Seriously, what was the media in Saskatchewan doing when it wasn’t investigating Scott Moe’s history of drunk and, on one occasion, deadly driving? Wednesday morning, the province’s Saskatchewan Party premier got up on his hind legs at a campaign event and “spoke to an impaired driving charge he faced following
Continue readingTag: press progress
Alberta Politics: Smoke and mirrors aren’t cutting it — Alberta’s health minister still needs to go
Despite a lot of smoke and mirrors, Alberta’s United Conservative Party Government has never dispelled the queasy feeling many Albertans have that Tyler Shandro’s personal business dealings render him unsuitable to serve as minister of health. It was Mr. Shandro’s personal conduct, publicly berating a neighbour who posted a critical
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: UCP candidate’s ties to Trump campaign caps off sleepy by-elections in Fort McMurray-Conklin and Innisfail-Sylvan Lake
Photo: Sid Fayad, Laila Goodridge, Jane Stroud, Nicole Mooney, Abigail Douglass, Devin Dreeshen. Voters will head to the polls tomorrow to elect new MLAs in two relatively sleepy by-elections. The two districts, Fort McMurray-Conklin and Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, were both held by United Conservative Party MLAs before they became vacant and voters
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Ezra Schemes And Dreams
I would say that Ezra Levant should be careful about the company he keeps, but I doubt that there is more that can bring down his reputation other than simply being Ezra. The merchant of malice and division, repugnant to the morally sane, has launched a new scheme to keep
Continue readingAlberta Politics: In case you missed it … Conservatives are in the news, making sure today’s bad ideas are tomorrow’s horrible reality! For you!
PHOTOS: Former Canadian Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, now leader of the Conintern. (Photo: Remy Steinegger, Wikimedia Commons.) Below: Margaret Thatcher, just another moderate leader of the “centre right.” Dig those pointy collars! Mr. Harper’s former lieutenant Jason Kenney, who is now the leader of Alberta’s “centre right.” Stephen Harper
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Bill 24 passes, making it hard for Alberta schools to obstruct gay-straight alliances and illegal to out members to their parents
PHOTOS: Alberta Education Minister David Eggen, whose Bill 24, An Act to Support Gay-Straight Alliances, was passed by the Alberta Legislature yesterday. Below: UCP Leader Jason Kenney, former Alberta Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman, and social conservative activist John Carpay. Bill 24, An Act to Support Gay-Straight Alliances, passed third and
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Kevin O’Leary Laid Bare
I have never cared for that blowhard known as Kevin O’Leary. A shallow man intellectually, he appears to have only two reasons for seeking the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada: ego and a thirst for power, likely the same imperatives that impelled Trump to run for the U.S.
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Kevin O’Leary Laid Bare
I have never cared for that blowhard known as Kevin O’Leary. A shallow man intellectually, he appears to have only two reasons for seeking the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada: ego and a thirst for power, likely the same imperatives that impelled Trump to run for the U.S.
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner
Given the viscerally-stimulating ort that Kellie Leitch has lovingly lobbed to a certain core of the Conservative Party’s constituency, it might perhaps be timely to remind the leadership hopeful of the old adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” And despite a new poll that suggests many Canadians favour screening would-be immigrants for ‘anti-Canadian’ values, she would be well-advised to proceed with extreme caution.
As The Mound of Sound suggests, she should start by looking closer to home. Consider, for example, something that recently appeared in Press Progress, which included a clarification of what Leitch means when she advocates screening newcomers:
“Screening potential immigrants for anti-Canadian values that include intolerance towards other religions, cultures and sexual orientations, violent and/or misogynist behaviour and/or a lack of acceptance of our Canadian tradition of personal and economic freedoms is a policy proposal that I feel very strongly about.”
While I encourage you to read the entire article, here are a few of the things Press Progress pointed out about some of the Conservatives within Leitch’s political ambit:
Leitch says personal “freedom” is not only a Canadian value – it’s a proud “Canadian tradition.”
A proud and avid anti-abortionist, Kenney apparently doesn’t hold with some personal freedoms:
Kenney even tried to suppress a women’s group from spreading awareness about abortion rights on campus, claiming that if they allowed women to talk abortion, there would be no stopping the Ku Klux Klan, pedophiles or the Church of Satan from peddling their ideas too.
So much for freedom.
Another worthy addition to what could be a lengthy rogue’s gallery would be fellow-traveller Candice Bergen:
Leitch vows she won’t let anyone in who doesn’t believe in “equality of opportunity.”
If that’s true, then being a good Canadian mean supporting an affordable national childcare program too, right?
Two big barriers preventing kids from starting off life on an equal footing are skyrocketing child care costs and lack of affordable child care spaces.
Unfortunately, Conservative MP Candice Bergen once said she opposes child care (like the rest of her party) because it is her “core belief” that “big, huge government-run daycares” should not “dictate to families how to address their child care needs” – a set of talking points that perfectly mirrors Republican Tea Party arguments opposing Obamacare.
Now that doesn’t sound very Canadian, does it?
An indisputable Canadian value is acceptance of a wide range range of values and orientations. A test for oppositional values might send someone like Brad Trost fleeing.
This spring, Trost reacted to his party’s decision to drop its opposition to same-sex marriage in favour of a neutral position on the question by publicly announcing “gay marriage is wrong”:
“I will say homosexual marriage, gay marriage is wrong. I’ll be public about it … The language of equality and comparisons, to me that’s socialist language, the way they do it. The same way they talk about equality of income where they want a tax from the rich to bring them down to the level of the poor. So I completely reject the underlying philosophy behind this.”
Personally, I am waiting for a reporter to ask Leitch whether she would apply her screening criteria to those fundamentalist Christians (who incidentally comprise a large cadre of the party’s base support) wishing to come to Canada.
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Groaning Beneath The Yoke
Last week, that paragon of rectitude, impartiality and righteousness (irony alert!), The Fraser Institute, performed its annual service to all Canadian by reminding us of the tax yoke under which we all groan:This non-profit, tax-payer subsidized ‘inde…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Groaning Beneath The Yoke
Last week, that paragon of rectitude, impartiality and righteousness (irony alert!), The Fraser Institute, performed its annual service to all Canadian by reminding us of the tax yoke under which we all groan:
This non-profit, tax-payer subsidized ‘independent’ think tank without a political agenda was keen to share details of our collective burden:
The Fraser Institute calculates that the average Canadian family paid $34,154 in taxes of all sort last year, including “hidden” business taxes that are passed along in the price of goods and services purchased.
The study’s authors conclude that visible and hidden taxes would have been equal to 42.4 per cent of the cash income for an average Canadian family in 2015, estimated at $80,593.
By comparison, the study estimates the average Canadian family spent $30,293 on housing, food and clothing last year — about 37.6 per cent of the family’s total cash income.
Thanks to a largely compliant and/or lazy mainstream media, this is now being accepted as a factual and grievous injustice. However, leave it to Press Progress to provide some much-needed balance and perspective:
Although the Fraser Institute claims the average family spends 42% of its income on taxes, less than one-third of that number actually refers to federal and provincial income tax.
The Fraser Institute inflates its numbers by tacking on average costs for health insurance, pensions and employment insurance (as if they’re all one in the same thing) and further pads their numbers by including corporate taxes and oil and gas royalties for some reason.
Fraser Institute defends their curious methodological choices by arguing “the cost of business taxation is ultimately passed onto ordinary Canadians.”
Is that true? To the extent that taxes on corporate profits are passed along to anyone, a US study shows four-fifths of the corporate tax burden would be passed onto income earners in the top 20% – in other words, even by the Fraser Institute’s own logic, it’s not being passed on to the “average Canadian family.”
In a similar vein, that outlier of the mainstream media, The Toronto Star, offers offers this counsel about the alarmist report:
– it deceptively includes corporate taxes, which are largely shouldered by richer Canadians.
– as a share of Canada’s economy, taxes are now at a low rarely seen over the last three decades.
– the portion of income going to taxes has increased by only 7 per cent since 1961.
The biggest flaw in the Fraser report, typical of the kind of right-wing propaganda it regularly disseminates, is the glaring omission of what we get for those tax dollars:
A 2009 report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that middle-income Canadians enjoy public services, from education to health insurance to pensions, worth about $41,000 annually per family – or roughly 63 per cent of their income. Conversely, we have watched as decades of tax cuts have led to eroding public services, but also to rising inequality, persistent homelessness, traffic gridlock and crumbling schools.
So clearly, that yoke under which the Fraser Institute would have us believe we all slave isn’t quite the burden they have presented. Indeed, many would not call it a yoke at all, but rather a representation of the values we hold dear as a society. But I guess the Fraser Institute lacks both the will and the tools to measure such vital intangibles.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: When Tories, the Fraser Institute and media team up to attack plans to improve the CPP, you have to know it needs fixing!
ILLUSTRATIONS: A luxurious retirement? Do you get the feeling that ship may have sailed? Well, rich conservatives and their flunkies want you to think that a better Canada Pension Plan is a bad idea anyway. Below: Conservative Party of Canada Finance C…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Christmas in Wildrose Country: That noise on the roof may not be Santa Claus! It could be the UN, here to steal your turnips!
ILLUSTRATIONS: Will Santa have to come armed and armoured like this to be safe on Alberta rooftops in case the province’s loony right mistakes him for a UN trooper bent on world government and turnip confiscation? Below: Wildrose MLA Rick Strankman a…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: St. Albert-Edmonton Conservative candidate Michael Cooper must clearly state his position on women’s reproductive rights
PHOTOS: St. Albert-Edmonton Conservative candidate Michael Cooper, centre, with former Alberta Justice Minister Jonathan Denis, left, and Employment Minister Pierre Pollievre in a photo grabbed from Mr. Cooper’s campaign website. Below: A shot of Mr. Cooper snapped on my doorstep when he turned up campaigning for the Conservative nomination. ST.
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Meat For The Conservative Base
… is, I hope, indigestible for the rest of us. At Sunday’s Calgary-Signal Hill all-candidates debate, Conservative candidate Ron Liepert responded to criticisms of the Conservatives’ controversial Bill C-51 by suggesting “civil liberties” and “freedom” are not the most pressing issues facing the country in light of “criminal activities.” “I
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Memories Are Made Of This
Almost like a blooper reel, these reminders of some of King Stephen’s ‘finer’ moments will, one hopes, serve a useful purpose. Enjoy. 24/Stephen: "Proud Conservative Moments" Proud Conservative moments Posted by Press Progress on Tuesday, September 15, 2015 H/t Press Progress Recommend this Post
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Stephen Harper’s Not So Proud Record The Video
For years Stephen Harper has used millions of dollars of OUR money to make himself look good on his ghastly YouTube propaganda channel 24/7.And now his Con Death Machine is flooding the airwaves with more propaganda promoting what he calls his great team and his proud record.Even though it couldn't
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Pinocchio Effect
Those of us who have followed the machinations of the Harper regime over the years know that it is a rare occasion indeed when Stephen Harper tells the truth, either inside or outside the House of Commons. His capacity to convincingly dissemble, or effect what Stephen Colbert has called ‘truthiness,’
Continue readingAlberta Politics: MP Wai Young’s lines were flubbed, but nevertheless they sound like a cynical Harper Government talking point
PHOTOS: The Cone of Silence – it just doesn’t work for anyone any more. Below: Conservative MP Wai Young, Conservative PM Stephen Harper and Jesus, whose position on Canadian politics is unknown. It seems likely Vancouver South MP Wai Young fumbled a cynical Harper Government talking point when she claimed
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