Scott's DiaTribes

At least John Baird is being honest

Scott Tribe — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:20:19 +0000

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 [...]

Monday musings

Scott Tribe — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:56:48 +0000

Friday flipping

Scott Tribe — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:08:10 +0000

-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 [...]

Right-wing talk radio on the US is going to be frothier then usual from now until November.

Scott Tribe — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:07:18 +0000

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, [...]

If you care about the Canadian Environment…

Scott Tribe — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:12:10 +0000

.. 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 [...]

Fine by me

Scott Tribe — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:21:01 +0000

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.

[...]

The more (choice), the merrier

Scott Tribe — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:00:16 +0000

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 [...]

Parliamentary impotence is nothing new

Scott Tribe — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:10:58 +0000

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 [...]

Harper and Cons reputation taking a bit of a beating – a year too late.

Scott Tribe — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:26:31 +0000

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 [...]

Seems the Fraser Insitute has donations from foreign influences too, Mr Harper

Scott Tribe — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:19:57 +0000

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 [...]