The 2016 federal budget delivered on poverty reduction, First Nations funding, but several of the Liberals’ 2015 election promises were not addressed, says the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
The post Budget turns left but doesn’t step on t…
Tag: Liberals
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Wall Can’t Cut Pollution? Cut the Crap.
WEYBURN, Sask. – Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall says a federal government cannot tax a provincial government and that might play a role in any potential national carbon tax. Wall says he might be able to make the case that Ottawa can’t impose a carbon tax on SaskPower because it’s a Crown corporation. OK, let’s play […]
Continue reading"Liberal" is back in the U.S.
Liberal is one of the most honourable words in politics or, indeed, in life generally. According to my ITP Nelson Canadian Dictionary, it means "open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behaviour of others," and what better basis for a good society than that. Indeed, we proudly call our political system a "liberal democracy."
Unfortunately, U.S. conservatives managed to
Continue readingLeft Over: Turning a Fail into a Win…
Mulcair takes responsibility for failed election campaign in letter to NDP supporters Mulcair wants to remain NDP leader promising not to repeat mistakes of 2015 election By Kristy Kirkup, The Canadian Press Posted: Feb 10, 2016 3:51 PM ET Last Updated: … Continue reading →
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Microwaste, Big Problem
I phoned Johnson & Johnson about why they continue to sell products with microbeads after Parliament started to vote last year toward creating a law to ban their sale. The customer care rep had no specific information, and hadn’t heard about the forthcoming ban on microbeads the Conservatives started to pursue the day before the […]
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Conservatives Failed to Protect Privacy
The Liberals record? Not much better. “I can’t answer the question about the former government, what their reasons were,” said Sajjan, also noting he does not believe any of the metadata inadvertently shared could have ended up in the hands of any countries beyond the Five Eyes. BREAKING: #CSE suspends #metadata sharing with int'l partners […]
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Looking Back At the Conservatives’ Campaign
I wrote this on October 1, 2015, but never finished it: Let’s examine the Conservative’s campaign thus far: It began with them showing ads where men are being drowned, as an example of how they’ll protect us, but no one else will. In the middle it had one of their candidates quit for being caught […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Redistribution, Inequality, and Federal Policy: Guest Post by Edgardo Sepulveda
We are pleased to present this rich guest post by a new PEF member, Edgardo Sepulveda. Edgardo has been a consulting economist for more than two decades advising Governments and operators in more than 40 countries on telecommunications policy and regulation matters (www.esepulveda.com). Redistribution, Inequality and the new Federal Tax & Transfer initiatives I want […]
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Trudeau To Rush A Billion Dollars to Wall and Notley
The government is in talks to quickly allocate $1 billion for infrastructure projects in the two provinces — money earmarked by the previous government’s infrastructure fund but not yet delivered, two of the officials said. I sincerely hope that this money goes into supporting the growing renewable energy industry, and not into propping up the […]
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Is a Referendum the Best Way to Determine an Electoral System?
.Is a Referendum the Best Way to Determine an Electoral System?
*Cf. Robin Sears: “The Conservatives are already demanding a referendum on any change to the electoral system, secure in the knowledge that that would mean certain defeat for any reform. Some gullible journalists have defended a referendum as an essential democratic test. What that naively fails to recall, of course, is that there has never been a non-partisan “democratic” referendum. The final choice will inevitably be political and require partisan approval.”**Why would they? First-past-the-post is not on the agenda, as the Liberal election platform clearly says: “We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.We will convene an all-party Parliamentary committee to review a wide variety of reforms, such as ranked ballots, proportional representation, mandatory voting, and online voting.This committee will deliver its recommendations to Parliament. Within 18 months of forming government, we will introduce legislation to enact electoral reform.”***Under FPP, less populated rural ridings carry as much representational weight in parliament as do densely populated urban ridings. Because of that discrepancy, they are really less democratically representational. Both a ranking ballot system and PR in particular would in fact be more representational of all voters in a given riding and thus more democratic.
****This has already begun in rural newspapers and even The Globe and Mail.
Politics and Entertainment: Is a Referendum the Best Way to Determine an Electoral System?
.Is a Referendum the Best Way to Determine an Electoral System? Theoretically a referendum may seem like the most obvious and democratic way to determine whether electoral reform is desirable in Canada; but, as we have seen with referendums at the provincial level in BC, PEI, and Ontario, the results
Continue readingThe Tory Pirate - Politics & Policy: The Mutually Unintelligibility of Right & Left
Recently a friend of mine on Facebook was asking why conservatives seemed to misunderstand a key aspect ofliberalism. The question was, and is, an interesting one. And it led me back to a field of study I first encountered inuniversity and have run across from time to time since then. Specifically I am referring to the ideas of Jonathan Haidt.He proposed that a lot of the anger generated between liberals and conservatives is because both groups assume thatthere is only one scale for mo […]
Continue readingA Grumpy Hobbit: RWNJ Revisionist History 101 = The Nazi Were Socialist
The Nazi were SOCIALISTS!!!! After all the name of their political
Party was the National Socialist Party (or there abouts) blah blah
blah,…
This is the one of the favorite mindless talking point I
hear from RWNJs who have never crack a history…
A Grumpy Hobbit: RWNJ Revisionist History 101 = The Nazi Were Socialist
The Nazi were SOCIALISTS!!!! After all the name of their political Party was the National Socialist Party (or there abouts) blah blah blah,… This is the one of the favorite mindless talking point I hear from RWNJs who have never crack a history book in their lives. I really detest
Continue readingA Grumpy Hobbit: RWNJ Revisionist History 101 = The Nazi Were Socialist
The Nazi were SOCIALISTS!!!! After all the name of their political
Party was the National Socialist Party (or there abouts) blah blah
blah,…
This is the one of the favorite mindless talking point I
hear from RWNJs who have never crack a history…
Scott's DiaTribes: Compassion confounds Conservatives
I get the feeling that Conservative supporters are confounded Canadians like a PM with compassion. Amongst the sites that still allow comment sections (and that number is shrinking, but that’s another story), on any given story that shows Prime M…
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Canadians Prefer Proportional Representation Voting System: Study
A new landmark new study – the left-leaning Broadbent Institute – Canadians want the new Liberal government to fulfill its 2015 election promise to reform Canada’s anti-democratic voting system.
The post Canadians Prefer Proportional Representation Vot…
A Grumpy Hobbit: It is Called *Being Consistent* Knee to the Nads For Ninny Nanny Nitwit Justin
To all those trained CPC Harper bots who had no issue with Harper having a private Chef and/or who were outrage about Trudeau firing said Chef,… Well seriously you just have to STFU about Ninny Trudeau hiring a couple of Nannies. (PS, the Harper Ch…
Continue readingA Grumpy Hobbit: It is Called *Being Consistent* Knee to the Nads For Ninny Nanny Nitwit Justin
To all those trained CPC Harper bots who had no issue with Harper having a private Chef and/or who were outrage about Trudeau firing said Chef,… Well seriously you just have to STFU about Ninny Trudeau hiring a couple of Nannies. (PS, the Harper Chef also did Nanny duties in
Continue readingA Grumpy Hobbit: It is Called *Being Consistent* Knee to the Nads For Ninny Nanny Nitwit Justin
To all those trained CPC Harper bots who had no issue with Harper having a private Chef and/or who were outrage about Trudeau firing said Chef,… Well seriously you just have to STFU about Ninny Trudeau hiring a couple of Nannies. (PS, the Harper Ch…
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