Photo Credit: Blacknight Solutions

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…The famous opening phrase to Charles Dickens’ novel “A Tale Of Two Cities” was applied to the times in which Dickens lived, but it probably also applies to all periods in history, including our own. This past year represents both the best of times and the worst of times for us. What follows are a few random snapshots of the past year, representing both the good times and the bad.
(more…)

Canadians need a new national animal

Compelled by a strange feeling of responsibility to manufacture one of those generic end of/beginning of the year articles, I recalled a memory from my childhood. Thumbing through a geography textbook as a young mushroom-haired boy, probably wearing either a Spiderman jumpsuit or an entire Toronto Blue Jays uniform, I found a cartoon that was comparing the size of Canada with Russia. Russia, represented as a grinning bear in a fez cap, was much larger than Canada, which was depicted as a beaver holding a hockey stick. In my approximately seven year old brain, these images didn’t demand much scrutiny beyond wondering what the bear thought was so funny. After all, what’s laughable about a beaver? Nothing, that’s what.

The beaver is a builder, a herbivore, an aquatic genius, a noble beast with work ethic that can make hot-blooded Protestants feel fancy. Indeed, the beaver is a majestic creature, an animal that deserves better than to be sullied as Canada’s national creature. A suggestion: re-illustrate our geography books to include a species that actually reflects Canada’s behaviour domestically and internationally. I think some variety of snake is more fitting. Unlike beavers, snakes do not have legs, movable eyelids, external ear-openings, or eardrums, just like many of the government officials and corporations that represent us here and abroad. Therefore, considering the troubled eggs our dry-eyed, legless, and hard of hearing Canadian elites have been laying all over the planet this year, I don’t believe it’s fair to ridicule the beaver any longer as Canada’s national creature.
(more…)

Photo Credit: The Canadian Cave of Coolness

Recent elections and polling indicate that two great Canadian federal parties, the Liberals and the NDP, are in real trouble and could continue to face irrelevance or even extinction in future elections. These are the parties of titans like Laurier, J.S. Woodsworth, Tommy Douglas, Pearson, and Trudeau, whose names reverberate throughout Canadian history.

Is it now time for an old and little known political idea to be revisited? Should the Liberals and the NDP consider some form of partnership? Having endured numerous unsuccessful election results, the Progressive Conservatives and various conservative splinter groups successfully entertained the thought of union, creating the Conservative Party at the federal level. Would the same type of marriage work for Liberals and the NDP?

The marriage between the Progressive Conservative and the Reform political parties was like a marriage between a wolf and a domesticated dog. They share a common evolutionary history, although there has been recent branching off from the evolutionary tree. Whatever differences that do exist, they are still genetically similar enough that they can produce progeny and get along reasonably well. Thus, the marriage of the two parties could and did occur. This union, which resulted in the Conservative Party, required a lot of compromise and effort, but a relatively happy marriage ensued.
(more…)

The yellow-bellied turtle

On December 30th, two weeks after the House of Commons ended its last sitting of 2009, the Conservatives presented themselves with a belated Christmas gift, unexpectedly proroguing Parliament until March 3rd. It was to resume sitting on January 25th. As a result, the House of Commons will be vacant for nearly three months. The Conservatives assert that this is to allow them time to consult with Canadians, particularly regarding their economic action plan, before releasing their budget on March 4th. Is this what hockey fans would call “a turtle”, or is it a brilliant strategic move that once again demonstrates the Conservatives’ ability to outfox the Liberals?

Most Canadians have seen a few hockey fights. First there’s some verbal sparring, maybe some shoving, and then two guys go at it, sometimes by prior arrangement. It’s a good way to vent frustrations and stir up the crowd. Other times, a player is a pest or has done something that deserves some retribution. In this case, when the first punch is thrown the guy on the receiving end (the pest) refuses to fight back, unwilling to take the thumping he might richly deserve. He won’t put his money where is mouth is and either skates away or falls cowering to the ice, gloved hands covering his head – he is a turtle. The net result is that someone who deserved some payback doesn’t actually get much of it, and his team, in fact, gains an advantage.
(more…)

Photo Credit: Canadian Fermentation

As I’ve arrived home from my Christmas holiday, I like many other Canadians, am feeling the wave of depression at the prospect of going back to work. It is that time, and it is a painful time. Unfortunately, I have a full-time job like so many of you, I get paid every two weeks like so many of you, and like so many of you, I have to actually show up to work to receive my paycheque. But I can dream, and that dream is to work for the Canadian government. If I did, I wouldn’t be returning to work until March with the blessings of my boss and my paycheques still in hand. What a generous guy that Stephen Harper is when it comes to our tax dollars paying his MP’s salaries. Call me a slave driver, but I would expect my employees to actually earn their wage, particularly if the Canadian public is paying their salaries. I mean a four month holiday from Parliament seems a little excessive, doesn’t it?
(more…)

Photo Credit: imgur.com

For the second time, Governor General Michaëlle Jean has acceded to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s request to prorogue Parliament. This is dangerous, to say the least, as on both occasions Mr. Harper used prorogation to dodge accountability and to retain power. Given this, I am forced to conclude that Governor General Michaëlle Jean is weak, incompetent, or colluding with Mr. Harper.

Canada is facing serious difficulties on many fronts, from a still faltering economy to climate change to world issues (we are still at war in Afghanistan, last time I checked), so the idea of Parliament taking a two-month holiday is inappropriate at best, dangerous more accurately.

I am no constitutional scholar. I am simply a practical man seeing that Canada’s democracy is not functioning well, and may in fact be in danger. Some constitutional scholars think the same: “parliamentary democracy is in danger.”
(more…)

Any follower of professional poker knows that Stephen Harper just went “all in” by proroguing Parliament. It’s because he now holds all four aces.

Ace number one is an opposition in disarray. Iggy is nowhere to be seen or heard. Gilles is emailing-in his commentary. And Jack is basking in the knowledge that eighteen percent of Canadians would vote NDP even if he were a mustachioed blow-up doll.

Ace number two is a reluctant but growing acknowledgment by the national media of Harper’s management of the country relative to the rest of the sinking world, H1N1, his piano playing and yes, Afghanistan. They, like he, know that the majority of Canadians don’t give a rat’s ass what the Afghans do to each other if it means finding and eliminating those who are building the roadside bombs that kill our selfless troops.
(more…)

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty
Photo Credit: CBC

Let’s get straight to the point. The deficit is an economic problem, but it is not as serious as many make it out to be. What may surprise many people is the fact that many business leaders and almost all neo-conservative politicians secretly agree. Don’t be fooled by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s recent rumblings about the deficit. His main concern is tax cuts and smaller government, not the deficit. In fact, a large deficit plays right into his plans for smaller government.

Let’s rewind our discussion back to the events in Ontario during the early 1990s when there was a severe recession and Mike Harris, who worked closely with Flaherty, was not quite yet Premier. Ontario was actually deficit-free for several years just before the recession of 1990. Recessions usually cause deficits, because the unemployment levels significantly reduce government revenue and because of the large costs of helping the unemployed. Based on the ideas of Keynesian macroeconomics, some governments try to end recessions by simulating growth through spending, further increasing the deficit. Ontario Premier Bob Rae, the leader of a socialist NDP government, tried this and so have most governments, including Mr. Harper’s, during this most recent global recession. Bob Rae eventually stopped spending and started reducing the deficit when he started receiving a lot of flak for the increased deficit. When Neo-conservative Mike Harris came to office, the deficit was already significantly way down. Mr. Harris and Mr. Flaherty continued the policy of deficit reduction, but not at a rate faster than Rae and that of other Canadian governments. The economy improved, not because of Harris tax cuts or deficit reduction, but because of low U.S. interest rates that created a large market for Ontario exports.
(more…)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrives at Rideau Hall to meet Gov. Gen. Michelle Jean, December 4, 2008
Photo Credit: Adrian Wyld

For the second time in the space of one year, Stephen Harper and his minority Conservative government have forced a little used parliamentary procedure known as ‘prorogue’ to suspend the federal government and delay a new session of Parliament until March 3, 2010.

Apart from the troubling similarities as to the motivations behind these 2 drastic measures, it is impossible to view this second Conservative prorogue request as anything but unprecedented.

On December 4, 2008, Governor-General Michelle Jean granted Harper’s motion to suspend Parliament for over a month, as his Conservative minority strove to fend off an impending vote of no confidence orchestrated by an alliance of the Liberal and New Democratic parties, with the support of the Bloc-Quebecois.

This desperate move by the Prime Minister was in response to the uproar caused by the presentation of his government’s fall economic update, made just days before Harper requested the prorogue. The update included a number of what the opposition parties termed politically motivated measures such as a three year ban on the right of civil servants to strike, limitations on the ability of women to sue for pay equity, and a proposal to eliminate subsidies for political parties.

The Liberals and NDP were outraged that these measures were included at all, and railed against the government for doing little to address the growing global economic downturn while attempting to force these hugely unpopular provisions through the House.
(more…)

SALOME a New, Old Solution?
Photo Credit: lovetoknow

The dispensing of heroin by SALOME in Vancouver, although controversial by North American standards, is currently in use in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Australia and has been well demonstrated as successful in a 1995 Liverpool test story. The dispensation of heroin and cocaine in Liverpool was a benchmark case study with startling results in aggravated crime reduction, reduction in property crime, reductions in high use neighbourhood violence, and addict deaths. Not only did the study see reductions in the negative results of addiction, the program also saw increased addict treatment, increased social integration of addicted persons and increased recovery rates. The Chapel Street Program, an anathema to the U.S. war on drugs and the newly chosen path of our current Prime Minister despite attitudes of Canadians in recent polls, shines a clear and brilliant light on a problem that drug criminalization has failed to resolve or abate.

The Chapel Street Clinic in Widnes (a suburb of Liverpool) run by Dr. John Marks until 1995 was the most famous holdout for the old British system of “free drug maintenance,” ended through legislation in 1968. The incredible success of this small Liverpool clinic had been a stark contrast to the documented failure of the other internal and external alternatives. The U.S. government had of course maintained constant pressure on the British government to shut down this glaring example of an approach that flew in the face of American drug war orthodoxy.
(more…)