Max tells all?

Maxime Bernier, the horn-dog of Canada's Greatest GovermentTM, has told an audience of his loyal followers in his home riding of Beauce, that the Julie Couillard misunderstanding was not a misunderstanding... it was a plot to get him.

“Did Ms. Couillard inform me of her past ties with people involved in organized crime? The answer is no. She did not inform, and no one else ever informed me, at any level. I knew of her past exactly what she wanted to tell me,” claims Maxie.

His dad, former MP Gilles Bernier, goes the extra step for poor Maxie. "It was certainly a trick,” he exclaims. So why did Maxie have to resign if he was set up? Dad says, "In the heat of the moment, he was forced to. He had no choice." Boo Hoo!

Got to admit though, Dad makes a better case than does Maxie.

Dad defends the misplacement of the so-called secret documents with this quip, "... he did not even know the nature of the documents." 'Scuse me? The cabinet minister did not know the nature of the documents in his red box?

But that is a better excuse than Maxie comes up with. "The level of importance of these briefing notes did not justify them being numbered so their disappearance would be noticed or they could be tracked." He seems to be claiming that he did know the nature of the documents. Is he saying that Dad is wrong?

So let's cut to the chase in this issue.

Max Bernier took Julie Couillard to visit with the GG, the PM and the rest of the Con cabinet to view his swearing in. And no one checked out Ms Couillard before the ceremony. Fire the RCMP.

Then Maxie took Julie overseas on a government jet and no one bothered to check her out? Fire the RCMP and PMO.

Maxie's department did not number the briefing notes he left in Julie's playroom. Fire his department.

Maxie's dad is making up lies to cover for his son. Fire Gilles, or at least cut off his pension.

According to Bernier, Julie is the blame for this set-up. She must be a spy so make her go away.

The only innocent person in this whole sordid affair is... wait for it... Maxime Bernier!

How cruel was it of the PM to demand his resignation?

Green Shift plan?

Dion released his Green Shift plan yesterday. I downloaded a copy of the guide so that I could comment with some facts behind me, rather than just empty rhetoric as which comes out the mouths of the opponents to fixing the climate.

"Mr. Dion's policies are crazy. This is crazy economics. It's crazy environmental policy," blurts PM Harper to anyone who will listen (and the numbers who listen are growing smaller by the day).

Even the ultra left Deputy NDP leader Thomas Mulcair branded the plan "a train wreck of programs..."

Is the plan complete? No. I would prefer that the plan give some more obvious estimates of the effects of the plan on carbon emissions. The Liberals have stated that their goal was to reduce 2020 emissions to a level that will be 20% below the level in 1990. Is that do-able? Certainly the Con and NDP policies of capping emissions won't do it.

Is the plan possible to achieve, especially the revenue neutral part? Both the Cons and the NDP, as well as most of the media gloss over the statement in the plan that the Auditor General will make sure that money in versus money out as outlined in the plan is achieved. Do the Cons, NDP and media not trust the Auditor General?

To underline and personalize the way the plan will work, the Green Shift web site (www.thegreenshift.ca) has a calculator to determine what your tax offset will be under the plan. However, rather than being personal on the cost side, the plan makes a general statement that the cost will be $350 per household, offset by the savings in taxes. We have two vehicles, live in the country and have gas heat. Are we typical? I am not sure.

Have we gone so far to partisanship in this country that we automatically oppose any idea if it isn't our own? Pretty sad state of affairs.

Two sides to an agreement

In my June 12 entry, I applauded Harper for the apology over residential schools, while at the same time wondering how sincere he was; considering that his pet-MP, Perfect PP, was given a clean bill of health by Harper when he (PP) should have been hung and quartered over the timing and tone of his comments about First Nations folks.

I also have a lingering doubt about the sincerity of First Nations folks surrounding this apology... this admission of guilt... on behalf of Canadians.

It is said that there are two parties to an apology. One to make it and one to accept it. We certainly had both parties to the apology on the Hill last week. But it also takes two parties to make an agreement work. I wonder if we have two parties.

I refer to the fact that, on one hand, the federal government does not seem to have a plan in mind to move forward from this apology and, on the other hand, some members of the First Nations seem to think that they have a blank check to screw Canadians.

Take, as example of the latter, the issue at Summerville Lake near Campbell's Bay, Ontario. Cottagers in the area have been told that their land is now part of a land claim and that, according to gun-toting natives, they, the cottagers, have to pay road access fees to local natives who run a camp nearby. The law is on the side of the cottagers with respect to road access and the issue of land claims did not even come up until after the natives bought the nearby camp. Before that there was no land claim. In fact the closest reserve to Summerville Lake is over 60 kilometers away. I wonder if the natives feel emboldened to blackmail Canadians because Canadians apologized for a past problem?

The natives are now saying that they are going to claim the entire Pontiac area of Quebec as their native territory and demand that the government pay them a land claims. Sounds like a money grab to me.

Did you know that 117% of BC is claimed by one native group or another? The First Nations can't agree between themselves which group has an historic right to which territory. It sounds a bit like they are throwing copious amounts of feces at the wall, hoping that some of it will stick.

There are some legitimate land claims and some bogus ones. Will Phil Fontaine and the Assembly of First Nations stand up and be counted to move their relationship with Canadians forward by helping to sort these out?

PP does it ever again

Two hours before PM Harper rises in the Commons to issue an solemn apology from all Canadians to "victims" of the Residential Schools fiasco, his Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board, the Perfect PP, Pierre "potty-mouth" Poilievre does it again. This guy is an embarrassment to the whole country... not just to his constituents!

PP goes on radio and wonders out loud if giving $4 billion to First Nations, as part of the apology, is good value-for-money. (Never mind that he cannot even get the amount right!) He then goes on to suggest that First Nations people are lazy, the cause of their own problems and demands an accounting of the $10 billion given to First Nations yearly.

Even if you have some good points, PP, did you not think that blowing off your mouth like this two hours before your Boss rises with an apology, might not be appropriate?

PP made an apology in the Commons today so, according to the PM, everything is hokey-dokey. The First Nations leaders and the opposition called for PP to lose his job in the secretarial pool but Harper will have nothing of it. I guess he needs PP to keep saying stupid things so the no one notices the rest of his government.

Makes you wonder how heart-felt Harper's apology was?

The Manley Report fails the simplest test

I have a lot of respect for John Manley but I hope that his study and report on Afghanistan didn't cost more that about $4025. That amount would pay for a researcher to Google on the Internet for a month to collect the background and foreground information that Manley claims he and his team discovered. There is nothing new here!

Let's pick a couple of issues that show the best of what I am talking.

The report claims that the mission must be working because the Taliban have resorted to IEDs and other small skirmishes rather than taking on NATO directly. It is interesting to note that Manley even mentions that the largest number of Canadian casualties occurred when Canada went on a major offensive in 2006. Guess what, John. It is a different kind of war; different than the one's starring John Wayne. IEDs and ambushes are tactics that work when you have no deadline to end a war. And make no mistake about it, the Taliban are not in any hurry.

Second, on page 21, the report talks about our goal of not allowing Afghanistan to revert to being the headquarters of global terrorism. But guess what? The headquarters for global terrorism is a figment of an over centralized imagination. Do you think that nuts in Spain and Indonesia and other hot spots around the world sit down around a table in Afghanistan like NATO does in Brussels. Terrorism has its headquarter all across the world; when ever two or more bizarros get together to foment hate!

I have some ideas on Afghanistan that I will impart later. In the meantime maybe I can get CGG (Canada's Greatest Government TM) to pay for a trip south to collect my thoughts.

Canadian book industry is dying

Unless Canada's Greatest Government (TM: PM Harper) steps up to the plate with some ideas, the Canadian Book Industry is going to die a painful death.

Just today Raincoast Books announced that they will get out the book publishing business. The high dollar and disappearing margins can only be experienced for so long before you give up the ghost, I guess. They are not the first publisher to quit recently and they will not be the last.

The whole writing industry in the final throws due to government action and inaction.

When the dollar rose to parity and beyond, what did CGG Minister Flaherty do? Rather than finding out where the discrepancy in cross border pricing was, he demanded that Canadian retailers slash their prices, regardless of their cost! Silly Minister.

The problem with book pricing is at the publisher level of the chain.

I am a writer. I have a number of books in print. I do not control the selling price of the books, the publisher does that. I know that the retailer gets a 40% discount from the publisher and that I get about 10% for doing all the real work so that leaves 50% for the publisher. But here is where the problem arises.

The publisher sets the retail price at whatever he thinks the market will bear. He could sell my book to a retailer in New York for $10 but turn around and sell the same book in Ontario for $14. Doesn't sound like a problem until you factor in the margins for retailers. The US retailer can sell the book for $14 but the Canadian retailer must sell it for $18 just to make the same $4 as the US counterpart. If you demand, as did Flaherty that the Canadian retailer reduce his price to match the US retailer then the Canadian retailer just lost his margins and will probably go out of business or make up the lost margins selling X-rated videos (which I am led to understand have great margins and the government steers away from talking about them).

The dollar is a sh*tkicker for Canadian exporters but when you combine it with bonehead statements from Ottawa, it can hurt importers also, especially in an industry like publishing, where regulation is a joke.

But let's not stop there. Tomorrow we will take a look at how the media industry is killing the news.