Canadian Politics

Haven't heard that one before, most energy regulation is a provincial matter anyway.

Well not unless he takes power issues out from the provinces, but he usually just offloads stuff onto provinces.

You know, Mulclair was saying today that premiers really shouldn't be backing Harper. Harper offloaded over 30 billion in yearly expenses onto the prairies and the provinces are going to be the ones stuck with the environmental bill when all is said and done. He's the one pushing for the oil companies to pay Canadians the real cost of extracting that oil.

Most of the premiers just want to have a decent working relationship with the federal government, not like they can actually do anything to stop Harper at this point. Unless they are Danny Williams.

I'd like to bring up how dirt cheap post-secondary education is in Quebec. That particular complaint is one I don't agree with at all.

That's where I disagree. Ontario has the highest tuition fees and it hurts the chances of the poor from getting and education and ending their familial cycle of poverty. The 1960s quiet revolution built the promise that education would decrease in cost over the decades until it was free. So a proper response to that would not be to increase the cost of education. I don't think it right to say that "Quebec has the cheapest education in Canada, therefore they can suck more and it'd be okay." It's never okay to suck more.

Open Media has a list of M Ps who have signed their online petition for privacy rights and fair copyright.

http://openmedia.ca/WithCanada

You'll notice 100% of Greens support it with 1 seat (:P), ZERO tories support privacy rights and most of the rest are NDP. Notably, Mulclair isn't there :(

Man how much do Tories hate freedom to not have a single freaking person sign Open Media's petition?

edited 5th Jun '12 7:00:39 AM by breadloaf

Ontario's Anti-Bullying legislation is up for third and final reading in the house, the Liberals/NDP will be voting in favour of it (NDP wanted a minor change because they were afraid the original wording would have accidentally banned the word "gay" in unintentional ways), and the Tories will be voting against it. The Tories stated that they believe the bill was intentionally designed to spur a discussion on funding the Catholic School Board that "Ontarians did not want".

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/06/05/ontario-anti-bullying-bill-final-vote-controversy-over-gay-straight-alliance.html

For my own personal opinion on it, the bill is fairly good, it does focus a lot on the bullying of gays, but for those who are overly concerned about that, it's #2 on the spot of things people get bullied over so it's not like it's tackling a non-issue. It still allows schools to combat bullying in all other forms and the guidelines over the bullying of gays can be reused to combat other types of bullying.

Honestly, I don't see how the Tories can whip a no-vote for this. That's just plain partisan like all their other tactics. Backing the Catholic Board over the fear of teaching the harms of homophobia is ridiculous and I highly doubt Catholic voters would even side with the board anyway.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/tory-mp-wants-baird-to-consider-yanking-canada-out-of-un/article4235343/

The stupid is physically painful...

Wow! I don't think I've ever heard of anyone stupid enough to want out of the UN. I mean, wow! That's a level of foreign policy stupidity that I didn’t even know existed. How do people like that get elected?

Pretty easily, apparently.

I have some problems with the UN but the benefits of membership outweigh the downsides at this current time.

edited 6th Jun '12 12:22:13 PM by thatguythere47

And that's not even considering the fact that they are admonishing this government for completely legitimate reasons. You can't just be a member of an organization and expect to get a free pass; unless you are on the Security Council with a veto.

Election fraud does wonders apparently. That and good old fashioned character assassination.

edited 6th Jun '12 2:07:10 PM by Rationalinsanity

It's a case of either sucking more or sucking less. Election rigging counts as sucking more and so much easier. These are guys who cut trade ties with UAE because Harper had a hissy fit.

Leave... the... UN?

Wha—

Wha—

Wha—

?!?!?!?!?!

So, if that happens, then that would mean Canada technically isn't a country. :P

Well no, the UN doesn't have the power to say what is and isn't a country. It's just idiotic and loses tens of thousands of UN sponsored programs across Canada that nobody seems to notice.

But you know, it's just... the Tories are just so unbelievably idiotic that voters are at this point correct about putting in a bunch of nobody NDP candidates. They're probably far more intelligent than those Alliance jackasses who seem to be so angry that they can't employ their anti-Mexican/anti-Roma racist immigration policy that they'd give the finger to the whole world to do it. There's only very few governments in the world who have flipped off the international community like this and that list of governments isn't a pretty one.

edited 6th Jun '12 6:34:37 PM by breadloaf

I was coming from the idea that a country is a country only because the UN recognises it as a member. Eh, it was a poor joke nonetheless.

What programmes do the UN do in Canada?

Actually, do Canada contribute much to the Blue Helmets?

We were the one of the top contributors, if not the top (can't remember), to Peace Keeping missions back in the late 80s and early 90s. Now, after the Liberal budget cuts and the Conservative focus on NATO, not so much but we still have a presence.

It should be noted that this is just one stupid back bencher spitting off garbage; but its still indicative of how entitled this government is.

edited 6th Jun '12 6:39:21 PM by Rationalinsanity

We used to contribute the bulk of blue helmets, but under the neo-liberals and under the neo-cons now, we contribute next to nothing (around 100+ personnel). Even the US contributes more than us (around 300 personnel).

We have a number of UNESCO funded education programs, there's hundred just in Ontario, and there'll be more across the country. We participate in literacy programs. Actually part of the criticism levelled by the UN was our inaction over the native reserves/communities and the continuing violence against those people. In addition, we work with the UN over poverty programs which the Tories think doesn't exist. With over 800 000 households in Canada estimated to not know if they'll have food the next day, the Tories have outright rejected UN criticism over our food security. Bah.

As for contributing to the UN, we contribute one of the most election observers, who are prized (but apparently we have trouble using them for our own elections), we are #1 in the list of food aid given in the World Food Programme, we also give a lot of money for infrastructure aid and other developmental aid. Although, with reference to maternal health programs that we contribute to (such as the Planned Parenthood group), Harper has restricted aid that may be used for abortions.

edited 6th Jun '12 6:41:55 PM by breadloaf

Canada must run on irony instead of Alberta oil.

Yeah pretty much.

Talk about falling from grace, breadloaf.

This is only one Tory, though, and not necessarily a representative sample of Tory opinion.

How have other Tories reacted to this? Has Stephen Harper weighed in on it?

Baird's office has said that this isn't going to happen (withdrawing from the UN) but still laments the criticism as a growing sign that people are undermining the UN's principles and the organization is now in decline. This is from the link I posted.

Well the tories think all the criticism that person has levelled is valid but they just don't think the answer is to leave the UN.

That's still problematic when they ignore and demonise Richard Colvin because he dared to speak out about the torture we were implicitly involved within in Afghanistan. They ignore the plight of our native communities even when the UN has lambasted us for allowing violence against women in those communities, as well as over 800 000 households, almost all natives, go hungry each night because they are food insecure. They don't care about how their immigration policy is both racist and damaging to the agreed upon principles in how to stop human rights abuses and protecting refugees.

Tories just plain don't give a shit and if this were a batman movie they'd be Joker. They just want to watch Canada burn.

edited 7th Jun '12 1:31:06 PM by breadloaf

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/06/07/pol-liberal-leadership-bob-rae.html

Sigh.

So Bob Rae is very likely to run for leadership of the Liberal Party.

Woohoo! NDP Minority!