Manning Centre for Building American Majority

Last month in Ottawa, PM Stephen Harper and House Leader Peter Van Loan quietly met with Scott Walker, the anti-SSM anti-abortion anti-union Wisconsin governor whose imminent 2016 Republican presidential candidacy is already teetering atop a pile of Koch Bros. dark money. 

When Glen McGregor reported on the meeting yesterday, PMO spokesey Stephen Lecce came out of his little spokesbox and said "These are not the droids you are looking for," and went back inside again. 

Harper and Walker have so much in common to talk about -  union-busting and voter suppression legislation, campaigning on transparency and creating jobs and being completely crap at both, support for tough-on-crime legislation, opposition to gun registration and minimum wage increases and clean energy jobs policies, budget crises due to corporate tax cuts, unfortunate appointments of people who become felons in office ... and the Koch-affiliated American Majority creating a "national farm team of conservative leaders" and "training them in guerilla internet tactics."

Wait. What? American Majority political training group is in Canada?

Why yes it is. On July 4 the Manning Centre for Building Democracy and American Majority sponsored a social media webinar from guns and jesus gal Aubrey Blankenship, communications director of American Majority, to "help you become a better voice for conservatism online."




I don't know what Aubrey's training session on how "to become a better Conservative online" entailed so instead here is one from American Majority's Austin James teaching Tea Party members to spam Amazon profiles of liberal books with negative comments and bad reviews. 



You can still catch another American Majority webinar at the Manning Centre on Aug 10 when Political Communications Expert Jess Nicholson will teach "Crafting Your Message—The art of getting to the heart".

Ok sure, I hear you thinking, but the Manning Centre sponsors tea party trainers all the time so who cares what dumbass shenanigans American Majority touts at the Manning Centre this year?

Well, because as of 2015, American Majority's Wisconsin chapter had trained 128 successful candidates for state or local office for Governor Scott Walker. 
128.  In just one state.

.

Happy Temporary Foreign Workers Labour Day!

Bloomberg, Dec 2010 : Europe’s largest oil-field service provider, Saipem, wins $1 Billion onshore contract from Husky for the Sunrise Energy Project in Canada.

Nine months ago, Fort McMurray Today reported that 270 unionized welders and pipefitters contracted to that Husky Sunrise tarsands project were laid off and replaced by cheaper temporary foreign workers from Mexico, Ireland, Portugal and Italy.

A commenter under another FMT article explained:

"We had to conduct a handover to Saipem (a mostly Italian workforce), detailing to them where we had stopped work so that they may continue. In the final week, Saipem foreign workers were actually in the facility working side by side with us; a very uncomfortable situation for those of us about to be laid off."

Yesterday, CBC's Kathy Tomlinson revisited that story : Canadians expose foreign worker 'mess' in oilsands"

"Canadian tradesmen from a huge oilsands construction project are waving a red flag about safety hazards and near misses, which they blame on the use of foreign workers who aren't qualified and can't speak English.

Stand-outs from her report :

• a foreign worker taking a blowtorch to a propane tank to defrost it, 
• Canadians with better qualifications passed over for jobs while foreign workers from Europe continued to show up 
• foreigner workers arrived without Canadian-standard trade certification but "under government rules, they have a year before they must take their test." after which they can take it again later if they fail,  and 
• "Probably 75 per cent of [foreign] ironworkers on site were only at the level of a labourer."
• When refused LMAOs, Saipem used "intra-company transfers" instead [which I wrote about here.] 

But back up a bit. The company that brought in those workers - Italian oil and gas services contractor, Saipem.  Haven't we heard about them before?

Dec. 2012 : Saipem CEO resigns after Algeria corruption probe

July 2013 :Milan court rules Saipem guilty of corruption in Nigeria ... 

July 2013 : Saipem drilling rig sinks off Angola One person missing

"The Italian oilfield services provider said that one of the jack-up rig’s three legs collapsed, causing the rig to suddenly tilt and start taking water. The incident, according to Saipem, occurred during the rig positioning on location between the coasts of Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in approximately 40 meters of water. 6 crew members have sustained minor injuries. At approximately 10:30 am CET, the rig, with no personnel on board, capsized and sank. "

Sept. 2013 : Milan prosecutors investigate Saipem for alleged market manipulation and insider trading

May 2014 : RBC Investor and Treasury Services - SAIPEM  - Class Action Notice 

"As a result of the company's untimely disclosures of relevant information, particularly its involvement in an Algerian corruption scandal from 2007 to 2010, and it is alleged that Saipem paid bribes to win a series of contracts worth around $11 billion which led to significant stock drops in January and June 2013. Various (criminal) investigations against Saipem by the Consob, the Italian market regulator, and Italian prosecutors are ongoing."

July 2014 : Australian unions fury at Coalition`s gas job sell-out

"Saipem's enormous pipelay vessel Castorone will start work soon off the Australia coast.  The Government issued a regulation eliminating the need for any worker on a craft not tethered to the Australian mainland to have a work visa. That would free foreign companies with the contracts to lay pipework and other vital infrastructure on huge projects such as the Browse Basin gas field to hire thousands of foreign workers instead of Australians."

Gosh, just like here.
But no, not any of those stories ... 
Ah I remember - it was Arthur Porter, SNC-Lavalin, and Saipem!

In 2005, Saipem won a contract with SNC-Lavalin for the Horizon oilsands project, owned by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.
In 2006, SNC-Lavalin and Saipem awarded "joint partnership contract" to build LNG Terminal in New Brunswick.

Four years later, SNC-Lavalin had signed a deal to award soon-to-be CSIS watchdog Dr. Arthur Porter of Sierra Leone (currently on the lam from Canadian law in Panama) and his company Sierra Assets Management, 3 payments totaling $10-million for consultancy fees regarding a gas project in Algeria.  The $1.2 billion Rhourde Nouss gas project deal was awarded to SNC-L the same year by Sonatrach, Algeria’s national oil company.

In 2013,  Algerian police raided SNC offices in Algiers regarding "allegations of bribery and kickbacks involving Sonatrach and public officials and agents hired by SNC-Lavalin to procure a number of large infrastructure projects."

G&M February 2013 : SNC-Lavalin bribery probe widens to Algeria :

The investigation focuses on one of the company’s agents in Algeria, Farid Bedjaoui, a jet-setting money manager hired to help secure at least $1-billion in contracts with the country’s state-run oil company, Sonatrach. Mr. Bedjaoui was educated in Montreal and occasionally resides there

Sources close to the investigations in Europe and Canada believe that SNC and the Italian oil services firm Saipem SpA relied on Mr. Bedjaoui, the nephew of former Algerian foreign affairs minister Mohammed Bedjaoui, to obtain contracts from Sonatrach.

Mr. Bedjaoui is one of several foreign agents hired by SNC who have fallen under suspicion for allegedly paying bribes.

Several Saipem executives are under investigation, including the construction unit’s recently suspended chief operating officer, Pietro Varone, who was so close with Mr. Bedjaoui that the two men launched a wine-making company together outside Naples.

Well, I'm sure when we sign off on those investor-state rights trade deals with Europe, CETA and TTIP, all this will go much more smoothly, right?

.

Fast-tracking fucking over Canadian workers

Fort McMurray Today reports that 270 unionized welders and pipefitters contracted to the Husky Sunrise tarsands project were laid off and replaced by cheaper temporary foreign workers from Mexico, Ireland, Portugal and Italy.

Husky says their work was over but a commenter under another article who was a worker on the site disputes this :

"The work contracted to Black and McDonald was no where near complete. We had to conduct a handover to Saipem (a mostly Italian workforce), detailing to them where we had stopped work so that they may continue. In the final week, Saipem foreign workers were actually in the facility working side by side with us; a very uncomfortable situation for those of us about to be laid off."

Six months ago, we learned that employees of Royal Bank - and all the other banks - were being forced to train and work alongside the outsourced foreign temporary workers who were to replace them at their jobs, while HD Mining, a BC mining company based in China, imported 201 Chinese workers after their ad to hire Mandarin-speaking miners in BC failed to turn up any candidates. ***

CitImm Min Jason Kenney promised a fix, the Accelerated Labour Market Opinion process was temporarily cancelled, and Kellie Leitch, then parlsec for Diane Finley of Human Resources, did such a bang-up job on Power and Politics saying they'd already fixed this  - repeating talking points about Canadian jobs for Canadian workers five times in as many minutes - that Steve made her Minister of Labour.

PostMedia Oct 10, 2013 : Program for foreign workers could be restored

Employment Minister Jason Kenney says the government could soon resurrect a fast-track scheme that allows companies to bring temporary foreign workers to Canada more quickly.  

"highpaying, high-skill jobs, not fast-food franchises in booming Alberta that need foreigners to peddle burgers and doughnuts to oil workers.

Of course not everyone has to apply for a ALMO first :

For example, the federal government has an agreement with Alberta to exempt welders, heavy-duty mechanics and iron workers from the process due to a shortage of skilled workers in those fields.

A point I'm sure was not much comfort to the the welders and pipefitters at Husky Sunrise who were laid off this past Labour Day.


So what changed in the intervening six months?

Nothing. Kenney is right on schedule.

A Wall St Journal article in July reported corps were just waiting for the public backlash to blow over : 

 "To be sure, the halt in outsourcing is expected to be temporary, with experts and IT service providers expecting outsourcing projects to resume after six to eight months. 

CGI Group signed $12 billion in outsourcing contracts with various Canadian corporations, and IBM - $7 billion.

" 'After the RBC controversy, companies are waiting for things to die down. Banks are slowing down projects—they are keeping a low profile, while the tension over offshoring jobs blows over," said an executive from an outsourcing advisory firm who requested anonymity.'  "

And how is iGATE, the company that kicked off the Royal Bank controversy, faring ? 
"Strong Second Quarter Results; Profits Up 136% " and they're planning on opening a new centre in Halifax.


*** Meanwhile the BC Liberals' love affair with HD Mining, the Mandarin-only-speaking Chinese mining company in BC, continues unabated.
Jody Shimkus, former BC assistant deputy minister of mining and "the main point person for the Chinese mining companies in B.C.",  left her government job in January 2012 to join HD Mining. 

Blair Lekstrom, former BC Minister of Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources, joined her there two months ago.

.

Made in the USA : Tim Hudak

Teahadist Tim Hudak, former Walmart manager and leader of the Ontario PC Con Party since 2009, doesn't much care for the term "right-to-work" laws, preferring instead "worker's choice reforms".  
Well, OK then - Workers' choice of the right to work for less money, reducing wages for union and non-union workers alike and pitting worker against worker.

On Friday, LauraK went to hear Chris Hedges in Toronto and provides an excellent overview of his talk on Syria, Chelsea Manning, the surveillance state, corporate and media ownership, the liberal class, and organized labour.
Laura's piece really worth a full read but here excerpted : Hedges :

"It's amazing. We do everything wrong in the United States, and 10 years later, Canada copies us.    Do you have 'right-to-work' laws here yet?" The audience answered that we do not.  And Hedges replied: "The minute Harper passes those laws, if you guys don't have a massive general strike, you're finished." He said, "You still have enough organized labour in Canada to mount a resistance."

Trapped in a Whirlpool : The Power of Irrationality 

And a reminder of Steve's 2011 bid for a Harper Hudak Ford "hat trick" :

.

CIDA doles out corporate welfare to mining giants

In Oct 2010, Bill C-300, An Act respecting Corporate Accountability for the Activities of Mining, Oil or Gas in Developing Countries, went down to defeat 140 to 134 because 13 Liberals, 4 Bloc, and 4 NDP skipped the vote. The bill sought only to limit Canadian tax dollars being spent to subsidize mining abuses committed by Canadian-registered companies abroad and only if they agreed to it.


A couple of months later in January 2011, Bev Oda, Minister of 'Not Kairos' and International Cooperation, acknowledged that Canadian tax dollars were subsidizing mining companies' CSR (corporate social responsibility) projects through CIDA - half a million to Barrick Gold, another half million to Rio Tinto, etc etc up to a total of $50-million for the year.

Today's G&M : CIDA funds seen to be subsidizing mining firms

This marks the first time that CIDA and mining firms are jointly funding aid projects abroad ...         The mining industry is welcoming the new trend in Canada’s foreign-aid policy. 

“There is a policy shift under way, and it’s one we’re encouraged by,” said Pierre Gratton, the president of the Canadian Mining Association.

while World Vision Canada, a CIDA partner with Barrick Gold in Peru, put it this way  (italics mine):

 “Anything we can do to encourage and advocate for better mining practices, and support the communities that they are displacing or affecting, we’re contributing to a better lifestyle and environment for them.” 

Yes, sadly, communities will be displaced but at least our taxes will be there to help polish the image of their new corporate landlords . 


It's particularly galling that multinational mining giant Rio Tinto ($US15 billion-plus earnings in 2011) is receiving Canadian corporate welfare after locking  800 Canadian workers out on New Years Day in Quebec for protesting having their union jobs replaced by contract workers. Additionally, a court injunction only permits 20 workers to demonstrate at any one time and only at a distance of 150 metres from the front gate.


Back to the G&M :

Federal officials said the policy shift at CIDA is co-ordinated with efforts by International Trade and Natural Resources to encourage the growth of Canadian firms abroad

Sure it is.
A couple of days ago, Rio Tinto took majority control of Canada's Ivanhoe Mines which owns 66% of Mongolia's Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine, the rest being owned by the state of Mongolia. 
As it happens, Bev Oda was in Mongolia last August :

"looking to assist Mongolia to strengthen its democratic governance and economic growth"

 presumably with the help of China :

"In 2010, Rio Tinto said that it had held talks with its biggest shareholder, Chinalco, about the possibility of bringing in the Chinese state-owned company as a partner in Oyu Tolgoi"

Why are Canadian tax dollars subsidizing these massive multinational mining corps with corporate welfare again?
.