interview after taking up his post last month. “At the same time, I would like to have the opportunity to sit down with the Canadian government and understand their perspective.”

Mr. Heyman is technically correct. The U.S. government is not a party to the bridge agreement between the Canadian and Michigan governments.

But politics, rather than legal niceties, may be the real reason for the plaza controversy. The money has become caught up in partisan budget wrangling in Washington and nasty U.S. midterm elections, coming up in November.

A Democratic-held U.S. Senate seat is up for grabs in Michigan, with the retirement of Carl Levin. Republican Governor Rick Snyder is also up for re-election. And he has angered some traditional Obama allies, including the United Auto Workers, for passing anti-union right-to-work legislation in the state.

Like the long-delayed U.S. decision on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, even the lure of thousands of construction jobs hasn’t been enough to break the bridge impasse. The project would create as many as 13,000 full-time jobs in both countries for three to four years.

In what has become a common theme in many other cross-border disputes, Ottawa has predictably struggled to gets its economic arguments heard over the din of domestic U.S. politics.

The other awkward reality is that Canada needs this bridge more than the United States. The Detroit-Windsor crossing is part of a vital lifeline linking Ontario manufacturers to their U.S. customers and supply chains. Congestion-free access to the border is more important than ever, given the disturbing loss of export market share in the United States over the past decade.

The bridge is to Ontario’s manufacturers what Keystone is to Alberta’s oil patch.

There is some urgency to getting this issue resolved. The plan is to put the project out to tender as a public-private partnership by early 2015. If the $250-million for the plaza is to be paid out of future tolls, investors would have to wait longer to get their money back. It also increases the risk to Canadian tax payers, who are already shouldering the most of the burden and won’t be fully reimbursed for some 50 years. Construction could begin late next year or 2016, with completion in 2020.

The options facing Ottawa aren’t very enticing. It can pony up more of its own money for a U.S. customs plaza. Or, it can delay the bidding process in the hopes that the U.S. government commits the cash in next year’s budget.

Either way, this bridge could get a lot more expensive.

The key, it seems to me, is these two sentences: "But politics, rather than legal niceties, may be the real reason for the plaza controversy. The money has become caught up in partisan budget wrangling in Washington and nasty U.S. midterm elections, coming up in November."

Althoug Canada does need the bridge more than does the USA, the Americans still do need it, but, as is so often the case in the 21st century, official Washington is screwing Main Street.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Former Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page gets the symptoms right in an opinion piece in the Toronto Star. He lists our economic woes as follows:


Now, one can quibble with bits of his list, but, broadly and generally, it is fair and accurate.

Then he goes completely off course with his cure. He doesn't propose any ways to fix anything about the economy, he say: "we cannot overcome the pressing economic challenges before us without the concerted effort of our government institutions." In other words, in his own words: "The time has come to launch a royal commission on the state of our institutions."

No! The last thing Canada needs is the distraction of another slow, plodding, expensive Royal Commission. Ministers, federal and provincial, and business leaders and informed citizens need to propose ways to improve our national productivity ~ interprovincial free trade would be a good start; to boost our exports ~ hello, "Northern Gateway" and "West > East" pipelines; to improve the quality of our secondary and post secondary education ~ even at the expense of quantity; and to continue to contain inflation and government, in general.

The problems Mr Page lists are amenable to solutions; a Royal Commission isn't one of them.

I almost hesitate to post this because I'm reasonably certain that a couple of folks will, incorrectly, accuse me of "union bashing," and I will, yet again, have to explain why unions perform a useful function in our free market system but why public sector labour is badly led and managed. I worry, a lot, about productivity and I point out, again and again, that Canada's (relatively) poor productivity is not about lazy or overpaid workers, it is about timid, branch plant management. I see that Canada has two big advantages in the productivity race: a fair (not good) public health care system ~ it needs a lot of HUGE changes, but it is very, very much on the right track, especially compared to the USA ~ and an OK, but not good public education system. The latter is, actually, more important to productivity than the former.

So, with that disclaimer, here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is an article that highlights one of the problems with our public education system:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/imagine-the-uproar-if-we-weeded-out-bad-teachers/article18565795/#dashboard/follows/

Imagine the uproar if we weeded out bad teachers

GARY MASON
The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, May. 09 2014

A provincial task force looking for ways to improve Alberta’s education system had barely tabled its report before the teachers’ union lost its mind.

What the Alberta Teachers’ Association objected to was a recommendation that provincial educators get recertified every five years. The aim: To weed out teachers who shouldn’t be at the front of a classroom – the ones doing far more harm than good.

Of course, that’s not how the association sees it. It views the plan as an all-out “assault” on its members. It even accused Education Minister Jeff Johnson of directing the task force to come up with the recommendation, a completely specious and reckless conspiracy theory that was repudiated by all involved.

It’s too bad teachers’ unions have become so predictable when it comes to any attempts to hold their members to a professional standard. Getting rid of incompetent teachers in Canada (and the United States, for that matter) is nearly impossible. The processes involved are so onerous, so stacked in the teacher’s favour, that most administrators throw up their hands in frustration and give up.

That shouldn’t be.

The Alberta task force noted that in 10 years, not one teacher has lost his or her job because of ineffectiveness – this, in a province that employs 35,000 full-time K-12 educators. That is a mind-boggling statistic and an indictment of both the government and the union. It’s not much different in most Canadian provinces. In British Columbia, just 16 teachers have been terminated or resigned in the past decade over incompetence-related issues. The province employs more than 30,000 K-12 teachers.

Talk to any teacher and they’ll identify at least one or two colleagues who shouldn’t be instructing kids for a living. That shouldn’t come as a great surprise. The teaching profession isn’t immune from the basic rules of the working world; 5 to 10 per cent of those making up any work force should probably be doing something else for a living. In the private sector, it’s much easier to push these people out the door and toward another direction. (And often, the departed are later happy they did.) In a unionized environment, where the mandate is frequently to protect the status quo, it’s much more difficult.

The thing is, most teachers are terrific at their jobs, which is good because at school, they play the single largest role in whether a child succeeds or fails. It’s not class size. Not class composition. It’s teachers and their ability to communicate effectively and make learning fun. It’s because teachers play such a vital role that it’s criminal to have people intent on building protective walls around those who shouldn’t be doing it.

The Alberta task force insists that a provincial system of performance evaluation must be introduced. In fact, every province should have one. Which metrics should be used to measure this performance is where it gets tricky.

In the United States, for instance, there have been some highly contentious attempts to evaluate teacher performance with a system known as “value added.” It’s based on measuring the average change in a student’s standardized test score from the beginning of the school year to the end. This, as opposed to just looking at the final scores, an outcome that often doesn’t take into account varying abilities, demographics and socio-economic circumstances.

I can just imagine the uproar if any provincial government in Canada tried such a thing. There would be wildcat strikes all over the place. And yet, surely, children’s academic progress has to be a factor in evaluating teacher performance, right? If the test scores of an entire class are noticeably off from a comparable group across the hall, doesn’t that say something? It’s not the only measure of a teacher’s ability, but it certainly is one.

It will be interesting to see where Alberta goes with all this. Provincial governments often talk tough, then get timid when it comes time to actually taking on teachers’ unions. Alberta’s Progressive Conservatives are incredibly vulnerable at the moment. They may not feel the time is right to force a confrontation with a group that will wield enormous clout at the polls.

Which would be too bad for kids. But then, they’re often an afterthought in these power struggles.

I can recall when, a couple of generations ago, teachers self identified as professionals and they were regarded, in the community, as professionals. Somehow, over some time, they morphed into unionized "education workers." It ought not to surprise them that the public, generally - not totally, just generally - regards them as unionized "workers," on a par with, say, plumbers. The public education system is a key component to a modern, civilized, productive society. It needs to work efficiently and, above all, effectively: part of operational effectiveness, in any enterprise, involves having the right inputs. The key inputs to education are: curriculum and teachers. It is madness, to be charitable, to suggest that there are not, always, some (not many, just some) bad teachers and some more who are less than adequate. The system must be allowed to fire the bad ones, for cause, and retrain the less than adequate ones. Teachers' unions are counter-productive.

 

[Brad Sallows]

The chief problem with the teaching profession in Canada is that teachers have failed to separate the bargaining unit function and the professional oversight function into distinct and adversarial organizations.

 

[Edward Campbell]

There is an interesting report with some insider information, maybe just gossip, in the Ottawa Citizen about Prime Minister Harper wanting to shuffle Jim Flaherty out of Finance and into Industry and moving Jim Prentice into Finance back around 2007.

I think Prime Minister Harper also saw the ideal of an inner cabinet - the sort of thing that existed, albeit informally, in the King/St Laurent eras.

The inner cabinet is:

    Prime Minister - controls strategy on all fronts, aided by  the Clerk of the Privy Council and a political PMO;
          Finance Minister - makes the long term fiscal plan;
          Industry Minister - implements the long term plan in the mid to short term (that's why moving from Finance to Industry makes some sense);
          Treasury Board - manages the plan in the near term;
          Foreign Affairs - presents Canada to the world; and
          Justice - keeps the laws of the land moving in step with society's changes.

Defence is not there - while it's a big spending department it only really matters in a war and then one will likely have, in addition to the inner cabinet, a war cabinet:

    Prime Minister;
          Defence Minister;
                Chief of the Defence Staff is a de facto member in his (or her) role as the PM's military advisor;
          Industry Minister;
          Foreign Minister;
          Minister of Supply; and
          Minister (maybe ministers) of Resources.

The idea of an inner cabinet is based on the established notion that one person's (the PM's in this case) effective span of control is less than 10, maybe only five. There are books, even libraries written about that in the management domain but they are, pretty much, all based on what we, as sailors, soldiers and air force members, have seen/experienced ever since we joined. Our basic structure is built upon small teams, and teams of teams and so on. (When I was a CO I always asked my "O Gp" to arrange themselves at the table so that the four sub-unit OCs sat on one side and the four main staff people (Ops O, adjutant, QM, and RSM) sat at the other - the DCO say at the other end, across from me. I did that, as I told them, to make sure that I never forgot that we had a chain of command and a control system. It's too easy, in my experience, for commanders to rely too much on the staff, on the control system, because it is omnipresent.)

 

[Edward Campbell]

I almost hesitate to post this because I'm reasonably certain that a couple of folks will, incorrectly, accuse me of "union bashing," and I will, yet again, have to explain why unions perform a useful function in our free market system but why public sector labour is badly led and managed. I worry, a lot, about productivity and I point out, again and again, that Canada's (relatively) poor productivity is not about lazy or overpaid workers, it is about timid, branch plant management. I see that Canada has two big advantages in the productivity race: a fair (not good) public health care system ~ it needs a lot of HUGE changes, but it is very, very much on the right track, especially compared to the USA ~ and an OK, but not good public education system. The latter is, actually, more important to productivity than the former.

So, with that disclaimer, here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is an article that highlights one of the problems with our public education system:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/imagine-the-uproar-if-we-weeded-out-bad-teachers/article18565795/#dashboard/follows/

I can recall when, a couple of generations ago, teachers self identified as professionals and they were regarded, in the community, as professionals. Somehow, over some time, they morphed into unionized "education workers." It ought not to surprise them that the public, generally - not totally, just generally - regards them as unionized "workers," on a par with, say, plumbers. The public education system is a key component to a modern, civilized, productive society. It needs to work efficiently and, above all, effectively: part of operational effectiveness, in any enterprise, involves having the right inputs. The key inputs to education are: curriculum and teachers. It is madness, to be charitable, to suggest that there are not, always, some (not many, just some) bad teachers and some more who are less than adequate. The system must be allowed to fire the bad ones, for cause, and retrain the less than adequate ones. Teachers' unions are counter-productive.

This report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Financial Times will enrage teachers' unions and those who oppose standardized testing because it might lower children's 'self esteem:'

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/e512db9c-c643-11e3-ba0e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz32J5XZxKK

Countries that excel at problem-solving encourage critical thinking

By Jeevan Vasagar

May 19, 2014

Maths lessons have changed since Tom Ding was at school. Recalling his favourite subject, Ding remembers: “A big pile of textbooks, the teacher taking you through an example, giving you a bit of context and then telling you what page to open the book at.”

So he was surprised to enter a classroom as a trainee maths teacher to find the textbooks on a shelf while pupils grappled with questions such as: “Does speaking a different language mean you count differently?” In another lesson, students debated the best way to represent a number – was it as a fraction, a decimal or a percentage?

Ding, who gave up a career in advertising to train as a teacher with the UK state school chain Ark, says that such questions are a way for students to move beyond rote learning. “If something is learned too much by rote, there’s a chance those broader concepts are lost.”

Education is under pressure to respond to a changing world. As repetitive tasks are eroded by technology and outsourcing, the ability to solve novel problems has become increasingly vital.

The origin of the word computer is an indication of the shift. The first computers were not machines but groups of people, each working on part of a complex calculation.

As computers have grown more powerful, humans are no longer needed to crunch the numbers. Instead the role of people is to work out which mathematical model approximates best to a real life situation – whether that is the fastest way to deliver Christmas shopping, or organising relief in a disaster zone.

As the rise of tech companies shows, there are high salaries for those most able to organise the world’s messy information. The challenge for schools is to combine the teaching of knowledge with the ability to marshal those facts in unfamiliar situations. How well are they doing it? And can they do better?

The first of those questions was answered in April this year, when the OECD published an assessment of the problem-solving skills of teenagers around the world.

About 85,000 teenagers in 44 countries and regions took the tests for the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment study. The tests expected them to devise strategies for tackling unfamiliar problems. In one, they were shown a map of routes linking the suburbs of a fictional city and asked to suggest a place where three people could meet but no one would have to travel for more than 15 minutes.

They faced situations where the information was incomplete, such as dealing with a new digital device: “You have no instructions for your new air conditioner. You need to work out how to use it.”

And they had to cope with surprises. In another problem, students were told to buy a number of tickets at a concession fare from a ticket machine, only to discover that the concession was not available.

Schools in Europe are frequently criticised by business leaders as “exam factories” that churn out students unable to cope with life beyond the classroom. But the lesson to be drawn from international comparison is that Europe’s schools are far better at teaching creative thought than this criticism implies.

Students from the main western European countries – England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium – all performed above the average, as did pupils from the Czech Republic and Estonia. In the rest of the rich world, the US, Canada and Australia also performed above average. But the laurels were taken by east Asian territories; Singapore and South Korea performed best, followed by Japan, and the Chinese regions of Macau and Hong Kong.

That result poses a challenge to schools in the west. Critics of east Asian education systems attribute their success at maths and science to rote learning.

But the OECD’s assessment suggests that schools in east Asia are developing thinking skills as well as providing a solid grounding in core subjects.

Across the world, the OECD study found a strong and positive correlation between performance in problem solving and performance in maths, reading and science.

In general, the high-performing students were also the ones best able to cope with unfamiliar situations.

But there were interesting exceptions to the rule. When Japanese students were compared with children in other countries of similar performance in maths, science and reading, the Japanese teenagers showed better problem-solving abilities.

This, the OECD suggested, might be explained by Japan’s focus on developing problem- solving skills through cross-curricular, student-led projects.

While there is agreement about the goal, there is a divide over how best to teach children the skill of critical thinking.

Daisy Christodoulou, an educationalist and the author of Seven Myths about Education, argues that such skills are domain specific – they cannot be transferred to an area where our knowledge is limited.

“Trying to teach abstract strategies that can apply across domains, there isn’t much evidence for that,” she says.

“The farther away from the original domain you are, the weaker the transfer is. In our lives this does ring true. We all know people who are good at thinking critically about a historical problem, and not very good at thinking critically about a mathematical problem.”

Critical thinking is a skill that is impossible to teach directly but must be intertwined with content, Christodoulou argues. Shakespeare, lauded for breaking rules, was the product of a rigidly traditional education.

“We have a good idea of what Shakespeare’s education was like,” she says. “He would have learned figures of speech by heart, in Latin.” And the rhetorical devices that he learned as a schoolboy are deployed with increasing confidence in his plays.

“In his early plays, it is quite mechanical, and as he goes on he is playing with these figures of speech and using them in a creative way. Learning by rote, far from stifling creativity, enabled it,” Christodoulou says.

Some argue that placing too strong an emphasis on children acquiring knowledge alone leaves them struggling when faced with more complex problems.

Tim Taylor, a former primary school teacher who now trains teachers, says: “If you front-load knowledge and leave all the thinking and critical questioning until later, children don’t develop as effective learners.”

There are some generic tools that transfer across disciplines, Taylor argues. “What is reading if not a cognitive tool? And that is clearly ‘transferable’.”

The style of teaching that he coaches, called Mantle of the Expert, encourages children to pose as experts faced with an imaginary scenario; aiming to engage their imaginations and help them figure out how they would get access to the information they need.

In a class studying the Great Fire of London, for example, pupils will play the parts of experts helping a museum create an exhibition about the fire. “It’s a way of making content more meaningful,” Taylor says.

The way to teach generic skills is to be “mindful of it as a teacher”, Taylor suggests. “You create opportunities to keep that in the forefront of what you are doing – how is this helping us? How can we use this in another context? That is the point of education, to develop a ‘growth mindset’,” he states.

It is hard to know how much of the advantage east Asian pupils have in international comparisons comes from the academic rigour of their schools, and how much is derived from recent reforms in the countries that have sought to give students a more holistic education.

The OECD suggests that those countries where students do best at problem solving, are not only good at teaching the core subjects, but are good at providing learning opportunities that prepare students well for complex, real-life problems.

Ding, the trainee maths teacher, says the school where he works in north London attempts to sidestep the debate between facts and skills by pursuing both with equal relish.

“On the one hand, our maths lessons begin with times table drills,” says Ding. “We put a lot of emphasis on repetition, and frequent testing means students are regularly rehearsing and assessing what they know.”

“On the other hand, we also try to use rich, open questions to structure the units of work, making them more enjoyable and memorable for students, and allowing us to avoid shallow rote learning and discuss higher-order concepts along the way.”

Mathematics may be the most creative of all academic disciplines but it cannot be used creatively unless and until one has mastered the basics, which does require some "rote learning." We tend to think of Asian creativity as being stifled, firmly rooted in the Confucian era, but that's not the case ... East Asia, Sinic Asia is home to a thriving and vey modern arts/design community. the East Asians still try to balance "rote learning," because their languages require it (just try to learn to write Chinese without using rote memory), along with problem solving and creativity. Maybe we shouldn't be quite so quick to dismiss their approach.

 

[Edward Campbell]

You're probably going to hear a lot, again, about Prof Thomas Piketty; he's visiting Canada, promoting his book - a runaway best seller -  ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century.’ He'll be appearing on CBC and will, almost certainly be the darling of the anti-American/anti-capitalist crowd there.

There are a few problems with Prof Piketty's book (which I have not read and which I do not plan to read) according to reviewers in e.g. the Financial Times and The Economist:

    1. He mixes up capital and land;

    2. He assumes, in a Marxist manner, that the future must be like the past; and

    3. He does that because his book is, essentially, a restatement of the popular soft Marxist orthodoxy which is, demonstrably, wrong.

Now, the Financial Times, having done a thorough analysis of the data Prof Piketty published concludes, in a fairly damning little essay, that he got his sums wrong.  :-[

 

[CougarKing]

What's ironic is that for all the naysaying and predictions of doom predicted about Keystone XL by many so-called environmentalists on the left, a pipeline is actually safer than shipping than by rail cars simply because the latter can cause deadly, potentially explosive, oil spills when a train derails. I seem to recall a Maclean's article that stressed that very point from last year or earlier.

Canadian Press via MSN

Keystone XL company's Plan B: a 'rail bridge'

WASHINGTON - Frustrated by yet another regulatory delay, the company behind the stalled Keystone XL pipeline project is delivering a message in the U.S. capital: it's getting involved in the rail business.

It might be costlier and dirtier, but until the pipeline gets approved, the company says shipping oil on trains might have to do as a Plan B.

TransCanada Corp. president Russ Girling is in New York and Washington this week, telling policy-makers and news outlets that the company is working out the technical and financial details of what Girling calls a "rail bridge."

The company already has oil-storage facilities in Hardisty, Alta., and Cushing, Okla., and might also build new storage space in Steele City, Neb., Girling said. From there, it would build relatively inexpensive infrastructure to load and unload the oil from the rail system, then hire train companies to transport it into Keystone XL's already-completed southern leg.

Girling's overarching message, however, is this: the company is not giving up.

"TransCanada is not walking away from anything," he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"As long as our customers are there, then TransCanada is going to be there.... We need a bridge between now and when we can build a pipeline... We use the word bridge, and by bridge we mean it just bridges us to the point in time in which you put in the pipeline."

It's not the first time the company has mused about greater involvement in rail shipping, which has skyrocketed in Canada and which rival pipeline companies Enbridge Inc. and Kinder Morgan already participate in.

(...EDITED)

 

[Edward Campbell]

Almost everyone who argues against Keynes (like almost everyone who argues for him) never finished the damned book.

There can be no doubt that one aspect of Keynes theory works: you can, do, reduce the deleterious human costs of recessions by spending. But that, spend your way out of a recession, is not what Keynes said, and even the part that he did say (public spending can mitigate some of the worst human costs of recessions) was only half of what he said.

Keynes also said that stimulus spending must be limited to recessions. When the economy turns around we have to save: we have to cut spending.

Keynes' theory can work if, but only if all, every red cent, of stimulus is spent in temporary ways, on projects that can be started and finished within the time frame of the recessions. By definition, social spending cannot, ever, be used a stimulus because it never ends. Good, productive, stimulus spending includes things like repairing roads and bridges, building ferries (even warships, although they are less productive), adding laboratories to universities ~ all sorts of "bricks and mortar" and "metal bending" projects, in other words, that have finite durations (and costs). It is OK, for stimulus to build a school, but it is not OK to hire teachers; it's OK to build a hospital but it's not OK to hire nurses. It is, clearly, OK to hire teachers and nurses when there is a demand ~ just not ever, not under any circumstance, as a stimulus measure ... not unless you are terminally f_ucking stupid and have, therefore, been elected to political office.

If people would only, just read Keynes, please just one of you, I wouldn't get so bloody angry.

This morning, on CBC Radio's "The House" former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge, one of the smartest men in Canada - head and shoulders smarter than any elected politician at any level, and smarter than 99% of the senior civil servants who advise all those politicians - will argue for more Keynesian stimulus: but he will argue, very very specifically, for infrastructure spending: e.g. yes to Kathleen Wynne's plan to spend several billions on transit, for example, but no to additional social spending.

I'm not sure how he will come down on the Ontario premier's plan for an Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, which would be mandatory for those who don't already have a workplace plan. In fact I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it: I, generally, want to see people save more for their own retirement, but I think I would rather see enhancements to the RRSP system, including, perhaps, very small employer contributions (maybe something <0.5% of payroll under, say, $60,000.0) for employees who do not have pension plans but who do contribute to a RRSP. But I also think that the very best way to address the problems that Ontario, for example, faces, is to grow the economy - which is why I know I will agree with David Dodge about some additional stimulus - stimulus focused, exclusively, on infrastructure, especially on maintenance of existing infrastructure but also on new public transit projects.


Edited to add:


Here, in Bennett Jones Spring 2014 Economic Outlook, is the substance of David Dodge's views. (Mr Dodge is a Senior Advisor at Bennett Jones.)

Mr (Prof or Dr if you prefer) Dodge is very clear: we must restrain current spending, which is, mainly social spending, but he advocates long term (30-50 year) borrowing, now, at low rates, for long lived (30 to 50 years) infrastructure. He also advocates tolls for roads and bridges and ports, and, and, and ... to help pay the interest on those loans.

 

[a_majoor]

While infrastructure spending is (or at least was) the primary job of governments in the early to mid 20th century, governments have generally "walked away" from infrastructure and focused on social spending, transfer payments and various "feel good" initiatives. Since governments (at all levels) tend to change the meanings of words, we have seen (and no doubt will continue to see) civic auditoriums, ice rinks and convention centres pawned off as "infrastructure", while spending on current consumption (wages mostly) suddenly becomes "investment".

At a minimum, instead of giving governments more money to piss away, tell them they need to pay for their infrastructure needs out of existing budgets, and the rest of the stuff can be paid out of whatever is left over.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Martha Hall Findlay (the best leader the Liberal party of Canada never had?) brings some much needed good sense to the Northern Gateway debate in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/northern-gateway-you-dont-build-a-nation-by-saying-no/article19215073/#dashboard/follows/
My emphasis added.

Northern Gateway: You don’t build a nation by saying ‘No’

MARTHA HALL FINDLAY
Contributed to The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Jun. 18 2014

Martha Hall Findlay, an MP from 2008 to 2011, is an executive fellow at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.

The federal government’s decision to give Northern Gateway the green light is conditional on the project meeting all 209 environmental and social conditions set out by the joint review panel of National Energy Board and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. The proponents must also engage in more consultations with affected aboriginal communities, and there are British Columbia’s five conditions to be met.

Many environmentalists are now willing to accept the project, provided those conditions are satisfied. Many aboriginal groups also support the project, based on economic participation in the project and associated benefits to their communities. There remain, however, certain environmental and aboriginal groups who still threaten to do all they can to stop it. There are those who will just keep saying “No”.

These challenges are nothing new. Other major nation-building projects in Canada’s history were plenty controversial in their time. The CPR, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the TransCanada Pipeline, Churchill Falls and the James Bay Project each had its risks, its detractors and hurdles to overcome. Given what we now know about animal migration crossings and the contribution of cars and trucks to greenhouse gas emissions, some today would say “No” to the TransCanada Highway – but there is no denying its importance.

Every nation-building project in Canada has required negotiation, balance and compromise: Northern Gateway is no exception.

You don’t build a nation by saying “No”. You need to ask “How”.

For our oil, access to the West Coast, and thus to global markets, has major economic implications for Canadians across the country. The United States is our only customer for oil, which causes a significant price discount, and they are approaching energy self-sufficiency more quickly than anticipated. We must diversify our customer base, and the opportunities that resource-hungry Asia presents are huge – and not just for Alberta. Manufacturers in Ontario and Quebec that supply the oil sands and pipelines with all manner of equipment and services – and they people they employ – will benefit. So too will scientists and technicians across the country developing more efficient (and environmentally-friendly) extraction processes. And the whole country benefits from social and other programs that are supported with the taxes that oil-related business activity sends to Ottawa.

In the late 1860s and early 1870s, John A. Macdonald saw the prairies as the (potential) breadbasket to the British Empire, with economic benefits for the whole country – but only if the grain could get to the sea. The government sponsored the construction of three transcontinental railways, including the CPR. People were needed, too, so Macdonald encouraged prairie farm settlement with the Dominion Lands Act of 1872. These efforts had their own controversies, and plenty of opponents and hurdles to overcome – but there can be no denying the importance and long-term value of such nation-building. It has ensured prosperity for many, and for generations.

Now, once again, we need access to the sea.

And we have learned a great deal from our mistakes. We have far better labour protection and workplace safety laws now than when the railway was being built. We understand the need for environmental sustainability – indeed, this is a huge opportunity. We can, and should, become the world leader in the technologies for spill prevention, spill containment and remediation, both land and sea. Although it has taken far too long, we now appreciate the importance of economic and social partnership with aboriginal groups. The irony is that the required social license should now be easier, not harder to achieve, because Northern Gateway, with the conditions met, will be more environmentally sound, more socially responsible and far better for the aboriginal groups involved than any other major nation-building project before it.

Northern Gateway offers an extraordinary, historical opportunity to provide economic benefits for the whole country. Done well environmentally, with the engagement and support of the aboriginal groups involved, it can also be something of which we can all be proud.

The concerns about the environment are real, valid and must be addressed. But some (almost all) BC politicians and some aboriginal leaders are nothing but paid shills for e.g. the Tides Foundation and they are, de facto acting contrary to Canada's best interests ~ they are, in other words, and I'm being charitable, third rate Canadians.

 

[Edward Campbell]

The US recovery remains anemic. The FOMC* has just revised its growth forecast down, again, this time to 2.2% from 2.25% at the last meeting.

Why does that matter?

Because the Canadian economy is (too) deeply and (too) broadly dependent on US markets - whes the US grows we grow, when the US stagnates or shrinks we stagnate or shrink.

_____
* Federal Open Market Committee is the primary market policy body of the Federal Reserve. It's 12 members comprise all seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; and four of the remaining eleven Reserve Bank presidents, who serve one-year terms on a rotating basis. It meets eight times a year. Janet Yellin is the Chair.

 

[Kirkhill]

Martha Hall Findlay (the best leader the Liberal party of Canada never had?) brings some much needed good sense to the Northern Gateway debate in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

Maybe Young Justin will blow away in the breeze after the next election and she'll get a shot after he takes the Trudeaumaniacs with him.

Alternately - maybe she could find a home in a Post Harper CPC.

 

[a_majoor]

From my limited exposure, Martha Hall Findlay's positions on various things would have sounded perfectly at home coming from the mouth of Jim Flarety or Prime Minister Harper. I believe Edward would say she is a "Blue" or Manley Liberal.

Perhaps one of the things the current government could do is to take her aboard to produce something "non partisan" to support the Northern Gateway or eliminating price supports, much like they did with the Manley Report on our mission to Afghanistan.

As for the post 2015 Liberals, I don't think they have the depth in the benches to come up with a viable leadership candidate, nor do I think a transitive party like the Liberals in their current form can attract any heavyweights any more. After all, no one knows "what" they stand for, and hence what positions are actually "Liberal" (don't forget Martha Hall Findlay's opponent in the leadership race was Marc Garneau, who's positions on the issues could have been spoken by Jack Layton or Tom Mulcair. What was "Liberal" about either candidate's platform?). The Young Dauphin may remain as the "Middle Aged Dauphin" after claiming victory over the NDP by squeezing a few seats out of Quebec, then have to face whoever is selected to succeed Prime Minister Harper (hopefully a young, energetic leader) in 2019.

 

[Edward Campbell]

This morning, on CBC Radio's "The House" former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge, one of the smartest men in Canada - head and shoulders smarter than any elected politician at any level, and smarter than 99% of the senior civil servants who advise all those politicians - will argue for more Keynesian stimulus: but he will argue, very very specifically, for infrastructure spending: e.g. yes to Kathleen Wynne's plan to spend several billions on transit, for example, but no to additional social spending.

I'm not sure how he will come down on the Ontario premier's plan for an Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, which would be mandatory for those who don't already have a workplace plan. In fact I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it: I, generally, want to see people save more for their own retirement, but I think I would rather see enhancements to the RRSP system, including, perhaps, very small employer contributions (maybe something <0.5% of payroll under, say, $60,000.0) for employees who do not have pension plans but who do contribute to a RRSP. But I also think that the very best way to address the problems that Ontario, for example, faces, is to grow the economy - which is why I know I will agree with David Dodge about some additional stimulus - stimulus focused, exclusively, on infrastructure, especially on maintenance of existing infrastructure but also on new public transit projects.


Edited to add:


Here, in Bennett Jones Spring 2014 Economic Outlook, is the substance of David Dodge's views. (Mr Dodge is a Senior Advisor at Bennett Jones.)

Mr (Prof or Dr if you prefer) Dodge is very clear: we must restrain current spending, which is, mainly social spending, but he advocates long term (30-50 year) borrowing, now, at low rates, for long lived (30 to 50 years) infrastructure. He also advocates tolls for roads and bridges and ports, and, and, and ... to help pay the interest on those loans.

More about infrastructure spending, albeit in America, in this article which si reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21605932-country-where-everyone-drives-america-has-shoddy-roads-bridging-gap

Bridging the gap
For a country where everyone drives, America has shoddy roads

Jun 28th 2014
WASHINGTON, DC
From the print edition

THE Pulaski Skyway is a bridge of beauty, a lattice of steel held high above the river that separates Newark from Jersey City. It is also a bit rickety. Some of its struts have begun to resemble the pastry on a millefeuille. Its structure is described as “basically intolerable” by the National Bridge Inventory. The thousands of motorists who cross it each day probably agree. With no money to pay for its maintenance, New Jersey re-classified the Pulaski as an entrance to a tunnel that maps suggest lies miles to its north, so that the Port Authority could be tapped for funds. For this, Chris Christie, the state’s governor—who has had other troubles with bridges recently—finds his administration under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and New York’s District Attorney.

New Jersey’s scramble to find money for basic repairs is not unusual. The Highway Trust Fund, a pot of federal cash that covers a quarter of spending by states on infrastructure, will have to start withholding money this summer to keep its balance above zero, as required by law. “The problem with the trust fund,” says David Walker, a former head of the Government Accountability Office, “is that it’s not funded and you can’t trust it.” A short-term fix may be found: Congress has already passed ten of these, shifting money from elsewhere to make up for a persistent shortfall in revenue from fuel taxes, which have been held constant since 1993. But such hand-to-mouth financing makes planning difficult and encourages city, state and local governments to put off repairs for as long as possible.

America saw two great booms in infrastructure spending in the past century, the first during the Great Depression, when the Pulaski skyway was built, and the second in the 1950s and 60s, when most of the interstate highway system was. Since then, public infrastructure spending as a share of GDP has declined to about half the European level. America is one of the most car-dependent nations on earth, yet it spends about as large a share of GDP on roads as Sweden, where public transport is pretty good (see chart). The federal government scrimps on airports and sewage pipes so it can pay for pensions and health care.

Something similar is unfolding at the state and local level, where three quarters of all spending on infrastructure occurs. States cut their budgets by 3.8% in 2009 and 5.7% in 2010—and have not made up the lost ground. Meanwhile bills for repairs are coming due. Much of what was built after the war was only designed to last for 50 years and now needs replacing. That includes almost half the country’s bridges.

Signs of the shortfall are everywhere. Airports are funded by passenger fees and another trust fund. Neither has kept up with the increase in air traffic. The last big new airport was opened almost 20 years ago, in Denver. Everything about America’s major airports is too small, starting with the gates for parking planes. Last year Boeing began offering aircraft with folding wing-tips because so many are damaged while trying to squeeze in. At the busiest international airports, clearing customs can take hours. At New York’s JFK the average wait is about 30 minutes, but some poor souls wait four hours.

This is relatively efficient compared with what is going on in the sky. Most air- traffic control systems are less advanced than the technology found in smartphones. Alaska’s Juneau airport, which is smothered by low-lying cloud, is an exception. Its airport introduced GPS navigation after there were threats to move the state capital to Anchorage because it was so hard to land. The result has been 2,000 fewer flights cancelled each year. Other airports still treat planes as if they were galleons crossing an ocean, travelling between fixed points on a two-dimensional map.

With interest rates low and companies sitting on $2 trillion in cash, this should be a good time to bring in private money to make up for the lack of public investment. That cause has not been helped by some high-profile flops: the consortium that took over a stretch of road in 2006 that runs from Chicago to the Ohio turnpike and is operated by Ferrovial of Spain and Macquarie of Australia is near bankruptcy. The involvement of two foreign infrastructure finance companies is telling: because America has been slow to adopt public-private partnerships its companies have little experience of them. The Port of Miami tunnel, a billion-dollar project which is due to open shortly, was financed by Europeans and used a boring machine built in Germany and shipped across the Atlantic in pieces to dig the tunnel.

A long road ahead

Jeff Immelt, the boss of GE, an industrial conglomerate, reckons that big public infrastructure projects require some government involvement, whether through subsidies, loan-guarantees or public-private partnerships. To this end John Delaney, a congressman from Maryland, has proposed a bill that would give firms a tax break on repatriated foreign profits if part of the money brought back was spent on infrastructure bonds. The bill has 35 Republican and 33 Democratic co-sponsors in the House and the support of seven Republicans and six Democrats in the Senate. Despite this, it remains stuck in Congress.

Because the problem is so big, people assume that the federal government must be responsible, says Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. In fact, he argues, other levels of government are going to have to find the money required. This is starting to happen. Some states add their own petrol taxes to the federal government’s one. Eight of them, including some deep-red places such as Wyoming, put them up last year. Virginia has increased its sales tax to pay for infrastructure. Michigan’s governor, Rick Snyder, proposed raising taxes to spend an additional $1 billion a year on infrastructure. When voters are asked about infrastructure projects in ballot initiatives they back them about 75% of the time, according to the Centre for Transportation Excellence, which keeps count.

For more of this to happen, Republicans—who control most statehouses and governorships—will have to stay their urge to shrink government and cut taxes. The party often argues that the federal government should spend less and let the states make more decisions about how to tax and spend. On infrastructure at least they have got their wish. Now is the time for them to show that they mean it.

One thing that happened, in Canada and the USA, was that after the infrastructure spending 'booms' of the 1950s and (early) '60s, we confused spending priorities and assumed that social spending would, could have the same benefits as hard infrastructure spending. It didn't because it couldn't. In fact, while infrastructure can be a value multiplier, most social spending is, almost always, a net drag on the "commonwealth."

But social spending is very, very hard to stop or even to slow; social programmes just keeps consuming greater and greater shares of municipal, provincial/state and national governments' budgets, squeezing out productive infrastructure construction and, especially, maintenance. It has to stop ... eventually. But it will take a politician of extraordinary vision and courage to do it, people like ...

  and 

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here are links to two articles that discuss the implications for First Nations, specifically for pipelines, but also for the BC economy, in general, in the wake of the recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling in the Tsilhqot’in Nation case:

    "In spite of all the hand-wringing about threats to resource development and the land mass of B.C., this is a big victory for governments ... in the unanimous 8-0 decision, which dismissed with nary a nod the last half century of strident native
      assertions of sovereignty, the high court said B.C. natives are not unlike any other litigant squatter," opines the Vancouver Sun; and

    "The Supreme Court’s Tsilhqot’in Nation decision marks a very dark day for the economy of British Columbia," says Gordon Gibson in an article in the Globe and Mail.