After all, the arguments over the anti-terror law, Bill C-51, were still fresh — a law denounced by four former prime ministers (including a Tory one, Joe Clark), five retired chief justices of the Supreme Court, former ministers of justice and pretty well every legal expert in the country, that triggered alarm at the United Nations, that was described by both the RCMP and CSIS as “unnecessary” and that was denounced by the otherwise small-c conservative Globe and Mail as a “quasi-police state bill.” And here was Harper jerking our chains again on the same issue, proposing another broad dragnet largely outside the rule of law. What a political opportunity!
Author: Emily Dee
Pushed to the Left and Loving It: Mulcair’s Confusing Stance on Security and C-51
Columnist Ralph Surrette had a piece in the Chronicle Herald this weekend: Harper defeat won’t suffice; this calls for fumigation In it he questions why the NDP did not go on the attack when Stephen Harper announced that he’d institute a “ban on travel by Canadians to areas of terrorist activity
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Mulcair’s Confusing Stance on Security and C-51
Columnist Ralph Surrette had a piece in the Chronicle Herald this weekend: Harper defeat won’t suffice; this calls for fumigation In it he questions why the NDP did not go on the attack when Stephen Harper announced that he’d institute a “ban on travel by Canadians to areas of terrorist activity
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Andrew Thomson’s Candidacy Exposes a Much Bigger Problem for the NDP
The media has been in a frenzy recently over the decision by former Saskatchewan finance minister, Andrew Thomson, to run for the NDP against Joe Oliver. According to Thomson: “My time in government, and we’ve seen the record of NDP governments — there is a strong attention to spending discipline,”
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Andrew Thomson’s Candidacy Exposes a Much Bigger Problem for the NDP
The media has been in a frenzy recently over the decision by former Saskatchewan finance minister, Andrew Thomson, to run for the NDP against Joe Oliver. According to Thomson: “My time in government, and we’ve seen the record of NDP governments — there is a strong attention to spending discipline,”
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Andrew Thomson’s Candidacy Exposes a Much Bigger Problem for the NDP
“My time in government, and we’ve seen the record of NDP governments — there is a strong attention to spending discipline,” he said.
“We are obviously committed to social spending, but at the same time are also committed to making sure budgets are balanced and that governments live within their means.”
It might be, if it were true. But it isn’t. According to BJ Siekierski, Thomson raided a contingency fund to give the appearance of a balanced budget.
“Are you confused about the state of the province’s finances? Uncertain whether Saskatchewan is running a) a balanced budget, b) a $500 million deficit or c)a $700 million deficit?” Bruce Johnstone, the financial editor of the Regina Leader-Post, wrote on March 24, 2007. “After this week’s provincial budget, you have every right to be confused. I certainly am and I’ve been covering these things for nearly 25 years.
“The Fiscal Stabilization Fund (FSF) was created in 2000-01 to stabilize the fiscal position of the Province from year to year and to facilitate the accomplishment of long-term objectives,” the 2007-08 budget reads.
A few days after the publication of Johnstone’s column, Brad Wall — then the leader of the Saskatchewan Party opposition — told the Saskatchewan legislature that Thomson and NDP not only failed to obtain the $75 million surplus they claimed, they also drained the FSF.
“They went from a $158 million surplus last year to a $701 million deficit this year, Mr. Speaker. They drained $500 million, a half a billion dollars, from the Fiscal Stabilization Fund,” Wall charged.
The minister’s comments have justifiably frustrated officials in these regions, especially the fact that he’s accusing them of hoarding money. If the minister wants to talk about hoarding money and replenishing reserves, he need only look in the mirror. After all, it was his NDP government that has socked away nearly $700 million dollars in its so-called rainy day Fiscal Stabilization Fund for use in the year leading up to the next provincial election. Most of this money came right from oil producing regions like South East Saskatchewan, where residents are now facing increased education property taxes all because the minister is hoarding money in his own reserves and failing to fully fund the increased costs of education.
It’s funny – Andrew Thomson didn’t bother to mention this hidden tax hike in his recent half-a-million dollar television ad campaign. Recently, a reporter asked Andrew Thomson why he had to appear in the NDP’s budget commercials. He said it was because “it’s my budget.”
Mr. Thomson, like the NDP, has forgotten something very important. It’s not his budget. It’s not even his money. That money belongs to you, the people of Saskatchewan.
Yes. He cut funding to education, so he could look good on television.
With the writing on the wall, Thomson decided not to run in the 2007 election. The NDP were thrown out of power by the Saskatchewan Party, made up of former Liberals and Conservatives. In the 2011 election, the NDP fortunes fell even further, as they were reduced to just nine seats.
Andrew Thomson has to shoulder the blame for at least some of that.
Saskatchewan NDP Shows Where the Brand Has Gone Wrong
In 2012, Journalist John W Warnock wrote a piece: Whatever Happened to the Saskatchewan NDP?
From 1944 through 2007, politics in Saskatchewan was dominated by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and its successor the New Democratic Party (NDP). But the NDP was soundly defeated by Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party in 2007 and routed in 2011. Today they hold only nine seats in the legislature.
He contributes their failure, and rightly so, on their decision to move the party to the right.
Obviously, the Saskatchewan NDP needs to seriously re-evaluate the political direction it has taken since 1991. The move to the right to embrace the neoliberal model has been a failure. Thus it is a good time for a book of serious papers which examine ongoing problems and set out an alternative policy direction. The child poverty rate in Saskatchewan stands at 19.6 percent, tied with BC as the highest in Canada. James Mulvale and Kirk Englot explain how a progressive provincial government could implement a feasible strategy for poverty reduction.
The NDP had failed on every issue, from healthcare to poverty. From education to the environment.
This follows elections last year in Nova Scotia and British Columbia that were marked by the drift to the right of the NDP and electoral disappointments similar to what the party suffered in Ontario.
Their fear of Harper is too profound and they fear that the way Conservatives decimated the Liberals, now it would be the turn of the NDP to be pulverized.
Pushed to the Left and Loving It: Mulcair’s Environmental Record #2: Minister of Hog Development
Recently Morris W. Dorosh had a piece published in the Financial post: Tom Mulcair’s incoherent farm policy.
Incoherence is the expected thing from Mulcair. His arithmetic seems a bit off. Supply management nationally provided 16.9 per cent of farm-gate cash revenue in 2014 and 17.0 per cent the prior year, so Mulcair must have been referring only to Quebec. In that case gross revenue from milk, egg and poultry sales in Quebec was 2.55 per cent of Canadian farm cash income. Employment allegedly created by the system can be almost any number depending on how creatively it is defined.
How can we give credibility to the words of a minister when his statements are different from one newspaper to another or from a television program to another or simply false.(1)
“By authorizing new hog barns, the government is giving municipal officials and citizens a fait accompli. It is preparing for the worst crises than previous ones, since people feel cheated. The BAPE gave them hope and yet nothing changes, “says Gilles Tardif of the Citizen Coalition.
“The Environment Minister Thomas Mulcair, seems to have turned into the minister of pig development,” adds Tim Yeatman … citizens have just elected candidates who campaigned against hog farms projects.
The groups are outraged that the government ignored the recommendations of the BAPE in regard to the protection of the environment and risks to the health of people drinking from artesian wells. “Despite clear evidence to the effect that the spreading of pig manure, slurry is not adequately controlled to prevent the pollution of watercourses, the Liberal government seems to be unconscious,” says Martine Ouellet Vice President of the Coalition Eau Secours. (4)
The major issue in Quebec is the ever-expanding hog industry, and its impact upon the environment and rural communities. In the fall of 2003 The Quebec government released its report on a public consultation process which recommended fundamental changes to hog production in order to make it sustainable in Quebec. A moratorium on hog production expansion followed, installed until new regulations and policies could be implemented, but was lifted prematurely in December 2004. Since then, grassroots community groups have been calling on the province to heed the Canadian Medical Association’s resolution to ban the expansion of the hog industry until the inherent risks of industrial hog farming are understood and the appropriate solutions.
Pushed to the Left and Loving It: Mulcair’s Environmental Record #2: Minister of Hog Development
Recently Morris W. Dorosh had a piece published in the Financial post: Tom Mulcair’s incoherent farm policy. In it he questions Mulcair’s logic and math, when discussing agriculture and supply management. Incoherence is the expected thing from Mulcair. His arithmetic seems a bit off. Supply management nationally provided 16.9 per cent
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Mulcair’s Environmental Record #2: Minister of Hog Development
Recently Morris W. Dorosh had a piece published in the Financial post: Tom Mulcair’s incoherent farm policy. In it he questions Mulcair’s logic and math, when discussing agriculture and supply management. Incoherence is the expected thing from Mulcair. His arithmetic seems a bit off. Supply management nationally provided 16.9 per cent
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Ignorance and Belly Badges: Learning to Deal With the Doltish
Recently the media and political opponents made merry with a comment that Justin Trudeau made on the economy. “We’re proposing a strong and real plan one that invests in the middle class so that we can grow the economy, not from the top down the way Mr. Harper wants to,
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Ignorance and Belly Badges: Learning to Deal With the Doltish
Recently the media and political opponents made merry with a comment that Justin Trudeau made on the economy.
“We’re proposing a strong and real plan one that invests in the middle class so that we can grow the economy, not from the top down the way Mr. Harper wants to, but from the heart outwards, that is what Canada has always done well with.”
Americans have traditionally looked to Canada as a liberal haven, with gun control, universal health care and good public education.
But the nine and half years of Mr. Harper’s tenure have seen the slow-motion erosion of that reputation for open, responsible government. His stance has been a know-nothing conservatism, applied broadly and effectively. He has consistently limited the capacity of the public to understand what its government is doing, cloaking himself and his Conservative Party in an entitled secrecy, and the country in ignorance.
This could not have been accomplished without a media and a politico determined to take everything down to it’s lowest common denominator. As a result, we are now seen as a country of uninformed bumpkins, quite happy to wander about aimlessly, waiting for the next sound bite and resulting media spin.
Neither the Conservatives, Liberals, or NDP have released a fully costed platform or have explained how they would pay for big ticket spending promises should government revenues decline.
Pushed to the Left and Loving It: Ignorance and Belly Badges: Learning to Deal With the Doltish
Recently the media and political opponents made merry with a comment that Justin Trudeau made on the economy. “We’re proposing a strong and real plan one that invests in the middle class so that we can grow the economy, not from the top down the way Mr. Harper wants to,
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Canada’s Domestic False Flag War Has Many Fronts
“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Canada’s Domestic False Flag War Has Many Fronts
“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Canada’s Domestic False Flag War Has Many Fronts
“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” — Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials
There is no doubt that the attack on Parliament Hill last October, by a lone wolf gunman, became Stephen Harper’s false flag war; as the government, with the help of the media, painted it as an attack perpetrated by ISIS.
In the wake of 9/11, the fear on that day was real, as no one knew how many gunmen were involved, and how organized the attack. We now know that it was just one mentally unbalanced homeless man, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who had no ties to any terrorist organization.
Since then, the Conservatives have used this false flag war as an excuse to further erode our civil liberties, in the name of terror. On the campaign trail, Harper is emphasizing the need for security, while suggesting that only he can keep us safe. The politics of fear.
“Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.” — Adolf Hitler
Not Canada’s Only False Flag War
The term “false flag” originated in the days of wooden ships, when one ship would hang the flag of its enemy, before attacking another ship in its own navy. This would then be used as excuse to go to the war. After all, didn’t they have the right to defend themselves?
However, “false flag” does not have to refer to fact manipulation, in order to promote a military engagement, but can also be used as a tactic to undermine political opponents. There is little doubt that Justin Trudeau was set up to take the fall for Bill C-51, the Harper government’s egregious, so-called anti-terrorist bill.
If all is fair in love and politics, the NDP’s political exploitation of the situation, could be called “fair” or at least a clever tactic against Trudeau and the Liberal party, leading into the election campaign. It certainly hurt the Liberals, at least temporarily.
What surprised me however, was the media’s complicity in this. If it is a journalist’s job to inform the public, while recording history; what will future historians think of the reporting and recording, of the events following the passage of Bill C-51?
They might initially believe that it was Justin Trudeau’s bill, until realizing that he wasn’t the prime minister. He wasn’t even the leader of the official opposition and did not head a coup. How could he possibly be responsible?
It would be easy for them to see through the actions of the NDP, but might be understandably puzzled by the direction taken by “journalists”.
Not that the media hasn’t helped to fan the flames of war, but why did they see it as their responsibility, to attack a political party with biased reporting, to help the prospects of another political party or parties?
However, while the NDP might, seemingly, have been the beneficiaries of this engagement, in the end, by giving Harper a free pass on the bill, they could also be the fallen soldiers. They chose the wrong allies. The Conservative army takes no prisoners.
The NDP’s False Flag War Claims Many Victims
With the distraction of the orange dog and pony show, there was important information that the Canadian public was not privy to. Bill C-51, was not just an anti-terrorism bill, but an omnibus bill, with many critical elements that should have been examined and made election issues. According to Vice:
.. this national debate about surveillance is also a distraction from the fact that Stephen Harper is once again using a monstrous bill to simultaneously change dozens of pieces of legislation while severely limiting Parliament’s ability to have a meaningful debate about these issues. Bill C-51 is an omnibus bill, meaning that it is creating two laws but also amending roughly a dozen others from the Department of Fisheries Act to the Criminal Code to the Income Tax Act.
This Means that we have lost the opportunity to debate these things, that are rarely mentioned by the media, too wrapped up in the Justin Trudeau nonsense.
There is now a series of memes being passed around, that make many of the things that Stephen Harper does in his politics of fear, pale by comparison. Showing a protest group and the idea that stopping protests, is the real reason for the bill, is not only a false flag, but entirely false.
Originally there was a clause that allowed “lawful” protest. However, when concern was raised that “lawful” could be left to interpretation, the word was removed. This means that the bill does not stop protests
“The first amendment would clarify that any protest or dissent would not fall under C-51. .. University of Ottawa law professor Craig Forcese, along with fellow academic Kent Roach, has conducted an in-depth analysis of the bill. Forcese said that dropping the word “lawful” from C-51 to ensure it doesn’t target civil disobedience activities may allay some concerns on the part of environmental and aboriginal groups.
So why are these people trying to suggest that protests will no longer be allowed in Canada?
This bill is flawed for so many reasons, and in the wrong hands could certainly be used for a lot of things. However, we have seen human rights abuses in this country, long before Bill C-51.
These images are designed to create fear where there should be no fear, while hiding the things we should be afraid of.
This kind of hyperbole can actually have a different affect than expected. Over the top fear tactics often turn people off, but more importantly, they might do irreparable harm to future protest actions.
If people are frightened that engaging in such things, could get them arrested or painted as terrorists, they might think twice before taking part.
The politics of fear, whether coming from the Conservatives or NDP, are still the politics of fear.
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Guest Blogger: NDP PLAYING A DANGEROUS GAME OF FOOTSIES WITH QUEBEC SEPARATISM:
By Ted Chartrand I have, by and large, stayed away from criticizing the NDP but it’s at the point where I cannot remain silent. The NDP is playing a very dangerous game by pandering to the separatist element in Quebec. It’s doing this in two ways: 1. The Sherbrooke Declaration:
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Mulcair’s Environmental Record #1: Have the NDP Sprung a Leak?
On August 25, 1988; then federal Minister of the Environment, Tom McMillan, tabled Bill C-156, in the House of Commons: the Canada Water Preservation Act The reason for the bill was to give teeth to an announcement made the year before, by the Mulroney government, that they would not consider large-scale water
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: The NDP’s Biggest Asset May be Their Biggest Liability
I watched the Macleans leadership debates again on Youtube, and noticed a few things that I hadn’t picked up on when watching it live. For one thing, Thomas Mulcair was the only one of the four to have to use a script, when delivering his closing remarks. We saw one awkward moment when
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: How Thomas Mulcair Dashed the Hopes of Millions of Canadians
On July 17, 1996, Bill C-35 came into effect, which redefined the federal minimum wage to be the adult minimum wage, in the provinces where the work was performed; by those employed in industries that fell under federal jurisdiction.At the time, federal minimum wage was just $4.00 an hour, while in B.C., for instance, it was $7.00
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