Yet Another Desperate and Despicable Ploy: More Harper Narrowcasting

The politics have a look of desperation about them. As they see their electoral chances diminishing among the wider Canadian public with each new sordid revelation, it looks like the Harper crowd is doubling down with its base, a strategy that I questioned in my earlier post today.

Steven Blaney, who could only be considered a Public Safety Minister in a Canada that has grown decidedly Orwellian, has announced a plan that will erode public safety but perhaps fire up the base. CBC News reports the regime minion has announced the Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act which would make life easier for many Canadian gun owners.

Currently, gun owners in Ontario, Quebec and P.E.I. have to apply to each province's chief firearms officer when they want to transport a restricted or prohibited weapon. Under the new rules, gun owners in all provinces would get permission to transport weapons as a condition of their licence.

But wait! There's more!

The government also plans to allow a grace period for gun owners with expired permits.

And even more ominously, this cryptic observation:

The new rules would also give the federal government more say in decisions previously made by each province's chief firearms officer.

Finally, you may recall this dandy little weapon that the RCMP banned earlier this year:

The national police force changed the Swiss Arm rifle from restricted to prohibited, the main reason being that the guns could be easily converted to be fully automatic. Automatic weapons, which shoot a spray of bullets with one trigger pull, are illegal in Canada.

In March, the government said it was troubled by the decision, and gave gun owners permission to keep the weapons, via a two-year amnesty.

Under the new plan, gun owners would also be allowed to use the weapons, in essence restoring them to their previous status.

Indeed, there is much to chew upon here for a segment of the Canadian population.

Why Is The Harper Regime Surveilling Us?

It's a good question, but unfortunately and predictably, the government is providing us with no answers.

As reported in today's Star,

The federal privacy watchdog’s concerns over electronic snooping are being met with silence from members of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet.

Interim Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier directly appealed to four cabinet ministers and the federal government’s chief bureaucrat to reform Ottawa’s electronic snooping practices between February and March. Only one cabinet minister, Treasury Board President Tony Clement, has responded to Bernier’s letter.

Meanwhile, a Star reader offers a pungent assessment of how our country has devolved under the Harper regime:

Re: Conservative snooping Orwellian, Letter May 5

I have been musing of late about so many events happening in our beloved country, at the speed of light it seems. One thing sits very uncomfortable with me. Communism was defeated by the progress of democracy and economics in most of the communist countries but here we are in Canada using the very same methods they used to control their citizens — every piece of personal and public information is being scrutinized and stored by threatening the people who provide us our freedom to the world via the Internet and our personal habits of buying, education, business, and so on.

What the hell happened? Democracy where are you?

Carole A. Zaza, Toronto

And finally, this brief video points out some of the things we should be thinking about as the regime continues its unwholesome, undemocratic and wholly unprecedented intrusions into our privacy:

Two Sentiments That Will Resonate With Many

Today's Star brings two letters, one on despotic rule and the other on electoral reform, that many would find hard to argue against:

Harper’s on a lonely road to political isolation, April 15

Aristotle once remarked that all forms of government — democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, tyranny — are inherently unstable, all political regimes are inherently transitional and that the stability of all regimes is corrupted by the corrosive power of time.

To prolong the viability of democratic form of government, his advice had been constant turnover of leaderships to renew the political process.
After eight years in power, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is clearly showing the signs of “the corrosive power of time,” as evident from the litany of problems outlined by Chantal Hebert.

He should, therefore, stand down, allowing a new leader to renew the political process. Time for change and renewal has arrived in Canada.

Mahmood Elahi, Ottawa


Why does anybody call Canada a democracy? It has taken nearly eight years for Stephen Harper’s stranglehold on his party and the country to start to loosen – and in all that time he has never enjoyed majority voter support.

We still can’t be sure Harper and Co. will be removed from office in 2015. It’s only a majority faint hope. Canadians will pay many millions to finance the federal election in 2015 — and then watch the pre-democratic voting system deliver, as usual, a House of Commons that bears no predictable relationship to what voters actually said and did. It could re-elect the Harper Conservatives with even less public support than they had last time.

The country needs new leaders who show real respect for citizens and taxpayers – by making a firm commitment to equal effective votes and proportional representation in the House of Commons. Representative democracy in Canada is 100 years overdue.

John Deverell, Pickering

I Come Not To Praise Flaherty

I have thus far avoided writing about Jim Flaherty's passing for a very simple reason; it is difficult, if not impossible to keep separate his family's personal loss with the man's record as a politician. Yet two pieces I read in yesterday's Star convinced me otherwise, and they allow me to offer my own views without disrespect for the dead.

The first, a fine piece of writing by Jim Coyle, is entitled Jim Flaherty gave up so much to serve us. His thesis is this:

...our politics would ... improve mightily if the Canadian public saw politicians as human beings much like themselves, often making very large sacrifices, rather than as contemptible cartoon figures of vanity, greed and corruption.

His column goes on to describe the tremendous sacrifices Flaherty made in his 25 years of service: forgone remuneration, which would have been likely totaled in the millions given the lucrative law practice he left upon entering politics, and more importantly, the precious time with his family that was never to be recovered.

Coyle states:

But let’s be honest. A life in politics, and especially in its higher reaches, is inherently incompatible with the everydayness and unpredictable crises of family life.

The job, more than most, is all-consuming. By necessity, it demands living away from home part of most weeks. Even when not in Ottawa, the travelling through ridings, the out-and-abouting, the constituency work is unrelenting.

But his piece, which ultimately is an effort to remind us of how politics can still be seen as a noble calling despite the widespread public cynicsm that currently prevails, omits something crucial to any evaluation of Jim Flaherty in particular, and politicians in general. The sacrifices Coyle discusses, while no doubt real ones, become tainted, cheapened and debased when they are made in service to a dark lord. And Flaherty had two such masters: the hideous former Ontario Premier Mike Harris, who did more than any other Canadian politician in memory to disseminate dissension, disunity and class hatred, all of which Flaherty was a willing part.

His second dark master was, of course, Stephen Harper, whose myriad measures to unravel our social, economic and political frameworks need no recounting here.

So without question, Coyle is right in reminding us that Flaherty sacrificed much to be a part of public life. But surely an honest evaluation of that life cannot be made separate from his and his masters' records.

Which brings me to the second piece I read yesterday, by Thomas Walkom, entitled CBC cuts show other side of Jim Flaherty. While acknowledging the grievous loss suffered by his family and friends, the writer makes this key assertion:

... it was under Flaherty’s watch as finance minister that the latest cutbacks in federal government funding to CBC occurred. ....he was also an integral part of a government determined to smash or cripple much of what makes Canada a livable country.

His death is a reminder that good people can do bad things for the best of motives.

Walkom broadens his perspectives beyond those cuts that will untimately destroy the CBC:

Flaherty’s various budgets have called for more than $5 billion in annual spending cuts. Successive parliamentary budget officers have noted that the vast majority of these cuts are to come from as yet unspecified public services.

On top of these, the federal government has decided to dramatically scale back spending on medicare.

Those health-care transfer cuts, announced by Flaherty in 2011, won’t kick in until well after the next election.

The cutbacks in employment insurance, the decision to raise the age of eligibility for old-age security, the reductions in transfer payments to Ontario, the lessening of environmental enforcement — all were collective decisions of the Harper cabinet.

All ministers bear responsibility for them.

But to forget that the former finance minister was a critical part of this ministry is to do him no favours.

And surely, it does no favours to Canada if we bury Flaherty's questionable record along with his earthly remains.

...Gone?

The tale of Eve Adams gets increasingly melodramatic, and increasingly reminiscent of Helena Guergis. That she will suffer Helena's political fate is looking more likely with each passing day.

Readers may recall that prior to her fall from grace, Helena Guergis, at the Charlottetown airport in February of 2010, allegedly threw a tantrum and screamed obscenities at staff who asked her to take her boots off for security screening. An airport worker said it was among the worst meltdowns he had ever seen.

Fast forward a few years and a similar outrageous sense of political entitlement was acted out this past December by Ms Adams who, it seems, showed her displeasure over a bit of ice remaining on her bumper after a car wash by blocking some gas pumps for 15 minutes at an Ottawa gas station.

John Newcombe, a Conservative supporter and the owner of the Island Park Esso station in Ottawa’s west end, said he contacted the Prime Minister’s Office in January to complain about an incident with Adams in December 2013:

An analysis of the incident can be seen here, from yesterday's Power and Politics:

Finally, also like Guergis, who suffered her lethal blow over allegations of misuse of her office, Ms Adams is being accused of misusing her political clout in seeking the nomination for the riding of Oakville North-Burlington. It has already cost her affianced, Dimitri Soudas, his job as executive director of the Conservative Party of Canada.

On yesterday's Power and Politics, Jeff Knoll, a board member of the riding association in question, explained why he signed a letter asking the prime minister to look into allegations about MP Eve Adams:

One wonders what particular brand of bottled water our elected public 'servants' drink from. If the kind of outrageous and contemptuous behaviour evinced by Ms Adams and countless others proves to come from something they drink, the product should come under immediate investigation by Health Canada and recalled.

Then again, perhaps it is just the Kool-Aid that is served to the entire Harper caucus.

A Simple Truth - UPDATED

But one, of course, that our political overlords have no interest in considering:

Re: Polls expert fears Bill C-23 imperils voters' rights, March 26

The response from Minister Pierre Poilievre’s office that “the Fair Elections Act simply requires voters to demonstrate who they are and where they live” shows a lack of understanding of the situation that many Canadians (by some estimates about 120,000) in remote areas, seniors homes and some students find themselves in. Many of these people simply cannot prove on paper where they live.

To disenfranchise them by eliminating the vouching alternative is patently unfair and is contrary to the democratic principle that all citizens have a right to vote. This clause, along with the one that restricts the right of the Chief Electoral Officer to encourage Canadians to vote, should be removed from the Bill.

Bill Wensley, Cobourg



H/t The ChronicleHerald

An Evening Reminder Of Just How Hostile Stephen Harper Is To Canada's Long-Term Interests

For more information, this link is a good place to start.

Another Guest Post From The Salamander

I sincerely hope that other commentators on my blog do not think I am playing favourites when I repost another's comments as a guest post. I sincerely welcome and value all of your comments. My reason for reposting The Salamander here, who offered the following comments in response to my piece, On Voter Engagement, is probably best expressed by my response:

Hi Salamander. As usual, your facility with language, your capacity for lacerating metaphor and simile in assessing the morass we currently find ourselves in, deserves a wider audience. I am therefore reposting your commentary as another guess post. Thanks again for your always welcome contributions to the political discussion.
...........................................................................

.. in regard to resolving complex issues such as voter disengagement, vote suppression/moving, electoral reform or investigating electoral fraud..
I am hardly optimistic...

We currently have a government struggling under its leader Stephen Harper
and his appointed Ministers of Environment - past and present
and Ministers of Department of Fisheries and Oceans - past and present ..
whining.. as a Federal Judge decrees they are breaking the law..
They believe they are above the law.. and Her Honor states they did not even bother to deny this..

All, including Stephen Harper, plead unable to grasp over the last 5 or 6 years, the relationship of Species At Risk Canada (SARA) to 'Critical Habitat' .. That's fish to water, caribou to boreal graze, seabird to shoreline, orca to inlet, polar bear to ice .. things that Canadian schoolchildren 'get' without trying very hard.. whether by parental osmosis.. cereal boxes or picture books when they were two years old...

You think these elected failures can hyperjump past their mental shortfalls to concepts of 'fairness' .. or deep concepts of their constituents? They probably can't spell 'constituent' .. 'poll' is more their level .. or 'robo' ...
Democracy is deep space to them .. a quantum leap over their fatuous heads

We won't need to kick these scumbag loser asshats out of Parliament ..
No .. we will will need to lead or herd them out like sadly inbred sheep ..
or dull cattle that have brains like tiny walnuts ..

Forget the Sergeant At Arms
We need a shepherd with dogs to git them dogies moving ASAP
And disinfect afterwards.. they may even be rabid ..

A Motivational Video

If Stephen Harper's contempt for the things we hold dear as Canadians isn't reason enough to vote, what is?

That Didn't Take Long

Bob 'Mad Dog' Runciman has a solution for those pesky protestors who dare embarrass the Prime Minister.

The Responsibility We All Must Assume

In a column entitled A disheartening year in Canadian politics published on Dec. 20, The Globe's Jeffrey Simpson recounts the corruption, buffoonery and scandals that permeate our municipal, provincial and federal governments. Whether we look at the antics of Toronto's Rob Ford, the widespread venality, graft and ties to organized crime endemic to Montreal politics as revealed by the Charbonneau Commmision, the gas plant scandal in Ontario or the diseased mentality surrounding Senategate, there seems little from which the average citizen can take heart.

In response to that column, a Globe letter-writer, Caroline Wang from Vancouver, offers an antidote that I think all of us who write progressive political blogs would heartily agree with. Rather than letting our disgruntlement and disillusionment be a reason to disengage from the political process, it should prompt all of us to channel our anger and become part of the solution:

Re A Disheartening Year In Canadian Politics (Dec. 20):

So isn’t it up to the “plenty of honourable and hard-working people” of Canada to change the unacceptable “culture of deceit, backscratching and venality” that appears endemic in political life and that caused the annus horribilis?

Jeffrey Simpson asks a good question: “How was it, with so many people complicit in the corruption for so long, that no one blew the whistle?”

If we want to see a change to the way of doing business that will promote a culture and system of legality and honour, this can only be done by Canadians who are “mad and disillusioned.”

The answer is not turning off. It is becoming more involved in order to challenge what is wrong.

Working together to stamp out the disease of “widespread, prolonged and systemic corruption” wherever it happens to be in our society is the first step to recovery.

Electing exemplary leaders who will shape our future and create a legacy that reflects and defines our national character is the only way to create the best from Canadian politics.

May 2014 mark the year that increasing numbers of us channel our inner Peter Finch and use our anger and our passion for a better Canada by devoting at least part of each day to learning more about the people and parties who have betrayed the trust that the electoral system has given them.

A Good Question

But what is the answer?

Re: ‘Golden age’ for Poland caps 500 years of pain, Dec. 22

Seeing the statement “communism’s iron grip” was too much. What about capitalism’s iron grip? Communism has come and gone in Poland, Russia and many other countries. But we have endured capitalism for centuries and it shows no sign of abating.

It tells us that we live under democracy, when in fact we can do nothing to stop the actions of mean and disgusting people like Stephen Harper and Rob Ford, when binding treaties are negotiated without our knowledge, when we are not permitted to know when we are eating genetically modified food, when the poor get poorer while the rich get richer. Capitalism has resulted in climate change, of which there is no end in sight, other than the destruction of the world.

Our so-called “democratic” structures were set up centuries ago by the rich and powerful to attempt to make capitalism run smoothly, and, above all, to guarantee the system’s persistence. It has not run smoothly, but it has stayed in place.

How do we extricate ourselves from the iron grip of capitalism?

Ken Ranney, Peterborough

H/t The Toronto Star

Tory Policy-Making: The Dangers Of Simplistic Thinking

Fallacies of reasoning are easy traps to fall into. Whether it is absolutist thinking, straw man arguments or any number of other errors of thought, we are all prone to them, and I am sure that I am no exception. Our best defense against such faulty thinking is to try to cultivate our critical faculties as much as we can; one of the best ways of doing so is to read widely and deeply. There is no alternative, unless wants to make a virtue of simplistic and lazy cognition.

The latter, of course, is what the Harper regime has excelled at since it was first elected. Most issues have been reduced to an either/or option; perhaps the most infamous was the facile and inflammatory statement Vic Toews made over those who opposed his failed Internet surveillance bill, namely that people “can either stand with us or with the child pornographers.”

The Tory propensity for reducing issues to their simplest forms has done a grave disservice to the people of Canada, who have essentially been told time and again that they need not think deeply and engage vigorously with issues of public policy, but rather let an autocratic majority government decide instead what is best for them. People increasingly seem more and more passive when told, for example, that now is not the time to improve the CPP, OAS must be delayed to age 67, or home mail delivery must end, all due to cost constraints.

And yet, with critical thinking, there is always room for alternative approaches to public policy. One such instance can be found in Canada Post. Although a crown corporation with an ostensible degree of independence from government influence, the recent decision to end home mail delivery and raise stamps to $1 each has all the earmarks of a government bent on the erosion and ultimate dismantling of public programs and institutions. No compromises were seriously entertained, for example moving to three-day a week delivery to cut costs. It is a classically absolutist policy decision that will ultimately see the end of Canada Post.

In his column in Saturday's Star, Thomas Walkom introduces a notion that could, in fact, make Canada Post very profitable and facilitate the retention of delivery services: a postal savings bank, an idea that has been advocated by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

Arguing that Canada Post has the technology and infrastructure to make such a venture both possible and highly profitable, Walkom points to New Zealand, France, Italy and Britain as successful examples of the concept:

New Zealand’s postal banking system, which was re-invigorated just eight years ago, now accounts for 70 per cent of the profit earned by that country’s post office. The comparable figure for Italy is 67 per cent.

France’s postal savings bank accounts for 36 per cent of its postal service’s pre-tax earnings. Britain is privatizing mail delivery. But it is not privatizing its system of post offices and postal savings banks. They’re too lucrative.

Indeed, as Walkom points out, former Canada Post CEO Moya Greene, who was hired away by Britain's Royal Mail, was an advocate of postal banking:

Speaking to a Senate committee three months before taking up her Royal Mail job, Greene said Canada Post was seriously considering the idea of offering full financial services.

“We . . . need to diversify the revenue stream and be in wholly different businesses than we are today,” she told the committee. “I note, for example, that many postal administrations have made a success of banking.”

Another compelling and potentially gratifying reason to offer such service resides in the conservative nature of our chartered banks which, many feel, should be shaken up a bit by competition. It is their conservative nature that is partly responsible for the fact that upwards of 15 per cent of Canadians are estimated to have no bank accounts at all, making them easy prey to the payday loan operations whose rates in Ontario can exceed 540 per cent.

So again, some reflection, analysis and good policy-making could solve two problems: the end of home delivery and the usurious interest rates that the poor without bank accounts must contend with.

But the Harper cabal is one that cares neither for nuance nor cerebration. After all, the solutions to problems are simple, reflected in just these mantras: privatization good, public ownership bad, and long live the 'free' market.