The Political Side of Me

Not sure when I'll be back......

2006-03-29T21:09:00.000-08:00

I don’t know if I can keep this blog going.
I started it on a whim but in reality I have no time to do this properly: I have two other family blogs going and another site I do as a favour for a volunteer group.

But to make this all really tough my family is moving: a big move and we will be loosing Internet connection for at least two months. After that I don’t know when I will have a personal connection back: this is a blog that I prefer to do in private, separate from my family life.

I am not going to delete it yet though: I might be able to come back to it. In the meantime I recommend you check out the bloggers I have linked on the side and I am adding links to my personal favourite posts that I have done.
As of now, all comments stopped: I can’t moderate them without an Internet connection.

Thank you for reading me.

Women In the Government .

Kyoto: A dream worth trying

Jobless Rate and the Medicare Circle .

La-la-la-la-la I cant hear you .

Something is missing here??? .

How is this going to help me?

Another bloggers voice

2006-03-22T16:10:00.000-08:00

This lady and her commenters are able to say it MUCH better than me.

Conservative child-care strategy takes women out of workforce, critics say

2006-03-21T14:42:00.000-08:00

Conservative child-care strategy takes women out of workforce, critics say

STEVE ERWIN Mon Mar 20, 5:17 PM ET

TORONTO (CP) - Fewer Canadian women will be able to contribute to the national economy if the federal Conservative government scraps a national child-care program set up by their Liberal predecessors, women's advocates said Monday.

A report prepared for YWCA Canada says more women will have to stay home without the increased day care spots made available under the five-year Liberal program introduced last year, which the Conservatives have promised to cancel after this year.

"We can't afford not to make this investment," study co-author Debra Mayer told a symposium on the issue at Toronto's city hall.

A difficult struggle to find day care spaces gets harder when parents - particularly shift workers - try to accommodate tight work schedules, Mayer said. Plus, finding sufficient care for children with special needs can complicate the problem, she added.

"Barrier after barrier is what our parents in Canada are faced with," Mayer said.

The $5-billion, five-year program introduced by the former Liberal government is slated to be replaced next year with direct $1,200 payments to parents for each child under age six.

Even with those payments, however, parents would still have day care expenses to cover, eliminating the incentives for many mothers to return to work or school, Mayer said.

YWCA Canada CEO Paulette Senior acknowledged the $1,200 payments are beneficial to parents as a family allowance, but don't address broader day care needs.

"We believe that Canada can actually do both," Senior said.

More than two-thirds of Canadian women with a child under the age of six are in the workforce, Senior estimated. Forcing them to return home because they can't afford child care costs is an issue of equal rights, she said.

"While all family members are affected, women pay a disproportionate price when quality child care is not available."

Federal Social Development Minister Diane Finley has not wavered from the Conservative commitment to cancel the Liberal program by March 31, 2007.

Finley declined the opportunity to speak at Monday's event.

Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba all signed five-year funding deals with the former Liberal government, but they allow either side to opt out with 12 months notice. Other provinces had one-year agreements in principle as they negotiated longer terms.

Opposition critics at the symposium pledged to battle the Conservatives over their child-care strategy when Parliament resumes April 3.

Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett, who is said to be mulling a run at party's upcoming federal leadership contest, said the Liberals may not have articulated the issue adequately during the last election campaign.

"It's a shame that in some ways, we didn't do a good enough job, I think, for the people of Canada, to understand really the importance ... of this extraordinarily important social infrastructure," she said.

Scrapping the Liberal program is "not a choice to the young mom who really thought that she was going back to school this September, or really thought she was going back to work," Bennett added.

New Democrat MP Olivia Chow is also spoiling for a fight.

"I can't wait until April 3 to deliver a message that . . . we need to protect these agreements," Chow said.

"We need multi-year funding, not just this coming year . . . .You can't just open a child care centre and then close them. Kids continue to be born."

Ontario Child and Youth Services Minister Mary Anne Chambers held out some hope that discussions with Finley might offer some more help for parents.

"This is not a partisan issue," Chambers said. "We actually signed an agreement as the government of Ontario with the government of Canada on behalf of parents and children in Ontario."

Canada in Afghanistan??? Confused???

2006-03-19T23:13:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting article and I would love to know other peoples opinions before I make a judgment. I will admit that this is an area that I am slightly biased against (I despise military and its supposed need) and I am admittedly a little unknowledgeable about. I know that I dont trust that Hillier General dude.
I would love for you all to educate me on this. I am soooo against the Iraq So Called War and in huge confusion about the real so-called necessity of the Afghan invasion.
Your thoughts would really help me.
I have posted the entire article for you but if you want you can find it here:

March 14, 2006
"We're Here Because We're Here"
Canada in Afghanistan
By JASON KUNIN
Has nobody questioned whether Canada's Prime Minister should be making "surprise" trips to Afghanistan? Since when are foreign policy decisions in a democratic country conducted in secrecy and revealed as surprises, like sexy underwear or chocolates on your birthday?
"We don't make a commitment and then run away at the first sign of trouble,"
Stephen Harper said, defending his decision not to debate whether Canadian
troops should be engaging in a combat role in Afghanistan.
I must have missed something. We, as in the Canadian public hello, remember us?
never made that commitment in the first place. That decision was made, without
public consultation, by the previous Liberal government. That's the same Liberal
government that I recall Harper once criticizing for abuse of executive
privilege.
"Perhaps the previous government should have had a vote on the deployment," Harper has said, "but that was not their decision. The decision was taken and we can't change our opinion when the troops are in danger."
And so the reason we're in Afghanistan is like that old Boy Scouts song, "We're here
because we're here because we're here." Clearly, this same policy of refusing to
"cut and run" from commitments made by the previous Liberal government does not apply to the popular national day care program, which the Harper government has cancelled against the wishes of the majority of Canadians.
There might have been a time when Canada, and even the U.S., could have done some good in Afghanistan. Let's leave aside, for the moment, the morality of invading a sovereign nation before diplomatic means had been exhausted. If we begin with
the coalition ousting of the Taliban as a fait accompli one that was indeed popular with many Afghanis who saw the Taliban as unwelcome interlopers from Pakistan there was a brief period in which Canada could have played a positive role in the country. That was our window of opportunity.
Instead, all the occupying forces together have failed to live up to even their basic
obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Chief among the obligations that
an occupying power has towards those designated as a "protected" people is, of
course, security. This much, at least, the Canadian and U.S. governments have
understood.
The main problem has been with the narrow military sense in which "security" for Afghanis has been prioritized. "Security," after all, is not simply about being protected from "bad guys," to borrow George W. Bush's phrase. It's also about knowing where your next meal is coming from, having access to clean water and health care, and being able to earn an independent living.
It's these latter aspects of security that the neo-cons orchestrating the war from Washington have failed to provide. Hell, they barely provide them to their own citizens.
Canada's efforts on this score, though wide-ranging and aided by some no doubt truly exceptional individuals, have similarly fallen fall short of what is needed.
As a result, since the arrival of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, things have only steadily worsened for Afghanis. There is less security, the warlords are back, the heroine trade has resumed, and what is called an "insurgency" looks more everyday like yet another civil war.
The window of opportunity for Canada to do some good in Afghanistan has long closed. Good intentions or not, we are now occupiers.
"When we send troops into the field, I expect Canadians to support those
troops," Stephen Harper has said.
I beg to differ. Supporting the men and women who serve in Canada's military does not mean placing them stupidly in perilous situations from which no good can come. If Harper really wants to support our troops, he should get them out of Afghanistan, where they are not wanted and where their presence becomes more counterproductive with each passing day.

Jason Kunin lives and teaches in Toronto. He can be reached at jkunin@rogers.com.

Mommy Wars

2006-03-15T20:05:00.000-08:00

I have gotten a lot of comments whenever I mention childcare in Canada. Well I just read this article and thought:

Yaaaa, catfights over different childcare ideas. Yaa know what that is like.

The Mommy Wars: Where the real "war" lies
Today's Salon.com has an interview featuring Leslie Morgan Steiner, who has a new angle on the "Mommy Wars": she claims that mommies don't hate other mommies who make choices different from them; rather, mommies are actually angry because they feel insecure about their own decisions regarding work and family. In her view, the media, advertisers and politicians merely tap into this internal struggle and turn it into an external, and frankly, contrived catfight. "Motherhood in America is fraught with defensiveness, infighting, ignorance and judgment about what's best for kids, family and women," she writes in her new book, "Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families."That said, the article continues by stating her book, an anthology of essays written by mothers, isn't nearly as in-your-face as the title will lead you to believe, describing the collection as "a subtler reflection on the lives of modern mothers than the title might suggest."It's a great article, and worth the read (if you have the Salon.com subscription). One notable point: with regard to whether Steiner believed that women who choose to stay home with their children (rather than work outside the home) were failing feminism, she had this to say:"I think that's ridiculous. A lot of younger women today are choosing to stay home because they don't feel they need to prove they can have it all in terms of work and family. And you know what? I think that's great. That's what I and a lot of other women worked so hard for."Amen.

Well now, this is interesting...

2006-03-15T03:01:00.000-08:00

It seems like Harper might just be listening to some of the people in this country after all. Hmm. Still don’t like the guy.

This is a very interesting move though. The guy keeps changing EVERYTHING he ran on!

I wonder how his voters feel about all this? hmmm

Federal environment minister says Canada will not opt out of Kyoto
CHRIS MORRIS Tue Mar 14, 6:08 PM ET
SAINT JOHN, N.B. (CP) - Despite Prime Minister Stephen Harper's public misgivings about the (image placeholder)(image placeholder)(image placeholder)(image placeholder)Kyoto protocol on climate change, the federal environment minister says Canada will not opt out of the accord.(image placeholder)(image placeholder)(image placeholder)(image placeholder)
Rona Ambrose said Tuesday the Conservative government will work within the protocol, but she said there is a need for a separate, made-in-Canada solution to achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.
"We are going to be working within Kyoto," Ambrose said, clarifying lingering uncertainties about the federal government's plans.
"It is one of 59 international agreements that we are signatories to. There are a number of other agreements that we work on bilaterally with a lot of other countries," she said.
"We are also looking at the Asia-Pacific Partnership which is a new group that focuses very much on advancing clean technology. So that is where we are going on the climate change file."
……

Read the rest here.

CODE BLUE for Child Care

2006-03-14T17:13:00.000-08:00

CODE BLUE means "medical emergency". Canadian politicians need to know that saving child care is an urgent need. Make your voice heard before Parliament resumes on April 3.
The Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC) has launched CODE BLUE for Child Care. Do your part by signing this open letter online or downloading the PDF to collect signatures on paper.

A child care idea

2006-03-04T04:36:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting idea that needs more discussion and thought. hmmm

Child Care Mess Illustrates Why Canada Needs a Policy Revolution
25/02/2006

by Gregory D. Morrow : If there was ever an illustration of why campaigns don’t make for producers of good policy it is the child care mess in which Canada finds itself following last month’s election.

Let me be clear about my feelings: neither of the the options that were presented by the Liberals (a program to provide child care spaces to low-income earners) or the Conservatives (a $100-a-month allowance for each child under 6 years old) are sufficient in and of themselves.

This false dichotomy is the result of campaign strategies that were intended to show the differences between the two parties. Unfortunately, both are merely partial solutions that benefit only fragments of the population.

The Conservative $100-a-month plan is being touted as giving parents “choice”. Giving parents choice is exactly what is needed, unforunately, the $100-a-month plan doesn’t do that. No doubt every Canadian would like a break on their taxes, and nobody needs this break more so than parents.

So, the revamped baby bonus is a win for all families. But with an average cost of $8,700-per-year for a single child care space, a $1,200-per-year subsidy will not help low- or even middle-class earners pay for child care.

For example, someone earning $20-per-hour would still need to spend over 20% of their gross earnings on child care, even after the $1,200 subsidy is factored in. A minimum-wage earner in Ontario ($7.45-per-hour) would need to spend more than 50% of gross earnings on child care, after the $1,200 subsidy is factored in. These levels of spending are impossible.

There is no doubt that the $1,200-per-year allowance will help parents pay the bills and provide for their kids better. But based on the numbers, it will not provide nearly enough money to pay for child care. So the Conservative plan by itself is only a partial solution.

The Liberal plan is also flawed. A network of subsidized child care centres only benefits a select segment of the population: a) the lowest 20% of income earners, since the program can only meet the need of 1 in 5 who want a child care space, b) those that live in an area that is sufficiently urbanized that it is convenient for parents to drop off their kids and c) those that want to send their kid to child care, rather than stay at home themselves.

In other words, people that don’t live in a dense urban region (or happen to live close to the centre) will not benefit from the child care centres. And, anyone earning more than about $20-per-hour will not see a benefit because the spaces will be given to those most in need.

Moreover, parents who choose to stay home with their kids before they go to kindergarten (more and more a luxury these days) will also not benefit from subsidized spaces. So the Liberal plan by itself is only a partial solution.

It is clear that both programs have merits, but operating by themselves, they are woefully inadequate as a means of providing much needed child care. Child care is not merely a social program, but it is also a vital tool to drive economic growth and increase productivity.

Child care allows those who want to work and have kids to continue their careers. Child care also allows parents to further their training in order to get better jobs and be more self reliant.

The Liberals dismissed criticism of their plan because they were looking out for low-income earners (since only the lowest 20% get spaces), while the Conservative plan benefits middle- and upper-middle income earners the most (yes, $1,200 will surely help low-income earners pay the bills, but is nowhere near what is needed to pay for child care).

There is a simple solution that gives parents real choice … wait for it … how about let parents choose which option best suits them? Revolutionary, I know. Why not have a system of subsidized child care centres and let people choose whether they want a subsidize child care space or the $1,200-per-year subsidy.

For those that choose parents who don’t want to send their kids to child care, they would choose the $1,200-per-year allowance. Folks who live too far from a child care centre would alos choose the $1,200-per-year allowance. But, for those low-income earners for whom $1,200 will not be nearly enough to buy child care, and who live close enough to a child care centre, they would choose — and be given first dibs on — the subsidized child care spaces.

If there are not enough spaces to meet the demand from among those who choose the subsidized space option, those parents would receive the $1,200 allowance.

It is the best of both worlds. I discussed a variation of this in an article on 7 December 2005 (“An Innovative Canadian Child Care Plan”) - see the article for how the numbers play out.

Parents who choose not to send their kids to school get the same benefit as the Conservative plan. Ditto for rural dwellers or those that don’t live close to a centre. However, those who need child care the most — low-wage parents who live in cities (where costs of living are highest) would have the benefit of subsidized child care in order to work or go back to school.

If we had a better system of developing policies in Canada — that is, if political parties actually went community-by-community and talked with people in different situations — we might very well have arrived at such a common sense solution. One-size does not fit all — not a $1,200 allowance nor a subsidized space.

If policy was developed bottom-up, hand-in-hand with communities instead of the brainchild of top-down policy wonks, Canada’s parents would really have choice on child care.

It is an even more interesting idea after you read the latest bruhaha with the Conservative plan.

Harper Government Ignores Needs of Canadian Families
28/02/2006

from Liberal Party : The Conservatives’ decision to terminate the day care funding agreements reached by the Liberal government with the provinces shows that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government are out of touch with the reality of hard working Canadian families, said Liberal Social Development Critic Dr. Carolyn Bennett.

As well, it would appear the Conservatives are also reneging on their election promise to send $1,200 annual childcare payments to families, said Dr. Bennett.

She pointed to Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s recent comments that child-care agreements will be terminated in favour of a “tax credit” for parents.

“A tax credit significantly waters down an already inadequate promise of about $20 a week that could only buy, on average, about one day’s worth of care,” said Dr. Bennett.

“The Conservatives’ decision to cancel our program will leave children, families and communities in the lurch. Today in Canada, 84 per cent of families with children have both parents in the workforce. Simply put, child care is an everyday necessity in Canada, and this is a reality the Conservative government needs to acknowledge.”

They also need clarify their election promise, she said.

“All along the Conservatives have been talking about cutting cheques to parents with small children. Now suddenly it’s a ‘tax credit.’ Did Mr. Flaherty misspeak, or was he trying to slip through the back door yet another broken election promise?

“If it is the latter, this is even more disturbing than their initial platform. The Conservatives need to clear this up immediately so that parents – and all taxpayers – know whether or not they were duped,” she said.

The dismantling of the ten existing early learning and child care agreements between Ottawa and the provinces means the loss of more than $4.3 billion in federal funding, Dr. Bennett said.

“In many communities, the shovels are already in the ground for new daycare centres. Families who desperately need spaces have their children on waiting lists. If they cancel these agreements, it means that new spaces won’t be created, new facilities will not be built, and working parents families will be forced to find unlicensed child care solutions for their children.

“Why would the Conservative government cancel the agreements when it is clear that the provinces want them to be honoured?”

In Ontario alone, the Conservative government’s decision will leave about 25,000 day care spaces in limbo. But instead of addressing the issue, the Conservative minister responsible for child care, Diane Finley, has refused to return calls from Ontario’s provincial minister of children and youth services.

It doesn’t seem that Mr. Harper or Ms. Finley is willing to act in the best interests of Canada’s children and their families.

The bottom line is simple – the agreements should be honoured. Canadian families deserve better.

The hole's walls are looking dangerously weak

2006-03-03T20:31:00.000-08:00

Harper is digging himself a huge hole and the dirt is starting to crumble in around him.
It will be very interesting as well as amusing to watch. The gambling guys should start taking bets as to when the ‘landslide’, hehe, will happen.

Harper isn’t harping so much about the Liberals and their problems anymore now, is he?

Harper 'loath' to co-operate with ethics commissioner
Last Updated Fri, 03 Mar 2006 15:11:45 EST
CBC News
The Prime Minister's Office attacked the credibility of the ethics commissioner Friday night after he announced an investigation into conflict of interest allegations against Stephen Harper.
….
"Although the subject of this inquiry is the prime minister, given that the actions of...Harper and Emerson in this incident were intertwined, questions will no doubt be raised during the course of the preliminary inquiry on the conduct of Mr. Emerson as well," Shapiro said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Canadian Press.
INDEPTH: Role of the ethics commissioner

It is pretty clear to me that Harper only uses the Ethics commission when it works in his favour.
But even then he won’t cooperate.
The man is a walking talking contradiction of everything he ran on.

Don’t people see this????!!!???

Shapiro, who did not speak to reporters Friday, appears to be basing his investigation on elements of the parliamentary conflict-of-interest code that prohibit inducing an MP to change his or her vote for personal benefit.
"After careful consideration, and pursuant to . . . the members code, I have decided to combine a preliminary inquiry of the prime minister . . . with a preliminary inquiry on my own initiative of Mr. Emerson," Shapiro wrote in an open letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons.
"My intention is to issue one report."
The announcement comes almost a month after Harper shocked the political establishment by plucking Emerson, the former Liberal industry minister, from the opposition front bench and placing the Vancouver MP in his first Conservative cabinet.
The move came the same day Harper was sworn into office and just two weeks after Emerson won his Vancouver-Kingsway seat running as a Liberal.
……
Peter Julian, the B.C. New Democrat who spearheaded the intervention, lauded the decision to investigate as a logical follow to Shapiro's ruling in January on the case of Gurmant Grewal and Ujjal Dosanjh.
Grewal, a former Conservative MP, surreptitiously taped bargaining sessions with Dosanjh, who was then the Liberal health minister, in which both MPs appeared to be haggling for Grewal's vote in the Commons last spring.
"(Shapiro) said very clearly that if a benefit is offered, that would constitute a breach of the members' code," said Julian.
In Emerson's case, said the New Democrat, "we have a very clear appearance of benefits being offered - because a cabinet minister has a much larger salary, there are a whole range of perks and benefits."
……
"If I'm found to be guilty of wrongdoing, I will leave," Emerson said Feb. 13 in Vancouver.

But here is the question:

If Harper is found guilty will he leave?

Health Care Privatization has side effects

2006-02-28T22:40:00.000-08:00

Read this in the Straight. http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=16192
Don’t have a thought on it yet.
What are yours? I really fear for the future of health care.

Privatization has side effects
By matthew burrows
Publish Date: 23-Feb-2006
A world-renowned UBC economist and health-policy researcher has warned that cherry-picking more profitable patients and increased user fees are two possible results of for-profit health-care delivery.
Dr. Robert Evans made these comments in a February 20 phone interview with the Georgia Straight, following the B.C. Liberal government’s February 14 throne speech. “Cherry-picking and user fees are two such side effects,” he said. “The question is, are you—the public contractor—going to be able to suppress them?”
A sizable chunk of the throne speech was devoted to the health-care system and the Canada Health Act. Campbell claimed the act’s founding principles—universal, accessible, comprehensive, portable health care and reasonable access to medically necessary services—were “largely undefined”. Premier Gordon Campbell has promised that he will add the term “sustainability” by the end of the Liberal mandate in 2009.
Campbell also said that mixed medical systems like the ones in Sweden and the United Kingdom should be looked at. Both Campbell and B.C. Health Minister George Abbott will undertake a fact-finding tour of Sweden, Norway, France, and the U.K. from February 28 to March 6 to check out their systems.
In her response to the speech, NDP leader Carole James referred to what she called the premier’s “personal pledge to privatize B.C.’s health-care system”.
Evans said the picture is more complex. “The Canada Health Act does one thing: it prevents them from bringing back user charges and moving costs from the government on to patients,” he said. “What makes me nervous is this talk about the CHA being out of date and needing reform. Why? What is it you want to do? Is your point simply that you want to take the cost off taxpayers and on to patients? It’s not, from some people’s point-of-view, very equitable. It is the opposite of what Medicare was set up to do, but you’re probably testing out this new government in Ottawa, which is probably not very pro-Medicare anyway.”
Evans stressed that he is not fundamentally opposed to contracting-out health services to the private sector, but he cautions against possible abuses.
“Once you have a private clinic set up on a for-profit basis, you’ve changed the incentive structure,” he said. “You’ve said, ‘What we want to do now that we’re running this private clinic for a profit is say—and patients come in all shapes and sizes —we can cherry-pick the nice ones. Some are a good deal more difficult to care for than others: the clean and decent from the West Side as against the guys who turn up in the emergency rooms at St. Paul’s. Well, we can make more money from the nice ones.’ If you want to contract out, it seems to me it puts a lot of responsibility on the guy doing the contracting [to prevent cherry-picking.]”
Neither Campbell nor Abbott returned calls from the Straight asking for comment and clarification of their intentions. But for Vancouver-based independent health-care researcher Richard Neal, whose clients include the B.C. Health Coalition, the message is pretty clear.
“It’s pretty ugly right now,” Neal told the Straight. “The news that George Abbott and Gordon Campbell are going on this fact-finding mission to Europe raises alarms. I was a guest at the National Health Service Consultants Association meeting in October in London, England. Looking there at what’s happened with the change in health-care delivery from nonprofit, publicly owned models to contracted-out private models, it’s been a disaster. The NHS [National Health Service] is losing capacity. Yes, waiting lists have been reduced, but at a huge cost.”
Neal said the U.K.’s fast-track treatment centres—contracted to private clinics, akin to “big-box style health-care centres”—were supposed to realize savings of 15 percent in cash terms.
“We find out from [British] health secretary Patricia Hewett that they’re actually costing more money,” he said. “The direct financial costs are at least six percent more. By the time you account for the fact you have to tender out these contracts, monitor them, and evaluate them to see that they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, the costs are between 15 to 20 percent higher than the national health-care one.”
NDP health critic David Cubberley told the Straight: “The direction they [the B.C. Liberals] want to take, which is privatization, clearly means they want to bring in user fees. I’d rather hear they’re going to visit hospitals in Vancouver, Kelowna, Kamloops, and Prince George to see how badly their restructuring of hospitals and their cutting of beds have impacted emergency rooms across the province.”
Evans said the direction that B.C.’s health system will take depends on “what the Liberals want to do”.
“My cynical expectation is that he’ll pull together a group that will tell him what he wants to hear,” Evans said of the premier’s planned foundation consortia. “He will set their terms of reference such that they will tell him to do whatever it is that he had originally decided to do. The problem is not the ideas. We’ve had hundreds of those. My fear is this will be a hand-picked group that will tell him what he wants to hear.”

I need a massage.

2006-02-26T20:48:00.000-08:00

I have been really annoyed with politics lately.
Every time I see the ‘H’s head on the screen I get irritated.
I want to scream every time I hear or read about him proudly announcing some new wonderful plan of his: they aren’t new!!
Most, almost all, of his so called wonderful ideas have been tried before and most failed. How has our government supposedly changed if it cant come up with any new original ideas!!!???!!!

I guess this is my long ranting way of saying:

-I haven’t got anything interesting to write right now. Maybe later. I need a massage.

Kyoto - an idea - a plan - a dream worth trying

2006-02-20T18:15:00.000-08:00

The Kyoto protocol is not perfect.
I don’t need people giving their long dreary lectures about all the things that are wrong with it. None of those people ever have any other solutions either, which gets me more riled up.
I know!: but it is a step in the right direction.

The Kyoto protocol is a step,
one step,
but a HUGE one and personally an excellent one.
I love the fact that it has brought together many different countries all seeking a way to help our dying environment.
I am glad that it has created a spotlight on environmental issues.
I am glad that Kyoto has made it to the front page of newspapers and is considered more important than movie celebrity issues!!
I am glad that there is an attempt at balance.
And I am especially glad that the targets are set high so that these countries have to try that much bloody more!!

The scenarios are frightening, from coastal communities flooded because of melting ice caps to widespread droughts and forest fires and millions more people around the globe facing famine.
Far from being the stuff of science fiction, those stunning images are becoming realities.
For decades, researchers have been sounding alarm bells on climate
change. The response, if any, by various levels of government greeting the growing body of science demanding action has been abysmal.
……
The Kyoto Protocol on climate change is meant to do just that.
Far from being a great leap forward on the path to ending global warming, the international agreement is a baby step to slow the rate at which we are destroying the planet.
Still, it is a symbolic first response to deal with the crisis.
Given that, Canadians should view with alarm the new Conservative government's apparent disinterest in Kyoto.
……
But rejecting the targets is wrong. It is akin to giving up on the climate change fight.
Instead, the Conservatives should embrace Kyoto. That means real progress in cutting emissions by 2012 and accepting more cuts in later years.

Yes the Conservatives should embrace Kyoto. They must accept that they need to work with the world and not with only our neighbour to the south. Environmental issues are no longer National issues, but global issues, and are linked to even more global issues: poverty, over population and disease.
The Conservative government has been skirting around the environmental issue for years. They scream at the Liberals about Kyoto but don’t even offer a program for change in their political platform.
Not important enough for them I guess.

The Conservatives have not been enthusiastic about Kyoto, fighting the former Liberal government's proposed changes to the Environmental
Protection Act that would have regulated greenhouse-gas emissions.
Ambrose's home province of Alberta opposed Canadian participation in Kyoto because of the potential damage it could do to the oil and gas industry.
The new government has not yet spelled out its position on Kyoto and Ambrose did not say Friday whether its policy would be made public by the time Parliament resumes in April.

The government is all about numbers and number crunching. They want figures and graphs and little bits of useless info. The larger picture seems to be irrelevant to them.
So what are the numbers?
(highlights by me)

Having pledged, under Kyoto, to cut Canada's greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5.2 per cent of what they were in 1990, the Liberals have failed to make any kind of dent in limiting these pernicious gases, both opposition leaders charged. In fact, the two pointed out in separate denunciations, greenhouse gas emissions – the byproduct mainly of driving cars and trucks, heating homes and creating energy – have actually increased 24 per cent since 1990. This is absolutely true, but doesn't tell the whole story. According to the latest internationally accepted tally, Canada emitted 596 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent gases in 1990. This was up to 740 Mt in 2003, the 24 per cent increase.
But over the same period. Canada's economy (as measured by GDP) jumped by almost 43 per cent, which means that, as energy users at least, Canadians have become increasingly more efficient in getting more bang for the buck.
The more important aspect in all this, though, which Mr. Harper should know well coming from the oil- and gas-producing region of Alberta, is that a significant portion of our greenhouse gas deficit stems from extracting and shipping ever-increasing quantities of oil and natural gas to the United States. (Gas exports to the U.S., for example, have more than doubled over that period, making Canada the world's second-largest natural gas exporter and turning Alberta into a debt-free boom land.)
Of the 144 Mt increase in greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, at least 86 Mt (41 per cent) is from the broad energy sector and just more than 40 per cent of that can be attributed to the rise in oil and gas exports to the U.S. There are two reasons for this. The first is extraction costs, especially the cost of delivering
usable barrels of oil from sticky tarsands. This process requires vast amounts
of steam and other emission-releasing energy. The second factor is that the
capture and delivery of natural gas by pipeline has led to millions of tonnes of
so-called fugitive emissions as unwanted sour gas is flared off at the well site
and methane escapes from many regular pipeline leaks.
With an average consumption of 402.6 million Btu per capita – less than the U.S – we Canadians are often considered the world's top energy gluttons. And while we do have our special burdens – cold winters, old houses in many parts of the country, long commuting distances, a decades-long love affair with the minivan, and, more recently, the SUV – part of the reason we can claim this ignoble prize is that we carry at least some of the energy needs and global warming obligations of our neighbour to the south.
For more detailed information:
Environment Canada greenhouse gas
site

U.S. Government Energy Information
Administration

United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change

Harper has started to speak about what he says in a Made-In Canada plan. They want to create a voluntary system. Hmm well we all know how wonderful those great huge companies are when they are allowed to do things on a voluntary bases. Yes, I am sure environmental issues rank higher than their quest for tax cuts, smaller pension payments, job cuts, saving money and the bottom line. Yes the environment is extremely important to them.

That and this is not a Made-In Canada plan, it is a Lets-Do-What-Bush-Is-Doing Plan.

One of the few truly stark platform differences between Stephen Harper's Conservatives and virtually all the other parties this election is environmental policy and the Kyoto accord in particular. The Conservatives are the only mainstream party not to highlight any environmental policies on their campaign website (though a handful do appear in the formal platform); and they are the only ones not to back the formal Kyoto plan to cut greenhouse gases. The
Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc and, of course, the Green Party are all ardent
supporters of Kyoto, the ambitious-and to some controversial--1997 international
agreement to try to curb man-made, climate-warming pollution.But the Conservative position-to replace Kyoto with a voluntary "made in Canada" plan-is not at all clear, perhaps even to the party itself. It does,
however, seem to have considerable spin-off implications for Canadian industries
already going along with the notion of a Kyoto-inspired carbon-limiting world;
for Canada's leadership role in the UN; and even for the Conservative's broad
budget plans.
… …
To create a voluntary system, the Conservatives told the Sierra Club they would remove greenhouse gases from the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which means these emissions will no longer be federally regulated. Without such internationally recognized regulation, it will be extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, for Canadian firms to buy and sell so-called carbon credits in an emerging international market. That is a key Kyoto incentive to encourage industries to reduce their own emissions and so benefit financially by being able to sell their surplus needs.Broadly speaking, Harper's seems to mirror that of George W. Bush, who early in his presidency reversed the Bill Clinton decision to participate in the Kyoto accord. Although in Canada's case we have
actually signed the deal. Harper is also hinting he wants to involve Canada in Bush-like side deals with other trading partners-the so-called bilateral approach-to link common pollution control objectives with preferred trading status.
… …

And this new Government seems to be touting a lot of scare tactics about how there is no possible way Canada can reach the targets and how we will be penalized and made to look like fools.
Wont you look more like a fool if you don’t try?
Scare tactics are a cope out way of saying “This is toooooo hard.” They sound like whinny children too afraid of trying to tie their own shoelaces for the first time.
Well there is no penalty for missing the targets but there is the shame that will follow you for not trying.
Governments like to worry about the bottom line

Missing your Kyoto targets in this first round does not impose a financial penalty on nations. But it is supposed to add to your obligations in the second round. Insiders said Canada, which produces about two per cent of the world's greenhouse gases, took on such big obligations in the first round because the Clinton administration was looking to do the same and we were trying to help clinch U.S. involvement. But if that was the plan it certainly backfired as an election strategy when the Tories ridiculed the Martin government's missed goals.A Conservative government that doesn't recognize Kyoto targets today will probably have much more difficulty getting a break down the road. Unless of course they do an about-face and can use this initial reluctance as a bargaining tool at the UN.

Money, money, money!! That is all most people are worried about. Well, what is the cost of Harpers new ideas?

Budget cuts
Another complicating factor is that the Tories plan to raid Ottawa's Kyoto climate fund to pay for their plan to subsidize urban transit users. Environmentalists applaud the subsidy but note it will have limited affect on reducing carbon emissions. It will cost the treasury an estimated $2 billion over five years and the climate fund has only $1 billion set. This means a Harper government will have to find significant cuts elsewhere to pay for the transit subsidy. It also
means that climate fund money, intended largely to reward Canadian companies for pollution efficiencies, won't be available.
As Kermit the frog used to say, it's not easy being green.

One of the things that really terrifies me about the new governments plan to back off from Kyoto and in their overall kiss ass to the oil polluting companies is that their less environmental polices means that it is going to be ten zillion times harder for the people in my area of Canada to keep fighting International polluters like this.

National Energy Systems Co. (NESCO) of Kirkland, Washington is seeking to construct and operate the Sumas Energy 2 Generation Facility (SE2) in Sumas, Washington. The proposed location is a mile from the Canadian border, just south of Abbotsford and 25 kilometers southwest of Chilliwack. Estimated cost is (US) $400 million.
SE2 would be a 660 megawatt natural gas-fired plant to generate electricity for (as yet) undetermined customers. The gas would be burned to create heat, which in turn will generate heat. This heat will be used to turn turbines, which generate electricity. Approximately half of the heat generated will be wasted.
… …
According to documents submitted to the Washington State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC), SE2 would emit an extra 2.5 tonnes of toxic pollutants per day in the Fraser Valley airshed. Toxic emissions would include nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, ammonia, benzene, formaldehyde, and lead. Further, the
proposal states decreased visibility in scenic areas could occur.・/SPAN>
Environment Canada reported in June, 2000 that air quality in the Fraser Valley poses a potential threat to human health 43% of the time. Dr. Jane Q. Koenig, a professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Washington, has testified SE2 poses a health hazard to the public, particularly those suffering from asthma.・SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> She notes the elderly and small children face the biggest
risk of adverse consequences. Another professor from the University of
Washington, Dr. Daniel A. Jaffee, has testified that SE2 may significantly contribute to exceedances of the Canadian air quality objectives.・SPAN style="mso-spacerun smog worse, noting some parts of the Fraser Valley already exceed Canadian air quality objectives for ozone and particulate matter. Prevailing winds in the Fraser Valley are from the southwest. As a result, a majority of the emissions from SE2 would end up in the central and eastern Fraser Valley.

This has been an issue very close to my heart and I have been very proud of the people in these cities for standing up and fighting this huge pollution machine. We have all worked very heard to improve the air of the Fraser Valley.
We have won: for now.

Backers of the proposed Sumas Energy 2 (SE2) power plant announced last week they would not challenge a unanimous Federal Court of Appeal ruling from early November. The court rejected SE2's appeal of a decision by Canada's National Energy Board in March, 2004 to deny permission to build a power line into Canada which would have connected the proposed 660 megawatt natural gas fired power plant in Sumas, Washington to a high voltage transmission grid in the Fraser Valley.
…
…
"It's also important to note that SE2 isn't just giving up on appealing the power line decision," remarked Penner. "I was worried they would pursue a different route for the power line through Washington State, but they said in a statement on their website last week that they have also put that idea "on hold" due to the rising cost of natural gas and regulatory hurdles. This means their project isn't going anywhere for now."
E2 says they will work to maintain their construction permit in Washington State in case market conditions change. Penner says the BC Government may examine legal options for challenging any further renewal or extension of that permit or the associated air emissions authorization.

With the USA staying far away from the Kyoto agreement and refusing to work with other countries to fight pollution and save the environment, how can we possibly fight them, and on what grounds can we fight them, if our own country backs away from the Accord which gives us more power to fight?!

The environment found to the south is not an environment I wish to create up here in Canada. In fact, I will use what little power I have as a single person to fight it every step of the way.

Deputy Secretary Steve Griles, a strong advocate of off-shore
oil drilling, was a lobbyist for coal and oil companies. William Myers,
Interior's solicitor, a former employee of a cattleman's association, advocates the use of public land for cattle grazing and opposes most environmental measures in the national parks. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman opposes what she believes are "unnecessary and burdensome" federal environmental rules.
Mark Rey, her undersecretary, is an advocate for the timber industry.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, while a U.S. senator, consistently voted against environmental protections. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Sansonetti, who had also served under George Bush the Elder, was a coal company lobbyist.
…
…
Also affected by the Bush policies are wolves, bears, and park rangers. The return of a small number of wolves into Yellowstone was vigorously opposed by Montana and Wyoming ranchers. With fewer bison deaths from natural causes in the park, wolves and bears now have a diminished food source. The National Park Service, which had favored a ban on recreational snowmobiles, is now faced by thousands of snowmobilers illegally crossing the Park's borders. Snowmobilers, says Lococo, "line up at the borders, spewing gas fumes that have made the rangers ill."
In other environmental policies, Bush reversed himself on a campaign pledge to reduce acceptable levels of carbon dioxide emissions
from coal-fired power plants. But, when he decided that higher levels of arsenic and other toxins in drinking water was just good public policy, the public outrage forced him to reverse that judgment. Score: Carbon Dioxide emissions 1; arsenic, after a fight, 0.
Bush eliminated the tax upon the oil and chemical industries that paid
for the clean up of SuperFund toxic waste sites; the new cost will be borne not by the polluters but by the public. He has repeatedly shown he favors increased logging and mining on public lands, and has pushed for oil companies to be allowed to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
To justify environmental destruction and upsetting a balance of nature, Bush claims the drilling of oil is a national security concern. The 600,000 barrels of oil a day that might be refined from Alaska is less than five percent of what the U.S.
currently imports. There are no substantial plans to seek alternative energy
sources, except for a policy to pay for development of clean energy sources only
with funds generated from oil drilling in Alaska. Even the oil companies don't
believe putting rigs and refineries along the Alaskan coast will be
cost-effective. But, there is a gunslinger's mentality at work in Alaska.
Opening up the refuge would require hundreds of miles of roads to be built, all
of them not necessarily for the transport of equipment and personnel but for
hunters to get that elusive caribou--maybe even to mount a seal.

Already the Bush administration is destroying land that affects our country personally all in the name of oil and the new government want to follow Bush style environmental strategies!!!!!

Each spring, with the regularity of migrating warblers, the oil lobby bursts into the halls of congress with a scheme to open to drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, perched on the northern rim of Alaska on the ice-bound Beaufort Sea. This seasonal onslaught prompts the big eco groups to frenzied action, unleashing a blizzard of emergency fundraising appeals adorned with shots of caribou and polar bears, pleading with their members to send money immediately in order to "save the refuge". Year after year, the face off has ended in a stalemate, with the politicians pocketing cash from both sides.
Now this dance is over. After emerging from their closed door session on the fabricated intelligence used to sell the Iraq war (supposedly evidence of spinal-column regeneration by Democrats), the Senate proceed to once again doom the nation's most treasured wildlife refuge. With a 51-48 pro-drilling
vote yesterday on a deviously-crafted line item in the U.S. Senate's budget
bill, the oil industry has seized its most prized trophy: access to reservoirs
of crude beneath the 1.5 million-acre wildlife refuge on the Arctic plain.
ANWR used to be an icon of the power of the environmental movement. Now it stands as a symbol of its impotence. With ANWR, the most sacrosanct stretch of land in North America, now pried open to the drillers, everywhere else, from the Rocky Mountain Front to the coasts of Florida, Oregon and California, is fair game.

And don’t forget people, a huge part of the reason why Canada is not able to meet its targets is because of the quest for oil and the destruction of the environment to do it. Canada’s contribution to the oil industry may be making Alberta rich and putting Harper in power but it is killing our earth for our kids.

Get a bike. I have one. (no car)
Or buy an environmentally friendly car: scrap the stupid SUV.
Take a stand.
The Environment affects us all!!!

An article that was not worth publishing

2006-02-17T05:59:00.000-08:00

This mans article is one of the major reasons why I DO NOT LEAN RIGHT!!!
This guy made me shake my head in amazement that he actually wrote and published these words.

As with the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad after the second Gulf War, it played no actual part in his government’s downfall, but its vivid symbolism was monumental. That crumbling icon of Saddam became the defining image of victory against his tyrannical regime. The toppling of Paul Martin is the defining image of the victory against the metastasizing Culture of Liberal Entitlement that he maintained.

WTF?????

Now this is why I started leaning Left.

I liked this read.

Harper is notorious for his loathing of media, pundits, and anyone he considers beneath him on an intellectual level, which by all accounts is everyone. But when it comes to being Prime Minister, communication not only goes with the territory, but is a vital part of the job.

… …

Someone ought to remind the wet-behind-the-ears Prime Minister that the media is the main mechanism that voters depend on to know what their government is doing (or not doing), and to keep the pressure on elected officials to do what they promised to do. Voters don’t depend on Harper’s communications director, William Stairs, nor Conservative strategist Tim Powers, nor a Ouija board, for that matter.

Accountability, in part, means facing the media, answering questions, and accounting for your actions, or so the theory goes. Now, this is not to suggest that we return to the hourly, hand- and arm-waving photo-ops that typified the image that remains of Paul Martin. As Powers has suggested, people want more substance than sizzle, an idea that’s hard to take issue with, though “substance” is normally not a word that goes hand-in-hand with “vacuum.”

……

If this is his idea of transparency, let’s hope he never decides to be “opaque.”

Women in Government - the numbers speak

2006-02-14T17:16:00.000-08:00

I just found the most interesting web page about women in Canadian elections.
Very enlightening and I need to share.
When I wrote this post about what I felt was missing in the New Government cabinet one of my anonymous commentors told me I should be checking my facts about the number of woman in the government.

If I remember correctly, in the last Liberal cabinet of 39 members, 7 were women. In the current Conservative cabinet of 27, 6 are women. I have no idea what you're talking about when you say women are missing.

So I did, and the numbers and VERY enlightening.

A little history first:

Women have been struggling to get their say in Canadian politics for a very, very long time. The first federal election in which women were able to vote and run as candidates was 1921.
1921 people!!!

In 1917, Canada's federal electoral law stipulated that
idiots, madmen, criminals and judges were not allowed to vote. It didn't mention
women who were also excluded from voting in national elections.

In the 1921 election, four women ran for office and Agnes Campbell MacPhail (1890-1954) made history as the first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons.

Surrounded by a panel of men, Agnes Macphail addresses a
group of students gathered at University of Toronto's Convocation Hall on a
subject close to her heart, "Women in Parliament: Why aren't there more?"
Macphail had made history on Dec. 6, 1921, when she became the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons in Canada. In this radio excerpt, Macphail
offers her thoughts on the absence of women in public life almost three decades
after her historic win. "Some nominations the men don't want," says Macphail.

Between 1921 and 2006, 3402 women candidates stood in 39 general elections and won on only 426 occasions.
They are all listed on this site.
(Blogger doesnt support the graphs, sorry.)

It is an amazing graph to read. The really shocking thing was the Communist party statistics!!!!

After Mcphail, women started setting more and more firsts and becoming even more political.

One woman of note is Jeanne Sauve.

When describing Jeanne Sauvé, it's hard not to think of the word "first." She was the first woman MP from Quebec to become a cabinet minister, Canada's first female Speaker of the House, and our first female Governor General. As she moved from broadcast journalist to high-profile political figure, Sauvé undoubtedly had her share of challenges and controversies. But through it all, the woman of "firsts" never lost her characteristic elegance and grace.

"Get to know the rules of the game and work very hard." That's Jeanne Sauvé's
number-1 piece of advice for women who want to be politicians. In this 1974
radio documentary on female politicians, the new cabinet minister says the House of Commons has been very accepting of women so far. But that doesn't mean it's
easy to be a woman in politics in the 1970s. "There's no doubt that we've got to
work twice as hard as a man," she proclaims.

How about Rosalie Abella? SHE WAS PREGNANT and still a judge.

Rosalie Silberman Abella set several firsts when she was appointed a judge of the Ontario family court in 1976. At 29, she became Canada's youngest judge. She was also the first Jewish woman to be appointed to the bench – and the first pregnant judge.

The scary word and force of ‘Feminism’ has been the main reason why women have been able to achieve what they have.

Putting ladies first in Canadian politics has always been a tricky exercise and sometimes a devious one. Much has been made by feminists and Tories of how Conservative prime minister Sir Robert Borden gave the vote to women in federal elections in 1917. In that year, Borden also introduced conscription against Quebec's wishes and called an election on the subject, declaring a kind of war for conscription.
The country was plunged into disunity on a scale it had never seen before. Sir
Wilfrid Laurier would not support conscription; all Quebec rallied to his side.
Laurier came up with one of the most radical platforms in Canadian history,
including the right of all women to vote.
Fearful that Laurier's radical program would catch on and determined to have
conscription at all costs, Borden pulled a misshapen form of the women's vote
out of his magic hat. Borden brought in the Wartime Election Act. That act took
away the vote of all Canadians, male or female, born in the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. These Ukrainians, Poles, Germans and Serbs were all Liberal voters.
…..
Actually it was the ladies themselves who put ladies first on the recent political agenda. It was the feminist movement that first saw the danger to themselves of social conservatism. The thou shalt nots of social conservatism - thou shalt not have an abortion, thou shalt not have a divorce - were reactionary male restraints on the very basic freedoms of women. The feminist movement could also see that restrictions on the rights of lesbians and gays could easily boomerang into restrictions on women in general.
Feminism had already transformed socialism. One of the Waffle's legacies to the NDP was equal representation of men and women on the national party executive. The election of two women in a row as leaders of the NDP - Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough - attests to the triumph of feminism in the NDP.

In my searches I have been extremely surprised by which women were Liberal and which Conservative. Infact, if you look at it this way, the Conservatives rock:

The history of Conservatives in Canada is the tale of a happy catalyst of progressive policy. Five of the first 10 women in Parliament were Conservatives -- more than the Liberals. The first woman to serve in the federal cabinet was Conservative Ellen Fairclough. Canada's first woman prime minister was a Conservative. The Conservatives established the Canadian Bill of Rights, upon which the Charter of Rights is based.
The Conservatives were the first government to have a black cabinet minister. The Conservatives appointed the first aboriginal man to the Senate. It was under a Conservative prime minister that the right to vote was extended to women and
First Nations. A Conservative government passed the Multiculturalism Act. A
Conservative government fought for and achieved the Acid Rain Treaty. A
Conservative government led the international/commonwealth charge against
apartheid. A Conservative government introduced Canada's first green plan.

BUT WAIT!! Don’t let that fool you. This was the OLD Conservative party. Even Monte admits that things have changed.

Alberta MP and Conservative party spokesman Monte Solberg says it’s natural for policies and platforms to change as the public’s priorities change.
“I think it’s obvious that we’re not the same party we were 10 years ago,” he says, adding that their platform does include some Reform staples, such as free votes, increased military spending and stronger justice legislation. “I think it’s true we never did have policies on all kinds of social issues, everything from abortion to capital punishment.

I wrote about this before: the word Torie has changed in meaning considerably over the years.

Canada’s distinct “Red Tory” conservatives had always been wary of American empire, firmly federalist, politically centrist, and as suspicious of antiestablishment socialists on the left as they were of the individualists and free-market advocates on the right, in the Liberal party. To be a Tory in Canada was to cleave to the principles of universality and the common good, and to welcome the progressive role of the state in nation-building.But by the 1980s, the fog lay so thick on the ground of Canada’s political language that our country’s venerable old Conservative party fell into the hands of the anti?nationalist and neoconservative Brian Mulroney. By the early 1990s, he’d destroyed the party, leaving it with only two seats in the House of Commons.Then, from their base in the Albertan enclave of American Christian-fundamentalist sects and American-style conservatism, the neoconservatives regrouped. By 2004, they’d reconstituted the Conservative party under economist Stephen Harper, who is, essentially, a republican—which is the antithesis of a “conservative” in the traditional Canadian meaning of the word.

The New Conservative Government that we have in power today has a very bleak out look in terms of female numbers.

Women in the 2006 Election Campaign
At the close of nominations for the 2006 election, there were 380 women and 1,254 men among the 1634 candidates confirmed by Elections Canada. While the absolute number of women candidates fell from
2004, the percentage of candidates who are women remained steady at 23.2%. There was at least one woman candidate in 241 of the 308 ridings (78.2%).
With 64 women elected (20.8% of all those elected), the 2006 election campaign just one seat less than the previous record of 65 (21.1%) set in the 2004 election. The number of women elected for each party, and the proportion of women in the party's elected caucus, are as follows:

Bloc - 17 (33.3% of caucus)

Conservative - 14 (11.3% of caucus)

Liberal - 21 (20.3% of caucus)

NDP - 12 (41.4% of caucus)
The 64 women elected represented 16.8% of all women candidates in the 2006 election. This is a somewhat lower success rate than the 19.3% success rate for men candidates.

………

Women in the 2004 Election Campaign
At the close of nominations for the 2004 election, there were 391 women and 1,294 men among the 1685 candidates who had successfully filed their papers with Elections Canada. This figure
represents a growth since the 2000 elections, both in the absolute numbers of women running for office and in the percentage (23.2%) of candidates who are women. However, the percentage of women candidates elected remained the same between 2004 and 2000, at 16.62%. This figure is slightly lower than the overall success rate for male candidates (18.8%); the success rates had been virtually identical in 2000.
There was at least one woman candidate in 236 of the 308 ridings. Ahunstic in Quebec had the distinction of the most women running for office - 5 out of the 7 candidates. The CBC provides a useful list of all the women candidates in the 2004 election along with their margin
of victory or loss. (Note: the CBC wrongly classified Bev Shipley as a
female Conservative candidate; he is male).
A record 65 women candidates won their seats in the 2004 election, for a total 21.1% of the 308 new MPs:

Bloc - 14

Conservatives - 12

Liberals - 34

NDP - 5

Total - 65

Women in the 2000 Election Campaign
In the 2000 elections, 373 women were among the 1808 candidates; this figure represents 20.6% of the total. Overall,
16.62% of women who ran for office in 2000 were elected, compared to 16.65% of 1435 men who ran. The NDP had the highest number of female candidates, 88 or 29.5% of their total, and the Liberals were next with 65 out of 298
candidates, or 21.8%. The Natural Law Party fielded the highest percentage of women candidates - 56.8% (25 out of 44). The Bloc Quebecois had the highest success rate among female candidates - 55.5%. The Tories and Alliance had the
lowest percentage of women among all the parties, with 13.4% (39) and 10.7% (32)
respectively.

The site is full of very easy to read graphs that I recommend you check out. It has been a very interesting read for me.

So to the commenter from before:

Sorry but the numbers speak for themselves.

But we still have a very long way to go in order to really represent the voice of women in our country.

The group most active in lobbying for greater representation
of women in Parliament is Equal Voice, whose chair, former journalist Rosemary Speirs, concedes wearily that "so far, we're battering against a wall."
One of the continuing problems, Speirs acknowledges, is that political parties frequently nominate women in those ridings where they expect to have little chance of victory.
Another result is that the number of women willing to take a chance
on politics is declining. Inevitably, there are no women premiers and no women are mayors of the largest cities.
Speirs points grimly to the chart published by the Interparliamentary Union in its survey of democratic institutions around the world.
In terms of representation of women, the 65 elected to the House of Commons in the last election mean that Canada is 23rd in the world – slightly behind Ethiopia, slightly ahead of Latvia.

Jobless rates and the medicare circle

2006-02-13T04:29:00.000-08:00

Jobless rate statistics confuse the heck out of me.

I don’t understand where they get the numbers.

From my understanding of things there are jobs out there, tons of them, just maybe not in your sector.
One of the problems I see is that jobless-people are jobless because they have not been able to find work in the area of their educational background.
This is an an going problem here and in the States due to outsourcing and the fact that engineering jobs as well as high education level jobs are limited to begin with: they are the type of job that literally has people working from the ground floor and crawling their way up to the top but you don’t need as many engineers as you do waiters.
There are tons of jobs in the service industry and in service related areas.

When I click on job seeking websites like this one, I am very confused about the jobless numbers. There are jobs out there, so why are there jobless people?

Canada's economy churned out 26,300 new jobs in January, but the unemployment rate ticked up to 6.6 per cent as more people entered the labour force looking for work, Statistics Canada said Friday.
From coast to coast, here are the provincial jobless rates for January (with December's rates in brackets):
Newfoundland: 16.5% (15.4%)

P.E.I.: 10.8% (11.1%)

Nova Scotia 7.8% (8.5%)

New Brunswick: 8.9% (9.6%)

Quebec: 8.4% (8.2%)

Ontario: 6.5% (6.2%)

Manitoba: 4.3% (4.2%)

Saskatchewan: 5.2% (5.3%)

Alberta: 3.5% (4.2%)

B.C.: 5.1% (5.1%)

Canada: 6.6% (6.5%)

I guess one of my problems is that I am looking at this from my point of view of as a medium, but well educated, woman who has never had a University Requirement job before. I have always had a job though, and most of them have been quite well paying decent jobs. In fact I think all of them I have proudly placed on my resume and have learned tons from them.
The longest I was without a job was three weeks, when I moved to a different town to be closer to my university and shorten my driving time: thought I was going to go mental in that three weeks.

I have read that much of the cuts have come from manufacturing jobs, much of that car related.
To put it mildly, Ford’s and GM’s business sucks right now.

Consider the following recent developments:
GM: The world's biggest automaker loses $3.8 billion US in the first nine months of 2005 and announces the elimination of 30,000 jobs as part of a major restructuring to turn its fortunes around. Twelve of GM's North American facilities are to close, including two in Canada. Its share price hits a 20-year low on the NYSE. Its corporate bonds are rated as below investment grade (often called "junk" status) by all major bond-rating agencies.

Ford Motor Co.: Ford, for many years the No. 2 automaker, falls to No. 3 behind Toyota as sales continue to decline. Ford makes money on a worldwide basis but its North American unit loses buckets – $1.4 billion US in the first nine months of 2005. The CAW agrees to the smallest wage increases for Ford of Canada workers in 20 years. In the U.S., the UAW agrees to major concessions. In late January 2006, Ford will announce "significant" plant closures and thousands of new layoffs. Ford bonds are also rated as "junk."

VW is also cutting jobs but expanding a little bit in Canada.

None of the cuts will take place in Canada. A VW Canada spokesperson said the company will actually expand its Canadian management when it moves product planning and marketing responsibilities back to Canada from the U.S.
VW does not manufacture or assemble any vehicles in Canada.

I have read that Canada’s Medicare system is one of the biggest lures for Car companies. I hope that our present government is aware of this and will realize that even though Medicare costs money it also creates jobs which pay taxes which pays for Medicare: an interesting circle that should not be broken.

Analysts usually cite labour costs – especially U.S. health care and pension costs – as another big reason why the U.S.-based automakers are having problems. GM, for instance, at one time picked up the entire cost of funding health insurance premiums of its employees, their survivors and GM retirees. Those costs have gone through the roof in the past few years, rising at double-digit rates every year. A recent agreement with the UAW will allow GM to trim billions from its annual health care bill. But the non-unionized Japanese automakers, with their younger American workforces (and far fewer American retirees) will continue to enjoy a cost advantage.

Here is a very interesting analysis of the Medicare and Car Manufacturing job industry and how they are linked.

Almost half a century ago, Charles Wilson, chairman of General Motors, once famously declared, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." These days, his successor might more properly say, "What's good for Canada is good for General Motors."
Certainly over the last decade or so, GM, along with competitors Ford and Chrysler (now DaimlerChrysler), have been shifting production out of Michigan and across the Detroit River into Ontario as fast as they can, making Windsor, Ont., and not Detroit, the real "Motor City" of North America today.
The reason for this capital flight, which has taken tens of thousands of American jobs with it, is health care costs.
General Motors executives, who even now are demanding that the United
Autoworkers Union agree in this round of bargaining to a contract that for the
first time would require workers to pay for part of their health benefits, complain that health costs currently account for $1500 of the cost of production of every vehicle made in the U.S. In Canada, the figure is only a small fraction of that.

Although I do question whether much of our jobless rate woes come from the total imbalance of money, imports, exports and service industry jobs in our neighbour to the south.

The country has lost nearly three million manufacturing jobs over the past five years, while its debt has risen to levels that concern many economists.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett warned last month that the U.S. trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt.

One thing is for sure: joblessness is a bottomless spiral and once you enter the spiral it is very hard to break free of it.
Joblessness creates stress, depression, poverty and even more Medicare costs.

Interesting: there is that circle again.

Who is the 'traitor'

2006-02-12T03:46:00.000-08:00

I am starting to really like this guy, Turner.
It is too bad he wasn’t the PM in that party rather than you know who.

I wish him luck in this fight. He might be standing for a party whose platform totally clashes with my way of thinking but he seems to be a good guy.
He is living in a little bit of a dreamland mind you and it will be sad when reality hits him and the hells of politics try to flatten him.
I hope his backside is strong: it is going to have to be if he is going to get this bill past his party people.

Ottawa — Despite a tongue-lashing from the Prime Minister, Conservative Garth Turner says he will proceed with a private-member's bill that would force MPs such as Trade Minister David Emerson to resign and run again when they switch parties.
Mr. Emerson, who has been the subject of intense public criticism since being appointed to the Conservative cabinet on Monday — two weeks after being elected as a Liberal — after being elected as a Liberal — was unavailable for comment yesterday even though the calls for his resignation continued.
Mr. Turner, the MP for Halton, Ont., said he was castigated by Mr. Harper for telling reporters on Thursday that Mr. Emerson should resign his seat and run again. But the financial-management-expert-turned-politician was unrepentant yesterday.
“I cannot stand and support something in Ottawa that I would not in a town-hall meeting in north Oakville,” he wrote on his web log. “Not even when it is the PM asking — or demanding.”
And, despite the censure from above, he said he will put forward a private-member's bill to force politicians who change political allegiances to resign their seat and ask their constituents for a new mandate.
“I do believe that voters are jaded today,” Mr. Turner said, “And one of the reasons that they are jaded and they feel they don't matter is that people get to be part of the government who never ran to be in that government.”

His web log words:
Latest.....

I found it ironic this afternoon in talking to one veteran Tory MP– who called me in support of my stance against the party bosses – that we’d almost reversed roles. Here I was, a former Progressive Conservative, in trouble for talking about the need for more democracy while key former populist Reformers around here were fighting for less of it. But as this guy said, “I didn’t hang around Ottawa for 12 years in opposition to be told to shut up now.”

Earlier.......

I reflect as I walk past the statues in the park on what the prime minister and his guys had to say to me last night. Those were tough moments, but I have come to the realization I had no choice. I cannot stand and support something in Ottawa that I would not in a Town Hall meeting in north Oakville. Not even when it is the PM asking. Or demanding.

This has been interesting to watch. I think that the entire Emerson family is probably a little afraid to leave their homes: their phones have definitely been taken off the hook. With protests like this I would even reconsider heading to work.

Hundreds of people angry at David Emerson's defection from the Liberals to Conservatives chanted "traitor" at a protest rally.

……

New Democrat MP Peter Julian said Prime Minister Stephen Harper could be in violation of Parliament's conflict of interest guidelines, which prohibit members from acting to advance their own or other MP's private interests.

Mr. Julian has the support of fellow New Democrat Ian Waddell, who finished second to Mr. Emerson in his effort to make a political comeback.

Mr. Waddell has said of those who cast ballots in the riding, 80 per cent voted against the Conservative Party.

Mr. Emerson received 43.5 per cent of the vote as a Liberal while Tory Kanman Wong got 18.8 per cent. Mr. Waddell garnered 33.5 per cent of the vote.

The readers comments on this issue range from interesting to crazy to downright stupid.

LA-LA-LA-LA I cant hear you

2006-02-11T18:08:00.000-08:00

More fuel for the fire and it is all Harper’s doing. He can’t blame anyone but himself.

First the parliamentary secretary for la Francophonie doesn’t even speak French!

Francophone groups and opposition MPs are raising concerns about an appointment in Stephen Harper's government after learning the parliametary secretary for la Francophonie doesn't speak French.
……
Minority French groups like the New Brunswick Acadian Society say nominating a unilingual anglophone to this position shows just how hard it is to communicate with the Harper government.
New Democrat MP Yvon Godin, an Acadian, says it's proof Prime Minister Harper didn't think these nominations through.
"It's like telling the anglophones, we're going to give someone to represent you. And he only speaks French and he doesn't speak English at all and that's your representative and you deal with it," said Godin.

Then I am pretty sure that David Emerson is too afraid to face his electoral and knows he doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning a single vote in a bi-election.

International Trade Minister David Emerson says he isn't going to bow to pressure and step down and face the electorate again in a by-election.
In his first public comments in more than two days, Emerson told CBC News in Vancouver on Friday night, "No, I'm not going to quit."

But this is a turn of events I find even more amusing: one of Harper’s own is actually standing by the principles he ran on and Harper is chastising him for it!!

Meanwhile, Ontario Conservative MP Garth Turner said he is feeling the heat from his own party after speaking out against Emerson's defection to the Tories.
Turner is sticking by comments he made during the election campaign, that anyone who crosses the floor should step down and run in a by-election.
But he said his outspoken position on the subject has not been well received by his party.
"I think my talking about the need for members of parliament, in particular members of government to be elected as party representatives was not viewed as being helpful," Turner said.
He said he was called to a meeting with the prime minister Thursday. He won't say what the tone of the meeting was like, but he expects to face party discipline for speaking out.

Turner has his own blog and he is not staying quiet on there. It is also considerable better written than the filth that MP Monte Solberg was spewing out of his fingers.

But even Monte is unhappy. He has been given the lowly position of Minister of Immigration. We all know how useless and unnecessary this position is in a country of immigrants. Makes me doubly happy that my husband got his immigrant status before the Conservatives came to power. With Monte minding the ropes and not wanting to even be there I hate to think how long it would have taken us to get my husbands papers.

There has been much talk in Ottawa about Monte Solberg's Cabinet posting, with suggestions last week he might not make it in the top tier. One version some Conservative insiders have since heard is that he was off the list until sometime last week. Certainly, the portfolio was a surprise -- Minister of Citizenship and Immigration for the long-time finance critic. More notably, he is from rural Alberta, where immigration is not exactly a burning issue. For those who missed it, he admitted in a scrum this week: "I wasn't pining to be the Immigration Minister." For the sake of party unity, he quickly went on to say how happy he was to be in Cabinet, how he was very excited and so on.

And I do consider this poll to be full of crap and completely inaccurate.

A majority of Canadians approve of the minority Conservative government's performance so far, although almost half consider two of Stephen Harper's Cabinet picks a "bad sign" that smack of old-style politics, a new Ipsos Reid poll says.
The survey's findings suggest Mr. Harper's first week in power might not have been as bad as some of the negative headlines made it out to be, said Darrell Bricker, president of the polling firm.
Mr. Harper got a thumbs-up from 54% of respondents when asked if they approved of the new government's performance under his leadership.

No one asked my opinion, and I am not too happy with things so far.

Working moms vs SAHMs

2006-02-09T18:51:00.000-08:00

Lets hope the NDP make some headway in this child-care issue. Being a working mom this issue affects me personally and I worry about it often.

NDP to introduce national child-care proposal
Last Updated Thu, 09 Feb 2006 20:06:46 EST
CBC News

The New Democratic Party will introduce proposals for a
national childcare act when Parliament resumes in April, MP Olivia Chow said
Thursday.
Chow, speaking at a news conference in her Toronto riding, likened the NDP's plan to the Canada Health Act.
"Only through legislation can we protect and build on the existing child-care agreements the federal government has forged with the provinces," said Chow.
Stephen Harper's new Conservative government must honour the agreements the Liberals signed with the provinces last year, the NDP said in a news release.
"The provinces need to know their child-care commitment is sustainable, not being phased out within a year," it said.
The Liberals campaigned on a $5-billion child-care plan based on multi-year deals signed with the provinces in 2005.
Harper campaigned on a plan to phase out the deals beginning in 2007, and introduce $250 million in tax credits and $1,200 a year for each child. He has also pledged to create 125,000 child-care spaces within five years.
With 29 seats, the NDP could hold the balance of power in the 125-seat Conservative minority government.
All three opposition parties opposed the Tory plan throughout the campaign.
But Sara Landriault, from Fund the Child Movement, a national parenting group, criticized Chow's proposals for not addressing the needs of stay-at-home parents.
Landriault acknowledged the importance of day care, but said Chow seems to be favouring day care over help for stay at home parents.
"They are putting day care on a pedestal and parenting on the bottom," Landriault said.

The quote from Landriault has me a little miffed though.
"They are putting day care on a pedestal and parenting on the bottom," is total crock! There must be a proper balance of the two. And to state that the NDP are favouring day care over stay at home moms is making my hackles rise.

Every single stay at home mom, that I have met, have become SAHMs out of their own choice. It was a difficult decision for many due to the leaving behind of a career and a total change in social life. Those that did did so because of their desire to be SAHM moms, and because their families were financially stable enough for them to do so.
I WOULD LOVE TO BE A SAHM!!
But the reality is my husband and I are not financially stable enough for me to stay home and raise the children. With two incomes we can live comfortably and still put a tiny bit aside for their education. Off of one income we can barely pay the rent let alone eat.
If we had access to cheaper child care with high standards then I would have that much more money to put towards my children’s Education Fund and create higher level paying tax payers for the government!

Is Harper REALLY a Tory?

2006-02-09T04:19:00.000-08:00

Ahh the power of the English word.
One word can change the entire meaning ofa sentence and cause happiness or sadness.
But one single word can have two very different meaning depending on where you are from.
Eg: fag, mate, crock
Canada, England, Australian and The USA all have different visions when these words are spoken to them.

Well here is a most interesting article that I found in the Straight about what the word ‘Tory’ really means, and if Harper is really a ‘Tory’.

Stephen Harper is no Tory

By terry glavin

Publish Date: 2-Feb-2006

... ... ... ...

After the 1963 defeat of the progressive and nationalist regime of Conservative John Diefenbaker, Canada suddenly found itself spinning in an ever-tightening orbit around the United States. Television had a lot to do with it, and so did popular music, movies, literature, and art.
We’d always shared a language with the Americans, but our words often meant different things. To an American, for instance, to be “conservative” is to be right-wing, strongly suspicious of the state, and most likely some kind of Christian fundamentalist. But in Canada, conservative meant almost the opposite.
By the late 1960s, our political language was changing. It was becoming American.
Canada’s distinct “Red Tory” conservatives had always been wary of American empire, firmly federalist, politically centrist, and as suspicious of antiestablishment socialists on the left as they were of the individualists and free-market advocates on the right, in the Liberal party. To be a Tory in Canada was to cleave to the principles of universality and the common good, and to welcome the progressive role of the state in nation-building.
But by the 1980s, the fog lay so thick on the ground of Canada’s political language that our country’s venerable old Conservative party fell into the hands of the anti?nationalist and neoconservative Brian Mulroney. By the early 1990s, he’d destroyed the party, leaving it with only two seats in the House of Commons.
Then, from their base in the Albertan enclave of American Christian-fundamentalist sects and American-style conservatism, the neoconservatives regrouped. By 2004, they’d reconstituted the Conservative party under economist Stephen Harper, who is, essentially, a republican—which is the antithesis of a “conservative” in the traditional Canadian meaning of the word.
After Saskatchewan prairie farmer David Orchard failed in his Conservative party leadership bid in 2003, the Red Tories were scattered. A few stayed on. Some abandoned politics altogether. Some turned to the Green party or the Liberal party (Orchard openly supported the Liberals in the recent federal election), and many turned to the NDP. Dart said he was left a “political orphan” by it all, although he voted NDP on the January 23 ballot.
But there was a warning Dart wanted me to pass on to readers of this column.
Beware the “antistate” left, he said. It may be Harper’s loudest and most vociferous opposition, but listen carefully. It speaks the same language that Harper does. It cleaves to “liberal” ideas, but in the American meaning of the word. It is a “subtler imperialism” that threatens to render Canada incapable of articulating an effective, homegrown defence against neoconservatism.
Beware, in other words, else we end up with our own versions of Fox News shouting matches, and our own Al Frankens pitted against their Bill O’Reillys in the same degenerate American arguments, carried on in the same American language, and the same hoarse and hate-filled stalemate that has so horribly paralyzed and disfigured American politics.
There’s a way out, Dart said, but it involves the hard work of rediscovering our own history and remembering that the very basis of Canada’s distinct political culture is its remarkable capacity to integrate politics that run the gamut of Canadian liberalism, Canadian conservatism, and democratic socialism.
To rediscover these things, we have to reclaim our language, Dart said.
“That’s what George Orwell understood so well, When they control your language, they control your memory.”

Toyota - 100% North American

2006-02-08T22:11:00.000-08:00

This is a little off of the normal political posts I have been doing but I found this very interesting.

Toyota eyes more capacity in Canada

The Associated Press
Toyota Motor Corp., which could surpass General Motors Corp. as the world's No. 1 automaker as soon as this year, said Wednesday it will increase capacity at a new assembly plant it is building in Canada.
Annual production capacity at the factory planned for Woodstock, Ontario, will be raised to 150,000 units from an initial target of 100,000 units, the company said. The plant is scheduled to come onstream in 2008.
Total investment in the Woodstock facility, Toyota's second Canadian plant, will
amount to about 0 million, the company said. The factory will employ 2,000
people to make the RAV4 sport utility vehicle.
The expansion is aimed at increasing its ability to meet future demand in North
America, Toyota said.
The plant will give the world's second-largest automaker an annual North American production capacity of 1.88 million units in 2008.
On Tuesday, Toyota reported a 34 percent rise in profit for the quarter that ended Dec. 31 as sales jumped in North America and Asia. Toyota recorded a record high group net profit of 397.6 billion yen for the period on a 15 percent rise in sales to 5.33 trillion yen.
Toyota's growth comes at a time when U.S. automakers General Motors and Ford Motor Co. are struggling.
Toyota also said Tuesday it expects to sell 7.95 million vehicles for the fiscal year ending March 31 -- 80,000 vehicles fewer than the 8.03 million it projected in November but higher than the 7.4 million vehicles it sold the previous year. Toyota said sales growth in North America was unlikely to offset drops anticipated in Japan and the rest of Asia.
Toyota's projected annual sales figure for fiscal 2005 is still lower than GM's yearly sales, but if trends continue, Toyota will overtake the Detroit-based automaker in the next few years, some analysts say. Toyota has already passed Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford as the world's second-biggest automaker.
GM sold 9.17 million vehicles worldwide in 2005, the most it has sold in 27 years.
The Japan Times: Feb. 9, 2006
(C) All rights reserved

I actually work for a Japanese company that makes molding products; many of these products are for cars.
According to my marketing friend the import verses domestic buying ratio of car parts for the Big Three (Ford, GM and Chrysler) has tipped to the point that their importing of molding parts from cheap outsourcing companies has reached the most unbelievable high peak.
Yet Toyota tips in completely the other direction: their domestic buying is HUGE and their imports are tiny. Toyota’s sales have also gone WAY up well the other Big Three have been suffering greatly.

In reality, if you want to buy a Made-in-North America car buy a Japanese Toyota.

Something is missing here???

2006-02-07T22:06:00.000-08:00

There seems to be quite a bit missing from Harper’s new government.

First:

WOMEN!!

Political scientist Lisa Young said it was "stunning" that Ms. Ablonczy wasn't selected given her work for the party and her skills as a politician.
"It sends a negative message to the Reform wing of the party -- one of their most solid performers has been left off -- but it also sends a terrible message to women. The fact that somebody who has been effective in her position for years doesn't get into a Cabinet that has very few women in it."

Second:

Democray and the honesty that Harper tried to shove down our throats!

The Cabinet additions of Vancouver MP David Emerson, who deserted the Liberals to become Minister of International Trade, and Conservative organizer Michael Fortier, who'll be appointed to the Senate and serve as Minister of Public Works, also aroused controversy.
"I just can't believe what I'm hearing. It wasn't that long ago when this sort of thing would happen with a Liberal government -- the appointments to ministries without even being elected. That's not a democratic principle at all," said Doug, a caller to a popular Calgary radio show.
The selection of an unelected Cabinet member and an ex-Liberal minister doesn't look good for people hoping for rapid action on democratic reform, said Roger Gibbins, president of the Canada West Foundation, a Calgary-based think-tank.
"Both the appointments of Fortier and Emerson suggest that democratic reform is not going to be high on the agenda for this government," he said. "It's not good news on the democratic-reform front, but on the whole I'm impressed with the skill he exercised in pulling it together."
………
"Then he offers a Cabinet seat to someone who crosses the floor -- it's the first thing he does as
Prime Minister. And the second thing he does is appoints somebody to the Senate which he said was going to be done by election."

Third:

A seperation of Religion and State!!!

Has anyone else noticed that all of the cabinet ministers are card carrying Christians. There are no Muslims, Budhists, Scientologists (blaach) or Athiests up there. If I am wrong please prove it to me.
The man even held his own personal bible while being sworn in!

Fouth:

A whole lotta white!

As I mentioned before I am a mix-race family and the whiteness of the new government makes my eyes slide into unhappy slits. This is a very poor representation of the real human landscape of this great country.

Fifth:

Age:

I admit, youth and energy are great: I am in my early thirties. But these people are also mostly green in the political field and this worries me. The lack of a little more age also has me a little concerned about the obviously aging baby boomers in this country and their need for representation.
Pension is a huge problem and it is affecting people now not just later for us in the lower age bracket.

Sixth:

Harper wants to make government smaller: hmm, havent decided if this is such a good move or not.

Harper’s idea to make government smaller is to cut out some ministries that do play a fairly important roll in the general Canadian landscape.
The Minister of State – Multicuturalism (HUGE ONE!!!)
The Minister of State – Status of Women (HUGE ONE!!!)

There are others things missing but these are pretty important to me personally.

Child-care fights and cabinet postings

2006-02-07T17:24:00.000-08:00

Fight people fight!!!

I still honestly believe that the Conservative child-care plan will only cause disaster and cost considerable more money.

Then there is the recent jaw-dropping moments of Harpers new cabinet. He claims it to be a balanced cabinet but I see a lot of unethical crap taking place that he tried to assure us that he would never do.

Following Monday's swearing-in ceremony, Mr. Harper said he chose to bring both Mr. Fortier and Mr. Emerson into his cabinet to bolster regional representation. In addition to concern over Mr. Fortier's appointment, critics also blasted the decision to draft Mr. Emerson, who had been elected as a Liberal.
By Tuesday morning, at least one Internet petition was circulating, calling for Mr. Emerson's immediate resignation."We also call on Prime Minister Harper to keep his election campaign promise to respect the will of Canadians and request that he call a by-election and allow the voters of Vancouver Kingsway to elect to Parliament a member who represents their political beliefs and principles," the petition, circulated by a group calling itself Canadians for Ethical Political Behaviour, said.
Advocacy group Democracy Watch has also said it will complain to the federal ethics commissioner about Mr. Emerson's decision to accept a cabinet position in the Harper government even though he was still technically Liberal industry minister until the transition of power took place this week.
If I had voted for Mr. Emerson (I am not in that riding) I would be one angry voter right now and would sign any petition that came my way calling for a by-election. This was sneaky, dirty and WRONG!

And according to this Poll I am not the only one who thinks this way.

Harper's innabilities and our failing environment

2006-02-06T23:15:00.000-08:00

Ahh more fuel for the fire.

Harper has already spoken of the courts. I don't know why it is, but right-wingers always castigate courts for doing their jobs.
Thomas Jefferson, the intellectual godfather of the American extreme right, absolutely hated federal courts, and it had nothing to do with democracy because Jefferson didn't believe in democracy,

In places like the violence-plagued Jamaican areas of Toronto, real day-care is badly needed and the city has planned, based on agreements with the Liberals, to create many new sites. But Harper's campaign promise is instead for a monthly cheque, kind of a super baby-bonus, although not large enough to buy day-care for anyone. A cheque will
be welcomed by anyone getting it, and will be especially so by Harper's stay-at-home, mothers-in-apron crowd, but will it do anything to create good day-care where it is most needed? Does any honest person believe that a cheque will do what a well-organized, easily-accessed system would do, especially where serious problems already involve poor parenting?

………
The greatest threat Harper's minority represents is agreement with the Bloc Quebecois to de-centralizing programs with cash flowing to the provinces. The reason for the Bloc's support of such programs is obvious.

………
Harper's almost wet-eyed puppy attitude towards the United States is dangerous over any extended period, especially at a time of American unapologetic imperial hubris, the kind of thing that makes the ongoing, pointless destruction in Iraq possible. If the Liberals do things right, Harper will not have the time.

Then there is my genuine fear of the destruction of Canada’s treasured environment. Harper wants to pull out of the Kyoto Agreement, a move that makes me want to cry. I pray that it never happens. The Kyoto Agreement is not perfect but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Harper wants to go along with the Bush Administrations style of non-environmental protection and basic destruction. People claim that Canada’s air has gotten worse in the past years. Well why is that?

Does it have anything to do with our neighbours wind patterns?

What about the oil sands and Harper’s little bosom buddy, Klein and his desire to strip Alberta down to rock in order to suck every last drop of oil out of it to benefit Bush’s desire for more and more oil.

Record profits coupled with little or new regulation on an
industry gone venally berserk and it's off to the races once again in Canada as far as natural resources versus the health of the environment are concerned. This time the triggering mechanism is the tremendous oil reserve contained in Canada's oil sands (or tar sands if you're a traditionalist) deposits. Fueled by the US's insatiable desire for gasoline, and its historical dependence on Canada, the current boom is only expected to escalate in profit-taking frenzy.

How the hell is this going to help me financially?

2006-02-06T22:35:00.000-08:00

I find this whole thing is completely ludicrously STUPID.
The Tory child-care idea is such a waste of money it is beyond comprehension.
What the hell am I supposed to do with 100$ BEFORE TAXES ARE DEDUCTED a month?
How the hell is that supposed to aid me in my childcare decisions?
I currently pay 600$ a month for a semi-decent, but my daughter loves it, daycare facility. The Tory hand out barely covers my gas bill to get to this daycare facility.

The Tory cabinet kicked off their first day in office by
pledging to move ahead on July 1 with a campaign child-care plan that includes a
$1,200 a year payment for every child under age six.
…..
The first part of the
Tories' Choice in Child Care program would give $100 a month for each preschool
child in every family, regardless of income, to spend as they wish.

And only for kids under six.
Well what about the remaining two to three hours every day after my child’s school has finished when my child still needs some sort of child care before my job finishes.
I have heard many people screaming that the Tory plan basically pushes for woman to stay at home and not even think about the work place. Considering their basic lack of woman in their cabinet and their total contempt for woman’s body rights, I would say these people are not too far off the mark.

In the last election campaign, the Liberals promised to build
a $5 billion Quebec-style national child-care system that they predicted would
create 250,000 licensed child-care spaces by 2009.
….
The Tory program, which is expected
to cost about $10 billion over five years, has drawn fire from critics who say
it is a poor substitute for day-care and early child-care development plans.

My eyes might be deceiving me but there is a HUGE difference in numbers here.

Doing a bit of a Reality Check I wanted to see what these numbers mean. Basically neither the Liberal nor the Conservative plan works, but if I have to choose between the two I would definitely take the Liberal’s idea.

On their website, the Liberals say they expect their
child- care proposal to create 625,000 new spaces over the next five years at a
cost of roughly $8,000 a space. The $8,000 figure seems to be based on the
operating costs of Quebec's highly popular child care system, which charges
parents $7 a day, up from $5 when it was first introduced in
1997.

Seven dollars a day,
hmm lets see,
that is 7 times 20 days a month, not counting gas, totaling 140 dollars a month.
The Conservatives want to give me just under a hundred a month so that I am still paying almost five hundred a month keeping my kid in the same daycare she is in now.
WOW!
Huge difference in price there.

This is of course not counting the tax dollars that are involved. Tons of money from both sides, but taxes are taxes. I have never been one to complain about high taxes, but that is for another thread.

The real costs, according to Reality Check, are huge:

Ottawa was talking much more modest numbers–roughly
100,000 new daycare spaces–when the $5 billion was first put on the table a year
or so ago, a far cry from the 625,000 they are now
claiming.
…
The Conservative plan suffers from some of the same fiscal
optimism–it's $10,000-a-space tax credit may not be enough real incentive to
create the 125,000 new spaces the party is hoping for, especially in the absence
of other direct operating subsidies. The $10,000 is a one-shot, one space offer;
costs in subsequent years would have to be carried by the operator.
The plan also seems to have another flaw.
The $1,200-a-year allowance is to go to all families with kids five and under
and is estimated to cost a substantial $10.9 billion over five years. But
Statistics Canada reports there are 2,057,848 children five and under at the
moment which would bring the five-year cost of the program to $12.3 billion. The
Conservatives may be thinking that some of this money will be taxed back from
higher income families. But by the same token, families in this bracket who do
not require daycare can simply redirect the new-found money to a tax-protected
RESP and perhaps escape the taxman's claw altogether.

I can assure you, I am not in the tax bracket range that has the ability to scape-goat out of that RESP route.

Baiscally neither plan really works. Critics claim that the NDP’s election plan was actually the best one out there

Of the three major parties, the most generous child-care
program is offered by the NDP, which would begin at $1.8-billion for the first
year and would grow to $2.5 billion after four years.
The NDP would also increase the federal child tax credit by $1,000
over four years for lower income families.

Lets hope that the NDP uses their in house voting power to rip apart this stupid budget proposal.

A same-sex poll with a good ending

2006-02-05T17:39:00.000-08:00

Do you think the new parliament should reopen the same-sex marriage debate?

Globe and Mail Poll

I like this result!!

A Chilling Echo of Bush's Republicans

2006-02-02T06:44:00.000-08:00

Today’s article sums up so much that I fear.

A Chilling Echo of Bush's Republicans
Canada's 2006 Elections

By JOHN RYAN

The 2006 federal election has set the stage for a possible dismantling of Canada's distinctive social and economic fabric. The newly evolved Conservative Party, in many respects a chilling echo of the USA's Republican Party, is poised for a two-stage attack to reshape Canada in line with its Canadian version of America's neoconservative ideology.

With slightly more than a third of the popular vote and only 40 percent of the seats in Parliament, the Conservatives will form a precarious minority government. From this it's obvious that the majority of Canadians opposed the Conservative platform and their philosophy, but the opposition was split amongst three parties, leaving the Conservatives with the largest number of seats. From this perspective, the Conservatives are in no position to claim that they have a "mandate" to try to enact any of their reactionary policies. And nor would they have a chance, given that all three opposition parties oppose the Conservative platform and objectives. But herein lies the danger.

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In the end, if Harper gets his way, Canada will wind up with basically the same health care system as the Americans have--about the worst in the Western world. Some of the corporate media are already salivating at the prospect and are even urging the current minority government to begin health care "reform" so that "it leads to a broader rethinking of the failed Soviet-style public monopoly on which our health system is based" (National Post, January 25, 2006). However, to gain respectability in the current minority government, a communiqué was recently sent to Premier Klein that Alberta must observe the Canada Health Act.

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In the previous Parliament about half of Harper's members were "religious social conservatives," and perhaps an equal number or more were elected this time. Many of them, including Harper and the upper echelon of his party, have strong connections to the American Council for National Policy, an extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalist body that's been reputed to have poured in billions of dollars to right-wing Christian activists (Robert Dreyfuss in Rolling Stone, January 28, 2004). One of their objectives is to train a new generation of Canadian conservatives on how to bring religion into politics. It's to this organization that Stephen Harper said as a guest speaker in 1997 that "your conservative movement . . . is a light and an inspiration to people in [Canada] and across the world." (http://www.harperstiestousa.org/ ). Also in that speech he took it upon himself to denigrate Canada with the comment: "Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the word . . ." The influence of the Christian right can be summed up in a comment on the prospects of the Conservative Party by the Edmonton Journal (December 5, 2003, p. A16): "The [social conservative] bogeymen won't go away just because they'll be hidden from public view inside a new Conservative Party. They'll still be there, under the bed, waiting for a chance to spring up and spout their offensive anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-immigration, pro-gun, pro-death penalty views."

EEKKKK!!!!

Gay marriage ok

2006-02-01T03:08:00.000-08:00

HAAA

Nothing makes me happier than the majority of MP’s realizing that the world is changing. Gay- Marriage will NOT destroy this country nor destroy family, if anything it will make it stronger.

But the part that really gets me is that Harper wants to take this issue out of the courts and ignore the Canadian Charter of Rights.
This issue has already been fought and won in a court of law, where it belongs: politicians have no right to vote on this issue.

But according to the Globe and Mail, Harper might just lose this free vote holier than thou religious crap vote of his.

YAAA!

About this blog

2006-02-01T02:47:00.000-08:00

When campaigning started for the Canadian election I was at a total loss on who to vote for. I had never considered myself of one political party before and had honestly never paid too much attention to what the platforms were for each party. I never understood the difference between right and left politics; that is for sure.

So I started to read and research and see what other people had to say.

It didn’t take me too long to realize that I was most definitely NOT conservative and didn’t belong anywhere near the right side of politics. I started to speak a bit more about what I believed in:

a woman’s right to chose

Gay rights and marriage

Being a part of the Kyoto Agreement

Staying as far from Iraq as possible

Defending our natural resources

Keeping Canada whole

Keeping Canada’s Medicare intact

Education for all

Open immigration (I have a multi-cultural family)

Minimal paper work in the government

A strong UN

I am going to use this blog to bring to light news reports that catch my eye, to rant when the ranting over comes me, to point out fellow bloggers and their views and to express my opinion loudly.

If you don’t agree with my choices it is your democratic right to do so, just as it is my right to disagree with yours, but if you leave a comment be friendly and courteous.