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Posted by Scott Tribe on May 15, 2012, at 7:20 am |
Shorter John Baird: We didn’t like the advice we were getting about environmental policy or suggestions, so we killed the arm-length’s advisory board because of it. So, basically, if you’re an advisory board that gives the government advice or statistics that goes against the current Conservative government policy or ideology, expect to get nuked.
This group, by the way, was led by the former Chief of Staff to Finance Minister Flaherty, and was filled with Conservative appointees, not “tree-huggers” or lefty’s, so Conservative apologists can put that excuse on the shelf. In the case of the environment, the real reason is that this government is determined at all costs to develop the tarsands and any other resource based project it can – and does not tolerate dissenting reports on it or on anything that suggests it is wrong on current environmental policy.
Posted by Scott Tribe on May 14, 2012, at 4:56 pm |
More in brief stuff:
You might remember I was wondering how the Globe and Mail was expecting to get any money and not lose too many viewers online by going behind a pay wall – well, the Vancouver Sun and the Ottawa Citizen are doing so as well. These papers are in Canwest’s fold, I believe, and this news organization just announced layoffs. I know they’re desperate for revenue streams, but please explain to me how they think by making readers online pay for something a lot of them don’t want to pay for in print or are reading only because they live outside of the area is a) going to get them any appreciable revenues and b) keep their online reader membership from sinking like a stone.
– A very funny cartoon editorial I saw on Facebook, obviously aimed at President Obama’s recent declaration on gay marriage and his support for it:
Posted by Scott Tribe on May 11, 2012, at 7:08 am |
-Young Liberal Zach Paiken asserts that Canada is becoming more conservative – therefore, Liberals must follow that trend to get re-elected one day. I don’t see any polls or statistics in that story backing that claim up. Zach, if you’re not aware, has a bit of a reputation amongst some of us Liberals of being on the conservative side of the Liberal Party, so I’m not particularly surprised he’d try to claim Liberals need to move to the right, or be more “conservative”. He needs more then his assertions though to prove those claims. As an aside, our last 2 leaders in the LPC represented both wings of the LPC, but neither doing very well had less to do with how conservative or liberal they were, and how they came across to voters, in my opinion. In particular, Ignatieff was not exactly a member of the liberal wing of the Liberal Party, yet he led us to our worst showing ever.
- Coincidentally (or not), the next story I’m featuring is that The NDP increased their national lead in a Harris-Decima poll released today/yesterday. At the moment, people seem impressed with Tom Mulclair’s performance. On the other hand, the election is still three years away, and the Conservatives haven’t thrown their full smear machine at him. Still, Conservatives and Liberals should view him as a formidable opponent.
Lastly, I see a story today that the Globe and Mail is going to be introducing a paywall to their online edition in the Fall – so that you need to pay to read their news and stories, etc. They’re trying to find ways to raise money, and they figure if the New York Times can be successful with a paywall, so can they. The Globe, however, is not the New York Times ; they will not have an international audience to draw from. I would suspect that a lot of their online readers will simply stop reading the Globe online if they’re forced to pay to read the site. The question for the Globe is can they entice enough people to make it worth their while.
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Posted by Scott Tribe on May 10, 2012, at 7:07 am |
You might have heard that President Obama came out publicly and announced his support for same-sex marriage:
“It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
As expected, that set off a right-wing talk-radio torrent. The funniest rebuttal to that so far is this:
To my American friends, I say same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada for several years now. There has been no moral or social collapse because of it. I also ask what’s worse for the destruction of the “traditional” family – allowing same sex marriage for a small segment of the population, or having the divorce rate for “traditional marriage” spiraling upwards at around 30-50% after several years, or whatever the number is (it’s high). I’d pick the latter.
Hopefully, folks down here (or most folks) will chill about this, and take note of some of the folks “track records” like Rush when he carps about the destruction of the moral fabric of society.
Posted by Scott Tribe on May 8, 2012, at 7:12 am |
.. and what Harper and the Conservative is doing to it, wanting to do to Canadian environmental laws, and how they are trying to silence environmental advocates dissent, check this site out:
June 4th is the day of action for the new alliance of environmental groups that has formed. The Conservative government is taking it seriously enough to have Natural Resources Minister (and head Big Oil cheerleader of this government) Joe Oliver come out and issue a statement about it.
I’ll be keeping an eye on how this is able to galvanize Canadian opinion for it – Canadians do care about the environment, and their environment – the question is whether enough can make enough noise to force the Harper government to listen – and it will only listen if it feels it has the potential to lose voters in the next election.
Posted by Scott Tribe on May 7, 2012, at 7:21 am |
From Carol Goar’s column in the Star yesterday:
Stephen Harper’s government is starting to show its age..a telltale sloppiness is creeping in. This is the point at which the Prime Minister either renews his government or lets the small mistakes — the ethical lapses, the hyperpartisanship, the unilateral pronouncements, the dubious accounting, the displays of arrogance — turn into costly, corrosive habits. The problem is correctable. But Harper has taken no action to correct it…A smart boss would cut his losses. Harper is pressing ahead..his middle-aged government is overdue for a housecleaning. He has overlooked the slips, ignored the misjudgments and protected the underperformers past the point of prudence.
Initial reaction: tell me something and others of like mind that we don’t already know. Secondly, I, in my own partisan manner, hope that Harper continues to ignore stuff like this and not clean up his act. The old saying is that governments defeat themselves, so continued stuff like what is mentioned by Goar as examples is fine by me in the long run if it gets rid of Harper’s government in 3 years. I’ll take short term pain (and outrage) at what Harper does if the end result is his electoral defeat and removal from office.
Posted by Scott Tribe on May 2, 2012, at 7:00 am |
I sincerely hope this is true:
At least a half dozen Liberal leadership candidates could be gearing up their campaigns as soon as this summer. Liberal party president Mike Crawley says he knows of about “six or seven” people who are thinking of entering the contest, which he expects to heat up by July…Among the rumoured candidates are former 2006 leadership candidates Gerard Kennedy, Scott Brison and Martha Hall-Findlay, as well as current MPs Marc Garneau, Denis Coderre and David McGuinty. David Bertschi, who ran unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate in Ottawa in the last election, has said he’s thinking of running. too.
Bob Rae of course is also rumoured to be a candidate. The point is that I think the more candidates that enter the race the better. It will give potential voters more of a choice of philosophies and styles out there, and perhaps that will generate more interest. With the voting rules for this changed and opened up, (no more leadership conventions with delegates), it will be important that folks be given incentive to vote.
Posted by Scott Tribe on May 1, 2012, at 7:10 am |
Andrew Coyne has a column where he rages over Parliament’s redundancy or seeming lack of influence – specifically over Bill C-38, the Conservatives “omnibus bill”, which basically combines several different type of legislation that could and should be debated on their own merits into one big monstrosity.
On the one hand, I do agree that what the Conservatives are doing is intellectually dishonest. They’d rather slip all these bills under 1 umbrella, so they aren’t forced to engage into debate or discussion on individual pieces of legislation and take multiple shots by the opposition or media/public. Take the big hit at the start, rather then have multiple smaller hits on the way (remembering that they’ve taken some heat for separate issues before this).
On the other hand, I’d have to say that Parliament probably has been “impotent” for far longer then Harper’s reign.. particularly in a majority government situation, where the government of the day basically got free reign to do whatever it pleased. Harper isn’t the first to use his majority to put through legislation however he chooses – he’s just been far more brazen about it – and he was like this even in his minority governments.
Posted by Scott Tribe on April 27, 2012, at 7:26 am |
Two new polls out today – one from Forum Research in the Star shows the NDP ahead of the CPC by 3%.. the other by Nanos at the Globe shows the CPC ahead, but in an MOE dead heat.
Pollster are going to get looked at skeptically for a bit after the Alberta election results, but it’s not a shock to see the CPC drop after the Robo-Con vot suppression issue (still ongoing), the F35 scandal, and other various CPC misdeeds. My two thoughts are: it’s too bad the public didn’t realize this a year ago before voting for a majority government, but then again, perhaps it needed to be a majority for the CPC to start showing off their true colours. Stuff like this does accumulate over four years and does stick.
Two, as a Liberal supporter.. not pleased we’re stuck in the low 20′s.. but a) I’ll wait till we pick a permanent leader before getting too worried, and b) as an anti-Harper, anti-CPC guy, if it’s the NDP taking away his vote, so be it. At least someone is.
Posted by Scott Tribe on April 26, 2012, at 7:19 am |
Perhaps if the Conservative Senate is going to conduct an investigation into the amount of foreign influence pouring into Canadian environmental organizations, it can add the Fraser Institute to the list as well for checking. I’ll not hold my breath on that of course. The mantra up here is to investigate organizations that are critical of the Conservatives, but if you’re on their side or promoting their interests, that’s just being patriotic, or something.
..the Vancouver Observer has learned that since 2007, foreign oil billionaires the Koch brothers have donated over half a million dollars to the “charitable” right-wing Fraser Institute. According to U.S. tax documents, the Fraser Institute received $150,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation in 2008, $175,500 in 2009, and another $150,000 in 2010. The grants were purportedly for “research support” and “educational programs”.
While the federal government and pro-oil lobbyists have taken aim at environmental charities for allegedly violating the Canadian Revenue Agency’s legal limits for “political activity”, the Fraser Institute and its charitable status remain unquestioned. And as the Koch Foundation’s tax data shows, they’ve received a significant amount of “foreign funding” to help influence Canadian policy—which is precisely what environmental groups have been accused of doing.
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