Our Poisoned Political Culture

Whether true or not, Canadians can, I think, be forgiven for wondering, quite seriously, whether the Harper cabal was somehow involved in the ominous break-in at Justin Trudeau's home while his family was asleep. A destabilizing and disturbing crime for anyone who has experienced such a violation, it is clearly weighing heavily on the Liberal leader, who must be away from his family for extended periods of time. That may be the intended effect.

Perhaps Harper and his acolytes had nothing to do with it, but entertaining such suspicions is surely not unwarranted owing to the pernicious and poisonous political culture that has been so avidly cultivated by a Prime Minister whose only purpose seems to be the perpetuation of his party's power. Assaulting character, instilling fear in critics of his neoliberal agenda, presenting the world in absolutist terms are all of a piece in a scorched earth policy that amply demonstrates Harper's unfitness for public office.

Unfortunately, we all become the victims when public policy is designed only to benefit a select few.

Writing yesterday in The Edmonton Journal, Michael Den Tandt offered this headline:

Reaction to Justin Trudeau break-in a symptom of debased debate

Den Tandt observes that the Twitter reaction to the break-in was often cruel and insensitive:

On Twitter – home to all important Canadian political debate now that Question Period in the Commons has become a set piece – some revelled in the news. Hug-a-terrorist Justin Trudeau, targeted by home-invading thugs; what fun! There were Tweets mockingly tying the break-in to Trudeau’s stance on marijuana. Maybe the burglars were after pot! Ho ho. Others tried, clumsily and with the hackneyed spelling so common in Twitter’s nether parts, to be sardonic.

And to be fair, the writer also castigates the Harper-haters for their own frequent vileness which, he says, neither the Liberal nor the NDP Party has done anything to quell.

Yet he lays the primary responsibility for the devolution in political discourse squarely at Harper's feet:

The Conservative party has since April of 2013 indulged in organized mockery and vilification, aimed at Trudeau personally. The intent of this messaging is to belittle and demean. That is not something the Conservative party can disavow. Nor can they deny that their attack ads – against Trudeau, and predecessors Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff and Stephane Dion — have contributed to a debasing of Canadian political dialogue. Debasement is the whole point of the ads.

Den Tandt offers some remedial suggestions:

To begin, the prime minister, to whom all Canadians look for leadership, could ditch the stupidest of his party’s attack ads and begin speaking positively, regularly and publicly about how he hopes to build a better country.

[A]ll the parties, their MPs and officials could aggressively block their own partisans who engage in personal debasement in social media. The standard should be the law against defamation.

[O]nline anonymity, in social media and news comment streams, should be abolished. That is a step that publishers can take.

These are all good suggestion, but given the extent of the rot that has set in and accelerated in recent years, I think we can realistically expect nothing to change.

About Those Taxes...

Responding to the latest propaganda piece about taxation levels from The Fraser Institute, Star readers weigh in with their own perspectives, one of which includes taking the paper to task for publishing news of the report with no critical comment:

Re: Families pay more for taxes than basics, Aug. 13

This report of a study from a conservative think tank could be a verbatim quote from the authors’ press release, with no editorial comment or critical opinions included. The Star does us a disservice (and, rather atypically, gives the conservative cause a boost) by publishing it in this fashion.
Other news sources (the CBC, for example) discussed the study in the context of criticisms, such as the fact that the base year 1961 was at the very beginning of Medicare and before state pension plans were instituted, not to mention many other lifestyle shifts that have taken place over the 52-year gap of the selected comparison.

The report as cited by the Star sounds more inflammatory than instructive.

Eleanor Batchelder, West Toronto


The Fraser Institute just confirms what most Canadians already know — their disposable incomes are either stagnant or decreasing while their taxes are constantly going up.

What most Canadians don’t realize is that while their taxes have been steadily increasing over the years, the corporate tax rates have been coming down. Corporate lobbies pushed our government to implement policies that catered to businesses and corporations at the expense of consumers. And the tool that successive Canadian governments used to implement the corporate agenda was taxation.

In the 1960s the federal corporate tax rate was 40 per cent. This rate has been whittled down by successive Liberal and Conservative governments. Today it is 15 per cent — the lowest in all of the G8 countries. But for consumers, taxes went up.

To make up for revenue lost from the discontinued 10 per cent manufacturing tax, paid by manufacturers only, the federal government’s GST is effectively paid by consumers. And with the added HST, Ontarians have to pay 13 per cent tax on almost every product and service they buy. This is on top of increases to income taxes, property taxes, health, vehicle, alcohol and tobacco taxes.

This massive shift in tax burden from corporations to individuals is the reason that Canadians are spending more on taxes than food, shelter and clothing and why most of us feel that we are going backwards rather than forward in terms of our disposable incomes.

Michael Poliacik, Toronto

Climate Change Adaptation

As the effects of climate change become more pronounced, adaptive measures will need to be taken alongside of measures ameliorating the rate of change (if that is in fact still even possible).

One such step has been undertaken in California, a state that has been especially hard hit by drought. Orange County has undertaken an ambitious waste water recycling regimen that will likely become the norm in other parts of the country and world facing similar conditions.

Mission Accomplished.

Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh.....



H/t Canadians Rallying to Unseat Stephen Harper

Where Do People Stand In The Harper Hierarchy?

The answer would seem to be, "Nowhere near the top." As discussed in yesterday's post on CETA, leaked documents confirm that Canadian sovereignty, something all citizens should have a right to expect, will continue the erosion that began under NAFTA. Specifically, the dispute-settlement mechanism that enables investors to sue governments when they pass legislation that impairs their ability to make profits (as in environmental regulations, drug regulation, etc.) will be a centre-piece. As well, Canadian governments on every level will see their efforts to locally source good and services severely curtailed.

The corporate state has clearly arrived.

But its arrival affects other areas of our lives, not the least of which is public safety. Industry self-regulation has accelerated under the Harper regime, in part a response to trade liberalization but also a reflection of an ideology which believes government involvement in the affairs of state and commerce should be minimal. Hence the disasters of Walkerton, Maple Leaf Foods, etc. Air disasters, god forbid, seem likely in the future as well due to changes at Transport Canada.

Then of course, there was the entirely preventable tragedy of Lac-Mégantic, which recently observed the one-year anniversary of the deaths of 47 people and the destruction of a significant portion of the town.

Despite those grievous losses, third-party proprietary rights are being invoked as the reason we Canadians cannot know the specifics of that massive failure of safety. As reported in today's Toronto Star, the paper's access-to-information requests resulted in only some information being released:

Safety inspections of the rail company implicated in the Lac-Mégantic train disaster found defective equipment, problems with locomotives, and sections of rail lines so rundown trains could not exceed speeds of 10 miles per hour.

But Transport Canada is blocking the release of information detailing the majority of the problems and their severity, saying the inspection reports cannot be provided in full because the information is “third-party” — confidential, and belonging to the rail company — or was prepared or obtained in the course of an investigation.

[T]he majority of the more than 1,000-page compilation of inspection documents was withheld or heavily censored.

These inspections, by the way, were not performed by Transport Canada, but by the railway company's own crews.

The unredacted portion received by The Star is damning enough:

- employees told investigators the company was using poorly maintained locomotives, and that instead of repairing worn train tracks, ... the company just lowered the speed limit.

- the company performed minimal maintenance on locomotives, and said locomotive 5017 (the one that caused the disaster) was in particularly poor condition.

- Transport Canada repeatedly flagged safety concerns and non-compliance with rail standards by the now-defunct company

Equally disturbing is the fact that the rail companies establish their own safety management protocols:

The arrangement allows rail companies to draft and enforce their own safety regimes, which are then audited by Transport Canada. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is considered third-party proprietary information, and hence the embargo on truth about the disaster.

All Canadians should be outraged by yet another failure on the part of the Harper regime to protect its citizens while simultaneously extolling and elevating the world's corporate denizens.

A Public Service Announcement From The Conservative Party Of Canada

Given the Harper regime's new-found zeal for warning all of us about the dangers of marijuana, and, coincidentally, the equally dangerous potential of a Justin Trudeau-led government, perhaps the following will help them to bring home the dangers of both:



H/t Patrick Clarke

Praising Stephen Harper

Now that I have your attention, let me assure that I am not the source of that praise. No, a site called Breaking Israel News is. Drawing heavily upon a piece written by the Ottawa Citizen's Mark Kennedy, it offers the following effusive approval of Stephen Harper:

The support he has shown for Israel has been absolute and unwavering for the entirety of Harper’s career, so much so that it has spread to many others within the political and social hierarchy of Canada.

For his support, Harper became the only foreign dignitary to have received the Key to the Knesset and who was termed as a true friend of Israel by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Kennedy accurately explained that Harper stressed that conservatives understood “the notion that moral rules form a chain of right and duty, and that politics is a moral affair,” unlike the “modern left” — which had adopted a position of “moral neutrality”.

Harper fully believes that it is in Canada’s and the rest of the western world’s best interest to support Israel and to do what is morally right. After all, the only state in the Middle East that shares the same fundamental values which Canada’s conservative party stands for is Israel. And as Harper said in 2003, “Conservatives must take the moral stand, with our allies, in favour of the fundamental values of our society, including democracy, free enterprise and individual freedom.”

There is a comments section at the end of this propaganda exercise. The majority are along the following lines:

Praise God for Prime Minister Harper that has the integrity, character and guts to stick by Israel and the Jewish People. Prime Minister Harper is a man of strong faith and is acting on the Bible/Torah where is says I will bless those who bless thee, which speaks about Israel and the Jewish!!!

Thank you Prime Minister Harper for taking a stand and remaining steadfast no matter what is flung at you. And I say Amen to that!

Proud of my Prime Minister.

However, some Canadians have tried to set the record straight about our domestic martinet:

I am sure to be dismissed but as a Canadian, who converted to Judaism long ago, I completely and wholeheartedly disagree with Harper's opinion and staunch support of those who run Israel currently. Zealotry is not appealing in anyway, racism and fascism should not be supported nor condoned.

The current climate and tolerance demonstrated by Israel in no way represents democracy nor freedom. If one were to remove the country of origin from the stories and have them read, there would be few who would support or even justify the actions of the Israeli leaders currently.

Since fair and balanced commentary is always desirable, perhaps some of you might also like to weigh in with your assessment of Mr. Harper. I already have.