Conundrum!

At the same time as the US and Russia are continuing to get rid of nuclear weapons to make the world a bit safer, the Cons are getting rid of the Gun Registry for the same reason?

Environmental screw-up?

If today's Grope and Flail has it right in a story, then the Cons are granting the right to pollute to anyone with a lobbyist.

The story today is that Jim Prentice is about to announce that his department will no longer require environmental assessments for big projects such as pipelines and oil sands and anything else that the lobbyists can dream up to make exempt.

I can only hope that they make me exempt from filing taxes, while they are at it.

Connecting the dots

The Anal Coulter affair here in Ottawa is just the tip of a plot to turn North America into a military state. The controversial, and slanderous (according to me)talking head comes into Canada to spew her outrageous spittle and cries censorship when Ottawa University activists try to shut her down. What did the press do? They branded activists as opposed to free speech.

But at the same time this is going on in Canada, the friends of Coulter are threatening lawmakers in the US with violence and death because they had the audacity to pass a health care law.

Coulter and her right wing loonies need a wake-up call and maybe U Ottawa delivered it. Now the press should wake up also.

What is the real number?

Cpl. Darren James Fitzpatrick of the PPCLI died yesterday from his wounds received in Afghanistan. Fitzpatrick encountered a roadside bomb that detonated while he was on patrol in Afghanistan on March 6.

He died 17 days later - in Canada.

There are lots of men and women returning from Afghanistan with scars and open wounds - some physical and some emotional - that are as much casualties of this war as was Fitzpatrick and any of the other 140+ who have died in this conflict that cannot be won.

Just remember that when the government tells you the toll that this war is taking on Canadians. And remember it again when the government caves to a US "request" that 600 Canadians remain in Kabul after 2011.

Also remember the date of September 17, 2009, when six Italian soldiers and ten civilians were killed by a car bomb in the so-called safe haven of Kabul.

If you ever wondered...

If you need one reason why Anal Coulter should be discouraged from speaking in Canada, look no further than her comment in Ottawa.

The report on her aborted attempt to speak at U of Zero, in today's Ottawa Bird-cage Liner reads, “It confirms my idea that you also need more liberal gun laws,” she said. “Guns lead to a polite society, as we like to say in the United States. And I think that all of western Canada would agree with me."

According to Her-Wisdom, if protesters get in her way, out comes her gun.  And that is polite?

Not earth shattering - just odd

I took Via rail to Toronto this morning.  I had reserved a no-salt meal and that was what I was served.  The strange thing that on the same tray as the salt free meal was a package of salt.

How very odd.

Hubris run amok

Those so-called 10 percentage that are used by out local MP to slag anything that moves across the country (except in his home province of Alberta where, I assume, mommy is watching) are being prohibited.  It was interesting to note that the NDP and BQ voted against the bill while many Cons voted with the Liberals to pass it by a couple of yeas.

What did President Steve have to say about the demise of his propaganda machinery?  "We will stop using them, if you will."  It isn't an optional plan, Mr. President... it is mandatory that you stop their use.  Plus it saves $10 million per year.

The elephant in the literary room

In all the ink that is being spilled over the idea of Amazon wanting to service their Canadian customers from a Canadian warehouse, the booksellers lobby is conveniently ignoring one of the big reasons for the demise of Canadian publishing business.  Chapters/Indigo!

As a Canadian writer I make money when the public buys my work.  How much money I make largely depends on two things I do not control.  How much my publisher claims it costs to publish my work and the price that the retailer sells the work for.

I have a couple of titles on the Chapters web site.  They are not in the store because, since my name is not Atwood, I do not deserve shelf-space.  It is better to give the space to some American writer even if she is lesser known than I.

But on the Chapters web site the book is offered at a 30% discount from the recommended price.  Since Chapters has no stock of my book there is no real cost to them.  The cost is all mine.  The publisher sells the book to Chapters at a 40-50% discount from list (sometimes even more) and still makes a profit.  Chapters sells it at a discount and still makes a profit of 10-20%.  But these discounts are at my expense.

If Chapters sold the book at list price and needed only a 10-20% discount from the publisher and the publisher needed only 40% to cover costs then there would be more money for me - the person who wrote the book.

The issue is not who ships what from where.  If you want to preserve Canadian heritage help the creators and preservers of that heritage make a decent living. 

What is reasonable?

I got to thinking the other day about the Reasonable Accommodation arguments that have been the subject of a great deal of ink in Quebec recently.  I did a bit of digging into the issue and many of the characters involved and what I see alarms me quite a bit.

The RA debate has as its genesis a bylaw passed in a small town called Hérouxville.  At least that is the general wisdom.  But is that the real story?

Hérouxville is a parish with a population of around 1300 just north of Quebec City.  It is a community without immigrants.  It is described as white, francophone and primarily catholic.  But for some reason Hérouxville is ground zero in the RA debate.  Why?

During the year preceding the Hérouxville bylaw there was a series of meetings between the RCMP, QPP, CSIS, and various anti-terrorism organizations from the US and Israel.  These facts were confirmed by one of the participants in a speech he gave in 2009 at University of New Brunswick.  A group concerned with terrorism meets to discuss a non-issue in Hérouxville?  According to information in the same speech the QPP and RCMP made sweeps through Herouxville.  Why?  What were they looking for?  Or for whom were they looking?

Alain Dubuc of La Press may have hit close to home when he characterized the issue as follows: "it's the revolt against the big city, its ideas, its lifestyle, its influence".  He went on to note: "For small towns such as Hérouxville, the real threat to their identity has little to do with veil-clad Muslim women, it is the urban world that is gradually drifting away from the traditional model."  Is that the issue?  Or is it something more sinister?


Time will tell.

Sometimes you get the shark...

... and sometimes the shark gets you.  And so the story goes.

In the world of Access to Information (ATI) sometimes the most revealing information is the information you do not get.

I am thinking specifically of a recent ATI request I made to a government department.  The material requested is not the secrets to the vault or who knew what and when, but rather I asked for the contents of a nineteen year old contract.  What was the response?  It is a secret... we can't tell you.  When an ancient contract is classified as secret it make you wonder why.  Why hide a public document?  Is there something in it that is illegal or embarrassing?  Why can't you release the document with sensitive parts redacted?  What are you trying to hide?

There are times that information requests are legitimately refused.  For example if the information does not exist or is not yet complete enough to be made public, that can be a legitimate reason to refuse a request.

This explanation applies to a local Anti-Wind group who is demanding, through their lawyer, access to a position paper not yet released by Pro-Wind, the company who has the audacity to want to build wind turbines in rural Ottawa.  The paper that is being demanded "RIGHT NOW" is scheduled to be released 60 days before public hearings (as required by law) - but that is not good enough for the protesters.  In a request to the wind company, the protesters demanded a whole raft of information besides the mentioned paper.  They were indignant when the company told their lawyer that the information they were requesting was on the company's web site - in full and free view of all who want to look at it.  The only item refused was the unpublished paper that is due to be published in a few months.

Now I understand the frustration of the protesters.  They believe that they have legitimate claims that with wind turbine will render them deaf, sterile or dead.  I do not want to argue their evidence here.  They might be right... they might be wrong.

But to demonize the company because the company does not accede to their every whim is not the way to go about it.

American Health Care at its best?

I was talking with a buddy the other day.  He lives and works in Denver, Colorado. He has developed at strange lump on his nether region and sought the advice of his local doctor. He is one of the lucky Americans because he has health care coverage through an HMO paid for in part by his company. For those who do not know, an HMO is the American equivalent to a combined group practice and membership-only clinic.

HMOs general work pretty well as long as you don't have a really difficult case because many HMO also subscribe to a regime called managed practice. One example of managed practice is as follows; if you have condition A, you can be treated for condition A. But is you have condition A and then develop condition B, you may have to wait for condition A to be cured before condition B is treated because, and here is the real rub, the insurance companies that fund the health care coverage will not pay for the second condition. Why not? There is a caveat in many US health care policies that talk about pre-existing conditions. Condition B may or may not be related to condition A but the pre-existing condition clause make the insurance company the arbiter of the condition... not the doctor.

In my buddy's case he had a hernia about 10 years ago - before he went to work for his current company. His insurance company decided that his current suspected condition was the consequence of that hernia. It is a totally stupid assertion but try to fight the insurance company over it.  The company will not pay for his treatment.  Maybe he should come to Canada for treatment.  Or maybe go to Mexico or even... Cuba.

With all its warts and blemishes the Canadian health insurance system does better than my buddy's private one. Just remember that when the Cons come knocking on your door trying to sell you a private plan.

It must be tough to be tough on crime

Anytime that a Canadian is given a light sentence by the courts the Cons go ape with the condemnation of the courts as being soft on crime.  But when one of their own is given a free pass they go completely silent.

Jaffer got a sweetheart deal.  I hope that all other Canadians can get the same treatment.

 

The federal budget did not disappoint

Except for the fact that we were told that the government was recalibrating during prorogation, President Steve has stuck to his guns in the recent budget. 

He told us that he would have a plan to get us out of the fiscal mess caused by the recession and he has one.  He won't tell us what the plan is... but he tells us that he has one. 

He told us that he was going to limit the growth of federal spending and that is what the budget promises.  How he will do that is not quite clear... but he tells us that he will do it.

Enough with the rhetoric. Get something done.

The Throne Speech was filled with orange marmalade but without the peel.  It tastes good but has no substance.

Take two of the lofty goals (and I don't include the change to the anthem or Senior's Day) for example.

"We will freeze public sector wages", states the document.  Sounds good on the surface but the reality is that the current civil service contract does not expire until 2011 so this promise does nothing to help our current crisis.

"We will freeze PM and MP salaries and ministerial budgets."  Sounds good but, as a result of redistribution the government is adding 26 more MPs to the payroll in the near future.  That's $50 million more dollars at a time of wage and budget freezes.  And let's not lose sight of the fact that if President Steve elevates his whole caucus to the height of Parliamentary Secretary for something or other, he can give raises without raising rates.

The devil is in the details.

It's like dry-humping

After waiting for three weeks for this Speech from the Throne and then listening to the GG drone through 6000 words - I feel like someone blew chucks in my soup.  What the hell did the government do with its time?

The Speech in a nutshell is... "jobs goods and deficit bad but since we have no plan to address either... we are going to change the words to O Canada and create a senior's day".

Sad news from a sad government.  They're like the generals in WWI - leading from the rear.

The budget comes tomorrow.  We can only hope for some real plans.