A Most Worthy Initiative

Although it has almost become a cliche, knowledge is indeed power. It confers upon us the opportunity to think critically; it enables us to make informed choices, freeing us from the demagogues in our midst; and most importantly, it helps us to participate meaningfully in the world around us.

One of the great daily conduits to that knowledge are newspapers. Taken in its aggregate, responsible journalism offers us the kind of information and analysis that makes it easier to navigate our increasingly complex world. And as regular readers of this blog likely know, The Toronto Star is my newspaper of record. It is therefore with great pleasure that I relay to those who might not otherwise have heard, The Star is making an extraordinarily generous offer that cannot help but redound to the public good.

Dear Readers,

There are about 2 million post-secondary students attending schools across Canada. Starting today, those students can become Star digital subscribers — for free — ahead of October’s federal election.

We are calling this the Vote2019 Offer, which basically means we want Canada’s newest group of eligible voters to be informed since they will have a say in how we shape our country on election day.

Why are we doing this? While accuracy, fairness and quality journalism have long been critical to our newsrooms, guiding those ideals are several principles we hold dear. Among those principles are community and civic engagement, and the necessary role of government.

Any current post-secondary student wishing to access this program need only fill out this form. They will need their school email account to register. The Star will also extend the offer to faculty during this period, which will end Oct. 31.

Those who register will have access to the wealth of credible, award-winning journalism our regular readers have long come to know.

Please sign up today, or let your kids or grandkids know about the offer.

If you know anyone who might benefit from this, please, please let them know.

How Supple Are They?

I hope, for the sake of their well-being, that each loyal soldier in the Doug Ford regime has a gym membership they regularly use. Otherwise, I fear they will sustain myriad and grievous injuries to their joints and sinews. Twisting oneself out of shape while proclaiming black is white and lies are truth can exact a horrible toll.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, the one whose well-being I currently feel the most concern for is Health Minister Christine Elliott, a once principled and competent woman who, upon entering the Ford cabinet, has proven to be, along with Attorney General Caroline Mulroney, most adept at amazing feats of contortion.

Consider the following from Rob Ferguson:

Layoffs of 44 staff at the Ontario Telemedicine Network following a funding cut by Premier Doug Ford’s government won’t curb plans to provide more virtual care to patients across the province, Health Minister Christine Elliott maintains.

Elliott said Wednesday none of the cuts at the telemedicine network were front-line care providers and called the firings “reasonable and pragmatic.”

Elliott seems to be an unabashed enthusiast of the far-right's core belief: less is more:

“It doesn’t mean that we take any ... direction away from digitization. It is vitally important in our modernization of our health-care system.”

Those who have not consumed that particular variety of Kool-Aid beg to differ:

... Green Leader Mike Schreiner said the health minister failed to explain how telemedicine remains a priority, particularly for remote and rural areas with less access to medical professionals than major cities.

“This government is so full of contradictions. It’s one after another. They say they support something and then they turn around and cut it. Telemedicine is just one example of that,” Schreiner added.

“The other one is they said they’re all for adapting to climate change and then they cut the tree-planting program and the flood prevention program.”

Until we all get "with the program," the vast majority of us, I suspect, will share Mr. Schreiner's bewilderment.

Just Another Trudeau-Hater, Eh?

You decide (heh, heh, heh).

H/t Theo Moudakis

Looking Toward The Future

I'm feeling an unaccustomed lightness of spirit these days. The growth of Green Party support is at least in part responsible:

A New Day

Having abandoned any notion of voting for the Liberals in the next election, I find it irritating beyond expression to be constantly confronted by the binary thinkers among us who shrilly declaim that a vote for someone other than Trudeau is a vote for Andrew Scheer. This kind of absolutist thinking not only shows disrespect for our democracy, but it also suggests that we are doomed to always pick the least odious party when we cast our vote.

Well, it would seem there is now a new kid on the block called The Green Party. Fresh off its major gains in P.EI. and in tandem with the impressive performance of Green Ontario MPP Mike Schreiner, yesterday saw the election of Paul Manly in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith byelection, garnering 38% of the votes.

Manly will become the second Green Party member in Parliament, joining Leader Elizabeth May.

“This bodes well for the Green Party across Canada,” he said.

His victory shows the other parties that Canadians are serious about climate change, Manly said, adding he expects the Green wave of support to grow in the October election.

Unlike the other conventional, tired parties, the Greens have a vision:

“How we can change the economy — that we are working in to protect the environment that we need for our health, for our children, for our grandchildren,” he said. “How we can do a better job of taking care of people who are less fortunate.”

He said governments should stop subsidizing the “old” economy.

“We moved beyond the horse and buggy and its time to move beyond the internal combustion engine,” Manly said, as the crowd cheered.

It’s also time that the government stop giving foreign multinationals tax breaks that “frack our environment and expand oil production,” he said.

“Those days should be over. It’s time to move forward,” Manly said.

“I will not compromise on the future of our children and our grandchildren.”

That's all I have time to post today. But for me, it is more than enough.

Pay To Slay

That's what critics are calling Bill 108, the “More Homes, More Choice Act,” introduced stealthily, as the cowardly are wont to do, by the Ford regime in Ontario. Buried in an omnibus bill, the favoured vehicle of the dishonest, (including both Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper), the bill promises to open up to developers sensitive aeas that will greatly endanger Ontario's at-risk animals and plants.

On the day a UN study reports that more than a million species worldwide are at risk of extinction, we should all be standing up taking distressed notice.

Bill 108, the “More Homes, More Choice Act,” would weaken classification criteria, allow the environment minister to delay protections for up to three years, and provide developers, industry and others who impact the habitat of endangered species with a suite of options to continue their activities, including a fee-in-lieu fund derided by critics as “pay to slay.”

Of course, the Ford regime, led by a man who has never met a developer he didn't like, is cloaking it as a means of addressing housing shortages. Hence the bill's simplistic title: the “More Homes, More Choice Act.” It is a subterfuge his willing, amoral acolytes and MPPs are happy to propagate, insisting the bill will actually enhance protections:

Lindsay Davidson, a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, said Ontario is committed to ensuring “best-in-class” protections for endangered and threatened species.

“The proposed changes … will enhance government oversight and enforcement powers to ensure compliance with the act and improve transparent notification of new species’ listings,” Davidson said in an email.

Cold reality is perhaps best expressed by experts in the field of biodiversity:

“It really is very deferential to exactly those threats that are affecting species at risk today,” said Justina Ray, president and senior scientist of Wildlife Conservation Society Canada. “I’m very concerned that at the end of the day, we kind of have an empty shell of an act.”

Or, to put it more bluntly,

“It really is a doomsday scenario for endangered species in this province,” said Kelsey Scarfone, program manager at Environmental Defence Canada.

“It’s basically been whittled down to nothing. They might as well have just cancelled it,” she said.

Every day brings forth more bad news. It is the fate of the newspaper reader to absorb this news, and to be as well-informed as possible about the depredations that envelop us. But it doesn't end there. Until each of us realizes that the well-being of nature (and I do urge you, in the strongest terms possible, to read about the UN report) and our very survival are inextricably linked, the destruction and rapidly increasing extinctions will only continue.

Bad, greedy people know no bounds.

Now, A Word From Premier Doug Orwell

The Ministry of Truth has released the following message from Our Glorious Leader. Widespread distribution is strongly encouraged.

My Friends, Citizens of Ontarioland:

It has come to My attention that the media, the Official Enemy Of The State, has been spreading lies in order to undermine confidence in, and devotion to, Me. In our fair and democratic society, such sedition cannot be overlooked, and you can rest assured that the offenders will soon be offered placement in many of our fine Reeducation Camps strategically located across our fine realm.

In the interim, however, it behooves Me to set the record straight (historical records will be amended as well, at a later date):

Enemy Number One is a perfidious scribe named Edward Keenan. Fortunately, his scurrilous misinformation is not online, but only in the printed edition of his propaganda organ, The Toronto Star, which nobody reads anyway.

Calling me an axe-wielding agent of chaos, he offers the following treasonous lies:

Here was city [of Toronto] manager Chris Murray, in the letter to councillors about the cuts to child care: “The city was not consulted or provided with any advance warning about these changes.”

Sound familiar? The first clause of that sentence read, “As with recent changes to the provincial/municipal costsharing arrangements for public health,” referencing another set of cuts that arrived as a surprise and occupied the city’s attention these past couple of weeks. But it could have said, “As with the sudden cutting of the size of city council in half in the middle of an election campaign,” or, “As with the changes to the city’s transit plan using new routes and new technology,” or, “As with the decision to shortchange the city for hundreds of millions of dollars in gas tax revenue Premier Ford had directly promised to deliver.”

In each case — and in others affecting those across the province using library services, caring for children with autism, or attending and working for the school system, to cite just a few more examples — the people directly affected by these multimillion-dollar decisions were taken by surprise by the drastic, immediate changes to the services they rely on or deliver. No notice, no advance consultation or negotiation and, apparently, very little consideration of any effect beyond the one on the bottom line.

Such defamation flies in the face of the fact that I am famous for consulting the people. I talked to thousands upon thousands in Ontarioland who told me they want new efficiencies that will make elected officials acknowledge the bloat found in every publicly-funded institution, be it health care, education, child care, library services or council size. And they are demanding lower taxes. As a humble instrument of the people, I do as demanded.

Happily, there are many efforts underway to set the record straight:

“In an attempt to protect child-care funding for future generations, our government is looking at ways to better deliver services and reduce administrative costs,” Education Minister Lisa Thompson’s office said.

Thompson’s office says, “we are challenging municipalities to reduce their administrative spending.”

My ever-loyal and doting Minister went further to explain the kindness we are bestowing with our budget 'adjustments:

“In an attempt to protect childcare funding for future generations, our government is looking at ways to better deliver services and reduce administrative costs,” said an aide to Education Minister Lisa Thompson.

“To be crystal clear, these reductions are primarily at the administrative level. We are challenging municipalities to reduce their administrative spending on child care delivery by 5 per cent and refocus that funding on things like subsidies for low-income families,” said Kayla Iafelice.

“The city of Toronto should be looking at ways to make their operations more efficient instead of passing on these costs to parents,” said Iafelice

“There is no need for a single child care space to be lost as a result of a 5 per cent administrative change. Any reductions in childcare spaces would be the result of the city of Toronto’s own decision-making.”

I realize holding up a mirror to the profligate spenders and socialists amongst us is an unpleasant experience for them, but The Truth must be known.

Spirited discussion is to be encouraged in a democracy as glorious and healthy as ours. However, when that discussion moves into the realm of lies and seditious commentary, your government will always act in the best interests of the people, and deal with dispatch and resolve in stopping such attempts to foment discontent.

Remember, I am always For The People.