NAFTA-gate, the NDP, presidential dynasties, and neoliberalism

Canadian (and possibly American) readers may be familiar with ‘NAFTA-gate’, whereby the news networks reported on supposedly leaked information from a Canadian governmental meeting with one of Barack Obama’s advisors. Apparently, Obama’s advisor was largely sent to reassure the Canadian government that recent criticisms of NAFTA made by Obama (also made by Clinton) were more political maneuvering than a genuine belief. Harper claimed, at the time, that he did not believe that either Clinton nor Obama would be genuinely interested in ‘re-opening’ NAFTA.

The reaction of the Canadian opposition, both the Liberal and NDP, was to attack Harper on the leak from his office presumably intended to influence the elections of a foreign country. It’s quite irritating to see Layton fawning over Obama and trying to accuse the Harpercons of trying to sabotage his campaign; it goes to show how it’s not easy to make easy comparisons of political ideology across borders.

Linkity-link: Jan 10th, 2008

In this issue of Linkity-link, we have a rumination on the broader issues of the WGA strike from the media arm of the Fourth International, the NYT reporting America’s dirty little not-so-secret secret of massive income inequality, and some rather heart-warming Bono bashing. Enjoy!

Newsflash: Tuition bad!

I came across this article from the Ottawa Citizen (via Inside Higher Ed) on what is (at first blush) an attempt by Maritime universities to respond to the ubiquitous ‘market forces’ and drop their tuition fees (i.e. price) to attract Ontario students. While I wish I could state that student mobilization was the sole cause of these developments, I can’t, but I also find it irritating that the article treats it merely as a something to be determined by the market.

What is more important, and what the article doesn’t really discuss, is that the maritime provinces saw some of the most punishing tuition increases in the 1990s, and as a result are more ‘coming into line’ with the rest of the country than anything else.

Although I did enjoy this humorous quote at the end of the article:

“Tuition fees seem to influence students’ choice of institution,” a commission report concludes.

Quite shocking, really.