It's Getting Harder to Recognize This Country Called Canada

Blogger Montreal Simon wrote a great piece in response to James Traver's column on our disappearing country. And he asks the question: "How could something so ugly happen in such a beautiful place?" It boggles the mind.

That's a question that is being asked by a lot of people these days.

Lawrence Scanlon wrote in the Ottawa Citizen recently: A less proud country. Apathetic Canadians have allowed their government to trample freedoms -- but opposition is mounting.

Opposition is mounting indeed, but unless we start believing that we have the power to change it, it will all be for not. Canadians Rallying to Unseat Stephen Harper, believe we have that power. We just have to block out the media nonsense that there is no alternative to Stephen Harper, when there very much is.

This government's latest decision to tie the hands of StatsCan is about eliminating reports that question their decisions. If Canadians are kept in the dark, they will believe that Harper is doing a good job. Facts and statistics just get in his way.

Donald Gutenstein hit the nail on the head when he blames the Fraser Institute:

To understand the brouhaha surrounding the long census, look not to Stephen Harper, but to the libertarian Fraser Institute and its long-term agenda to get government out of every activity except to protect the market, including the market for statistics. The Fraser has been Harper's most vociferous ally outside government in attacking the long census form. Within government, Maxime Bernier leads the cheerleading. Before Bernier went into politics, he was vice-president at the libertarian Montreal Economic Institute, the Fraser's sister organization in Quebec.

Think mid-term exam when you ask why the Harper government is scrapping the long census form. Harper is simply testing the waters to determine how far the project to remake Canada into a more conservative society has proceeded.

Linda McQuaig also notes that it will make the poor invisible.

The poor rarely get such sympathetic attention; indeed they rarely get much attention at all. And they're soon to get even less. That is the real reason for the Harper government's decision to scrap the long-form census matters, and why the debate over it is more than a bizarre obsession with statistics in this overheated summer.

As a number of experts have noted, the decision to replace the mandatory long-form census with a voluntary abbreviated survey will result in less reliable data collection, particularly from the poor and marginalized. So, as income becomes ever more concentrated at the top, as it has in recent years, we'll know less and less about those at the bottom, making them easier to ignore.

Michael Ignatieff wrote the same thing in his 2000:

What about the economic insecurity of our poorest fellow citizens? Why can't our politics address this? It can't be because everyone has shared the fruits of our recent economic boom. It can't be because the poor don't exist. It must be because they have become invisible. (The Rights Revolution: CBC Massey Lectures, By Michael Ignatieff, Anansi Books, 2000, ISBN: 978-0-88784-762-2, Pg. 20)

We need to keep this mandatory census and get rid of the Harper government. There is no other solution.

Vic Toews Archaic Views on Rape Reflect Government's Narrow Minded Agenda

The Canadian Press has learned that Vic Toews tried to abolish the broad definition of sexual assault, calling it the "biggest mistake in criminal law ever made."

By replacing it with "rape" would take us back decades.

Catherine Kane, who's in charge of the criminal law policy section at Justice, jumped to the defence of the current law, internal documents show. “We have several offences that cover the conduct previously captured by the very narrow and impossible to convict of charge of rape,” she wrote in a late-night email on May 11, the same day Toews made controversial public comments on the issue. “And we have several offences to cover the equally harmful sexual offences that fell short of the offence of rape.”

I do like this comment from Rob Nicholson though:

“The government currently has an ambitious justice agenda and we are committed to pursuing it. However, in regards to your question (about rape), there is nothing currently in the works.”

"Ambitious justice agenda" ... yes. "Committed to pursuing it" ... yes. The need for it ... not on your life.

In what has turned into a rite of summer in recent years, Statistics Canada has released data that again suggests the crime rate in the country continues to fall. The annual police-reported crime statistics issued yesterday indicated drops in overall crimes, motor vehicle thefts and even violent offences. The crime rate in the country in 2009 was 17% lower than a decade earlier. A relatively new indicator, the Crime Severity Index, which is a weighted average of criminal offences, is down 22% from the level in 1999.

Going through with massive corporate tax cuts when this country has so much poverty, our health care is in crisis and our veterans are being treated like dogs ... That's the real crime that needs to be addressed.

Harper Preaches Austerity While Increasing His Own Spending Habits

The Toronto Star is reporting that Stephen Harper's budget has increased by over one million dollars, most of it on communication.

Communication?

He doesn't communicate. Times when he should be addressing the nation he goes into hiding.

Don't they mean photo-ops?

The cost of running the prime minister's office will jump by over $1 million this year because of additional expenditures on communication.

The final number will be published in the government's official accounting of expenses for 2009-2010, but The Canadian Press has learned it will hit about $9.89 million, compared to last year's $8.15 million.

Rob Granatstein Says That Stephen Harper is Not a Leader

I agree of course, but Granatstein is one of the most right-wing journalists in the country. If he says that Harper is not a leader, believe me ... he is NOT a leader!

And while the journalist goes into the old nonsense about there not being an opposition, he clearly believes that there is no government either. Harper's disappearing act is leaving him a little puzzled, because while he is nowhere to be found:

...he’s having a summer of implosions ... Too many fumbles on too many non-issues is not the sign of a strong leader. Canadians want to enjoy their summer, want the economy to roll on strongly and don’t want to be bothered by questions about the strength of our PM. By staying in the news, Harper has looked confused and weak, and he’s done it to himself.

Maybe he's at the circus school he built with our infrastructure money.

Judging by the latest fundraising letter, this is a government that has run out of ideas.

There are two other recent columns that I want to talk about though.

One was James Travers, who is one of my favourite columnists. But in his most recent, he suggests that Harper is poised to win another election. Based on what? 31% in the polls, where Alberta always places him higher than warranted? Weird comment for Travers.

The other was Tom Walkom's. As expected it was pretty anti-Liberal, though he does almost, sorta' kinda' say something quite possibly not unflattering to Michael Ignatieff.

But then he went down a strange road. When discussing Ignatieff's education, he makes a point of saying that he attended "high school at Toronto’s elite and privately funded Upper Canada College".

Is there a point to that? Stockwell Day attended private school, Stephen Harper went to school in what his biographer William Johnson describes as a 'WASP' (whites only) neighbourhood and Jason Kenney attended a private Catholic school run by his father. Was Walkom trying to again paint the Liberal leader as an 'elitist'? A little weird.

Michael Ignatieff's father was a high ranking diplomat and he comes from one of the oldest families in Canada. His great-grandfather was George Munro Grant:

In 1867, Nova Scotia was greatly apposed to joining Confederation, until a popular scholar and theologian, George Monro Grant stepped in. It is said that without his involvement, there may not have been a Dominion of Canada, at least not at that time. (Elections Canada: A History of the Vote in Canada, British North America, 1758–1866)

I would not have expected him to attend public school, if for no other reason than security. Besides Upper Canada is a renowned school, so again, Since when is a good education a liability?

But the most bone-headed comment came on Lloyd Mainsbridge when the panel got around to talking about 'Harper's base'. One panelist, I can't remember his name, suggested that since the Libertarians were not large in number, Harper had no base.

Whaaaaaat?

The Libertarians gave up on Harper long ago and are actually now running attack ads against him. Do journalists even try anymore?

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!

Why is Stephen Harper Abandoning Our Veterans?

After learning that the Harper government is planning on closing the Veterans Affairs office, no doubt the reason for Greg Thompson's resignation, the story just keeps getting worse.

The way John Sheardown and other veterans in need of long-term care are being treated in their twilight years amounts to a national embarrassment, critics of the Conservative government say. Sheardown, 85, is a former bomber pilot and a Canadian hero who, along with former ambassador Ken Taylor, played a key role in the rescue of six Americans during the Iranian hostage crisis 30 years ago.

Suffering from Alzheimer’s and recovering from a broken hip, the long-time Canadian diplomat is languishing in hospital and faces a wait of up to 18 months for a bed in a veterans’ long-term home in Ottawa, the Star revealed Friday. “I simply cannot understand how Veterans Affairs is dragging its feet here,” Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Friday while touring the Niagara Region. “This is a man who did something heroic for Canada. . . . We shouldn’t even be having this conversation. And I appeal to the minister to act immediately on this. It is just causing anguish to a good woman and it’s treating a man who served our country well in a poor way.”

The Harper government has responded with "No comment". I'm responding with "No more Harper government."

Has Rob Anders Finally Flipped?

Rob Anders has always been a little weird and his riding association has been trying to get rid of him for years, though Stephen Harper won't allow it.

This former heckler for the Republican kook James Inhofe, has always had an obsession with the Chinese, but his latest actions appear to have gone to the fanatical.

With Stephen Harper in hiding, members of his caucus from Dean Del Mastro to Tony Clement have been spewing nonsense, but I think Anders takes the cake.

A Conservative MP says some of his colleagues have fallen into traps laid by seductive Chinese spies, lavished with gifts of alcohol and too-good-to-be true business deals, and at least two MPs have been subsequently blackmailed. Calgary MP Rob Anders claims both cases occurred in Shanghai,
where an MP was offered a rich but skeptical business deal. In the other case, he said, the MP accepted sexual favours.

In return, Anders said, politicians can provide access to resources or rubber stamp business deals. Anders said many current MPs have told him that on their trips to China they’ve been approached by stunning women half their age “offering them to go out dancing, go to dinner, get a massage.” “I know MPs who have taken up those offers,” he said, adding that that some ministerial staffers have also been compromised. “They have to understand that when they are being done, they are probably being taped (and) those tapes can, and will, be used,” he said.

Anders has no physical proof and refuses to name names, saying he’s not out to create a witch-hunt. “My purpose in doing this is not to end colleagues’ political careers,” he said. “My purpose is to educated them so they are better aware of how they can be manipulated.” Anders said he has personally witnessed the sons of two different MPs being seduced by women far too attractive to be interested in these “average looking” guys, including a 14-year-old, in Taiwan.

Coming from anyone but Anders, the story might be believable, and I'm sure there's at least some truth to it. Lobbyists for countries and companies often dangle rewards.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s spokesman refused to comments on Anders’ assertions that Chinese infiltration had crept into the federal government. “Mr. Anders’ remarks are his and his alone and do not represent the government’s views. We have no comment on them,” Andrew MacDougall said.