That must be the reason that people like Transport Minister Lisa Raitt and her parliamentary secretary Jeff Watson haven't yet had time to read the Transportation Safety Board's damning report on last year's Lac-Mégantic train derailment that killed 47 people:
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Pros and Cons
Following up on Rona Ambrose's stout denial that the government's planned anti-marijuana campaign has anything to do with trying to undermine Justin Trudeau, along with Canadian doctors refusing to be part of a campaign that has become, as they describe it, political messaging, here are the perspectives of two National Post readers:
Re: Health Canada Doesn’t Endorse Medical Use Of Pot, Ambrose Says, Aug. 19.
The time for legalizing marijuana is long overdue. It strikes as more than a little hypocritical that the politicians in this country spend our tax dollars to bewail the evils of pot, while alcohol is given a free pass on being socially acceptable.
It would be interesting to compare the harms caused by alcohol and marijuana. Should we start with tallying vehicular injury and death? Then we could calculate which substance contributes more to violent crime. Then look at which is more likely to cause social ills, such as broken families and spousal abuse. Then we could also measure the medical costs incurred on the health system by both substances.
Every state in the U.S. that has fully legalized marijuana has reported only positive results — socially and economically. It is time that the politicians and the people benefiting from this draconian system of prohibition accept the facts.
Robert Fitzpatrick, Sicamous B.C.
Playing politics
By refusing to take part in a Health Canada anti-drug campaign that will target young people, the doctors are showing their political bias in favour of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, who supports legalizing marijuana use. Can’t they see that they have allowed their politics to prevent their informed opinion on discouraging marijuana use to be propagated?
Jiti Khanna, Vancouver.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Denial And Outrage
During my teaching career, it was occasionally my unpleasant task to confront a student with evidence of his or her cheating; most situations revolved around plagiarizing essays or having skipped a test. The student's responses when confronted were invariably the same; indeed, they tended to parallel Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' five stages of grief.
I won't bore you with the details, but common initial reactions were denial that any offence had occurred, ("I have no idea what you are talking about"), and when that failed, anger that I would harbour such unfounded and unworthy suspicions ("I am really hurt that you would accuse me of such a thing"). Invariably, they were guilty as charged.
There seems to be an analogous system at work in politics.
Let's start with the Harper regime's upcoming campaign against marijuana use, the one that the three main groups representing doctors, Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada have refused to be part of because they "... do not, support or endorse any political messaging or political advertising on this issue".
The accusation that the campaign has become a political football aimed at discrediting Justin Trudeau, who favours legalization of pot, has been hotly denied by Health Minister Rona Ambrose:
“Telling kids to not smoke pot is not a partisan attack on Justin Trudeau by Health Canada,” Ambrose told a news conference Monday on the sidelines of the annual Canadian Medical Association meeting.
“It is a sound public health policy backed by science. Whether pot is legal or illegal, the health risks of marijuana to youth remain the same, and we should all be concerned about them.”
She added that Trudeau “made this a political issue.”
Denial and shifting the blame, both time-honoured tactics of my former wayward students.
Next, the anger:
This morning's Star reports the following:
The federal New Democrats are hoping to put the Canada Revenue Agency under the microscope Tuesday after recalling a House of Commons committee to examine a wave of audits against registered charities.
NDP MP and revenue critic Murray Rankin (Victoria) has questioned whether the audits were politically motivated actions against those advocating for environmental causes and other issues clashing with the Harper government’s policies.
However, Revenue Minister Kerry-Lynne Findlay rejects the allegations, and with great umbrage:
“Your baseless allegation that I have used my office to blatantly misappropriate CRA resources to target and intimidate charities that don’t agree with our government’s policies is absolutely reprehensible,” wrote Findlay in a letter to Rankin, dated Aug. 5.
“As an honourable parliamentarian, I find your unwarranted attacks on the integrity of the CRA and my office shameful and plunges parliamentary discourses to new lows.”
To quote from my favourite Shakespearean play, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Such indignation may play well to the party's base, but critical thinkers may wonder at the rhetorical flourishes employed by Ms. Findlay here.
The final stage in the five stages of grief is acceptance. For the Harper regime, I suspect that will only come after the results of the next election.
Monday, August 18, 2014
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
Sunday, August 17, 2014
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.
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.
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