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G20 Embarrassment for Harper

Posted on 28 June 2010 | Comments Off

Okay, it was Canada’s turn to host the G20 and we had a responsibility to do it in spite of the fact that in my opinion it is just a high priced photo op. You can’t really tell me that the positions of the member countries wasn’t already set before the conference started and for those that feel that “face time” between world leaders is important, they could have accomplished “face time” at another time and place without spending over $1 billion and wrecking a city.

To start with why did they put the G20 in Toronto? The Harper government is telling us that they wanted to show off Toronto. I don’t think that anyone involved in the G20, foreign government or press, were intending to do any sightseeing other than the the drive in from the airport. The 427 and the Gardiner Expressway aren’t that exciting.

The G20 could have been held in Huntsville immediately after the G8. The facilities and security were all set up already. It would have saved a ton of money, they wouldn’t have needed a fake lake and the protesters would have been partially controlled by the mosquitoes. Huntsville could have been secured and controlled a whole lot easier than Toronto.

Why did the government spend a billion dollars on security in the first place. There are always protests and riots at the G20 meetings and no matter how much you spend on security, the protests are going to happen. By announcing that a huge some of money is going to be spent on security and by keeping the protesters as far away as possible from the conference, the government basically threw down the gauntlet and dared the protesters to try to disrupt things. They did. Nothing makes a person or a group more determined to do something than to say they can’t and go to extremes to prevent them.

The protesters could have been given a venue to make the case closer to the conference, negating the need for marches and given air time on the media to present their message. The majority of protester were law abiding legitimate protesters who had a real concern and wanted to be heard. The trouble makers just wanted to create havoc and destruction and could have been controlled easier in a controlled dedicated venue than out on the city streets.

The destruction to the downtown businesses and the disruption of every day life to those who use and work in the downtown core of Toronto should have been foreseen and will add substantially to the costs of this conference. I don’t know exactly what the $1 billion security was intended to secure but apparently it had little to do with protecting the businesses and residents of the downtown core. If it was, it was a dismal failure and was a substantial waste of money.

The Harper government has said it wanted to show off Toronto to the rest of the world. The message the rest of world got was Toronto can’t control protesters with $1 billion dollars and the only images of the weekend in the news were of confrontation and mayhem. God help Canada if they try to promote it.

To be fair, I thought the police did and admirable job considering that the job they were given was basically impossible to do and did prevent an escalation of violence by their self control and professional behaviour. The cards were stacked against them from the beginning.

Once again Harper has wasted a ton of money on a badly thought out idea and embarrassed the majority of Canadians while spouting his success. He really believes that BS baffles brains and unfortunately he’s right in a lot of cases as is evident by his polls.

Misconceptions about the Conservatives’ Fiscal Abilities.

Posted on 20 April 2010 | Comments Off

The Conservatives are running around these days talking about how well they are handling the economy and held off the recession from affecting Canadians too badly.

This Conservative government did not create a strong economy and country, they inherited it.

It takes decades to lay the foundation for a strong and prosperous country that will withstand the outside pressures of a global financial meltdown. The Conservatives wasted a huge surplus with programs that were intended to buy votes without looking at programs which would provide any long term benefit to the country.

We were headed for a large deficit long before the global recession happened. I read an article shortly after the “stimulus package” was created that said most of the projected deficit (the one neither Steve or Jim saw coming) was not due to the stimulus package, more than half of the deficit was due to Conservative programs already announced. I would like to know how much of this and future deficits can be attributed to the so called stimulus packages and how much debt we were going to be saddled with had the recession not become an issue.

The global recession has been a great boon to Harper’s reputation and clearly covered up his mismanagement by providing him with an excuse for tough times and huge deficits.

Elected Senate

Posted on 27 February 2010 | Comments Off

I’m starting to hear quite a bit of rumbling about Senate reform being a issue in the next election. I’m not necessarily against the idea after all the system isn’t working properly the way it is now but I am afraid that the government will make the whole process even worst than it is now.

I seem to remember from my school days the the idea of the Senate is to have an unbiased overseeing body to prevent the House of Commons from running amok and pressuring them to produce complete and proper legislation. What has been happening for the last few decades is the Prime Ministers have been appointing senators, not on their merit but on their loyalty to the governing party of the day. So what we have now are a whole bunch of senators who are biased toward one of the political parties and the idea of an unbiased senate has totally gone out the window.

I can’t see an elected Senate really being an answer to the system we have today as one would expect that the same people who vote for their local MPs based on party affiliation will also vote for their Senators based on party affiliation and the Senate will be a mirror image of the House of Commons.

Another issue I have with Senators running for election is that it’s likely that Senators will be elected based on popularity instead of instead of qualifications and and abilities.

While the prospect of an unbiased Senate is probably a pipe dream there are some measures that could be taken to minimize the effects. The big parties of course won’t like but it’s about time they did something for the country instead of themselves.

1. Appointments of the Senators by the House of Commons and not the PMO.
2. Each political party who holds at least one seat in the House of Commons submits a list of candidates to choose from.
3. The party affiliation of the elected Senator to be rotated with every appointment unless all of the other parties have their quota already elected.
4. The rotation would be based on the popular vote in the previous election to try and make up a Senate that roughly resembles will of the people rather than the will of the parties.
5. Appointments would last ten years or until the senator resigns and be replaced by the House based on which party is next in rotation.

If the Senators cannot be bipartisan, and it’s pretty obvious they can’t be as things are now, these partisan inclinations need to be neutralized as much as possible in order for the Senate to perform as it was intended. Since our elected MPs can`t usually be trusted to put the country first beyond the counting of the ballots on election night Canada must have a properly run Senate to keep the House in check and honest.

Cable/Satellite companies versus Local Television

Posted on 5 November 2009 | Comments Off

The cable/satellite companies are engaged in a massive advertising campaign against local television stations for wanting to get paid for their product. The CRTC has allowed the cable/satellite companies to use the signals coming from the local stations for free since their beginning and charge their customers for stations they have never paid for.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t like cable or satellite companies. They charge for channels they don’t have to pay for and call it basic service which every subscriber must pay for whether they want it or not. They bundle the the channels that aren’t in the basic package into groups and charge extra for each bundle chosen. These bundles group together 5 or 6 channels and one or two of them will be something that people want to watch. So if you want to get 1 dozen or so channels which are worth watching your are forced to buy at least half a dozen bundles.

They also charge a monthly fee for each tv a customer has hooked up regardless of the fact it costs no more for them to supply 2 tvs than one. One more thing, satellite companies advertise 100`s of channels but 50 are probably CBC channels with the same programming, 20 are probably CTV with the same programming etc. And, what about cable company monopolies. I`ve never seen an area where there is a choice of cable suppliers; they all seem to have protected areas. No wonder the prices are so high when they have no competition.

All that said, what really is bugging me these days is they are lying in their advertising. They are saying that the local stations want the CRTC to impose a tax on their services to pay the fees they are looking for for their products. The local channels are asking for a fee for their signals but it`s not to be a tax. In fact, the CRTC is expecting the cable and satellite companies to absorb the few pennies the fee would amount to as a cost of doing business and not pass this expense on to the customer. This is why the cable and satellite companies are so up in arms.

The cable/satellite companies seem to think it is perfectly reasonable to get tv signals for free and then turn around and sell them to their customers.

There are a couple of solutions that I can see,

• One is to allow the cable/satellite companies to continue to get these signals for free on the condition they allow Canadians access to channels for free that they do not pay for. If they do not have to pay for these channels then neither should anyone else.
• Another is to allow the local tv deny their signals to the cable/satellite companies and enable them to deliver them for free through free satellite signals and over the air signals

In short cable/satellite are lying and not to be supported while local tv channels are perfectly reasonable in being expected to be paid for their product. Giving tv signals to cable/satellite for free to is like forcing local newspapers to give their newspapers to corner stores, who will sell them, for free.

HST in Ontario

Posted on 3 November 2009 | Comments Off

There’s been a lot of stuff around lately on the upcoming Harmonized Sales Tax in Ontario. Depending on who is speaking or writing the HST is either the worst thing to happen to Ontario or the best so I decided to look into it myself.

It is clear that some things will cost more than they did, but what the anti-HST people fail to mention are:

1. Books, kids clothes and footwear, car seats and booster seats and feminine hygiene products are exempt
2. New home under $400,000 are exempt
3. All new homes will get a $24,000 rebate
4. Families with less than $160,000/year income will get $1,000 rebates for two years
5. Singles with less than $80,000/year income will get $300 rebates for two years
6. The HST will not apply to the sale of existing homes
7. Low income families will get a permanent sales tax credit of up to $260 for each adult and child per year
8. Persons with less than $80,000 of income per year will get an average reduction in their income tax of about 10%
9. Persons with less than $36,848 of income per year will get an average reduction in their income tax of about 16.5%
10. 90,000 Ontario low income tax payers will pay no income tax at all

In addition to these points, things that are not GST applicable will not be HST applicable, things which were subject to GST and PST will cost exactly the same amount as before. So in effect, we will not pay any more for anything except those things which were previouly GST applicable and PST exempt.

As far as I can see, low income earners will be better off, middle income earners will probably break about even and people who buy brand new homes costing more than half a million dollars and have really high utility bills will be worse off.

Before we get all weepy for the rich and even the middle income people, remember the 2% GST cut Sleazy Steve put through. This cut saved the rich tons of money, the middle income people a little money and the low income people virtually no money.

What many seem to forget is, sales tax is a consumption tax. The more money a person has and spends, the more tax they pay. Those with little money to spend pay little tax. This is why the GST reduction was so unfair to low income Canadians. To be truly fair, they should exempted utilities and other services that everyone uses from GST completely rather than lowering the tax on everything that most Canadians can’t afford in the first place.

So while everyone will be paying more out every month, at the end of the year when everything is factored in most people will be no worse off and a few may be better off.

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