Canada Drops Again in Quality of Living

Canada has dropped to eighth place in a United Nations index that measures quality of life in countries around the world. That follows Canada’s fourth-place showing in the 2009 UN Human Development Index.

What kills me is that this gang believe that Canada should only be accepting immigrants of ... hmmm .... Anglo persuasion.

But what are they offering? Our healthcare is on life support. Good jobs are on the decline.

Who in Europe would want to come here now? They can do better at home.

And if getting beat up by police for the simple act of protesting, is their thing, they could move to a third world dictatorship.

They never think things through.

Harper's Northern Annual Photo-Op Was Just More Hot Air

Since Stephen Harper refuses to do anything about global warming, we should at least keep him out of the Arctic. The glaciers are melting fast enough without more of his hot air.

Susan Riley had a great column in the Ottawa Citizen today, in which she exposes the Harper government's view of reality. From Dimitri Soudas's nonsense about a Russian threat, to Stephen Harper's nonsense about a Russian threat.

The Russians must think we're idiots. I can just imagine their political cartoons.

But she also sheds a little light on Harper's posturing in the Great White North.

The truth is that Harper's government, while giving northern sovereignty welcome profile, has promised much and invested little -- outside of annual photo ops like this week's military ballet on ice and Harper's unexpected northern jig.

Meanwhile, a 2005 promise of three new icebreakers has been downgraded to one big ship and six patrol vessels. There is still no sign of the promised northern deep-water port. And -- despite Harper's announcement of three new surveillance satellites to keep an eye on "the bad guys" -- investment in northern science, environmental protection and military presence has been slow in coming.

As Gen. Walt Natynczyk (whose candour is becoming refreshing) noted, the North is a more hostile and expensive environment for Canadian forces than even Afghanistan. Now, if he could free up $16 billion somewhere ...

I agree with Riley. This government is dealing in illusions.

Ideology, illusion, will probably trump reality, evidence, in both these cases. The next challenge for Harper is to convince Canadians, including deficit-shy Conservatives, that we really need those expensive fighter jets -- not exactly tailored to fight home-grown terrorism, which seems a more immediate threat than a replay of the Second World War.

New Support Group For Those Jailed Because of Census

While Stockwell Day is building prisons for imaginary prisoners, Tony Clement is trying to bust out all of those Canadians who have jailed because they refused to fill out the mandatory long form census.

A group of concerned citizens held a concert and raised enough money to ... well actually they raised no money, but they raised a lot of spirits.

And Stephen Harper was so concerned about these poor census felons that he actually held a press conference .... well not exactly a press conference, more of a staged affair but we learned how he felt about some play that he probably won't go to, mainly because he's just so gosh darned worried about all those census felons.

The Globe’s Steve Chase wrote this piece to explain how Stephen Harper, instead of being asked about changes to the census, wound up being asked today about a play that few people will see and even fewer will give a shit about.

But the article is interesting for a different reason. Read it and marvel at what has become of our national press gallery – reduced to milling about in cliques and engaging in whispered debate over how to obediently divvy up the meager allotment of questions they’ve been granted by a Prime Minister too arrogant to expose himself to scrutiny, too fragile to agree to anything so risky as a follow-up query and — someone has to say it — too gray now to use Just For Men without us all totally noticing.

I know I'm quite marvelled at what has become of our press gallery. Maybe they should just stay home and phone in their columns. They're always the same anyway. "Harper refused to answer questions". "RCMP threatened me with a big stick".

But back to those poor census felons. I'm still worried about them, and I don't think that Dr. Sylvia Ostr gets it. These poor people are being threatened.

Canada’s former chief statistician and one of its internationally renowned economists Saturday described as “shocking” and “ridiculous” the federal government’s decision to scrap the mandatory census long form. “I think it’s ridiculous the government would intervene and tell Statistics Canada how to collect its information,” Dr. Sylvia Ostry told the Couchiching Conference on public affairs after being presented with an award for public policy leadership.

The Conservative government’s action, she said, undermined the global stature of Statistics Canada which has been praised consistently as one of the leading statistics agencies in the world. “The whole thing is shocking,” she said.

When Stephen Harper was asked why he was scrapping the census ... oh, yeah. He wasn't asked. But he may be taking in a play.

Canadians Being the Largest Lender of Sub-Prime Mortgages in the World May Not be Our Biggest Problem

I keep reminding people, and everyone needs to keep reminding people, that Stevie and Jimbo did not handle our economy very prudently and they have us in a lot of deep doo doo.

They bailed out our banks to the tune of 125 billion dollars by buying up, on our behalf, all high risk mortgages.

High-risk mortgages that Jimbo and Stevie allowed into this country in the first place.

But the UK Guardian has published a story about our underground economy, that could also be in big trouble.

It has to do with the marijuana industry, which will dry up if California legalizes it and we don't.

This November, in an effort to increase tax revenue, California will hold a referendum on whether or not to legalise the cultivation and use of marijuana. If passed, the change in law would be devastating to the Canadian economy, halting the flow of billions of dollars from the US into Canada and eventually forcing hundreds of thousands into unemployment.

Over the past 20 years, Canada has developed a substantial and highly profitable marijuana industry that is almost completely dependent on the US market. Between 60 and 90% of the marijuana produced domestically is exported to the US via cross-border smuggling operations. It's exactly like the alcohol prohibition of the 1920s, only far more sophisticated and more profitable. The establishment of a legal industry based in the US would likely cripple these exports overnight.

Ironically, support for legalisation is stronger in Canada than it is in California. Canada's most prominent rightwing thinktanks have long supported legalisation, as do the majority of Canadians. But since the Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, formed a minority government in 2006, drug reform has been wiped off the agenda and the gears have grinded into reverse. In a bizarre twist that defies all rational thought, the Conservatives have decided they want to go in the opposite direction of the Canadian voter and emulate outdated Republican drug war policies that have already proved catastrophic in the US.

The Conservatives have proposed legislation that would introduce mandatory minimum prison sentences for marijuana producers. If passed, the
legislation would result in spending billions in order to put more people in prison – the exact scenario that lead California into severe debt and towards legalisation. Even more stupefying, police in Montreal recently raided a "compassion centre" that legally distributes medicinal cannabis, and Conservative politicians have started calling for medicinal centres to be shut down across the country.

Of course all you'll ever get from Harper is "marijuana is bad, now where did I put my beer?", even though Stockwell Day (yeah, I know) admits that he once smoked it "and inhaled".

Something to think about.

Conservative Buffoon No. 16 Comes to Aid of Buffoon No. 23

Remember the Cat in the Hat and Thing One and Thing Two?

Well either the Conservatives are engaged in a reenactment or they're dumber than we think.

Warbling their own indecipherable language and literally leaping from one catastrophic fun-making adventure to another, the Things end up making Conrad's messy attempts at fun look like child's play.

Though Rob Nicholson and Stockwell Day aren't exactly making Harper's messy attempts at governing look like child's play, but they sure put into question their own political futures.

I played the video yesterday of Stockwell Day suggesting that we needed to spend another 9 billion dollars in new prisons for "unreported" crimes. How he expects to get convictions for crimes no one knows about boggles the mind, but the Hallelujah chorus is singing his praises today. OK, not exactly a chorus, just a single warbler.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson backs a cabinet colleague's controversial claim that unreported crimes are too high and he urges Canadians to step up and call the police more often. But Nicholson stopped short Wednesday from fully endorsing the view of Treasury Board President Stockwell Day, who a day earlier raised eyebrows when he claimed Canada needs more prisons in part because so many crimes go unreported.

"If you ask, is there unreported crime in Canada, there's unreported crime, there's no question about it," Nicholson told The Canadian Press in an interview. "We treat all crime as serious in this country and we encourage all people to report crime to the appropriate authorities," he added. "I get anecdotal evidence and there are certainly some studies on that."

Let me guess. The studies were conducted at the Fraser Institute, right?

The Montreal Gazette blows them both out of the water:

No doubt many crimes do go unreported. But let's think this through. Many of the unreported incidents mentioned to the pollster may not have been crimes at all. Many property crimes, such as auto theft, are routinely reported, if only for insurance purposes. Society's attitudes toward offences rooted in racism, and toward sexual assault, have been growing steadily sterner, we believe, making reporting more likely, not less. And federal prisons are for offenders sentenced to two years or more; that is, perpetrators of serious crime. Do you believe that the worst crimes are the least reported?

For all these reasons it's hard to accept Day's claim. We're also puzzled that the Conservatives waited until now to uncork this argument; there's a whiff of intellectual desperation, and a just-discovered old survey, in this. The solution to a genuine national problem of unreported crime, if there were such a problem, would not begin with more prisons. It would begin with encouraging supposed victims to speak up, and continue with more resources for the provinces for police and prosecutors. More prisons would be the last step, not the first. We're not buying, Mr. Day.

I'm not buying it either.

David Cameron May be a Neoconservative But He's Not an Idiot

The Toronto Star has published a column by Washington Post's E.J. Dionne: Politics of stupidity saps U.S. power

In it Dionne discusses the new British prime minister's latest budget which includes massive spending cuts, but rather than follow the old neocon insanity of cutting costs, while providing tax cuts for the rich, he is raising consumption taxes.

A conservative raising taxes? Grover Norquist must be having a nervous breakdown.

Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid? Start with taxes. In every other serious democracy, conservative political parties feel at least some obligation to match their tax policies with their spending plans. David Cameron, the new Conservative prime minister in Britain, is a leading example.

He recently offered a brutal budget that includes severe cutbacks. I have doubts about some of them, but at least Cameron cared enough about reducing his country’s deficit that alongside the cuts, he also proposed an increase in the value-added tax from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent. Imagine: a fiscal conservative who really is a fiscal conservative. That could never happen in America because the fairy tale of supply-side economics insists that taxes are always too high, especially on the rich.

Dionne believes that the Democrats should make raising taxes on the wealthy an election issue. I agree. And we must do the same thing here.

While Stockwell Day is huffing and puffing about cuts, we wonder if Guy Giorno is suggesting that he do what he had Mike Harris do to reduce spending, which was massive layoffs in the civil service and drastic cuts to services for the most vulnerable.

The wealthy in Ontario did very well under Harris. The poor not so much.

But this is what we need to make an election issue. Harper is promoting austerity, and yet:

2 million for a "fake lake".

1.3 billion for security at the G-20 to target the media and advocacy groups, while telling the police to leave vandals alone to do their job.

16 billion for new jets.

125 billion bank bailout so they can give their execs 8 billion in bonuses.

25 billion ad blitz to sell us on their new census decision

Massive increase in Harper's communication budget, which is rich because he doesn't communicate.

45 million for signs

5 million for self-promotion TV ads during the Olympics

Millions to sell bogus Canada Action Plan where stimulus went to ridiculous projects including the opening of a circus school (Harper's fall back career)

And yet they are carrying through with a 6 billion dollar tax cut to the wealthy, while telling our veterans to take a hike.

They are making this almost too easy.

Jim Prentice Has resorted to Lying to Prove That we Need Him

Since Guy Giorno's newest Omnibus Bill has abandoned any hope of this government having an environmental platform, I wondered if we still needed Jim Prentice. I mean what is his job now?

But not to worry.

Jimmy has invented a job by fabricating accolades, since clearly the big middle finger from most Canadians didn't convince him of the "job" he was doing.

Yesterday, Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice released a list of quotes from environmental groups supporting his pending proposal to overhaul heavy vehicle emission regulations. Followers of Canadian environmental politics might have been surprised to see an enthusiastic endorsement of the plan from the Sierra Club, an organization with a less than cordial relationship with the Harper government.

The Sierra Club of Canada's executive director, John Bennett, certainly was. "We didn't know anything about it," he said. "I got a call from Sun Media last night asking if the quotes were from us. I looked at them and they're not ours, they're quotes from the Sierra Club United States, they're over a year old, they don't refer to any event in Canada and they certainly don't represent anything we actually said."

Whoa! I just got a whiff!

Harper to Cut Back Jobless Benefits and Pensions While Raising Taxes on Low Income Earners

Stephen Harper and Guy Girono have decided that jobless Canadians, pensioners and low income families are the ones who should be paying for the economic mess they got us into it, not the corporations or the banks.

I mean Canada's bankers deserved the eight billion dollars in bonuses they just gave themselves. They were gracious enough to allow Jim Flaherty to buy back on our behalf, $125 billion in sub-prime mortgages, giving us the wonderful distinction of being the largest lender of sub-prime mortgages in the world.

I'm getting that embroidered on a pillow, I'm so proud.

Most people think they're idiots. Duh! Do 'ya think?

A fragile economic recovery worldwide has barely begun. Yet the world’s leading economies are abruptly removing the stimulus measures that revived a global economy hurtling toward a second Great Depression only 18 months ago. With unemployment still at intolerably high levels, Canada has begun to engage in “fiscal consolidation.” This is the new euphemism for austerity. For cutbacks in jobless benefits and pensions, for tax increases on the working class, and reductions in social-service spending.

Stats show that 93,000 jobs were created in June, but most were temporary and part-time. And how many were for the G-20 and G-8?

The official communiqué warned that continued stimulus to reboot the global economy “would undermine confidence and hamper growth.” Which is nonsense. Even the stock market knows that much, having lately given up much of the huge gains it made at the peak of the stimulus last year. As a show of “confidence,” the markets have been sliding ever since the austerity talk began in earnest.

Dr. Harper’s faulty prescription

Canadians trying to recover from the post-G20 blur have yet another worry on the horizon: the aftershock of the G20 leaders’ austerity plan. Two years ago this fall, the G20 nations responded to the global financial meltdown with aggressive monetary stimulus and massive bank bailouts to quarantine the contagion; and a $5 trillion fiscal stimulus program to stem the economic free fall. Without this unprecedented collective action, the world would have plunged into a 1930s-style depression.

Draconian austerity measures are now being imposed in Europe and elsewhere: pension rollbacks and wage cuts for public servants, savage spending cuts. Millions are losing their jobs, their homes and their businesses. These measures are guaranteed to deepen and prolong recession and, paradoxically, weaken governments’ ability to manage their debt.

The wealthy will suffer no similar fate. On the contrary, the latest Merrill Lynch world wealth report found that ranks of millionaires climbed 17 per cent in 2009 while their collective wealth surged 19 per cent to $39 trillion. Stephen Harper boasted about getting G20 countries to agree to cut their deficits by one-half by 2013. If they follow through, the risk of backslide into global recession will grow. (Nothing about job creation targets in the summit communique.)

Harper also lobbied hard to kill an international bank tax that would help rein in the speculators that put the global economy in crisis in the first place, and provide a major new source of revenue for governments. At home, egged on by business economists and its own ideological instincts, the Harper government is preparing to shrink its own moderate deficit and debt via major public services cuts, layoffs and asset sell-offs, even as more than 2 million Canadian workers (11.5 per cent) remain unemployed or underemployed.

Those are the real figures. That is the real economy. Harper may want an election ASAP before the you know what hits the fan.

Jim Flaherty Made a Right Mess of Things This Time

If you ever had any doubt that the Reformers on the Hill were neoconservatives, Flaherty's latest announcements running up to the March budget, would convince you.

They will not raise taxes. They will not put a end to outrageous corporate tax cuts, and in fact plan to introduce more; and they will not change their plans to have the biggest party of the century once they've bankrupted the country.

It's time for us to starve these beasts, and take their hands off our money, while we still have any hope of having money again.

The gap between rich and poor in this country is the largest it's ever been, and these clowns want to make them richer, off the backs of Canadian taxpayers?

OTTAWA–Faced with skyrocketing debts, the federal Conservatives say they will begin cutting spending on government programs in the March 4 budget. But the massive corporate tax cuts that are deepening Ottawa's deficit hole every year will not be touched, officials say.

Despite a record annual budget deficit of $56 billion, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will look elsewhere in a bid to start putting the federal government's financial house back in order. In fact, the government is expected to continue phasing in deeper business tax reductions over the next few years.

We need jobs. We need honest reforms to EI and and we need someone in power who gives a damn. The Reform movement was a project that failed. It's time to start cleaning up their mess, but we have to give them their walking papers first.

While these major tax savings for business have attracted little public attention, they are an important factor in the financial mess that has arisen since Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives took power.

Without the corporate tax reductions brought in by Flaherty since 2006, the $160 billion cumulative budget deficit being run up by 2014 would be reduced by more than one-third – to about $100 billion ....

Murray Dobbin wrote an excellent piece this week, where he presents a very compelling argument for this country's wealthy to start chipping in a little to put this country back on it's feet.

They've had years of corporate welfare, and because their enormous profits are due to the generosity of the Canadian taxpayer, it's time they started sharing the wealth. That is not socialism, it's Canadianism.

The rich and super-rich seem completely oblivious to the plight of their fellow citizens. How else can we explain the obscene pay packages of CEOs and other executives? They are the product of upper-class exceptionalism — the normal rules of citizenship do not apply to them. They do not have to consider the fate of their country so they hide their money in foreign banks — with no guilt — to evade taxes. They are simply entitled to everything they have — and to even more if they can get it. Class divisions in Canada have been growing now for at least 25 years, to the point that we seem to be entering a new era of feudalism. This is a part of the crisis in democracy that almost never gets talked about.

So instead of asking public servants to share the pain, how about asking those who feel no pain to take a little prick in the finger. It will only hurt for a second.

In fact there are many influential people who are suggesting the same thing, as Dobbin continues:

But there may be real changes in the wind. Canada now faces huge decisions about its future and its fiscal viability as a nation state. And for the first time in 30 years, some very unusual suspects are calling for tax increases. Perhaps the most prominent (because it unleashed a nasty attack from the Prime Minister’s Office) was Ed Clark, the CEO of TD Bank.

He told a business meeting in Florida that Stephen Harper was not listening to those on Bay Street who were telling him the best way to get rid of a large deficit is through tax increases — on people just like him. And it wasn’t just Clark. He was reporting on the judgement of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), the voice of the 150 largest corporations in Canada.

This country is in trouble, and it's time for everyone to share the burden. Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty just don't get that and I don't think they ever will.

IS THIS REALLY YOUR CANADA?

Maxime Bernier Confirms the Theory: There is Shrinkage

It's always interesting reading columns about this government's handling of the economy.

Over and over again, 'Jim Flaherty shouldn't have lowered the GST', 'Jim Flaherty should listen to economists', 'Jim Flaherty should do us all a favour and move to Lower Slobovia' (yes that last one was mine).

However, they always think they're so clever when they say 'Gotcha', you are not a fiscal conservative!

Well sorry guys, but the only ones earning 'Gotcha' claims are the Reformers.

It was never ever about fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget or handling the economy.

It was always about reducing government revenue and tearing down our social safety net. They have now created the perfect storm. In the recent sale of our country, Harper and Simon Bar Sinister, have put our health services into the new trade agreement, and provinces will no longer be able to limit private health care.

But this doesn't just mean that they've opened the door to a two-tier system, because by allowing the Americans or the multinationals to get their hands on our health services, they will no longer be sustainable. And with the Harper government dangerously reducing our revenue, there's no way we could pay for it even if we tried.

POP!

Did you hear that?

That was the sound of the champagne cork at the National Citizens Coalition office, as they toast Colin Brown. He was the man who started the NCC with Ernest Manning, for the sole purpose of destroying the Canada Health Act. Step outside you'll get a faint odour of smoke. That's the Act being torched.

Stephen Harper has won. Who knew? We thought he'd need a majority to put an end to public health care in this country. But all he needed was a sleeping public and a complacent media.

At Harper's church, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, they sing God Bless America. We will soon be too.

Maxime Bernier's Shrinkage

For most of us paying attention, we know what neoconservatism is, so can usually predict the next stages. Andrew Coyne over at MacLeans thought he had the scoop of the century. Poor Andrew.

Yes, Maxime Bernier laid out the neoconservative agenda in all it's ugliness, but where were you four years ago? Four months ago? Four days ago? We could have used a scoop then and we might not be in this mess.

Maybe you could have scooped Patrick Brown last election campaign when he too suggested that Harper would never allow our economy to grow.

Maxime Bernier unplugged
by Andrew Coyne
February 9, 2010

That was a remarkable speech Maxime Bernier delivered the other day in Calgary. That is, it was an entirely unremarkable speech, the kind you would hear every other day in any normal democracy: a fairly pedestrian restatement of conservative principles by a leading conservative politician ....

UPDATE: And what’s this? Pierre Poilievre calling it a “brilliant speech”? So: the last four years, then. They’ve just been a bad dream?