(On September 28th, The National Post ran an ad from Charles McVety‘s “Institute for Canadian Values,” which tried to allege that LGBT-positive education would confuse children about their gender. This was sent to the paper at the time, and the Post has since pulled those ads, and publicly apologized) Apparently, Charles McVety is confused. No, 
Tag: Canadian Politics
Scott's DiaTribes: The Canadian Supreme Court rejects Conservative ideology for facts.
Not only am I pleased with the Insite rulling, I’m pleased it’s unanimous, in a strong rebuke to the Conservative government, who’s been trying to close this since 2008:
A supervised needle injection site for heroin addicts in Vancouver has gotten a constitutional reprieve following a landmark ruling Friday by the country’s top court. In a decision that sharply pits the court’s view of a coherent drug strategy against the Conservative government’s, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 that the federal government cannot refuse to extend a legal protection to addicts and clinical health workers at the InSite clinic in Vancouver’s gritty Downtown Eastside who would otherwise […]
Continue readingeaves.ca: Insite: Evidence, compassion and effectiveness overcome fear and reactiveness
I’m so deeply pleased to hear that the Supreme Court has ordered the federal government to allow Insite, Vancouver’s supervised injection site, to stay open. While on one level the case was about a battle of powers between the provincial and federal government – does health policy trump criminal law – at a deeper level […]
Continue readingwmtc: ontario, vote three ways and pass it on
There’s an excellent new democratic voting tool designed to show us what the upcoming Ontario election would look like under different voting systems. Although we can reconfigure actual election results using different electoral systems, those “what mi…
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Borys Wrzesnewskyj… I propose “call me Borys” for the campaign slogan
I’m going to need to first off learn how to pronounce Borys’s last name correctly. Secondly, like a couple of other Liberal bloggers, his entry into the Liberal leadership race is very intriguing.
Now, I don’t know a lot about Borys, other then his participation in the Ukrainian motion and such that is described in the original article, so just because he seems a good grass-roots canddiate doesn’t mean I’m going to support him until I research him a bit more.. but this party and this party leadership race needs a good shake-up, and if Borys can supply that, that’s half the battle for […]
Continue readingcentre of the universe: You might read it here, but what does that mean?
So, there’s this advert that’s run in at least one, possibly more Canadian newspapers. I’m not interested in posting the advert, but I’ll link to an article that talks about it. Understandably, a lot of people are Very Upset abo…
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: Debating the Debate
Not sure that anyone gives a toss, but here’s a panel of “experts” TVO rounded up to discuss who “won” and “lost” last night’s leadership debate. If nothing else, it’s always somewhat fascinating to witness how the impressions of people … Continue reading →
Scott's DiaTribes: Ontario debate – no knockout punches – McGuinty appears to have done well
So the Ontario debate has come and gone. There were no real “gotcha moments” last night, which is bad for the opposition parties, since you’d like to get some momentum for your side by laying a licking on the governing Premier. In fact, it appears the immediate public impression from 2 different sources was that Hudak finished last. Ipsos-Reid had Dalton Mcguinty narrowly winning last night, while a second poll from CP24 in Toronto did have NDP leader Andrea Horvath narrowly leading Mcguinty. In both cases, Hudak was last with 25%.
He had better hope that’s not a provincial wide trend. It can’t be too encouraging when the Toronto […]
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: Ontario Leadership Debate
Shorter version: Blah, blah, blah, blah… I have to confess to finding these “debates” to be incredibly tiresome affairs. After listening to an hour and a half of dubious promises and contradictory gainsaying by the various leaders, one doesn’t really … Continue reading →
Scott's DiaTribes: Ontario leaders debate tonight is big
We enter the Ontario leaders debate tonight with a new poll from Ekos released today showing the Liberals with a 4 point lead over the PC’s and the NDP in the mid-20′s. According to threehundredeight.com, combined with the findings of another poll release last night by Abacus (with their new polling methodology), that would lead to a bare Liberal majority.
Therefore, I would submit the pressure is on the opposition parties’ leaders to perform well. Hudak needs to do so to salvage what has been a fairly miserable campaign for him (losing a massive lead in less then 3 months to now possibly losing the election outright). Horwath on […]
Continue readingThe Wandering Joe: If a Tree falls on twitter, does it make a sound?
I wanted to wait on this particular post for a little while to let peoples’ emotions die down a bit, but I would like to write about the death of Jack Layton. I’m not going to write about the man himself mind you, but rather the remarkable response to his
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: If younger voters had bothered to vote in Ontario, Harper would have lost.
There was some conventional wisdom out there in pundit land that in the last few days of the May election, the Conservatives and Harper bit of fear-mongering that the NDP might be elected to government caused right-leaning Liberals to turn and vote Conservative in order to stop this, thus causing the vote splits in Toronto and such that ensured a Harper majority.
According to a study by Ekos, however, that was not the case:
In his post-election analysis, which he presented to a polling conference in Ottawa last week, Mr. Graves says that his sample of 1,000 voters in Ontario did not find a respondent who shifted to the […]
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: Ontario Election: Economic Realities
Another fascinating TVO discussion about the Ontario election, this time pivoting off some disparaging comments made several weeks ago by former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge in regards to political leadership with respect to prospects for the province’s economy… … Continue reading →
Scott's DiaTribes: Big new Ontario poll – deadlocked.
Very interesting – the Forum Research president apparently paid for this poll out of his own pocket. It’s a massive sample that shows a deadlocked Ontario legislature if it holds to election day:
A Forum Research survey of 40,750 people — one of the largest polling samples in Canadian political history — has the two parties separated by only 107 respondents, each holding 35 per cent. (14,064 said they will vote Liberal, while 13,957 selected the Conservatives.) Meanwhile, the New Democrats were at 23 per cent and the Green Party at 5 per cent.
For those wondering, this was an IVR poll – an interactive voice response one, which […]
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: My deflating optimism about the NDP leadership race
For a while, I was feeling very energized about the NDP leadership race. We on the left were going to get six months or so to have a real and refreshing discussion of values and policies about where to go from here. With a relatively new One Member One…
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: Reviving Canadian history/heroes
There was a nice editorial in the Star yesterday talking about how one of Canada’s war heros from World War I, Lt-Colonel William Barker, is finally getting some modest recognition to his feats (a gravestone with a plane propeller etched in it) after years of neglect and forgetfulness. I’ll admit I’d never heard of Colonel Barker either until recently either, and I’m one that takes a keen interest in Canadian history as well as obviously political science. This to me seems only a modest first step for reviving Colonel Barker in the collective Canadian conscience. It would be nice perhaps to do something more – how about re-telling his […]
Continue readingDented Blue Mercedes: Trans Rights Bills Intrduced in New Canadian Parliament
In the first week of the 41st session of Parliament, two Private Member’s Bills were introduced, both proposing explicit inclusion of transsexual and transgender people in the Canada Human Rights Act and the hate crimes clauses of the Criminal Code of Canada. Both were inspired by Bill C-389, which had passed in the last session 
Scott's DiaTribes: Environment: low on the totem pole for this Conservative government
Just as a brief followup to Impolitical’s posts/observations on the controversy brwewing surrounding cuts to ozone monitoring, I remember a time when opposition leader Stephen Harper was in his “climate change controls are a socialist schem…
Continue readingScott's DiaTribes: World Alzheimers Day
I just wanted to briefly mention that today is World Alzheimer’s Day. This is a disease that affects a lot of people, but doesn’t seem to be in the public spotlight as much as is heart disease or cancer. It is a disease in many ways worse for the family of the victim then it is for the victim, at least in it’s later stages. They don’t know any different what’s wrong with them, but the families see them and suffer from seeing a shell of the former loved family member, or because they don’t remember them anymore.
I decided to mention it because my mother is holding a […]
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: Big Red Machine Beatdown!
Come to PEI, and travel back to a simpler time…
Here’s a fun fact about PEI. If Ontario had the same ratio of MLAs to population, its provincial legislature would consist of 2,492 representatives!
Continue reading