You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Canada’ tag.
I can’t say I disagree with the little man from Shawinigan.
“In 2003, to the dismay of our American and British allies, we refused to go to war in Iraq because the UN refused its consent to what is now universally acknowledged as a big mistake. Canada was noticed and respected for this decision.
However, since then something has happened to Canada’s international reputation. I fear it has been altered and damaged for a long time. In 2010, for the first time, Canada’s bid for a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations was defeated. The next year we sent our planes to bomb Libya, and we are now participating militarily in Iraq and Syria.
After the campaign in Libya – which we now know had disastrous consequences in the region – the Harper government trumpeted Canada’s bombing role with a flyover above Parliament Hill to celebrate our “victory.” This is a ritual normally characteristic of conquering and warlike countries.
Today, with great sadness and shame, I am watching Mr. Harper’s cold-hearted reaction to the tragedy of refugees from Syria and Iraq. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stepped up to the plate, and the world looks upon the generosity of her country with admiration. The same goes for Norway, Sweden and Finland, which have welcomed refugees and do not erect roadblocks to taking them in. Instead they get rid of roadblocks. But not Mr. Harper. He has shamed Canada in the eyes of Canadians and of the international community.
In my travels around the globe, I am regularly asked: What has happened to Canada? What has happened to the advanced, peace-seeking, progressive country Canada once was? What has happened to the country that was a model for peace and stability in a tumultuous world? These questions evoke great sadness in me.
I am sad to see that in fewer than 10 years, the Harper government has tarnished almost 60 years of Canada’s reputation as a builder of peace and progress. During all these years, government leaders, whether Liberal or Progressive Conservative, have sought to understand, engage and influence their international peers, including those with whom they disagreed. They did not try to embarrass or give other countries lessons in good behaviour. Rather, they patiently sought to convince others of the universal values that make our global community a better and safer place to live.”
Oh if we had the handshake now to deal with the Harper foolishness…*pines*
[Source]
Rick Mercer reports on our Canadian para-Panam/para-Olympic athletes with a vivacious gusto and aplomb that leaves one smiling and quite pleased to be Canadian. I am very glad the CBC exists and can provide a platform for the likes of Mercer and the good, often funny, work that he does.
We can only hope that Harper will begin his electoral walk of shame for his ‘extending the electoral campaign’ shenanigans.
Wow, kinda early to be talking about the upcoming Canadian federal election, yet because our beloved Conservatives love power more than democracy here we are. Let’s check in with the former head of Elections Canada on the merry jig Harper is doing on the grave of Canadian democracy.
“The former head of Elections Canada says Prime Minister Stephen Harper is “gaming the system” with an early election call and the result is parties with less money are politically disadvantaged.
“What it does is completely distort everything we’ve ever fought for, everything we’ve established as rules,” Jean-Pierre Kingsley said in an interview on CBC Radio’s The House.”
Well that sounds pretty damning Mr.Kingsley. What exactly is our benevolent government planning?
“What should be happening right now is very simple — the prime minister should not call the election. He should wait for the 37 days to count towards the 19th of October, political parties should stop advertising right now, third parties should stop advertising. Then I’d say, hey, those people are respecting the spirit of the law.”
A longer election campaign means a higher ceiling of allowable expenses, under the rules set by Elections Canada.
In a typical 37-day election period, each party can spend a maximum of $25 million. For each additional day, the limit is increased by 1/37th, or an extra $675,000, meaning an 11-week campaign would allow parties to spend more than $50 million.
“What you’ve done is that you’ve distorted the role of money in politics,” Kingsley said.”
Oh! Fascinating. Essentially it looks like our neo-liberal PM is just, ever so slightly, tilting the table heavily in favour of the Conservatives because they are the only ones who can afford a long electoral campaign.
“Canadians have said, $25 million is enough for you to run a campaign. Now we’re going to be facing the possibility that it’s going to be more than $50 million just to pump more ads our way.”
Kingsley said it’s no coincidence that only one party can afford to spend $50 million on a campaign.
“If (the Conservatives) are doubling it to fifty, it’s because they can get to fifty,” he said.”
It would seem that more rules are required to stop the kind of hard bullshite that is going on here. This is a cynical loophole being exploited by Harper so he can flood the media airwaves with Conservative party propaganda.
“Parties plan how much will be required to spend. The Conservatives are way ahead of the other two, so by doubling the amount, all of a sudden you’ve thrown a monkey wrench into all of that financial planning that’s been going on.”
“And that’s what distorts the game for Canadians,” Kingsley added. “That is what is happening to us. We’re the electors here, and we’re the ones who are going to be faced with the consequences of this thing.”
I hope Canadians won’t let this shameless manipulation of our electoral system go unnoticed. This foul political ploy is rotten and needs to follow the Tories throughout the entire election – we are talking dead albatross around the neck levels of shame here. Speaking of our government spending like a drunken sailor:
“The financial consequences of an 11-week campaign for the public could be significant because of the campaign rebate, which sees taxpayers subsidize 50 per cent of what the parties spend on a national campaign.
“Significant elements of [the estimated cost] are doubled, or more than doubled,” he said. “We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars the chief electoral officer will need extra.”
Yeah – did you just feel that? That was the sound of conservative fiscal policy hitting the side of the bin, as the taxpayer dollar wasting election extravaganza is about to begin. A feather in the cap of the government that purportedly manages the public purse with the utmost care.
So, what the Conservatives are doing electorally is dirty pool. Surprising? Not really – but this election scandal tears a rather large hole in the facade of our democratic electoral system. Fair? Level playing field? Let Canadian choose the best ideas and policy? Bollocks to that!
“That means parties will be disadvantaged politically because they can’t afford to keep up with bigger spenders, Kingsley added.
“What about the disadvantage this imposes upon, for example, the Green Party?” he said.
“Now they’re facing foes who are going to be shooting twice as hard at them as they were before. It destroys the fairness that is at the base of our system.
“That level playing field gets it in the neck.”
The Conservative Party just doubled down on the idea that big money and big donors will win elections. I hope that the people of Canada are wise enough to see through this cynical dog and pony show and kick them out of office.
I’m curious as to how our military procurement system is intends to differentiate itself from the awesome-fun game of spitting into the wind.
“The Harper government is terminating its contract with Thales Canada Ltd., which was to supply new radar units to support Canada’s CF-18 fighter jet squadrons in Cold Lake, Alta., and Bagotville, Que.”
The idea behind the procurement process is to investigate the fine details of a piece of equipment and estimate how much the supplier intends to soak you with bullshit added-costs, delays and ‘upgrades’.
“The deal signed in November 2010 was initially worth $55 million for two tactical-control radar systems, with delivery to begin in 2013. Thales won the tender over one other bidder.
Defence Department documents show costs had risen to more than $78 million by 2013. And by November last year, the Public Works Department was deep in negotiations with Thales to resolve problems.
“In February 2015, Canada and Thales reached agreement in principle to terminate this contract by mutual consent,” said Public Works spokeswoman Annie Trepanier.”
Somewhere along the line our Master Procurers must have had a rectal cranial inversion as a jump from $55 million to $78 million dollars seems a little extreme. It is not like we enjoy spending money on overpriced non-functional military hardware…
“The botched deal is yet another military procurement gone sour, alongside the more high-profile F-35 Stealth Fighter project, the Cyclone helicopter purchase to replace the aging Sea Kings, and used British submarines that have been sinkholes for maintenance and repair dollars.”
Errr…whoops. I wonder when our lovely government will realize that we need our military primarily for domestic security – (full props to Canada’s army for mobilizing units to fight forest fires) and peacekeeping roles. Imperial ambitions and force project have never been our forte and we should stop trying to compete with more imperialistically focused nations.
Canadian foreign policy concerns aside some careful attention should be paid to this:
“Negotiations for a final termination agreement are still underway, and Public Works declined to provide any information about penalties, losses to the taxpayer or even the reason for the termination.
“Public Works is working with DND [Department of National Defence] to identify an appropriate path forward to meet their long-term capability needs on this project,” Trepanier said in a terse email.”
From a government whose platform trumpeted accountability and transparency to the high-heavens and back, this response from Public Works can be reasonably classified as neither accountable, nor transparent to the Canadian public.
If you have been watching our beloved conservative government the above response is not out of place with the deep centralization of power that our PM has undertaken. This government has been all about the control and management of information and unsubtle PR for the hoi-paloi. The Prime Ministers Office has subsided into the shadows, sorta like Sauron in LOTR – sure you can see the flaming eye up there on the tower – but you have no idea what it is doing or what policies it happens to be crafting. Canadians just have to brace themselves for whatever crap policy that magically appears on the horizon and hope for the best.
It must be a slow news week for JO and the Last Week Tonight Show as they spend a segment describing our Senate expense scandal. Is it surprising that people with access to public funds are behaving irresponsibly, not really – but unlike JO, I think the money spent documenting our free-wheeling senators is a good thing. I believe it sends a small message to our elected public officials that they, like the rest of Canadians, are responsible for their actions.
The clip in question:
Needs more kittehs to improve political image.
Sometimes I think it would have been better if we had actually passed our own Canadian Patriot Act. At least we would have a predictable baseline of oppression of every day Canadians not to mention a political target to take action on. Rather, we have the chaotically raging adolescent security boner the Harper government occasionally plays with and thus leaves me unsure of just when its going to go off and make a mess of things (looking at you bill C-51.)
This latest story of the PM’s own propaganda hacks exposing Canadian soldiers and their families to possible violent retaliation leaves me wondering how to categorize this particular brain-fart properly. Is it the usual arrogance of our PM, safely ensconced in his warm fuzzy blanket of narcissism or is it just the PMO drones slavishly making stupid mistakes?
“Another video showing the faces of Canadian military personnel has surfaced on the prime minister’s website, just days after his office was forced to remove two similar videos that potentially endangered soldiers’ lives.
This time, however, the video seems to have been posted with the approval of the military.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s staff took down two videos shot in Iraq and Kuwait because they risked identifying Canadian Forces members and exposing them and their families to possible attacks.”
You would think that our war loving PM would be a little more in touch with the concept of Operational Security. Opening up our soldiers to retribution because he needs to be seen on the battlefield isn’t exactly the best PR move in the book. This wasn’t rocket science the media that wasn’t a part of the PMO personal propaganda squad had very strict instructions.
“Media travelling to Iraq and Kuwait with Harper were required to sign a five-page agreement pledging to uphold operational security. Among other things, the agreement instructed reporters not to publish photographs that could identify any personnel “who are not designated spokespersons.”
“Publication or inadvertent dissemination has the potential to jeopardize operations and endanger lives,” the document warned.”
So I think we can reasonable rule out ignorance in this case. Hubris and stupidity are making a comeback as far as the reasons for this security breach are concerned.
“CBC News has confirmed the military never screened or approved the 24 Seven videos as initially claimed.
The Prime Minister’s Office admitted it had made a mistake. Rob Nicol, the prime minister’s director of communications, issued a statement expressing regret and promising to review PMO protocols for posting images online.
Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Tom Lawson also issued a statement, saying that after reviewing the two videos, the military determined they presented only a low risk. But he said they should not have been posted.”
Whoops. Stupidity confirmed. The necessity to provide hate-fap propaganda to the Harper faithful apparently out-weights the risks to the Canadian soldiers in said propaganda. It’s always refreshing to know where your government stands on the safety of Canadians.
“The opposition has been scathing in its criticism of the government throughout the whole affair. NDP defence critic Jack Harris Friday accused the government of being more concerned about “the prime minister’s propaganda” than the safety of Canadian troops.
“They had about four or five different stories,” Harris said, “and they never did acknowledge that they misled the Canadian people.”
I’m completely shocked that the PMO’s office would flagrantly abuse the security of Canadians for political gains. Do keep in mind the lovely juxtaposition of this same government bringing in legislation to spy on Canadians (bill C-51) ostensibly to tighten domestic security and enhance public safety.
Way to lead by example Steve! Keep up the good work, I’m feeling safer already!
Vaccination is one of those medical topics in which people tend to lose their shit. As it happens, you can also risk losing your children if you decide to embrace the foolishness that is the anti-vax movement. Here is a story of a mother’s close encounter with easily preventable childhood diseases.
Learning the Hard Way: My Journey from #AntiVaxx to Science
“I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me. Emotionally I’m a bit raw. Mentally a bit taxed. Physically I’m fine. All seven of my unvaccinated children have whooping cough, and the kicker is that they may have given it to my five month old niece, too young to be fully vaccinated.
We’d had a games night at our house in March, my brother-in-law had a full-blown cold, so when the kids started with a dry cough a few days later I didn’t think much of it. But a week after the symptoms started the kids weren’t improving, in fact they were getting worse. And the cough. No one had a runny nose or sneezing but they all had the same unproductive cough. Between coughing fits they were fine.
Then a few days later at midnight I snapped. My youngest three children were coughing so hard they would gag or vomit. I’d never seen anything like this before. Watching our youngest struggle with this choking cough, bringing up clear, stringy mucus – I had heard of this before somewhere. My mom said I had it when I was a kid. I snapped into ‘something is WRONG’ mode.
I jumped on Google to type in “child cough.” My kids had all but one symptom of pertussis, none of them had the characteristic “whoop.” But they had everything else.
We had vaccinated our first three children on an alternative schedule and our youngest four weren’t vaccinated at all. We stopped because we were scared and didn’t know who to trust. Was the medical community just paid off puppets of a Big Pharma-Government-Media conspiracy? Were these vaccines even necessary in this day and age? Were we unwittingly doing greater harm than help to our beloved children? So much smoke must mean a fire so we defaulted to the ‘do nothing and hope nothing bad happens’ position.
For years relatives tried to persuade us to reconsider through emails and links, but this only irritated us and made us defensive. Secretly, I hoped I would find the proof I needed to hold the course, but deep down I was resigned to only find endless conflicting arguments that never resolved anything. No matter if we vaccinated or not, I thought, it would be nothing more than a coin toss with horrible risks either way.
When the Disneyland measles outbreak happened my husband and I agreed to take a new look and weigh the evidence on both sides. A friend suggested I write out my questions so we could tackle them one by one. Just getting it out on paper helped so much. I only ended up with a handful of questions. But more potent than my questions were my biases.
I just didn’t trust civic government, the medical community, the pharmaceutical industry, and people in general. By default, I had excluded all research available from any major, reputable organization. Could all the in-house, independent, peer-reviewed clinical trials, research papers and studies across the globe ALL be flawed, corrupt and untrustworthy?
The final shift came when I connected the dots between a small, but real measles outbreak in my personal circles this time last year. But for the grace of God, our family was one step from contracting measles in our mostly under-or-unvaccinated 7 kids. Maybe we could have weathered that storm unscathed in personal quarantine. But in the 4 highly contagious days before any symptoms show we easily could have passed on our infection to my sister’s toddlers or her 34-week-old son in the NICU.
When I connected the dates for everyone involved it chilled me to the bone. I looked again at the science and evidence for community immunity and found myself gripped with a very real sense of personal and social responsibility before God and man. The time had come to make a more fully informed decision than we did 6 years ago. I sat down with our family doctor and we put together a catch-up vaccination schedule for our children.
That schedule that was supposed to start the week after I found myself in the waiting room of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) with my 10-month-old son, waiting to confirm if he had whooping cough.
I said before that the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m writing this from quarantine. For six years we were frozen in fear from vaccines, and now we are frozen because of the disease. My oldest two are getting better, the youngest four are getting worse and fast. Ottawa Public Health has been so helpful and communicative, trying to get us the help we need while keeping the community safe. We are under quarantine and starting antibiotics. Tonight, the baby started ‘whooping’. I did the right thing going to the hospital when I did. I can only hope this painfully honest sharing will help others.
I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest. Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk. I want them to know that we tried our best to protect our kids when we were afraid of vaccination and we are doing our best now, for everyone’s sake, by getting them up to date. We can’t take it back … but we can learn from this and help others the same way we have been helped.
Vaccination is a serious decision about our personal and public health that can’t be made out of fear, capitulation or following any crowd. No one was more surprised than us to find solid answers that actually laid our fears to rest. I am confident that anyone with questions can find answers. I would only advise them to check your biases, sources and calendar: Time waits for no parent.
– Edited by Leslie Waghorn
Rolling the dice with your children is irresponsible – making that choice for other children is reprehensible.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…