This and that to end your Saturday. – Bill Curry breaks the news of the Cons’ next round of public service slashing – with Canada Revenue Agency employees whose work far more than pays for itself once more looming as one of the main targets of a government determined to
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Plenty more commentators are taking a turn duly mocking the Cons’ Senate shenanigans. Here’s Tabatha Southey: In fact, Mr. Duffy lives and votes in Kanata, a suburb of Ottawa, in a home he purchased five years before he was appointed to the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – The Star’s editorial board highlights why our elected representatives should be countering the effect of precarious employment (rather than exacerbating them as the Cons have done): Simply put, programs like Employment Insurance and the Canada Pension Plan were created back in the days
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the current controversy over residency requirements only helps to show how Canada’s Senate is beyond fixing. For further reading…– Again, Andrew Coyne similarly points out how abolition is a more viable option than trying to rewrite rules to preserve the existing Senate.– Kelly McParland’s take on Mike
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Canada News Headlines: Stephen Harper – World’s Worst Talent Scout
Curated By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive | Feb. 27, 2013: Stephen Harper – world’s worst talent scout Sooner or later, the country is going to realize that there is something terribly wrong with Stephen Harper’s judgment. And sooner or later, the Conservative party is going to realize one-man bands are great until the tuba
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Canadian Senate Expenses Scandal: Harper Must Back Off And Let Justice Prevail
By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive | Feb. 27, 2013: Has Prime Minister Stephen Harper finally awakened to the reality that Canada’s appointed Senate is indeed a scandal-ridden ”useless, expensive, undemocratic appendage of government”? That a majority of democracy-loving Canadians don’t really find the unfolding Senatorial soap opera engulfing mostly his appointees that funny? Is he finally admitting the truth: he’s the world’s worst
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – John Moore questions the much-hyped assertions of a permanent Republican Conservative majority by pointing out that Canadian values haven’t changed at all even as the Harper Cons have tried to use public money to change the channel. And Justin Ling sees the Cons
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Michael Harris rightly points out that a steady stream of scandals and incompetence from the Cons says plenty about Stephen Harper’s own judgment (or lack thereof): Sooner or later, the country is going to realize that there is something terribly wrong with
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Andrew Nikiforuk discusses how Alberta and other petro-states have ended up destroying their treasuries and their democratic systems alike by relying excessively on volatile resource prices: Thanks to the volatile nature of the world’s most lucrative commodity, various petro states find themselves short
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Why Canada Needs An Elected Senate Just Like America’s
“Washington is broken.” – Barack Obama Looking at the Canadian Senate in isolation might motivate many to question it, but compared to the American Senate, Canadians should be proud of their upper chamber. Besides the fact that googling “Ottawa is broken” brings zero related results, the American Senate is so
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Premier Wynne can push for national referendum on future of the Senate
By Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive, Feb. 18, 2013: In, 2004, Stephen Harper described Canada’s Senate as a “dumping ground for the favoured cronies of the Prime Minister.” He also said: “I will not name appointed people to the Senate. Anyone who sits in the Parliament of Canada must be elected by the people
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your Family Day. – Gerald Caplan comments that it’s long past time to put the Senate out of its misery: Who knew that when well-known Canadians in 2011 begged old acquaintances now turned Conservative Senators to back a bill for cheap generic AIDS drugs for Africa,
Continue readingBryan Crockett: The Senate Encourages A Few Party System
We all know that Senators, who are appointed on the advice of the Prime Minister of the day, are supposed to, in theory, represent the views of the provinces or regions of Canada. In actuality, Senators represent the political parties of the Prime Minister who appointed them. READ MORE AT
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Michael Harris concludes that we’re currently stuck in a golden age for political falsehood and deceit: (T)here are problems with blotting out inconvenient truths with self-serving Newspeak. It’s catchier than a flu-bug in a pup tent. Quite a few pairs of pants are
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Marc Lee and Iglika Ivanova offer up a framework for a more progressive and fairer tax system. – Andrew Hanon looks behind the Fraser Institute’s labour-bashing and finds that what it’s really criticizing is fair pay for women in the public sector.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Carol Goar discusses Canada’s broken fiscal stabilizers – as unemployment insurance and social programs intended to assure citizens of at least a reasonable standard of living have been cut to well below that level: Canada’s economic shock absorbers are badly worn. Employment insurance,
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: A More Democratic Senate Is Less So
Canadians certainly are no Nero, but they do have at least one thing in common with the late Roman emperor. In 64 AD it is said that while Rome burned its emperor Nero fiddled. That while his city suffered calamity he amused himself with music. Today Canadians are doing something
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Shawn McCarthy discusses the Cons’ latest plan to sell Keystone XL to the U.S. – which involves hoping that the best-resourced government on the planet will be suckered into accepting a transparently false pretense that the Cons have the slightest interest in addressing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Tabatha Southey rightly turns Brad Trost into a poster boy for the Harper Cons’ deliberate aversion to critical self-evaluation: We shouldn’t be too quick to judge. Let’s instead take a cue from Conservative MP Brad Trost, who, when questioned regarding the calls, said,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – While we may sometimes lose track of the continuing differences between Canadian politics and those in the U.S., here’s a reminder of how we’re familiar with a far wider and more progressive range of public policy choices: while we’ve seen plenty of discussion
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