The Sad Record Of Our Last Parliamentary Session

Star reader David Buckna, of Kelowna, B.C., offers a searing and accurate assessment of our latest session of Parliament:

Federal MPs are back in their ridings for the summer, and will be out hitting the barbecue circuit. When I think back to the second session of the 41st Parliament (January to June), the following things come to mind:

1. The Orwellian-sounding Fair Elections Act. More than 150 university professors signed a petition stating that the Fair Elections Act “would damage the institution at the heart of our country’s democracy: voting in federal elections.” On April 25, Minister of State for Democratic Reform Pierre Poilievre begrudgingly submitted 45 changes to the bill in a bid to quell opposition to it.

2. Tory attacks on Chief Elections Officer Marc Mayrand, former auditor general of Canada Sheila Fraser, and Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.

3. Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino’s haughty manner in dealing with veterans and their families.

4. Speaker of the House of Commons Andrew Scheer finding Conservative MP Brad Butt’s Feb. 6 remarks prima facie grounds of breach of parliamentary privilege. On Feb. 6, Butt said in the House: “I have actually witnessed other people picking up the voter cards, going to the campaign office of whatever candidate they support and handing out these voter cards to other individuals, who then walk into voting stations with friends who vouch for them with no ID.” On Feb. 24 Butt told the House that his earlier statement was “not accurate.”

5. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program fiasco, in which Employment Minister Jason Kenney had allowed it be abused too often by employers.

6. The deafening silence of Conservative MPs after the government announced on June 17 that it has given conditional approval to the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. The Sierra Club B.C. called the approval a “slap in the face” for British Columbians. “But ultimately, it changes nothing: the Enbridge pipeline will not get built,” said spokeswoman Caitlyn Vernon.

On June 18 NDP MP Nathan Cullen said on CBC’s Power & Politics: “Where are the Conservatives? And we know that 21 B.C. Conservatives that represent — allegedly — their constituents have been under their desks on this thing because they know back home the recent polling says 1 in 5 people in the last election who voted Conservative are switching their vote on this issue. They know that they’re in trouble.”

This is going to be a ballot box issue in 2015.

A Guest Post From The Mound Of Sound

Steve Harper and his chums have transformed cognitive dissonance from an affliction into an art form. Harper’s prime directive, his overarching quest, is to get as much Athabasca bitumen as possible to foreign buyers as quickly as pipelines and tanker ports can be built. Now square that single-minded purpose with the report just released by Beelzebub’s own government that “Canada faces greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather as a result of climate change, as well as increased risks to human health from pollution and the spread of disease-carrying insects.”

“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to lessen the magnitude and rate of climate change, but additional impacts are unavoidable, even with aggressive global mitigation efforts, due to inertia in the climate system” the report said. “Therefore, we also need to adapt – make adjustments in our activities and decisions in order to reduce risks, moderate harm or take advantage of new opportunities.”

It may strike you as odd, this dire warning coming from a government intent on increasing Canadian emissions through a targeted five fold expansion of the Tar Sands while spending next to nothing on adaptation initiatives and risk reduction. As Calgary languished underwater last summer, the World Council on Disaster Management held its annual conference in Toronto. One speaker was Dr. Saeed Mirza, professor emeritus at McGill University. Focusing on what he called decades of neglect of Canadian infrastructure, Dr. Mirza said that Canada needs to invest hundreds of billions of dollars, possibly upwards of a trillion dollars, on repair and replacement of our essential infrastructure. Like most of these warnings, it comes with the added caution that, if we don’t overhaul our core infrastructure soon, we will pay dearly for our neglect later.

It’s important to bear in mind that, while early onset climate change is already here, as even the Harper government’s report admits, it is going to worsen through the remainder of this century and, quite probably, for a good era past that. The extreme weather we’re seeing today is expected to become more extreme – in frequency, duration and intensity – with each passing decade. A report released Tuesday by Risky Business, a climate change research initiative established by Michael Bloomberg, Hank Paulson and Tom Steyer, put a physiological dimension on what we’re facing. “As temperatures rise, towards the end of the century, less than an hour of activity outdoors in the shade could cause a moderately fit individual to suffer heat stroke,” said climatologist Robert Kopp of Rutgers University, lead scientific author of the report. “That’s something that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world today.”

The body’s capacity to cool down in hot weather depends on the evaporation of sweat. That keeps skin temperature below 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 Celsius). Above that, core temperature rises past 98.6F. But if humidity is also high, sweat cannot evaporate and core temperatures can increase until the person collapses from heat stroke. “If it’s humid you can’t sweat, and if you can’t sweat you can’t maintain core body temperature in the heat, and you die,” said Dr. Al Sommer, dean emeritus of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at John Hopkins University and author of a chapter on health effects in the new report.

While climate change is plainly the greatest threat facing mankind this century, a genuinely existential threat, it’s one that triggers indifference, acquiescence or resignation in far too many of us. The potential enormity of climate change in all its dimensions – environmental, economic, political, societal, military – is almost too much to grasp. This saps us of the collective will needed for timely action on adaptation and mitigation initiatives. We are firmly immersed in the “boiling frog” syndrome. We don’t like to dwell on the future or hear accounts of what we have in store for our grandkids and their children. The burden of rising to the challenge, even if we don’t really know what that burden is, seems inconvenient, something that can surely be deferred for now. Yet if we don’t rise to this challenge, if we don’t begin to understand climate change in all its dimensions, we probably won’t be able to take advantage of the best remaining options available to us before they’re foreclosed. And that would be cowardice and an utter betrayal of our grandchildren and the generations to follow. We may have limited powers to make life better for them but we still have enormous powers to make their lives vastly worse.

An Effective Counter To Oil Companies' Greenwash Propaganda

The following definition of greenwashing is offered by Wikipedia: Greenwashing (a compound word modelled on "whitewash"), or "green sheen,"[1][2] is a form of spin in which green PR or green marketing is deceptively used to promote the perception that an organization's products, aims or policies are environmentally friendly.

Most of us, I am sure, have seen commercials on television that, as they start, seem to be environmental in nature. We are treated to scenes of trees, fresh water, children paying in the clean outdoors, etc., images that relax and inspire; then it is made clear that the oil industry is the real subject, those images serving to manipulate viewers into believing that the companies exploiting our oil resources and despoiling our environment are quite benevolent presences that have a deep respect for nature.

Here is one such shameless effort from Suncor:



Happily, not all of us have succumbed to the group think so avidly desired by our corporate and political overlords. Whatyescando.org has created an outstanding response ad that pierces and skewers the shameless hypocrisy of oil giants.

Watch it, and please consider clicking on this link to add your name to a petition asking Suncor to respect our water:

Lisa MacLeod's Ambition

I'll say right off the top that I am no fan of recently re-elected Ontario Progressive Conservative Lisa MacLeod, and not just because she is a member of what has become an extremist party. Her embrace of the politics of division, her strident hyper-partisanship, and now, post-election, her hypocrisy, rankle.


Tim and Lisa in happier times

Ostensibly a staunch supporter of her leader up to and during the election, now Ms. MacLeod, a rumoured leadership hopeful, has dramatically changed her tune. In an op-ed in today's Toronto Star, entitled Ontario Tories need fresh leadership, she offers the following observation:

...we let Ontario down by not offering an alternative that more voters were prepared to accept. We have a lot of work to do over the next four years. The party needs renewal, a new direction, and most important, fresh leadership.

In what could very well be the rudiments of a pre-leadership manifesto, she talks about the need to prepare for the next election, telling us what the next leader must be capable of:

We need a person who understands urban, suburban and rural concerns, one who gets the complex makeup of this province.

But wait. Could that someone be her?

In my own riding of Nepean-Carleton, I represent new immigrant communities, expanding suburbs and a large rural area. I also take the lead on the urban issues that affect Ottawa, our second largest city. Nepean-Carleton is a microcosm of the growing and changing Ontario that our party must represent.

While not entirely disavowing the campaign under Hudak's leadership, she observes its shortcomings and includes information about herself that serves to offer redress:

Our most recent PC platform has been criticized for talking too much about numbers and not enough about people. Fact-based decision making is important, but we can’t overlook the human side. I’m a suburban soccer mom. I care about my child’s school, our local hospital and whether our community is safe, just like so many other Ontarians do. (emphasis mine)

And to drive home the point for those dullards among us, she adds:

Ontarians need a party that knows how to make their lives better in measurable ways. For example, the Schools First policy that I put forward as education critic would ensure that schools get built sooner in our rapidly expanding suburbs. (emphasis mine)

MacLeod ends her exercise in self-extolment, however, on a note with which I agree:

The PC Party has a responsibility to deliver a strong and broadly acceptable choice the next time.

It is in everyone's best interests to have strong and credible opposition parties. Such entities act as necessary checks in healthy democracies, standing at the ready to offer viable alternatives to governments that becomes stale, tired, complacent or arrogant.

Setting The Record Straight

Is the oleaginous Pierre Poilivre really the best the Harper regime can do in its propaganda efforts?




h/t Press Progress

The Long Reach Of Partisan Politics

h/t Montreal Simon

In Ontario, we noticed the long federal reach of divisive partisan politics during our recent election. Joe Oliver, our alleged finance minister, interposed his views, lamenting the fiscal state of Ontario that, according to him, is bringing down the rest of Canada. Of course, the disingenuous Uncle Joe denied trying to interfere in our electoral contest. Indeed, he kept up his unsolicited advice post-election, suggesting the following to Premier Kathleen Wynne:

“We hope that her government will follow our lead toward a balanced budget,” he said. “Canada cannot arrive at its potential if the biggest province remains in difficulty.”

In her column today, The Star's Carol Goar offers a pungent rebuttal and some advice to the minister and his government:

He ignored the fact that Ontarians had just rejected his formula, championed by defeated Conservative leader Tim Hudak. He ignored the fact that Ontario is struggling to replace its manufacturing base. And he ignored the fact that Ontario, unlike Ottawa, doesn’t have resource revenues pouring into its coffers.

Compounding the problem, observes Goar, is the fact that the Harper regime is doing nothing to help the province regenerate its economy. In my view, this sad state is the result both of partisan prejudice and a paucity of ideas from the regime's braintrust, Nonetheless, The Star offers some suggestions that we can be certain will be ignored:

- Close the multitude of tax loopholes that allow the country’s wealthy elite to stash income in shell companies that pay low corporate taxes; hide assets in offshore tax havens; write off personal expenses and exploit all the tax credits, deductions, refunds and allowances in Canada’s 3,236-page Income Tax Act.

While the late Jim Flahety closed some loopholes, much more needs to be done.

- Restore Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.’s original purpose.... If the federal government made it clear that CMHC’s first job is to make housing affordable, it would alleviate the need to build social housing, remove some of the risk from the real estate market, encourage residential construction and boost employment — all of which would benefit Ontario.

- Pay as much attention to Ontario’s mineral wealth as Alberta’s oil reserves.

While the regime can't do enough to promote and develop the tarsands, it has shown no interest in helping Ontario finance the infrastructure needed to mine the Ring of Fire and its rich chromite reserves.

- Fix Ottawa’s unfair equalization system.

Oliver ignored Ontario’s claims that it was being shortchanged by hundreds of millions under the convoluted formula Ottawa uses to ensure the financial burdens of all the provinces are comparable. But now Parliamentary Budget Officer Jean-Denis Frechette has confirmed Ontario is being underpaid by $640 million this year. That revenue would allow the province to knock 5 per cent off its deficit.

I expect that little attention will be paid to these sensible suggestions. As we have all learned over the years, Harper and company have developed a long list of enemies. Given its ideology and its resounding recent rejection of Harperesque medicine through his surrogate, Tim Hudak, there is little doubt that Ontario has a prominent place in that pantheon of distinguished Canadians.

Calling Stephen Harper

It is always heartening when young people get involved in issues that should matter to everyone: