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Posted by Scott Tribe on January 10, 2012, at 6:53 am |
Joe Oliver, Minister of Natural Resources, is apparently mad that his government’s plan to dump an oil pipeline through some of British Columbia’s pristine wilderness and have oil tankers come through to pick it up (and why should anyone be concerned about that, right? Exxon Valdez… cough) has been slowed down by environmental review hearings and thousands of people wanting to comment on it (and presumably express their opposition to the plan). He’s taken to calling Environmental groups and others who oppose this as “radicals”.
Pressed on what he defines as radical, he came up with a remarkably good explanation:
In an interview on CBC News Network, Oliver said radicals are “a group of people who don’t take into account the facts but are driven by an ideological imperative.”
Putting aside the debatable charge that belonging to the Sierra Club or being a member of a First Nations band concerned about the effects of a potential oil spill in their land means they and others who oppose this is “radical” (yet another attempt by the Conservative government to demonize its opponents and call them “enemies of Canada”), Joe Oliver should know what a radical is: his government has a long series of decisions that fit that definition precisely: dismantling the long-gun registry, wanting to build a series of multi-billion dollar prisons, destroyed the effectiveness of the long-form census, among other decisions, without taking into account anything to do with facts that support their decisions.
He speaks from first hand experience; this is one of the more radical governments in Canada’s governing history.
Posted by Scott Tribe on January 3, 2012, at 7:14 am |
The big news down in this area the past few days – specifically in London – is that the big company Caterpillar decided to lock all of its employees out at its London based ElectroMotive plant. It is trying to force its employees there to take more then a 50% wage cut in salary and benefits, as well as trying to get rid of the pension plan. You might think the company is in a bad position, but it has profits in the billions of dollars, while it gives its CEO a multi-million dollar salary. Times aren’t tough for it – it’s just decided it’s going to try to break the union and hang the threat of leaving the country and replacing the London plant with a plant in Indiana.
This is the same company and plant that Stephen Harper was touting tax breaks for three years ago, saying it was essential to keep the plant open in London. He has so far been silent on this issue – perhaps hiding behind the holidays as an excuse. It is no different today in London – a city that has close to 10% unemployment and cant afford losing several hundred more jobs because of corporate greed. Harper and the government should speak up publicly – as a company three years removed from getting a big tax cut that Harper himself announced shouldn’t be getting away with this type of behaviour – the very stuff the Occupy Wall St. movement was born over – and remind the company it wasn’t given tax breaks only to threaten to leave three years later, if the blackmail it’s trying to attempt on its workers fails.
Posted by Scott Tribe on December 27, 2011, at 3:04 pm |
I’ve been off for a few days enjoying the holidays – I’ve not gone anywhere online – don’t worry 
Anyhow, to all my political friends, foes, and in between, I hope you had a very Merry Christmas, and I wish you the best for the upcoming New Year.
Posted by Scott Tribe on December 22, 2011, at 7:21 am |
I don’t usually give out endorsements for internal Liberal Party elections to posts, (I’m just one of those “stupid bloggers”) and this probably won’t matter in the grand scheme of things Liberal, but here you are, as events of recent days and weeks have caused me to decide to openly state support for a couple of candidates.
As you’re aware from yesterday, I and others think the LPC new position on blogger “accreditation” – where bloggers who are not LPC delegates either have to go begging to the mainstream media for them to sponsor us, or else pony up 1100$ as a non-accredited “observer” (to pay for the Liberals renting the place, or maybe the bar? Beats me) is backwards, circling the wagons, and plain stupid – a needless controversy and very poor PR that could have been easily avoided.
James Morton, who is running for VP English in the LPC, came out yesterday at his campaign site and at his blog with a statement strongly stating that bloggers should be accredited as they have in the past. James Morton has blogged of course – is a member of Progressive Bloggers and the Liblogs affiliate – so he has some knowledge about how social media works. I applaud him for his stance. I’ve also been giving his platform over at his site a look-see (the call for “on-going and relevant communications” is a nice one), and I like what I see there. I also know James has gone out of his way asking some of us bloggers to support him – even though we’re just some of those “stupid blogger” types that some in this party apparently would rather ignore.
Therefore, I urge Liberals – particularly in the netroots/grassroots who are going as delegates to support James candidacy.
As for my other one Mike Crawley, who is running for the President of the LPC, also came out yesterday and said the same thing – as in the past, legitimate bloggers should be accredited with no strings attached. I’ve been keeping my eyes on Mr Crawley, and I’ve liked what I’ve seen and heard – and yesterday’s events enhanced that view. I think he might help stir some things up, so I’m stating here as well that I believe he is the person that should be the new LPC President.
If you’re going to preach “renewal” and “back to the grassroots” as being a theme for this party, you actually have to follow up actions with words. These are still words of course from these 2 candidates, but they’re at least specifics, compared to the generalities of others, and the actions of others in the party on some fronts in recent days are not encouraging. Hence, my support for these two folks.
Posted by Scott Tribe on December 21, 2011, at 7:32 am |
As some of you may know, the Liberal Party has decided that for their upcoming convention in January, they were not going to accredit bloggers to it. They preferred Liberals who wanted to come cover it to come as delegates.. and as for the rest – be that other partisan bloggers or unaffiliated ones, or even Liberal bloggers who weren’t delegates – you had to be sponsored by a media organization, or you could come as an observer – without the media accreditation.
This was explained several weeks ago to some of us. I wasn’t happy exactly, but it wasn’t enough to make me blog in protest. However, it wasn’t told to us at the time that for one to get observer status, you had to pony up 1100$ for the privilege of getting that status – and to a non-leadership convention no less.
That, folks, in my opinion, is plain stupid. Either the Liberal leadership hierarchy is looking for an easy cash grab, or it’s an openly blatant attempt to discourage bloggers – be they affiliated or not with the LPC – from bothering to attend… unless of course you’re an LPC delegate.. then you can have privileges…. A little message control as it were. This particular new edict on accreditation and observer status also applies to freelance journalists as well apparently – not just bloggers.. hence I’m leaning towards the latter reason.
It’s not often I agree with Stephen Taylor on something, or even link to his blog, but there you are – the LPC has in their infinite wisdom managed to do that. We as a party now have the dubiousness of being less open to social media folks then either the NDP or the Conservatives, and we’ve been going on for years how much more open we are as a party towards that. It was groundbreaking for this party to accept bloggers as accredited media back in 2006 at that leadership convention – Tait Simpson was the guy who spearheaded that.. but alas, it appears since the May disaster, some folks in the party has decided its time to circle the wagons and try to control the message.
Not everyone mind you: LPC Presidential Candidate Mike Crawley came out on Twitter last night and said bloggers should be accredited. James Morton, who is running for the VP English position, has also said the same thing at his blog and his website (James actually blogs, so he has experience in knowing the importance of social media). You can read some of my fellow Liberals blogposts on the topic here and here and here. I’m sure there will be others.
It was said to me once not too long ago by someone in the LPC familiar with the inner goings on of the party that the new folks in charge up there since May have little regard for bloggers – even those who are Liberal ones – the attitude according to this person was bloggers were unpredictable and not controllable – and there seemed to be some disdain for them. I would say that seems to be playing out here.
UPDATE: If you follow politics, you probably have seen Kady O’ Malley of CBC on Twitter and Susan Delacourt at the Toronto Star blog opining that this is bad policy. Feeling some heat over this perhaps, our Liberal Comms Director Sarah Bain (which seems to be increasingly becoming an an oxymoronic title in this party) now issues a press release. It looks great doesn’t it – except it isn’t a climbdown – it’s a restatement of their silly policy. Basically, it appears to have been issued by the LPC in an attempt to dispel the notion that they were banning bloggers outright - as opposed to just charging them 1100$ for the privilege of coming as a non-accredited observer.
Posted by Scott Tribe on December 20, 2011, at 7:03 am |
Apparently, some Conservative ministers are either bored in Ottawa as Christmas approaches, or they’re trying to seek out new “enemies of Canada” to demonize. The new foe of Canada is now apparently Chiquita and bananas; all because they don’t want to use tarsand-based oil. Kenny and Rona Ambrose are urging all red-blooded patriotic Canadians to boycott Chiquita bananas to support our biggest carbon producing oilfields in the tarsands.
Chiquita is no corporate patron saint, but if Rona Ambrose and Jason Kenny are urging a banana boycott of them, I’m turning around and making an effort to buy a few extra bananas from Chiquita this year – to reward them for good environmental stewardship in this instance – and to show Ambrose and Kenny that I do not support Canadian environmental policy under the Conservatives as it comes to cutting down carbon emissions – in the tarsands in particular.
Posted by Scott Tribe on December 17, 2011, at 9:14 pm |
I’ll be blunt – I’m not a dog person. I’m a cat person. I normally don’t go out of my way to comment on dog-related matters. I also don’t normally comment on stuff that is not political, but tonight, something has caused me to change gears and do that. My blogging compatriot Zoom of Knitnut.net (full disclosure: she’s a Progressive Blogger affiliate, though not as political as some of my affiliates are) was publicly musing about whether to get a certain dog or not.. when some folks at Friendly Giants Dog Rescue showed they should be changing the first word of the organization’s name. John Marshall of Trashy’s World – another Ottawa based blog, fills us in:
Seems Zoom (The Knitnut) put up an innocent post soliciting opinions about whether or not they should adopt a certain type of dog from a rescue organization. She said the following: We’re not crazy about the look of poodles. She’s not ugly, but she’s not drop-to-your-knees heart-meltingly cute either. I think we’re both feeling guilty about this. Is it terribly shallow of us to reject a sweet little dog on the basis of her looks?
Um. No. I don’t think so. Well, some self-proclaimed do-gooder forwarded this on to the owner of the rescue group and the group immediately disqualified Zoom and her family from adopting the varmint… judging their suitability as pet-owners solely based on these couple of lines from a blog post. That’s it. Here’s how put it:
Yesterday’s blog post, Should we adopt this puppy? has had some completely unexpected and bizarre repercussions. Someone forwarded the post to Kim Knapp, founder of Friendly Giants Dog Rescue, and she hated it. I don’t understand what her problem with it is, as she doesn’t seem to be able to articulate it, but she really hates the post. Not only is she not allowing us to adopt the puppy in question, and barring us from adopting any dog from FGDR, but she claims to have contacted all the other dog rescues in the Ottawa area. She says we should not be allowed to adopt a dog. She says “The rescue community is a very tight-knit family and stuff like this travels like wildfire. What I want to know is, STUFF LIKE WHAT? What have we said that would make anyone think we’re unfit to adopt a dog? She’s also threatening to sue me.
Personally – I don’t see the big deal. So what? You make a throwaway comment about the looks of a dog…The rescue org is threatening lawsuits if Zoom does not take down the reference to the organization – which is total BS.
It sounds like someone needs to have an eggnog or two over at FGDR and calm the heck down… they have literally defined what “thin-skinned” means. As for the threatened “lawsuit”, it’d be laughed so far out of court if they attempted it. Quite frankly, I think Zoom and her partner have a better chance of winning a counter-suit against these folks. I think some light should be shed on this organization to people if they continue to pursue this – I’m sure the publicity optics would just be wonderful for them… and particularly at this time of the year. Bah Humbug to this organization, for showing they have a lot of the Grinch in them.
Posted by Scott Tribe on December 13, 2011, at 6:57 am |
It’s become rather obvious that with a majority government, the Conservatives feel they can do whatever they want, now that the opposition can no longer restrain them from doing their worse impulses in a minority parliament. You’ve seen the recent court case that the Conservatives lost over the attempted crippling of the Canadian Wheat Board without putting it to a farmer’s vote as had been called for in the legislation (and which the Conservatives are threatening to ignore). We’ve now seen over the course of 2 days the leaders of the troubled Attawakaspit reserve threaten to go to court over the Conservatives arbitrarily forcing them to take a 3rd party accountant (at the band’s expense), and we now have Quebec about to take the Conservative government to court over the gun registry data it wants to retain to create its own gun registry.
I expect you’ll see a lot of litigation against this government over the remainder of this term – they have become the only check on this ideological Conservative government and its attempts to ram what it wants down everyone’s throats – laws or rules be darned.
Posted by Scott Tribe on December 8, 2011, at 7:56 am |
Well now, this is a ruling that should have some Conservative government officials fuming that they can’t always do as they please, even with a majority government:
A federal court judge has ruled that Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz’s tabling of a bill to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board without holding a plebiscite among affected farmers was illegal. In a ruling issued Wednesday, Justice Douglas Campbell agreed with the wheat board, which had argued that Ritz breached the Canadian Wheat Board Act by pushing ahead with the legislation without consulting with the board’s directors or holding a vote among producers.
The kicker quote from the Judge? This:
“This fact requires that, in proposing that a fundamental change be made to the [Wheat Board’s] structure, the Minister must act democratically. This is what [the amended Act] says. Not adhering to these values is not only disrespectful, it is contrary to law,” the judge said in his ruling. Parliament’s intention, he added, “is not to alter this structure without consultation and consent.” Judge Campbell added that the government’s actions were an affront to the rule of law, which was a fundamental constitutional imperative.
and this:
“Had a meaningful consultative process been engaged to find a solution which meets the concerns of the majority, the present legal action might not have been necessary. [...] The (Harper) government must be held accountable for its disregard for the rule of law.”
Of course, this government will appeal this – as is their right, and they still may get this overturned on appeal. What is more outrageous though is Agriculture Minister Ritz’s declaration that they’re going to basically press ahead and ignore this ruling before that, and try passing their new law anyhow. I’d be careful if I were the Conservatives and Minister Ritz; you might be able to ignore the rest of Parliament, but ignoring the courts when they issue rulings “inconvenient” to you is a bit more dangerous.
Posted by Scott Tribe on December 6, 2011, at 6:39 am |
A couple of instances of irony I see today – one slightly amusing, one not so.
The first is there is at least one Canadian at the Durban conference on the Environment that truly cares about the environment in Canada and world-wide when it comes to trying to slow/halt Greenhouse gas emissions. The irony is she’s not there representing Canada:
Green Party leader Elizabeth May has been registered as an official delegate at the United Nations climate change summit… by Papua New Guinea. The Canadian government declined to register the opposition MP from British Columbia, but the developing nation was more than happy to accommodate her request..She was however welcomed by the Canadian delegation at the international conference centre and met with the government officials after arriving on site. She said she has paid her own expenses to attend the conference.
I’d half expect the Conservative MP’s in the House to declare her a traitor when she gets home.
The other piece of irony – this time a sad one – is today is the 22nd anniversary of the Montreal Massacre of 13 young women at L’Ecome Polytechnique, and the Conservatives are hell-bent to destroy the very thing that was created in response to this tragic event – the long-gun registry… which is why you see some of the parets of those slain women angrily speaking out against what the Conservatives are doing. It will be up to an opposition party to put the long-gun registry back in place, once the Conservatives are removed from power.
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