Who will make the best leader of the NDP and does it matter? Some surprising answers from Murray Dobbin, Corvin Russell, Simon Tremblay Pepin, Josh Brandon, Herman Rosenfeld, Stefan Christoff.
Continue readingCowboys for Social Responsibility: What Vic Toews doesn’t know might hurt you
As the Conservative caucus wanders off tonight to celebrate their modest victory against the continuation of the life saving long gun registry by drinking the blood of gun violence victims with the gun lobby, we would be remiss if we did not point out how little Public Safety Minister Vic
Continue readingLaw is Cool: LawFacts: Online Legal Advice from Legal Aid Ontario
LawFacts: Online Legal Advice from Legal Aid Ontario By: Simon Borys; Cross Posted on Simon Says Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) recently launched a website entitled LawFacts which is designed to provide information about the criminal justice system to people in Ontario. (See the press release here.) It will not provide
Continue readingStacey Meek, get ready
You’re about to become the story. The shit is about to hit the fan.
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Don’t Toews Me Bro! – Harper’s NCC Letter
Read the First Part, if you want. This following letter may be the most hilarious thing the Vic Toews Internet Spying Bill scandal has produced. Stephen Harper, the 2001 President of the NCC, wrote supporters the following: “The jackasses at Elections Canada are out of control.” Please excuse my language,but
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Don’t Toews Me Bro – Conservatives Eying Email Spying
Minister Vic Toews is a nice guy, on Mark Horseman’s authority. I have to disagree, the evidence to the contrary is too strong. Nice guys don’t try to destroy the Internet as we know it, and subject innocent Canadians to higher ISP bills to fund government spying on legal communications.
Continue readingOpenMedia.ca: Government Begins to Backpeddle on Online Spying as StopSpying.ca Petition reaches 93K
openmedia_logo.jpg February 15, 2012 – The government is in hot water with 93,000 Canadians after introducing a bill that would allow warrantless online spying. Known as Lawful Access, this legislation was introduced in Parliament on Tuesday as Bill C-30. Public interest group OpenMedia.ca says that if passed unchanged, this bill
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: NDP Leadership Candidate Policy Comparisons: Israel/Palestine
The Israel/Palestine issue is the foreign policy issue to which politians are most expect to have a cogent answer to. It is a necessary right of passage and, for many, a litmus test for political support. Unlike many other countries and regions to which my research has not indicated extensive
Continue readingCalgaryGrit: The Drummond Report
The eagerly anticipated Drummond report has been released – if you’re into horror stories, by all means curl up by the fire and read the full 562 pages here. In it, Drummond offers 320 recommendations. The initial reaction by many pundits is that this puts NcGuinty in a bind, since
Continue readingStaffroom Confidential: Are BC workers getting wage increases?
The BC government is trying to impose a second round of “net zero” increases for public sector workers. One of the arguments is that other workers are not getting increases. The Conference Board of Canada, based on a survey of 236 organizations, has predicted non-union wage increases of 3% for
Continue readingQP: Doing the math on the F-35s
QP was off to an abrupt start after the Speaker shut down Conservative MP Jim Hillyer’s attempted attack against Justin Trudeau in a Member’s Statement, and Turmel was up, and decried the fact that making budget cuts too fast could
Continue readingOpenMedia.ca: The Globe and Mail: ‘Snoop and spy’ bill could be costly overreach
By Omar El Akkad for The Globe and Mail Vic Toews, Canada’s Public Safety Minister, has framed any debate of the Conservative government’s new lawful access bill in the simplest terms: Canadians can either stand with the government, or with child pornographers. Of course, the dichotomy is false. It is
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Credit where credit’s due
You might want to prepare yourself. I’m about to compliment the federal Liberals. A few weeks ago I was expressing concern about what seemed like an increasing tendency on the part of the Conservatives to take the business of parliamentary committees behind closed doors. Not that I was the only
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Curious About The Man Who Wants To Invade Our Privacy?
Then check out this and this. Recommend this Post
Continue readingThe World Famous Dan Shields: 4225…Lin Sanity
In case you don’t know Jeremy Lin is the hottest property in pro sports right now. He is the first Asian American to play in the NBA. Unrecruited out of high school he had to settle for playing at Harvard and then was undrafted. His rookie year was kind of
Continue readingThe World Famous Dan Shields: 4224…Be Afraid, Chris Brown, Be Very Afraid
The rapper, who smacked out his girl Rihanna a few years ago, should be very afraid. Miranda Lambert, the country singer, is p*ssed at him and, as reported by WENN, suggests he listen to her first coupla discs. I believe that she dispatched [killed] five boyfriends in her first two
Continue readingNews flash—country rejects Olympic Games!!!
Hard to believe, but true—a country has rejected the possibility of hosting the Olympics. Rome had intended to bid for the 2020 Summer Games, but the Italian government has nixed the application. Italian Premier Mario Monti said it would be irresponsible to use taxpayer money to fund the Olympics with
Continue readingwmtc: results of poll on immigration shows conservative anti-immigrant policies are out of step with dominant canadian view
I was pleased to see the results of a recent Environics survey about Canadians’ attitudes towards immigrants and new Canadians. It’s reassuring to know that the attitudes that led to an attack on a Muslim woman in Mississauga and the directive forbidding women to wear veils at a citizenship ceremony
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Could McGuinty’s cuts be worse than Harris?
The Ontario government’s long awaited and much discussed report of the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services (aka, the Drummond report) was finally publicly released this afternoon. As was rumoured, the report says Ontario would need to increase program spending by no more than 0.8% per year for
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Heartland Confirms that it Mistakenly Emailed Internal Documents
heartland.gif The Heartland Institute has confirmed in a prepared statement that it mistakenly emailed its board materials to an anonymous third party – confirming the source of the documents released here on the DeSmogBlog yesterday. Heartland then goes on allege that one of the documents (the Climate Strategy) is a fake. The
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