Do Nothing Goverment? Why Thank You!

Paul Martin has decided to turn the Liberals' lack of coherent economic policy into a virtue by claiming that everything is going so well that he doesn't need to do anything:

Liberal Leader Paul Martin says he is not making new promises to help small business because the economy is soaring and he likes the status quo.

Mr. Martin took his campaign tour to an auto-parts manufacturer in this Hamilton suburb yesterday and spoke glowingly about Canada's low inflation and employment rates. It was the second day in a row that the Liberal message has been about small business - and the second day in a row that no new policies were unveiled.

When asked if that meant the Liberals had no new ideas for the business sector, Mr. Martin and the five Liberal candidates that flanked him -- including three incumbent MPs -- laughed out loud.

"We're not making promises, we're saying we've done it and we're going to continue to do it," Mr. Martin told reporters.

....

But if Mr. Martin believes the status quo is good enough, that opinion is not shared by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, a non-partisan organization representing more than 100,000 of the nation's smaller companies.

It released a policy paper yesterday asking the government to cut red tape and "the paper burden" -- moves that the organization says will save Canadian businesses $33-billion a year.

....

The Conservatives have said that, if elected, they would raise the threshold of the small-business tax rate to $400,000 from $300,000 and reduce the small-business tax rate to 11 per cent from 12 per cent over five years.

Liberal smugness knows no bounds.

"You've never had it so good" sounds appealling when unemployment is relatively low and corporate profits reasonably high, but economic policy has to look forward to when things are not so good--and what could make a good situation even better.

Paul Martin seems to have confused laissez-faire government and do-nothing government. The former creates the conditions to allow the free market to function properly. The second lets it break down under the weight of inertia, bureaucracy and favouritism by using relative prosperity as an excuse not to look at its own deficiencies.

Source: Globe and Mail

Til The Cows Come Home

Gilles Duceppe claims that independence will prevent the spread of mad cow disease in Quebec.

If that isn't a winning slogan for the next referendum, I don't know what is.

Source:
CBC

A Simple Question From A Simple Rube

Submitted for the consideration of my fellow right whingers:

Is there a causal connection between the apparent implosion of NDP support and the appearance of Robert McClelland as administrator of the Blogging Dippers?

Just asking.

NDP: We Care, Therefore We Care Better

The Liberals don't trust you not to blow child care money on beer and popcorn. The NDP hardly trusts you with your children at all:

NDP Leader Jack Layton announced the NDP’s plan to improve child care in Canada and measures to fight child poverty. Layton was speaking at the Parkdale Beach Child Care Centre in Toronto.

The NDP plan to improve child care and fight child poverty has three main elements:

A Child Care Act to ensure that federal funding for child care is targeted at licensed, high-quality, non-profit child care.

$1.8 billion invested in child care next year, with annual increases of $250 million for the next three years. This would create 200,000 additional spaces in the first year, with another 25,000 spaces annually after that.

An increase in the federal child tax credit of $1,000 phased in over four years in order to help lower-income families cover child care costs and meet other essential expenses.

Layton said the NDP plan means a permanent commitment to create high-quality, licensed, non-profit child care, one affordable step at a time.

The NDP plan, in the main, is a pale imitation of the Liberal plan to create "spaces" as opposed to doing anything for children and families. Let them waste their energies trying to outbid each other for the hard-left vote while the Conservatives put money in parents' pockets.

The last sentence, however, has an ominous undertone.

Does the NDP's vision of high-quality, licensed, non-profit child care sound inspired by its commitment to high-quality, licensed, non-profit health care?

I hope I'm only being paranoid when I see Brave New World visions of warehouse-sized state-run daycares, overseen by a vast bureaucracy of certified early childhood educators, while the government denounces and arrests parents for providing unlicensed private child care in their own homes.

I fear I'm only being realistic when I envision two-week waiting periods to change dirty diapers.

Source: NDP

Dear Editor

Often the best way to dismiss outrageous allegations is not to dignify them with a response.

Which is why I'm surprised that Stephen Harper has seen fit to respond to Liberal claims that the Tory campaign is getting too much help from the American right by denying them in the Washington Times :

Patrick Basham of the Cato Institute calls me "pro-free trade, pro-Iraq war, anti-Kyoto, and socially conservative" ("Gift from Canada?" Commentary, Dec. 2). While I certainly consider myself to be a friend of the United States, I am afraid this greatly oversimplifies my positions.
For the record: While, unlike the current Liberal government, I have always supported free trade, there is a deep concern in Canada about the commitment of the current U.S. administration and Congress to free trade. The United States is withholding some $5 billion in duties held from Canadian softwood lumber producers, despite the fact that a NAFTA panel has ruled that these duties are illegal.
In a recent speech, I stated that Canada must determine "the willingness of the United States to strengthen the dispute resolution mechanism and to subordinate domestic political pressures to a shared system of rules" and that "if this is not a direction in which the United States wishes to go, then Canada will have to make other long-term choices in its economic infrastructure," including expanded trade relationships with Asian countries such as India, Japan, and China.
On Iraq, while I support the removal of Saddam Hussein and applaud the efforts to establish democracy and freedom in Iraq, I would not commit Canadian troops to that country. I must admit great disappointment at the failure to substantiate pre-war intelligence information regarding Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction.
While I think that the Kyoto Treaty is deeply flawed, I support developing a plan, in coordination with the United States and other countries, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by developing new technologies and energy conservation.
And while I have promised a free vote in Canada's parliament to reconsider the recent change of law to allow same-sex marriages in Canada, and will vote myself for a return to the traditional definition of marriage, I have said any changes must protect the existing status of same-sex couples who have been legally married. As well, a new Conservative government will not initiate or support any effort to pass legislation restricting abortion in Canada.
Despite my differences on many issues with some American conservative politicians, I look forward to a cooperative, constructive relationship with the United States as our principal trading partner and ally under a new Conservative government.

Unfortunately for Mr. Harper, this letter is factually correct, but the optics are all wrong. He should be standing up for Canada in the Canadian press, not in the American papers.

Second Thoughts On Immigration?

When the Globe and Mail begins questioning our immigration policy, you can sense a sea change coming in the attitudes of the governing classes who have profited from it:

Census data now shows that better-educated immigrants are not doing as well as their less-educated counterparts did a generation ago. The reduced value of their work -- because Canada fails to recognize their qualifications -- robs the economy of as much as $3.4-billion a year, according to the Conference Board of Canada.

Another problem is geographic concentration: 80 per cent of all immigrants settle not in Halifax, Winnipeg and Calgary, where more labour is needed, but in congested Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Moreover, these clusters are turning into ethnic ghettoes. Today, there are 254 distinct neighbourhoods where immigrants from one ethnic region comprise at least 30 per cent of the population.

Finally, Canada's mix of carefully selected immigrants isn't what we pretend it is. Despite the rhetoric, there are many more family-class immigrants than skilled workers. Allowing immigrants to re-unite with family members is a sound idea, but if they overwhelm the system, they drain the economy.

Yet in spite of these many challenges, immigration is not likely to be a hot-button issue during the election campaign. Politicians know there is no gain to questioning immigration -- and much potential to lose coveted immigrant votes in big-city ridings. In the early 1990s, the old Reform Party was branded "racist" for suggesting that immigration levels be lowered from 250,000 to 150,000.

Yet this is a crucial time to ask the question. Notwithstanding its fans in Europe, has Canada's immigration model outlived its usefulness? Is the country getting the immigrants it needs?

Do you get the impression that their editorial board is secretly afraid that what's happening in Paris and Sydney will happen in Toronto next?

This city has all the ingredients necessary for an insurrection: huge immigrants ghettoes full of unemployed, underemployed and disillusioned people; armies of young men raised without a stable, intact family influence and turning to gangs for the male leadership their absent fathers don't provide; government policies that play a cruel bait-and-switch, luring immigrants with promises of good jobs and sending them to do the scut work instead; a policy of multiculturalism that discourages assimilation into the greater community while exposing them to a crude, aggressive pop culture; a social service and education system dedicated to the proposition that no one is to blame for his own problems.

Today, most of us are secretly relieved at the fact that, as in Jane-Finch and the Tamil gangs, they tend to kill only each other. But one day, when their numbers are a little greater, their anger a little deeper and their confidence a little higher, they will take their fight to the streets of Rosedale and Forest Hill.

Axe Fights

I used to think that men's body spray was just for metrosexual sissies, so it's heartening to see that boys are finding a proper use for it:

A New Brunswick principal has stepped in after a series of "Axe fights" that are not nearly as dangerous as they might sound.

Students at Nashwaaksis Middle School in Fredericton are not wielding hatchets, but small 155-ml spray cans of Axe deodorant body spray.

The recent scent skirmishes have prompted principal Alan Atkins to order students to stop wearing the smelly spray.

....

Mr. Atkins said some students were showing up reeking of it first thing in the morning while others would sometimes squirt each other with it on the way back from gym class. "If they get into squirting it on one another, like an 'Axe fight' as they all call it, that's a whole other different issue," Mr. Atkins said. "That's a discipline issue more than anything else."

The boys were obviously taking notes from the company's overtly sexual marketing campaigns that promote the "Axe Effect," whereby women become powerless to the effects of the deodorant's scent.

We need not fear for these boys' masculinity if they're getting into gross-out fights to see who stinks the worst with it. Good to see them fighting back against the feminizing tendencies of the modern school system!

Source: National Post

Go Down Gamblin'

You're nobody in the casino business if you can't bring in the high rollers. Free gourmet meals, hotel suites, first-class flights, liquor, even drugs and prostitutes--you gotta comp 'em if you want them to drop a few million on you.

So it should be no surprise that our government-run casinos in Ontario are doing the same:

There is such a thing as a free lunch at Ontario's government-owned casinos — as well as hotel rooms, NFL tickets, Rolex watches and tropical vacations. The casinos spent more than $300 million on perks like these last year to lure gamblers to the card tables and slot machines.

But a Star investigation of the widespread and growing use of "comps" found that the provincial government has no control over what they are, how many are given out or who gets them at its four Las Vegas-style commercial casinos in Rama, Windsor and Niagara Falls, raising questions over its level of oversight of the private operators.

Complimentary gifts are part of an even larger pool of $700 million the provincial gaming corporation spent last year to market and promote gambling — a number that keeps growing despite plummeting commercial casino profits. By contrast, the province spends $36 million on problem gambling prevention, treatment and research. About 450,000 people are classed as moderate to severe problem gamblers in Ontario.

And it's costing the taxpayers nearly $300 million a year to keep these guys hooked:

The OLGC instead released a general financial breakdown of comps at all gaming venues for the year ended March 31, 2004.

According to that record, the cashback program — where holders of players' points cards get money back based on their level of play — rang in at $109.8 million; free food and beverage at $103.4 million; coupons for tokens or chips at $47.3 million; hotel, $12.8 million; entertainment, $6 million; valet parking, $2.9 million; and certain "retail" items, $874,000 (no description in records). That's a total of $283 million.

For the year ended March 31, 2005, total comps are $319 million, but no breakdown was available.

The minute the government got into the casino business, it got itself into all the sleaze and crookedness that goes with it. If private casinos want to hook high rollers with comps, that's their business. But the government has no compelling public interest to compete with Vegas and Atlantic City, and it is the height of hypocrisy to rail against gambling addiction and encourage more of it at the same time.

Source: Toronto Star

Thirty Million Reasons

The Liberal TV ads which present completely unrehearsed testimony from undoubtedly ordinary Canadians offer us thirty million reasons to vote Liberal.

I'm confused. Don't Liberal reasons usually come in plain brown envelopes?

Beer And Popcorn

Scott Reid has just made what could be a fatal comment about the Tory child care plan, if we get the word out past the Liberal-friendly media:

Scott Reid, the prime minister's director of communications, reportedly said in an interview that the Conservative childcare plan of giving households $1,200 per year for each child under six would just be spent on beer and popcorn.

This story hasn't shown up on the wires yet, and I don't know if there's any video.

John Duffy, appearing for the Liberals on Question Period, stood by the statement.

"The fact is there is absolutely nothing to stop somebody from pocketing Stephen Harper's $1,200 supposed child care baby bonus and spending it however the heck they want," he said.

The Liberal plan will create more daycare spaces, he said.

"There is no shortage of demand for childcare spots. There is a huge shortage of supply," Duffy said.

Politically, did Reid put his foot in it?

On a policy basis, what's the better way to for governments to assist parents: By providing more daycare space or through direct financial aid to parents for them to spend as they see fit?

Or does this episode show the philosophical difference between the Liberals and Conservatives?

A big philosphical difference indeed, folks. The Liberals not only don't trust you with your own money, but they also think that you're lazy and selfish to boot. Had a Tory said this about welfare recipients, he'd have been hung out to dry for being heartless.

Reid's comment just drips content for the ordinary people whose votes he is happy to buy, but who he doesn't want to get too close to, lest he catch some of their filth.

Makes me want to break out the beer and popcorn to celebrate!

Source: CTV Election Blog

The Sydney Riot: PC's Legacy

Some Australian men have decided that rather than waiting for Islamic rioters to strike first, they should make a pre-emptive strike, according to the Melbourne Herald-Sun:

ANGRY crowds have singled out and bashed people of Middle Eastern appearance at Sydney's Cronulla beach as racial tension erupted into violence.

And an ambulance called to the scene to treat five people injured in today's violence has been attacked by a mob who shattered its windows.
Meanwhile, police have been pelted with beer bottles, and their patrol cars stomped on, as the outnumbered officers struggled to maintain control.

Witnesses saw officers using capsicum spray in a bid to quell those perpetrating the violence.

....

Earlier today, police rushed to Cronulla train station where a mob ran there from the foreshore after receiving a text message saying a group of Lebanese people were trying to leave. Mr Goodwin said the text message was wrong, but sparked a scuffle at the station between the crowd and police.

....

Authorities had expected trouble today after two violent incidents at the beach last week – an attack on two lifeguards on Sunday and a brawl later in the week in which youths turned on a media crew. A series of text messages then began circulating, encouraging members of two rival groups of beach users to attack each other.

One of the messages had urged "Aussies" to take revenge against "Lebs and wogs". Another urged locals to rally at a point on the beach today to take retaliation against "middle eastern" gangs.

As the 5,000-strong crowd moved along the beach and foreshore area today, one man on the back of a ute began to shout "No more Lebs" – a chant picked up by the group around him.

Others in the crowd, carrying Australian flags and dressed in Australian shirts, yelled "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie ... Oi, Oi, Oi".

The riots in Sydney may represent nothing more than a gang of white trash beating up on a gang of Middle Eastern trash. Thugs of all kinds don't need much of a pretext to start a fight.

But they may also be representative of the anger of native Australians left politically voiceless in the face of overwhelming political correctness on the issue of immigration, an anger stoked by recent cases of gang rapes of Australian women by Muslim Middle Eastern men.

Perhaps the most notorious case was that of Bilal Skaf, a Sydney man of Lebanese Muslim origin who was handed a 55-year sentence for leading a brutal gang rape in 2000, only to have his conviction overturned without a retrial when his victim refused to testify again.

In a 2002 case, four men convicted of gang rape blamed the police for forcing them to commit their crime: "We did not commit this crime, the crime was committed against us. The police set us up because we are Muslims, your honour."

As one of them (identified only by his initials, MSK) later claimed, he thought he had the right to rape his victim because he thought she was promiscuous:[TW] said no but I go ahead with it because I believe that at the time I commit these offences, I believe that she was promiscuous …" he said. "She don't know us, I don't know her, like she was not related to us and she was not wearing any purdah … like she was not … covered her face, she was not wearing any headscarf and she started drinking with us and she was singing.

And he and his partners in crime could have found encouragement from their religious leaders, including an Australian-born imam who publicly claimed that women had only themselves to blame for being raped: A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world . . ."Strapless, backless, sleeveless, nothing but satanic skirts, slit skirts, translucent blouses, miniskirts, tight jeans: all this to tease man and appeal to his carnal nature." (Though he later apologized, his supporters had the last laugh: they deposed the head of the Lebanese Muslim Association of Australia who called on him to make the apology.)

We have been called upon repeatedly to examine the root causes of Islamic terrorism and anger towards the West, and to engage in breast-breating for sins, real and imagined, committed by us against these people. Yet never do the chattering classes suggest, except in the mildest of manner so as to give the illusion of even-handedness, that the Islamic community ever examine the root causes of Western anger towards them.

Comments and actions like these mentioned above will end up sparking more emnity and hatred. If we can't have a frank public discussion about the issues for fear of causing offence and damaging the myth of multiculturalism, anger and resentment will fester, and people will turn to the demagogues who, alone of all people, hear them and let them speak.

No Peace, Disorder, Too Much Government

If you want to understand Jack Layton's mentality, the same mentality that could prop up an admittedly corrupt government for a few billion dollars and then could bring it down when more money was on the way without asking, read today's National Post column by Lawrence Solomon about the petty despotism of Toronto city council, where Jack Layton spent 20 years honing his political skills:

The local despots -- in Toronto they're called councillors -- do more than curry favour through their power: As the advisory panel points out, they act to blindly stop development, discourage business, and otherwise harm the city through arbitrary actions that cater to special interests and political allies.

At root, the panel describes a dysfunctional system in which councillors wield minor powers that yield much harm to maximize their political influence. Any Torontonian needing to deal with city hall is liable to be ensnared.

Take the case of my friend and neighbour, recently afflicted by an illness, who requires a handicapped street-parking spot. There is no question about his entitlement to this spot -- his difficulty walking any great distance is evident and his doctor has filled out the requisite government forms -- yet this is not enough. Under Toronto's system of governance, the decision to allow him a parking spot in front of his home in a residential district rests on a vote of the entire Toronto City Council. There is only one reason that councillors have not abandoned this and other powers that should properly be left to a non-partisan clerk in an administrative department: Councillors want leverage over their constituents, to reward friends and political allies who have performed a service for them and to exact gratitude when they have performed some service for others.

It's little wonder that city politics in Toronto has become dominated by New Democrats and Liberals. If you believe in overarching government control, as do the New Democrats, city council gives you the power to carry out your schemes almost unopposed. If you believe in creating a constituency dependent on your largesse, as do the Liberals, city council offers the power to reward allies and harass enemies at every turn, from business licences to social service programs.

Understand the Toronto mentality at the civic level and you'll see how it wells up to the federal level. Belief in limited and responsible government is not merely heresy in Toronto; it is also a practical impossibility. The Conservatives cannot win in Toronto, not because of hostility from immigrants and visible minorities or towards cultural conservatism, but because its view of government's relationship to the people is too revolutionary for Torontonians to consider.

Culture De Défait

A prominent PMO staffer trying to get back into Parliament has admitted what everybody else in the rest of Canada but keeps quiet about for the sake of national unity: Quebec gets more money out of the country than it puts in:

Hélène Chalifour-Scherrer, Liberal leader Paul Martin's former principal secretary and now candidate in the Quebec City riding of Louis Hébert, said this afternoon that contrary to popular belief, the province of Quebec "was a very poor province."

"People still have the impression that the province of Quebec is the milking cow for all of Canada. That is not the case. The province of Quebec needs equalization payments and money from Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia, otherwise it couldn't make ends meet," Ms. Chalifour-Scherrer said.

The comments provoked an outcry of indignation from the Bloc Québécois that the remarks were a sign of Liberal contempt towards Quebec.

....

"I cannot accept that we treated as beggars. And I find shameful that some would be proud to be beggars," he (Gilles Duceppe) said.

When Stephen Harper remarked that dependence on EI and government-sponsored development programs had created a "culture of defeat" in Atlantic Canada, he became the most hated man out East for a time, because he told the truth that people back home know in their hearts to be true but are ashamed to admit publicly.

Thus also with Mme. Chalifour-Scherrer's remarks. The Liberals have purchased the loyalty of federalists in Quebec with what Robert Bourassa cynically called fédéralisme rentable (profitable federalism): equalization grants, procurement contracts, development programs, industry subsidies (especially to dairy farmers and Bombardier, and, of course, the sponsorship program.

The Liberals exploit the fear that all this wealth will disappear upon secession, and people flock to them for the money.

It is an uncomfortable truth both sides in the exchange know but won't admit publicly: the loyalty of federalist Quebecois depends entirely on what they can get of it.

If the federal well should ever run dry, or Quebec finds a way to make itself a have province, support for federalism will disappear because the need for Ottawa's cash will have gone away. Federalists' heads will finally listen to their nationalist hearts.

It's in the Liberals' interest to keep Quebec as dependent on their control of the money tree as it is to keep Atlantic Canada on the dole.

National unity through bribery and dependence: that's the Liberal way!

Polar Shift

Canada has lost so much over the last 12 years of Chretien-Martin government.

Now it's about to lose the North Magnetic Pole.

Compasses in the Northern Hemisphere will no longer point to Canada as voyagers seek to find their way across land, sea, and sky.

The Liberals' moral compass, like all other compasses, will point towards Russia, a land of great promise and natural wealth ruined by decades of corrupt and repressive one-party rule.

If the Liberals believe that a mere treaty can stop the natural forces of climate change, surely a campaign promise will bring the North Magnetic Pole back?

The Mouse That Roared

The Liberal Party's captivity to its radical anti-American wing has not gone unnoticed in the White House and State Department:

U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins said overheated election rhetoric is prompting some Canadian officials to burnish Canada's image by sullying the reputation of the United States.

Wilkins made no official comment on the Bush administration's annoyance with Prime Minister Paul Martin's denigration of U.S. environmental policies during an interview with The Canadian Press. Instead, he expressed regret that the United States was being drawn into a campaign that it was trying to stay out of.

"It appears that oftentimes, some officials, in order to build Canada up, attempt to tear the United States down," Wilkins told CP Friday.

"I'm sure the election plays a role in that or is to some extent a cause of that."

God help us if the Liberals' poll numbers shoot through the roof because of this. It would be rewarding boorishness and ineptitude in handling our foreign affairs. And it will be further evidence of Canada's gravest structural problem: its lack of a coherent national identity beyond being "not American".

Peoples confident in their own identity and accomplishments do not need to continually denigrate other nations that just happen to be more powerful.

Rope A Dope

A jewellery thief asks for a marijuana dealer's endorsement because it will enhance his public credibility, and gets it.

Only in B.C., you say? Pity!

Unwelcome Back Khadr

Forgive me if I do not shed salt tears for this poor man's plight:

Now that Abdullah Khadr has returned to Canada, his sister says he can expect to be condemned along with the rest of his relatives.

"People have this picture of us as these very arrogant, selfish, scary people who did not care for anyone," Zaynab Khadr recently told the CagePrisoners.com website, which draws attention to the cases of detained Muslims.

"It's a very difficult situation when you are living in a place where you know you are not wanted and people are actually fighting to get you out of the country."

In a lengthy interview, she made a plea for sympathy, saying her family members -- who are all Canadian citizens living in Scarborough, Ont. -- are hated by Canadians and abandoned by Muslims.

Leaving Canada to take up arms in such an execrable cause will not win friends and influence people. Getting captured and snitching to save your skin gets you branded as a coward. If neither Canada nor the Islamic umma will have the Khadrs anymore, then that's their own fault.

But here's the money shot:

Ultimately, she said, the Khadrs are good citizens. "We pay our taxes and our papers were always in perfect order."

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Is there something about how the Khadrs got Canadian citizenship she's trying to hide?

Source: Globe & Mail

Polls, Schmolls

Further evidence that the SES polls showing the Grits with double-digit leads are suspect; the Globe and Mail is running a big article on the latest Strategic Counsel poll instead:

The Liberal Party's steady lead in the national election polls is masking a series of regional swings that would significantly reduce Paul Martin's minority and leave Canadians with an even more deadlocked Parliament than the last one.

That conclusion can be found in a new Strategic Counsel poll that shows the Liberals have lost a substantial amount of support in Montreal, where the Bloc Québécois is poised to pick up more seats, while the Conservatives are doing better in Southwestern Ontario than they did in the 2004 election.

By the same token, regional changes in British Columbia suggest the Tories could see their Ontario gains offset by losses to both the Liberals and the New Democratic Party in British Columbia.

The data suggest an appreciably reduced minority government for the Liberals. But a shift of a couple of percentage points could see the Tories under Stephen Harper form a minority government, even without taking as many overall votes as the Liberals.

Bearing in mind that the real campaign begins after New Year's Day, when the public's attention will be focussed on it, Gregg's findings are actually quite heartening.

The Liberals do best when they do nothing and hide Paul Martin away. Up until he made his handgun ban promise, this is more or less what Martin and company were doing.

Martin's handgun ban announcement has reminded the public just why they didn't like him in the first place. His pomposity and inconsistent, dithering nature shone through when he announced a new law that even his own party admits wouldn't change anything as his latest number one priority.

Whatever pops into his head at the moment is always his absolute number one priority. If everything is, nothing is.

If six points ahead is the best the Grits can do nationally, while they've been idling, can they expect to do better when they actually get into gear?

Today's Abomination

Tomorrow's Charter right.

Inside Job, Continued

We now have confirmation that someone in Ralph Goodale's office gave an unethical heads-up to a seniors' lobby group about the decision not to tax income trusts.

And predictably, Monte Solberg is calling for the resignation of the man whose job he could well be holding in two months time.

No wonder the Liberals want to ban handguns: they keep shooting themselves in the foot!

Who Speaks For Us?

Today's National Post raises a point that no one else has asked the Liberals about their claims that only they can defend national unity:

Canadians might worry about the possibility of electing a Conservative government with no MPs -- and perhaps no Cabinet representation -- from Quebec. And second, they may fear the possibility of a Conservative-Bloc Quebecois alliance manipulated by the separatist party to suit its goals.

Neither of these concerns holds up to scrutiny. On the first count, there is no reason the Conservatives could not draw Quebec Cabinet ministers from their Senate caucus if needed. And even if they did not, consider that there is a very real possibility that after the election the Liberals themselves will lack any MPs from the province of Alberta. Has anyone advanced the argument that this is a reason for the rest of the country to vote against them?

This has already happened with Liberal governments from 1972-1979 and 1980-1984. They managed to govern from 1997-2000 with no Nova Scotia MPs either, and at no time did the media speculate about Alberta's or Nova Scotia's alienation from the country.

But then, national unity has always been code for appeasing Quebec. Quebec will never be appeased, and people in Canada have lost patience with this neverending issue. The Conservatives could turn their weakness in Quebec into a strength, if it positioned itself as the voice of English-speaking Canada and its legitimate aspirations.

Who speaks for Quebec? We already know.
Who speaks for English Canada? No one right now.

The Tories can be, and need to be, that voice.

Somebody should.

A Farewell To Arms

Paul Martin's latest very clear absolute number one priority today will be to propose a complete ban on handguns in Canada, ostensibly to stop the shooting sprees amongst Jamaican gangs in Toronto, but actually to little effect except on a small number of legitimate handgun owners:

Current laws already prohibit the possession of unregistered handguns and some currently registered users would be exempt from the proposed Liberal ban. Police could continue to carry sidearms and groups such as target shooters would still be allowed to shoot.

As such, the ban could actually affect very few people. According to estimates by Edward Burlew, a gun user and lawyer who has done work with the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, the vast majority of handgun owners in the country are registered as target shooters.

He said that the ratio of target shooters to collectors is about 10 to 1 -- and that there are probably not many more than 3,000 handgun collectors, though he stressed that that figure is an estimate.

Mr. Burlew, who was unaware of the Liberal idea when he spoke last night, said individuals who want to own a handgun must already put up with a maze of regulations and costly fees.

"As gun owners, it takes a lot to be licensed," he said. "Handguns aren't cheap, if you want to be a competitive shooter . . . you're going to get a fairly decent gun. You're going to spend between $1,000 and $2,000."

The total cost, he said, including safety equipment and shooting-club membership, can easily run many times that. And the hassle of obtaining multiple licences can be exacerbated by sometimes-lengthy waiting times.

Among other things, target shooters must apply for an Authorization to Transport licence, which allows them to take their weapon -- unloaded, trigger-locked and in a secure box -- from their home to a registered shooting range. They must take the most direct route possible and bring their weapon home directly after. These guns cannot be stored at the club.

Handguns can also be purchased by collectors, but people who want to buy the weapon for that purpose must take a test to prove that they are bona fide collectors, Mr. Burlew said.

I'm sure that the denizens of Jane-Finch have been held back from starting an all-out Paris-style insurrection because of the stringency of restrictions placed on the use of their properly licenced handguns. I am also sure that the law-abiding folk whom they once terrorized will be able to sleep of nights, secure in the knowledge that the gangs have been completely disarmed.

Urban voters, especially women, who pride themselves on their sophistication, have a collective animistic belief that firearms turn peaceful, law-abiding handlers into bloodthirsty killers. They'll fall for this policy proposal, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, because of that belief.

The only way I can think of get the point across is to have someone like Vic Toews or Peter MacKay slam down a handgun and ammo on the table at a press conference and say this: "If this handgun loads and shoots itself in the next minute, then Paul Martin' handgun ban will work."

Globe and Mail

Bankruptcy Or Death?

Haven't we been told that only American private health care forces people to choose between bankruptcy for life-saving treatment or agonizing death!

A cancer patient who was told he would be "lucky" to live another eight months says his constitutional rights were violated when he was forced to travel to England to obtain a life-saving liver transplant at a cost of almost $500,000.

Nearly six years later, lawyers will ask Ontario's Divisional Court this week to let them argue that Adolfo Flora's Charter rights were infringed when he had to choose between dying or the crushing financial burden of obtaining treatment overseas.

If lawyers are successful Friday, it will build on a previous legal challenge using the Charter of Rights and Freedoms against Canada's health-care system.

"It is intolerable in a civilized society that a man should be forced to choose between bankrupting his family in order to pay for life-saving treatment or facing certain death," Mr. Flora's constitutional lawyers, including Mark Freiman, say in their submissions.

The 56-year-old retired high-school teacher is fighting his case on two fronts: In addition to the constitutional argument, he is appealing a decision of the Health Services Appeal and Review Board, which refused to order the Ontario government to reimburse him for $447,000. (The board hears from Ontario patients trying to recoup costs for treatment received out of Canada.)

Mr. Flora is using the section of the Charter that guarantees the right to life, liberty and security of the person. Quebec physician Jacques Chaoulli used the same provision to argue successfully that prohibiting private health insurance jeopardizes the well-being of those who badly require medical treatment.

This man's story could form the basis of a home run negative ad for the Tories the way that the Willie Horton ad was for George Bush père in 1988. It gives the lie to the Liberals' claim to be champions of the Charter, and to their claims that the medicare monopoly is a sign of Canada's superior compassion.

He would be dead had he done his Canadian duty and waited in line.

His story had a happy ending; many others did not. Their stories need to be told, and the victims' faces shown, to illustrate a simple message: WE DIED TO DEFEND THE LIBERAL MEDICARE MONOPOLY.

Source: Globe and Mail

12 Point Inspection

Today's SES poll showing a sudden 12-point lead for the Liberals is causing the nervous nellies in the party to panic with visions of a Liberal landslide majority dancing in their heads and a wipeout of 1993 levels.

Oddly enough, the most balanced and reassuring post comes not from a fellow partisan Blogging Tory, but from Calgary Grit.

Bottom line: it's early in this two-part campaign, people's attention is on the Christmas holidays right now, the Liberals do best when they do nothing and nobody's really paying attention, but they can't keep doing nothing forever.

By way of perspective: SES and other pollsters had the Liberals leading by similar margins during the first two weeks of the 2004 campaign. Everyone was convinced that Paul Martin could ride out Adscam to a smashing majority government and that the newly-merged party would crumble. How short are people's memories!

But They Support One-Tier Health Care

The NDP candidate running against Jean Lapierre in Outremont sounds too much like a stereotypical university professor to be a real person. He's got to be a figment of the imagination. I hope:

An NDP candidate in Quebec is offering praise for Cuban President Fidel Castro and Venezualan President Hugo Chavez, and says the Canadian government should run Air Canada, CN Rail and the oil and gas industry.

Leo-Paul Lauzon, a university economics professor in Quebec known for his left-wing views, said Canada should never have privatized those national commodities.

He also said the country should never have let private companies take over the energy sector.

"Natural gas. At minimum - the federal government should have a part ownership that didn't give them legal control but effective control."

Lauzon was asked if he thought Chavez was an example Canada should look to. Supporters praise Chavez for spending oil revenues on popular social programs for the poor. But critics say Chavez uses Venezuala's state-run oil industry as a political tool and has become increasingly authoritarian.

"Yes, it's a good example and I'm not ashamed to say it. The same thing with Fidel Castro. Look what they did, you know for the population," Lauzon said.

Look at what Castro and Chavez have done for their people, indeed!

The NDP may be short on people in Quebec, but surely they can do better than an apologist for two of the ugliest tyrants in the world.

Source: CBC

Fear Of The Open Agenda

After nearly two years of attacking Stephen Harper for having a hidden agenda, the Globe and Mail is now attacking him for not keeping it hidden:

Paul Martin's handlers believe there is a chance Conservative Leader Stephen Harper will "burn people out" with his daily doses of policy announcements.

"He's their biggest vulnerability and they're jamming him down people's throats every day," a senior strategist says. "It's neck and neck [between the Tories and the Liberals] and woe be he who makes a mistake."

Mr. Martin has been deliberately keeping his "powder dry."

It's a long campaign -- eight weeks, including a break at Christmas -- and the Liberals have decided to pace themselves.

And if Stephen Harper walked on water, the Grits' unnamed senior strategists would go around yelling that he couldn't swim.

Sell Yourself

A point to ponder:

It is not against the law for politicians to buy your vote, but it is against the law for you to sell it.

In the same way, it is also legal to pay for sex, but illegal to solicit payment for it.

The Liberal Party is already considering helping out one lot of whores; why will it not help out this one?

Be Not Afraid

Memo to news editors from Paul Martin: Stephen Harper is not scary.

Please update your style guides accordingly.

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful

Belinda Stronach is complaining that people and the press are focussing more on her clothes than her political opinions.

Her fashion sense is something of hers she can actually manage. Her opinions, like her careers, are hand-me-downs from Daddy and his friends.

When she gets some actual opinions of her own, maybe people will listen to them.

Source: Toronto Star

St. Ursula of Montreal

One of the most prominent virgin-martyr cults in mediaeval Europe was that of the St. Ursula and the 11,000 virgins.

According to the legend, Ursula was the daughter of a British Christian king who made a voyage to Rome rather than be married to a pagan prince. On the way back to England in 451 A.D., she and her ten ladies-in-waiting, each accompanied by a thousand maidens, were slaughtered by Huns near present-day Cologne, Germany, rather than sacrifice their virginity and Christian faith.

St. Ursula's cult made Cologne into a great centre of pilgrimage during the Middle Ages as pilgrims, inspired by her story, flocked to the city to venerate relics of her and her companions.

Her example inspired countless vocations to the women's religious life; it inspired St. Angela de Merici to found the first teaching order for women, the Ursulines, that bear her name.

As wonderfully moving as St. Ursula's story is, there's only one problem with it: St. Ursula and her companions never existed. Their legend sprang from actual events, but they concerned maybe a handful of virgin martyrs: time and misinterpretation inflated the number and the legend, and in time, the sheer improbability of the legend led to her cult's eventual suppression from the Roman Calendar of saints.

All of which is a round-about way of drawing an analogy between historical events and the modern age's evolving virgin-martyr cult surrounding the massacre of 14 women engineering students in Montreal, sixteen years ago today.

The real story--that of an Algerian-born loser, raised in an Islamic society to regard women as chattels, taking out his resentment on uppity infidel women who didn't know their place--has been essentially lost to the mists of time.

The Montreal massacre's victims individual identities themselves are unimportant, just as those of St. Ursula's fellow virgin companions were. What mattered in both cases was the example their legends were intended to inspire.

The solemn candlelight vigil processions from the university women's centre to the university massacre memorial, accompanied by the soft strains of guitars and women's voices singing sentimental dirges, recall pilgrimages to the shrines of martyrs. Testimonies of women's inspiration to pursue higher education because of the massacre may be equally as exaggerated or apocryphal as those of women entering the convent to emulate St. Ursula's example of Christian womanhood, but they are no less a part of the cult.

For that is what these women have become: unwilling martyrs to the cause of feminism, sacrificed for women's liberation not at the hands of pagans but of men, an enemy who has not even the hope of conversion.

Our age is not so different from the mediaeval era; merely the objects of veneration have changed.

Honoris Causa

That's Dr. Mulroney to you, now!

Proof that a prophet is often without honour in his own country:

Although Mr. Mulroney has several honorary degrees from universities in the United States and around the world, Concordia's is the first bestowed on him by a Canadian university since he served as prime minister. He received an honorary degree from his alma mater, St. Francis Xavier, in 1978.

Further proof of his rehabilitation: the Globe and Mail didn't make this an election hit piece on the Tories like it normally would.

The Nasty Nanny State

As I don't have children myself, and the fact that I once was a child isn't enough of a qualification, I don't think I can pass judgment on the long-term financial benefits of Stephen Harper's proposed $1,200 annual child care allowance.

But giving parents more financial freedom to choose, instead of forcing them to support Ken Dryden's $5 billion boondoggle, has got to be the better way for people who believe that parents, and not the state, know best how to raise their pre-school children.

To quote The Interim :

If Ottawa was attuned to the desires and needs of families, it would develop programs to make it easier for a mother or father to stay home and raise children and to stop punishing (through the tax system) parents who make the sacrifice to do just that. Instead, for ideological reasons – a mindless egalitarianism that seeks to turn women into wombless clones of men – Ottawa is committed to expanding daycare.

To do that, to encourage women to abandon their families by entering the workforce, a national, tax-funded daycare scheme is necessary. If women want to work and find a trustworthy source of care for their children, so be it. But for the state to encourage it is altogether another matter.

A cynic might even see a reason for the state’s interest in breaking the ties of children and parents. If the trend to redefining morality is to continue, then why not begin indoctrination at the earliest possible stage? Why wait until a child is six, nine or 15, when you can begin when he or she is two or three years old? Can the task of imparting “Canadian values” be left to parents alone?

When critics denounce Harper for ideas such as this and income splitting to lower the tax burden on families, it is not a mere question of finances they are arguing.

They are arguing for the state to arrogate all power for raising and educating children away from their parents, to create a future society of mindless drones beholden to the ideology of the governing classes.

The current practice in North Korea of raising children in state-run nurseries to worship Kim Jong Il has more supporters than you might think within the Liberal Party and NDP.

Diplomatic Licence

A conviction for drunk driving or some other petty criminal offence can be fatal to one's career prospects. Unless you're a diplomat, in which case one can just turn in one's driver's licence and rely on the embassy chauffeur. Or at least it so appears on the surface:

Three foreign diplomats have had their driver's licences suspended after being charged for impaired driving-related offences in Ottawa this year.

Ottawa police said the three diplomats refused to waive immunity after it was determined there was "sufficient evidence" to warrant the laying of criminal charges.

"A formal request for immunity to be waived was made, but not obtained," said Ottawa police Supt. Charles Bordeleau, adding all three opted to avoid prosecution by turning over their licences to Foreign Affairs under Canada's zero-tolerance policy on impaired driving by diplomats.

....

Among the stranger items diplomatic agents are accused of attempting to steal in the past 11 months were a Halloween costume, used coat and boots from the Value Village store on Bank St.

The most recent incident occurred last Sunday when police were called after a woman was caught at Sears in the Rideau Centre for allegedly swapping pricetags on a manicure kit to save $5.

In another incident on Sept. 5, three diplomatic agents were caught allegedly trying to steal a CD holder, a can of WD-40 and Scotch tape worth only $33 from the Canadian Tire store on Coventry Road.

Although there have been seven shoplifting incidents, criminal charges weren't laid in any of them, police said. Instead, police relied on trespassing notices and diversion programs, including letters of apology.

"This is much like any other individual we end up attending to for shoplifting, due to the circumstances they are often issued trespassing notices and banned from the store," said Supt. Bordeleau. "Had these not been diplomats, the same outcome would have taken place."

Police also investigated 11 incidents involving traffic tickets, driving complaints or car accidents, including one driver who was so bad that police sent a letter to Foreign Affairs who subsequently withdrew the diplomat's driving privileges.

Diplomatic immunity is one of the most commonly misunderstood concepts in international law, mostly because people think it means that diplomats and their families can commit crimes in their host countries with complete impunity.

Far from it. The protection has evolved over centuries to prevent diplomats from being harassed or imprisoned during disputes between their countries and their host countries. They remain subject to their home countries' laws; in some cases, they might prefer to face Canadian courts than their own.

And once they act outside their official scope of duty, immunity no longer covers them; their own countries' laws kick in, or their immunity can be waived.

Outrageous as it sounds to let shoplifters and drunk drivers be sent home without facing Canadian justice, think what might happen to Canadian diplomats in places such as North Korea, Iran or Cuba if they didn't have the protections of diplomatic immunity against trumped-up charges.

Source: Ottawa Citizen

Recommended Reading: The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations sets out the nature and scope of diplomatic immunity in Articles 29-44.

The Red Robed Queen

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has gone down under to sell people on the virtues of legislation by unelected, unaccountable judges with superior insight into the human condition:

Judges should feel "emboldened" to trump the written word of the Constitution when protecting fundamental, unwritten principles and rights, Canada's Chief Justice says.

Beverley McLachlin, in a speech delivered in New Zealand, took on critics who say judges have no business going beyond the strict letter of the Constitution to strike down laws and enforce rights.

"The rule of law requires judges to uphold unwritten constitutional norms, even in the face of clearly enacted laws or hostile public opinion," said a prepared text of the lecture Judge McLachlin gave to law students at Victoria University of Wellington late last week.

"There is certainly no guarantee or presumption that a given list of constitutional principles is complete, even assuming the good faith intention of the drafters to provide such a catalogue."

In other words, the constitution and laws of Canada need no longer be subject to the inconvenience of plain meaning. These unwritten principles can be ever expanded beyond all relevance and logic to accomodate any political agenda, left or right.

Like the Red Queen, Madam Justice McLachlin believes that a word means what she wants it to mean. That is an attitude a future Tory government needs to combat, even if judicial reform isn't as catchy a topic as tax cuts.

The judiciary will set itself up as the political opponent of Tory government policy and use the unwritten principles to undermine it.

Count on it.

National Post

Slimy Creatures Threaten East Coast

Not the Grits making dark predictions of no more pogey and fly-by-night make-work projects under a Tory government, however:

A slew of goopy and gross sea creatures is making its way into or near Canadian waters, leaving a slimy trail that is menacing mussels and threatening rich fishing grounds.

Known as the tunicate, the unappealing sea life has slithered into waters around several provinces, including Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and British Columbia.

It fouls mussel farms and is raising anxiety over future invasions.

One in particular — didemnum — is alarming marine biologists, who fear the species could get into Canadian waters and smother lucrative scallop beds under a pancake-like batter that chokes off life.

But actually not entirely unlike them, it seems.

Globe and Mail

Two Tier Without Tears

No sooner have I condemned Jack Layton for elevating ideology over compassion than I find myself having to eat my words:

Campaigning in Vancouver's Chinatown Sunday, NDP Leader Jack Layton said private clinics are a “fundamental aspect” of the health-care system founded by former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas and not much can be done about them.

Mr. Layton says he wants to stop tax dollars from boosting the bottom lines of big health-care corporations.

“Our focus is to keep public health-care dollars going to public and non-profit facilities,” Mr. Layton told confused reporters. “What happens with people in the privacy of their own relationship financially, that's up to them.”

When pressed on the issue, he said private clinics have been around from the beginning.

“There is nothing new about that,” he said. “Our focus is on what happens to the public tax dollars that we all contribute to help take care of Canadians.

“We want them going to non-profit and public facilities and services.”

Until now, the furthest that any political leader would publicly venture from the received orthodoxy of the Canada Health Act was the suggestion that public funds might pay for services contracted out to private clinics.

In condemning this lesser heresy, Layton advocates the greater one: freedom of choice between parallel public and private systems.

Until the NDP invoked the holy name of Tommy Douglas to defend health care reform, the debate was between two strawmen. We could choose between a non-existent state monopoly used nowhere else outside the few remaining Communist dictatorships, or between an imaginary "American" purely private system that allegedly left the poor to die in the streets untreated.

With Layton's solemn proclamation of magister dixit, the truth may now be openly admitted, and real debate held.

SIDE NOTE: Unless, of course, Jack Layton was merely reassuring his audience that the NDP would still defend the one element of private health care that is sacrosanct to the left: abortion clinics. No leftist would ever dare touch the foundations of the new society of mandatory irresponsibility.

Source: Globe and Mail

Ad Scan

The first Conservative TV ads are out.

The crime ad might have been much more effective if a minority woman, and not an older white woman had been the one to complain about drug dealers and criminals not getting deported, at least in the big-city markets. Their communities are the ones that suffer most, and it would defuse in advance the hysterical Liberal claims that "getting tough on crime" is code for "beat up anyone who ain't white."

The accountability ad is the most effective of the three: without saying "Liberal" or "corruption" or "sponsorship scandal", Harper discusses the problem and provides a policy solution and at the same time avoids charges that he's got nothing else to run on except whining about Adscam.

The taxes ad blames 12 years of Liberal government by name and rolls out the GST cut from 7% to 6% to 5%. Harper avoids creating the future perception of a broken promise by making it clear that the GST cut will be rolled out in stages.

We need low-key message ads right now to fill the policy void the Liberals can't fill, and nobody believes they can. Let's hope we've got the nastiest negative ads ready to roll when the Grits go for the throat in the New Year.

Ideology Over Humanity

Compare and contrast the answers Stephen Harper and Jack Layton gave on a Vancouver open-line radio show yesterday when asked if they would use a private clinic to relieve their wife's suffering:

Harper:

"Well, I'll just say as a father and husband, you will do whatever you need to do to take care of your family," Harper said.

Warren: You would have gone private?

Harper: If that's what I had to do.

Layton:

Layton said he and his wife Olivia Chow, a candidate in Toronto's downtown Trinity-Spadina riding, would rather suffer than go private.

"We would work for the public, for the system, because we believe in it," he said.

The first answer is a genuine human and compassionate response to a loved one's suffering. You'd answer the same way too.

The second answer is coldly cynical. Cold, because it demonstrates comfort with seeing people suffer in defence of an abstract theory. Cynical, because we know that Layton is not above manipulating the system to his own ends-- such as living in municipally subsidized co-op housing while serving on Toronto city council.

He and Olivia won't suffer on the waiting lines, that's for sure. That's your patriotic duty, as Canadian citizens, to suffer and die on waiting lines in defence of the cornerstone of Canadian national identity.

A member of the old Soviet nomenklatura couldn't have said it any more clearly.

And yet the CTV subtly suggests that Harper's answer is the troubling one:

At a later rally in Victoria, Harper tried to deflect the issue by blaming the Liberal record on health care.

"I would do, my friends, what every one of you would do. You would go to wherever you could to get care for your loved ones. That's what you would do," he said.

Why does he need to deflect criticism of a humane answer to the question?

Are the defenders of the public health care monopoly so inflexible that they have become indifferent to the human suffering it causes? That is what should disturb our consciences, not incidental profit-making.

Jack Layton: Trade Warrior

The law of unintended consequences will kick in if Jack Layton has his way on the softwood lumber tariff dispute: those greedy oil-soaked globe-warming Albertans will get even richer!

NDP Leader Jack Layton says Canada should consider taxing energy exports to the United States if Washington doesn't lift its tariffs on softwood lumber imports.

Layton said trade sanctions might be necessary if the U.S. doesn't dump the import duties that have siphoned $5 billion so far from Canadian producers of softwood lumber.

Layton focused on the softwood lumber issue Saturday during campaign stops in British Columbia, the province hit hardest by the dispute.

"We favour a polite, clear, neighbourly warning that Canada is prepared to impose export duties on oil and gas exports to the United States," he said.

The net result of Jack Layton's tariff war would be to cripple the British Columbia forestry sector, losing thousands of NDP votes in the bargain, while enriching Alberta oil interests and not getting a single vote in return.

But no one ever accused Jack Layton of acting in his own best political interests when there were headlines to be made.

Why Women Don't Run

Every election, women journalists write articles complaining about the lack of women candidates, as though there were some vast misogynist conspiracy to keep too many women from getting elected, and as though democratic legitimacy demanded that both sexes be represented in equal numbers.

Linda Diebel's article in the Toronto Star is unusual in this regard, because it actually talks to high-profile women who've been asked to run and realize that politics just isn't for them:

Sherry Cooper, 55, chief economist for BMO Nesbitt Burns, was wooed by federal Liberals. Among her reasons for declining was the need to spend time with her husband and child, her passion for work and the spectre of earning less money than in the high-flying financial sector. Moreover, she talked about the tawdriness of it all. "What's happening in Ottawa is very unpleasant ... It's very dirty campaigning," she says.

....

Many women find party discipline problematic. The parliamentary system requires MPs to vote along party lines, unless released by the whip. One would think that high-profile candidates would be courted for cabinet posts — as most men are — but, still, several women raised the issue.

....

Lorna Marsden, 63, Liberal policy chair under Pierre Trudeau, a former senator and president of York University, made it clear to the Liberal party from the beginning that she wouldn't "make the huge sacrifice" of leaving her family.

"You give up your privacy, you give up your family, and for some people that's fine, but if you look at the rate of failed marriages among politicians, it's not for me," she says. "I admire people who do it."

....

Internationally, Canada has slipped from 43rd in terms of women in politics to 44th after new rules in Afghanistan resulted in greater representation by women.

It's tough to look at all the male faces, says Speirs. Prime Minister Paul Martin with the premiers — all men. With the mayors of the biggest Canadian cities — all men. Women were supposed to go so far but, instead, a generation of women got burned, says June Callwood. "For the most part, they felt used."

Women clearly do not lack the opportunity to seek office; it's just not in their nature for many of them to do so. If both sexes aren't equally represented in a particular profession, that doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem. Men and women have different priorities and interests; it doesn't take a political scientist, or a journalist, to figure it out.

Many men don't think they can afford the sacrifices of a career in elected office. It's no surprise that more women think the same way.

Thousands March Against Global Warming

No response to protesters' demands; vow to camp outside until globe meets with them. Calls for US to repeal laws of thermodynamics, gravity, ignored by Congress, White House.

For A Few Words More

Scott Reid tells a Calgary Herald columnist, "Alberta can blow me!"

Not a word mentioned outside of the Western Standard and a few Blogging Tories.

Or if it is, the Ottawa press gallery and Toronto newsrooms are chuckling to themselves about Scott Reid's zinger and saying, "Good one!"

William Stairs tells a Le Devoir columnist, "Quebec can blow me!"

Well, first off, William Stairs is a gentleman and wouldn't say it, no matter how much he was provoked.

But even the rumour that he might have said it would have made front-page news the next day. The talking heads would solemnly proclaim that it was further proof of the Conservatives' unfitness to govern, because of the anti-Quebec bigotry at the highest levels within the party. Academics would confirm their findings with learned analyses from fellow historians and constitutional law professors.

Every quote from every Tory who ever said a slightly uncomplimentary word about Quebec, right back to the Riel rebellion, would be reprinted and rebroadcast for weeks on end.

Paul Martin would announce that Stephen Harper had finally revealed the hidden agenda to drive Quebec out of Canada in partnership with Gilles Duceppe. Scott Brison would hiss that the derogatory reference to fellatio demonstrates the rampant homophobia that drove him out of the party.

EKOS would commission polls showing that 128% of Canadians, and 273% of GTA residents, would now switch their votes to the Liberals to save the country.

Frightened Ontario voters, whipped up into a frenzy by MSM Liberal propaganda, propel the Liberals to a landslide majority in English Canada. Quebeckers take the hint from the Liberal re-election and vote in a landslide to elect a PQ government and YES for secession. Alberta decides to bolt anyway and take the rest of the West with them. The Maritimes, cut off from Ontario, form their own country by default.

Ontario finds itself friendless and alone, sitting amidst the rubble of a once-great country.

Outside the offices that once housed the now-defunct CBC, two recently laid-off journalists walk towards the Union Station subway.

"Where did it all go wrong?" the first one asks. "How did we lose the country? Do you think we were a little too hard on the Tories?"

"How can you say that?" the second one replies. "Losing the greatest country in the world was a small price to pay to keep them out of office."

Paul To Jack: Buzz Off

Someone forgot to tell Jack Layton that Buzz Hargrove took over the NDP leadership while he was out:

Prime Minister Paul Martin is openly encouraging the notion of a Liberal-New Democrat minority government on Jan. 23, recruiting the high-profile leader of the Canadian Auto Workers to back his plea.

CAW chief Buzz Hargrove, whose membership has a long-standing affiliation with the NDP, sent shock waves through the election campaign when he appeared at Martin's side yesterday and spoke in favour of a Liberal-NDP alliance.

"The overwhelming majority of our delegates endorsed what the Prime Minister stands for here today," CAW chief Buzz Hargrove told reporters after Martin laid out his election themes before 900 union members at a convention in Toronto.

In the event of a Liberal minority on Jan. 23, Hargrove would like to see a formal deal between Martin and the NDP to join forces to eliminate instability in Parliament. "It could be an accord on issues or it could be a coalition," he said.

And Jack's not taking the news of the unofficial leadership putsch too well:

Equally bad for Layton was the visual message — the sight of Hargrove and Martin sharing a stage, with Layton nowhere to be seen.

Layton, 55, told reporters yesterday, "Mr. Hargrove is well-known for having his opinions and expressing them. ... Our view is that the Liberals don't deserve people's support. We believe that having as many New Democrats as possible in this House produces the best results for working people. ... I think we've shown that in the minority Parliament."

Hargrove said he hasn't discussed his political stance with the NDP leader. "I haven't talked to Layton," he said. "I don't report to Jack."

Paul Martin's poaching of Buzz Hargrove from the NDP is little different from his poaching of Belinda Stronach and Scott Brison from the Tories, except that he doesn't have a cabinet seat to offer him, and that he's decided that Hargrove can do more damage to the NDP staying inside the party to force Jack Layton's hand.

Hargrove's annoucement will not likely translate into more Liberal votes; he can't deliver his membership the way he used to because his own union's success has raised many of them into the higher tax brackets, and more willing to listen to the Conservative message of tax cuts.

But it will force Layton to waste time and energy keeping the union bosses from joining an all-out revolt against his leadership. What will he have to promise them to keep them from following Buzz's call?

Source: Toronto Star

Doomed Are The Peacemakers

The kidnappers who seized two Canadian hostages in Iraq have threatened to kill them by next Thursday if their demands for the release of their detained fellow terrorists and insurgents in Iraq aren't met.

Their demands aren't surprising. What is surprising the fatuousness of the response from the organization they're working for:

In Baghdad, Greg Rollins, a Canadian member of Christian Peacemaker Teams, called the news disturbing.

"It's a bit of a shock," Rollins said in an interview minutes after hearing about the threat made against his colleagues.

Rollins, who had not yet seen the video footage, said he had hoped the kidnappers would respond to messages of support from Muslims and other Arabs for the group, which opposes the invasion of Iraq.

"Hopefully they will continue to read those things and get a positive idea of what we do here and who my teammates are."

And what have the Christian Peacemaker Teams been doing in Iraq? Running a Foster Parents Plan for terrorists!

After a year and a half of coordinated advocacy for Iraqis detained by U.S. and other occupying forces, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is ending its Adopt-a-Detainee Letter-Writing Campaign. CPT's Iraq project will, however, continue to monitor the situation of Iraqis captured by the Multinational Force in Iraq (MNF) and by the new Iraqi Forces.

The Adopt-a-Detainee Letter-Writing Campaign, beginning in March 2004, matched individual detainees with congregations, mosques, synagogues, and peace groups in North America and around the world. These groups wrote letters to U.S., Iraqi and other relevant officials on the detainees' behalf. The campaign grew out of CPT's investigation of and reporting on abuses within the U.S.-run detention system in Iraq during the fall of 2003. The Adopt-a-Detainee Letter-Writing Campaign included a total of twenty-seven detainees, nine of whom U.S. officials released during the campaign, ten of whom were still detained at last word, and seven of whom U.S. officials never confirmed as detained (i.e., the "disappeared.")

....

Since the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis in June 2004, CPT has experienced U.S. officials in Iraq becoming increasingly unresponsive to appeals for reform, both from team members on location in Iraq and from letter-writers abroad.

Perhaps the Iraqi government doesn't want a bunch of naive do-gooders sticking their noses in places where they don't belong? They know who they're dealing with, and what they're capable of. The Christian Peacemakers, until now, didn't. And they still don't.

The Christian Peacemakers' concern for the human rights of the detained insurgents and terrorists is touching, but it will not move their captors to release them, let alone beat their swords into ploughshares. Their abductors will complain about human rights abuses when it suits them, to win the support of Western public opinion and undermine the forces of liberation and freedom. But their mission remains unchanged: to slay the infidel where they find him, and destroy all his works, including such un-Islamic concepts as human rights.

Naive though the Christian Peacemakers may be, they are not entirely unconcerned for their own safety: a quick look at their website reveals that they prefer to "get in the way" where there are civilized nations' armies and police to get in their way if something goes wrong. They certainly were nowhere to be found when their services were most needed in Iraq, when Saddam Hussein was gassing Kurds and running dissidents through wood chippers.

All that's left for these men is to bear witness as true Christian martyrs. If they understand the concept of Christian marytrdom.

Source: National Post

Waiting In Line For Real Change

Stephen Harper's pledge to create guaranteed maximum waiting times for surgery and treatment, even if it means moving patients to other provinces, is a very smart short-term political move. Unfortunately, it is also a long-term disaster:

The guarantee is a positive, forward-looking plan to protect Canada’s public health care system while complying with the principles of the Canada Health Act, treating all patients equally for essential health care services regardless of ability to pay, and maintaining a single-payer, publicly funded health care system.

“There will be no private, parallel system,” Harper said.

“Despite the denials of the Liberal government, reforms have been taking place — especially in alternative, private delivery of publicly insured services. We can and will achieve better results for patients and maintain the essentials of our system of public health insurance while maintaining our universal public health care system.”

....

The Patient Wait Times Guarantee will be based on the recommendation of the bi partisan Senate committee chaired by Michael Kirby and Marjory LeBreton, with the key contribution of Dr. Wilbert Keon. It will fulfill the commitment that federal and provincial governments made last year when they agreed to establish maximum acceptable waiting times for key treatments and procedures and then meet those standards — but the Conservative plan will be implemented right away, not delayed until December 2007. The plan also responds to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Chaoulli case.

“Clearly and unequivocally embracing the Patient Wait Times Guarantee is the only way governments can preserve both the principles of the Canada Health Act and the Charter of Rights,” Harper said.

In the short term, Harper will come across as a resolute defender of both the Canada Health Act and Charter of Rights, both of which he and the party have been perceived as less than supportive of. And maybe that will win the election.

But in the long term, the Harper government will have to deal with the collapse of the single-payer public health care monopoly. He is going to have to break his promise to maintain the current system, a promise that he has made as unequivocally as Jean Chretien did to scrap the GST in 1993.

That broken promise is still hanging around the Liberals' neck like an albatross; otherwise, no one would have pointed it out following Harper's promise to cut the GST to 5%.

And when he does have to introduce private competition, the old "hidden agenda" canard will be revived and trumpeted even louder when the Conservative government goes up for re-election. Only this time, there will be the perception of proof to fight against.

Better for him and the party had he faced the privatization question head-on the way that he did with homosexual marriage. Lay out the policy, say that some sort of privatization is inevitable if medicare is to survive, because the public can't bear the load alone any more, either as taxpayers or patients.

The press and other parties would have screamed a bit for a day or two, then calmed down once they discovered the "hidden agenda" charges didn't stick.

Canadians are ready to consider real change to the public health care monopoly. Too many people have seen friends and family suffer and die waiting for life-saving surgery and treatment. They no longer necessarily associate private health care with some American bogeyman. The party's best asset is that people agree with its current election theme of change. Real choice in public health care is real change, much more so than a percentage point or two off the GST.

People will follow if the Tories take the lead. And they haven't yet.

Source: Conservative Party of Canada

Ignatieff: Just Kidding

His Excellency Count Mikhail Georgyevich Ignatiev wishes to inform his most loyal subjects that he will not punish them by withdrawing his presence even if they should be so ungrateful as to not send him to the Duma:

Michael Ignatieff's path into politics took another luckless bounce yesterday with the publication of an article in Harvard's student newspaper quoting him as saying he would ask the U.S. university to take him back if he didn't get elected to Parliament.

The statement had "Oh-Oh" written all over it, given that the distinguished academic and celebrity Liberal candidate has made much of being committed to re-engaging in Canadian life and is scheduled next month to take up a University of Toronto post.

Mr. Ignatieff quickly explained in a telephone interview from Boston that the comment was a joke. "I was talking in my customary way, with a lack of care," he said ruefully. "It was meant in a light-hearted humourous way . . . a kind of joke, like I was begging them to take me back."

The Harvard Crimson quoted him deadpan as saying: "If I am not elected, I imagine that I will ask Harvard to take me back. I love teaching here, and I hope I'll be back in some shape or form."

National ties were unimportant to the old royal houses and nobility of Europe. What mattered was having the right bloodline. Thus the practice of intermarriage and moving around to take up titles and thrones. In our own monarchy's history, we have had Danish, French, Welsh, Scottish, Dutch and German monarchs on the throne of England, Russianized Germans as tsars, Austrians and French on the Spanish throne, and Germans becoming Greek royalty who produced the current British consort.

The same attitude seems to be at work inside the Liberal Party with Ignatieff, and the old noble attitude seems to be coming forth. It doesn't matter whether he actually spends any time on his estates or has any real connection to them (George III was elector of Hanover and never set foot in it; his grandfather, George I, could hardly speak English) as long as he has the right political pedigree.

Source: Globe and Mail

Pelletier: Chuck Out Guité

Jean Pelletier's not just content with getting his old job as VIA Rail chairman back; he wants to overturn the Gomery inquiry findings as well:

Mr. Pelletier's lawyers filed the challenge in Federal Court shortly before it closed on Wednesday, claiming sponsorship inquiry chairman Justice John Gomery was biased, exceeded his mandate and based his report on erroneous facts.

Mr. Pelletier's claim echoes the one made by Mr. Chrétien, which also says Mr. Gomery was wrong to believe the inquiry testimony of Chuck Guité, the man at the centre of the scandal, over that of Mr. Pelletier, Mr. Chrétien's former chief aide.

Mr. Pelletier's claim notes that Mr. Guité was considered an unreliable witness by the inquiry.

This is what he wants stricken from the record of history:

Mr. Pelletier met with and gave instructions to Mr. Guité without the participation of the Deputy Minister of PWGSC or any other senior official. The program
was commenced in haste without a public announcement of any kind, and
without clearly defined objectives, administrative guidelines or criteria.

....

Mr. Pelletier, with his many years of experience in public administration,
must have known that such a program of discretionary spending would be
open to error and abuse unless provided with rules, guidelines, controls,
safeguards and oversight specific to that program. He was not entitled to
assume that the mandatory rules stipulated in the Financial Administration Act
and by Treasury Board policies would provide sufficient protection against
the possibility of dishonesty, error and incompetence, or that Mr. Guité and
his staff could be trusted to administer such an unprecedented program with
perfect competence and probity.

If you believe Jean Pelletier and his boss, they were as pure as the driven snow until Chuck Guité, whose every word of Gomery testimony was a lie, came on the scene. Who wouldn't believe them?

Campbell's Sour Grapes Soup

The Liberals picked Kim Campbell out of the dustbin of history and dumped her into the consulate general in Los Angeles, and now she's returning the favour:

Former Tory prime minister Kim Campbell says she doesn't think Stephen Harper will win the federal election because Canadians are too afraid of his party's social conservative agenda.

Campbell made the comments in an interview Thursday at her alma mater, the London School of Economics.

"Their (the Conservative party's) positions are too socially conservative, I think, to form a government in Canada," said Campbell about the Jan. 23 election. "People may like their fiscal policies but they're frightened by their social conservatism...It's a pity because it denies people a choice on policy issues."

Kim Campbell's comments are illustrative of the governing classes' contempt for the electorate. We may have our choice of economic side dish between mild socialism and mild free market economy, but we must order the social extremist main course of mandatory unbridled sexual licence and death worship.

How many seats did you win again Kim?

Source: CBC

The 5% Solution

Stephen Harper's pledge to reduce the GST to 5% from 7% over the next five years marks a significant change in campaign strategy and tactics since the 2004 debacle.

By announcing it early and on its own, instead of as part of a general platform rollout, it will stand out as a promise everyone will remember and everyone will relate to.

People grumble about their income taxes, to be sure, but few read their whole pay stub each week, and people are only really reminded about them once a year at tax time. The GST stands there as an annoyance every time we go to the cash register.

Moreover, the announcement puts the Liberals on the back foot, not only by having to react to a Conservative policy announcement, but also by reminding everyone that the Liberals first came to power in part because of a promise to scrap the GST.

No one seriously expects the GST to be abolished, and it would be foolish to promise it, no matter the fiscal climate. But a two percentage point reduction, besides sounding more credible, actually is more credible.

Everybody wins with a GST cut. And the Tories will too.

Source: Globe and Mail

Coming To An Election Near You?

CTV seems to be deeper in the tank for the Liberals than even the CBC these days--its chief lobbyist's influence being a critical factor--so who knows if this article was planted to give Paul Martin ideas?

Riot police cordoned off polling stations in this Nile Delta village Thursday to prevent people from voting as Egypt entered the final round of legislative elections that have been marred by violence and allegations of fraud.

The ability to vote varied from town to town among the nine provinces where polling took place, but the use of police to stop people from voting in this northern village or to deter them from voting in some southern villages appeared to show that the government had gone back on its promise of free and fair elections.

"I'm calling on his excellency, the president, to appoint the members of parliament because no one has been allowed to vote," Sameer Fikri, a voter, said sarcastically. "It would save the money wasted on elections."

I'm surprised that last sentence hasn't become one of the Liberal talking points. Paul Martin already appoints the Senate. Look how much money he saves taxpayers by doing so, and how much the Conservatives would waste by having Senate election.

Besides, not having a Christmas election campaign ever again would save even more money, to be returned in the form of tax rebates to spend on Christmas gifts and parties!

A police lieutenant said "I don't know" when asked why both polling stations in the village had been cordoned off. An Associated Press reporter was not allowed in the polling station to ask officials there despite having the required election press pass.

One reason could be that Sandoub is the hometown of Saber Zaher, a favored candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has proved to be the pacesetter for change in the staggered elections. In the two earlier rounds of polling this month, Brotherhood-backed candidates won 76 seats in the 454-seat parliament, more than five times its representation in the outgoing assembly.

Would the RCMP follow order to help commit election fraud to keep the Liberals in power, if it came to that, by intimidating voters at polling stations in close ridings? The more observant--or paranoid--among us have raised questions before about the RCMP's pliancy in the hands of the PMO.

Has the Liberal Party reached that depth of corruption yet?

Blowing Hot And Cold

Man-made global warming is a wonderfully elastic theory, stretching to fit every change in the weather.

Fierce storms, howling winds and lashing rain? Global warming.

Calm sunny days, with gentle breezes and cloudless skies? Global warming.

Broiling heat? Global warming.

Freezing cold? Global warming.

Yep, you read that last one right:

Scientists have detected a weakening of key water currents in the Atlantic Ocean, raising fears of major ecological upheavals, including colder winters in northeastern Canada and Europe.

These currents, which continually move warm and cold water around the Atlantic, have slowed by 30 per cent since 1992, a drop unequalled since the last Ice Age, British researchers reported yesterday in the journal Nature.

If the trend continues, experts forecast that changes to the so-called Atlantic conveyor belt could trigger major environmental disruptions, including not only colder winters in parts of Canada and Europe but severe declines in the North Atlantic fisheries, droughts in India and sea levels rising as much as a metre along the eastern seaboard of North America.

Apparently the concept of natural climate change, despite mountains of scientific and historical evidence, escapes the comprehension of most journalists and politicians.

Ice ages and warm periods will happen, Kyoto accord or not, and it's foolish to think that man can change the climate at will, for good or ill, when he cannot even predict the weather accurately more than a couple of weeks in advance.

Who drove the SUVs when Vikings farmed the southern shores of Greenland? Who ran the oil refineries when Londoners held frost fairs on the frozen Thames?

McGuinty v. Martin: Both Lose

You can just feel the love between Paul Martin and Dalton McGuinty these days, can't you?

Already, indications are the brightest and best are not flocking from Queen's Park to staff federal campaign teams. One federal Liberal said Mr. McGuinty's aides are reluctant to release senior operatives, sending rookies to give them experience for the provincial campaign in 2007.

Provincial observers say relations between Queen's Park and the Prime Minister's Office have been at an all-time low since the 2004 election.

Martin insiders want Mr. McGuinty to abandon his fiscal fairness campaign, which has struck a chord with Ontario voters. They are warning that anything short of total loyalty from the Ontario premier could even lead to a shift in political allegiance.

About three months ago, senior Martinites began quietly talking up the idea of campaigning against Mr. McGuinty by working with Conservative leader John Tory. With so much on the line, the Ontario premier was sounding conciliatory in an appearance on Tuesday.

"I will be supporting Prime Minister Martin and the federal Liberals during the course of this campaign," he told reporters. "I mean, we've crossed swords more than a few times, and I've never ever shrunk from fulfilling my duty to Ontarians as I see it. But when you look back on the record, it's not bad."

Mr. McGuinty mentioned two deals worth more than $2.2 billion signed within the past week -- on labour markets and immigration funding.

"At the same time, I will be pressing them to make more progress in the future," he said, mentioning social transfer payments and dollars the province wants to help pay for the shutdown of coal plants. So the premier's next moves are being closely monitored by Mr. Martin's war room. Observers say the tension is palpable.

....

Relations between the two sides took a sharp turn for the worse when Mr. McGuinty introduced his unpopular health tax weeks before the 2004 federal election. That move sent provincial support plummeting in the polls; federal Liberal support in Ontario followed. Indeed, Mr. McGuinty became so unpopular that federal Grits asked him to make himself scarce in the final days of the campaign.

Another source of anger for Martinites is Mr. McGuinty's association with political strategist Warren Kinsella, the multi-faceted former Chretien adviser who runs a virulent anti-Martin blog widely read by political insiders.

The passive-aggressive Ontario voter may not be deterred from voting Liberal because of these games of inside baseball that interest the electorate far less than the media.

But McGuinty could become a loose cannon on the Liberal deck the way that Ralph Klein has been for the Conservatives. The Liberals already had to do damage control because of McGuinty's health premium announcement in 2004. What if he cooks up another brilliant idea in the middle of the camapign?

Source: Ottawa Citizen