Colin it like it is…

Tim Hudak is an Embarrassment.

Posted on 8 March 2010 | 4 responses

I will get to my thoughts on the Ontario Throne Speech later this week (I think, really, when I have some time) once I’ve reread it, but while it’s on my mind I simply needed to write this blog.

For the first time in my life while watching a Speech from the Throne I noticed a little background noise. What was this noise? Heckling… Heckling the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario… The Honourable David Onley.

This is just simply inappropriate. And whether this was Tim Hudak or other members of his party doesn’t matter to me, as in my opinion this type of behaviour comes down to the leader, as they should be enforcing good conduct on all of the members of their caucus.

Why is this inappropriate? Because they are heckling the representative of the Crown. Whether you agree or disagree with the Crown, or agree or disagree with the content of the speech, this is simply the wrong time to be heckling. This is a long-standing tradition to kick off new Parliamentary sessions, and is a good tradition. Also, this is not Question Period – you can get your heckling out there, but not at the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. This is just inappropriate. Sit back, take in the speech, and criticize it later.

Did the Federal Liberals do this to the Governor General last week when she presented Harper’s Throne Speech? Of course not. They appropriately listened, and critiqued once it was over. They have class. Apparently the Official Opposition in Ontario doesn’t.

Tim Hudak and his party are a joke and an embarrassment. In one man’s opinion he would be a disaster as Premier. He is mean-spirited, a liar, and inappropriate when it comes to decorum (heckling the LG and infamous the sit-in from last year as just a few examples). He wants to return Ontario to the Mike Harris’ years, and continue to destroy many programs we as Ontarians care about like education and health care just as Harris began to.

Tim – the Speech from the Throne is not Question Period. You are inappropriate and an embarrassment. Cut it out, and maybe I will start to have some respect for you. Until then I will keep treating you as a joke. Because that is the character you present to the public – a joke.

Mike Harris v2.0

Posted on 7 March 2010 | 3 responses

AKA Tim Hudak.

Obviously I wasn’t at the Ontario “Progressive” Conservative AGM this weekend in Ottawa (I feel I may be chased out with torches and pitchforks if I were) but I’ve read enough about it through various news sources to be sufficiently bitter about it.

First though, I will admit their iPhone app is an innovative idea. I haven’t had the chance to use it, but the idea certainly does interest me. I will definitely be checking it out, although I assume it will do little more than spew the typical Hudak spin – but unfortunately may now do this to a larger and younger audience. It’s a smart call, because it has the potential of being a good communication tool… but only if people outside the party faithful actually download it. It will be interesting to see how they market it, and even more interesting to see how many people out of the already converted actually download it. Time will certainly tell on its effectiveness, and I will be watching it for sure.

But on the topic of the AGM itself, I was certainly bothered by the speech and talking points made by Mr. Hudak. He is obviously quite vicious and critical of the governing Liberals, as is his job, but he goes about it the wrong way – he lies. I have talked about this many times before, but I feel I need to cover it once again.

Hudak does not do what a smart, reputable, and responsible opposition party should do, which is to point out problems in government programs and keep the government in check. No no, Tim Hudak is not responsible like that – he just lies. A lot. Oh and plays pathetic political games that get his MPs banned from the legislature.

Here is the thing, if a person actually takes time and looks at the facts they can easily see through the lies that are pushed out by Hudak’s party, but the reality is that most people don’t have time to look into details of government programs so don’t know that these are lies. People generally trust what comes from governments – especially when it is critical talking points from an opposition, so Hudak is in a good position to say these things and be taken as reputable.

People need to start realizing that the majority of what he says is lies, and he is only saying them to get elected – not because they are in any form productive critical statements. They are political lies, and just that. If people simply look at the facts, and weigh them against the spin and rhetoric, they will see they do not line up. The Hudak PC’s simply lie.

HST “tax grab”? Untrue, and they know it. It will be close to revenue neutral, and in the end will actually lower prices. And even worse, until McGuinty proposed it they were actually for it. It was an amusing flip-flop.

Becoming a “have not province” is untrue as well. Welcome to a global recession folks. Yes, we have dropped off a bit, but who in this world hasn’t? At least the Liberals are working towards fixing this recession – all the PC party does is complain and push out misleading lies. They certainly don’t propose productive ideas to fix anything… no no, they just like to distract from the good work being done by McGuinty’s Liberals.

Even eHealth was not nearly the “boondoggle” that Hudak wanted you to believe. Admittedly, there were some mistakes made, but from my understanding of the situation they are creating an extremely secure network (which it should be, it’s our personal and confidential health records) and was a key asset in the distribution of the H1N1 vaccines this past fall. It works and will be implemented successfully.

I could go on, but I feel I have made my point made – Hudak misleads the public by lying about many situations for political gain, but for no productive reason.

The main reason I am afraid of this party though? Well it’s because Tim Hudak is Mike Harris v2.0. That picture at the top of this page scares the hell out of me – anyone being that chummy with the man who in my opinion ruined education and health care in this province (among other programs) should not be elected. Harris even strongly endorsed Hudak’s campaign for leadership and campaigned hard for him to win. This should scare the citizens of Ontario. It sure scares me.

I just want to know when Hudak is going to be releasing his version of “The Common Sense Revolution,” because I know it’s coming. And this scares me. too He clearly wants to move us dangerously to the right, and continue to ruin the public institutions we value, that his predecessor Mike Harris started to destroy years ago.

Here is the question you really need to ask yourself – would you rather the 3^rd term of Dalton McGuinty, or the 3^rd term of Mike Harris… because this is the option you have in the 2011 election. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, because it’s true.

Our government must be charged with contempt.

Posted on 6 March 2010 | 1 response

No, I do not hate the troops. Neither does the Liberal Party, the NDP, or the Bloc. As a matter of fact, despite what the Harper Conservatives are trying to make you think, this is not really about the troops. This is about our government, their blatant cover up, and their neglecting to take responsibility for the cover up.

A little history courtesy of Wikipedia:

“On October 6, 2009, the lawyer for [Richard] Colvin (called to testify at a hearing into allegations of Afghan prison torture) said that the Conservative government was trying to keep her client silent. In a letter sent to the Canadian Department of Justice and obtained by CBC News, lawyer Lori Bokenfohr said the government invoked the national security order in response to Colvin’s decision to co-operate with the Military Police Complaints Commission.

During his testimony in November 2009, Colvin said Canada did not monitor detainee conditions in Afghanistan and that detainees transferred by Canadians to Afghan prisons were likely tortured. “According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured”, Colvin said. “For interrogators in Kandahar, it was a standard operating procedure”. Colvin worked in Kandahar for the Department of Foreign Affairs in 2006 before moving to Kabul, where he was second-in-command at the Canadian Embassy. He said his reports were ignored and he was eventually told to stop putting the reports in writing.

So, as any respectable politician would do after hearing this testimony the opposition parties asked for these documents to determine themselves what had been told to the government by diplomats in these documents, and in essence, what crimes had been covered up by our government. So Parliament passed a motion requiring the release of these documents. I feel this is reasonable. As a matter of fact, not just reasonable, but responsible.

So what was the Conservative response? They released a few of the documents, but certainly not all, and all were heavily redacted to block out significant amounts of information.

Oh yea, and then when the questions got tough around this Harper decided to prorogue Parliament to “recalibrate,” which after his rehashing of old plans and programs we all know was BS, and he really prorogued to get away from questions on this particular controversy.

Parliament wants to know what exactly is in these documents. Why have they been censored? What is hidden behind the redactions? What is in the documents they haven’t released?

Of course Stephen Harper has had two responses to these rewuests. His first response is that the “government lawyers” have deemed these documents inappropriate to be released to Parliament. He says it is vital to national security that these documents not be released. What he fails to recognize is that Parliament trumps government lawyers, not the other way around. Also, if these documents are so sensitive there are other ways around it. In Camera Sessions, things like that, will allow for Parliamentarians to make the call themselves whether these documents should be released, before they were to go public.

Harper’s other response, just yesterday, was to appoint former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci to review the documents himself, and then deem whether they can be released to Parliament. I am sure that Mr. Harper sees this as some form of compromise, but the reality is that this is the government once again telling Parliament what to do, which is the wrong way around. Mr. Iacobucci is working for the government, not for Parliament. No retired judge, no matter how accomplished or reputable, can tell Parliament what it can and can’t see. This is not an appropriate compromise.

Attorney General Rob Nicholson must release these documents. MPs are elected to hold government to account through Parliamentary rights and privileges, but is being blocked in doing so by the government. They should not be held back from doing their job and be able to judge themselves what the government did or did not know. MPs deserve to see the full documents. This is not about national security, is about the government and what crimes they hid from Parliament and the Canadian people.

One thing is clear in this situation – Stephen Harper does not understand the structure of the Canadian government. Everyone reports to Parliament, not the other way around. Parliament is supreme – no government lawyers or former justices can tell Parliament what they can or cannot see. It is that simple, but Stephen Harper clearly does not understand this.

Opposition parties want a full release of these documents and a full judicial inquiry. It’s that simple. It has been asked for and a motion has passed in Parliament – anything less then doing just that should be seen as being in contempt of Parliament.

In the end, what is out government trying to hide from Canadians? Are they trying to cover up war crimes? What does this government know that they blatantly covered up and are refusing to tell the people of Canada?

Until the Harper government properly and fully responds to Parliament’s requests, releases these documents our government is clearly in contempt of Parliament, and must be deemed as such.

Canada deserves, and needs, a better budget.

Posted on 5 March 2010 | 1 response

Canada does not need a “stay-the-course” budget, like Minister Flaherty presented yesterday. The course we are on is a bad one. There are many problems facing Canadians that the Conservatives neglect to address. There are many innovative ideas on the table that the Conservatives refuse to look at. We have a tired and far too ideological government who refuse to accept the realities facing many Canadians, and thus do not attempt to fix the problems facing them.

What was this budget missing? It has nothing about money for advancing green technologies, and it has nothing about fixing the major problems facing many pension plans. Instead of reinvesting money in programs that are in need, the Conservatives have decided to make corporate tax cuts. Great idea Steve.

This government has said that the environment is a priority, and even says making “green jobs” is a priority, but leaves this extremely vague. How is this going to be accomplished? And where is the money and incentives to do this? Without these it may be a “priority” but it’s not going to happen.

Clearly unemployment is a huge problem in Canada. Flaherty’s speech certainly made reference to jobs many times, but never provided any tangible reasons as to how these jobs are going to come back. Programs seem to be very lackluster and incredibly underfunded. The Conservatives seem to be hoping things just get better so they don’t have to spend money. Psst – Steve, this isn’t going to work. Also, there needs to be an increased focus on Employment Insurance as many Canadians are going to be running out of their benefits soon, yet no mention of helping these people in dire need.

Specifically there is a lack of funding for youth unemployment. This is a cohort that has double the unemployment rate of the rest of the country and seriously needs help. Trust me, I know this well – I’m an unemployed recent university grad. There are very limited programs to help people like myself out. No matter the skills and experience you have there are simply too limited of opportunities where you can actually use your skill sets. This is pathetic and is a huge embarrassment for our country because you are leaving many of your best and brightest behind – yet the Harper government does not seem to care. There is not nearly enough funding to make employment programs legitimately function and get people back to work, and this doesn’t appear to be changing under the Harper regime.

Yet another area of disappointment is health care. Yes, the government thankfully noted they would not be making cuts, but this is an area that if anything should always and continually be funded more. We are entering a time of significant demographic shift in our country. Our population is aging, and we are going to need to spend much more on health care. We should be making it a priority to fund health care more, because the reality is that keeping the same funding is actually a cut because the demand is continually growing higher.

On a different topic though, I do feel the need to say this – I dislike that the budget has doubled the funding for what will be a replacement for the Own the Podium program. I realize this may be unpopular to say right after a very successful Olympics, but I honestly believe this. I agree that we should be keeping the same funding, but when you are clearly in a cutback themed budget non-essential programs like athletics should not be expanded, and especially not doubled. Keep the program? Yes, definitely. Double it? Absolutely not. It’s non-essential and many other areas could use this funding (see any topic I’ve spoken about above).

Here’s the thing, I agree we need to bring Canada back to fiscal balance – this is obvious, but I think we are trying to do it too fast and at the expense of a legitimate recovery. Yes, compared to other G-8 countries we are doing well but we are still recovering, we still have a huge unemployment rate, we still have significant problems that need to be invested in. Yes, over time we need to get back to a balanced budget, but I don’t think this needs to be a priority yet. Maybe a priority in a year or so when we see true signs of a recovery, but not yet. Wait for the recovery to actually happen.

This budget/Throne Speech combination really was a frustrating exercise in Smoke and Mirrors – the government wanting to distract the public from what they were actually presenting. Here we have government who has gutted women’s programs wanting to “fix” gender inequality by changing a couple lyrics in our national anthem. We have a government who gutted financial support to seniors, but plan to “fix” this by creating seniors a “Seniors Day” to honour them instead. While these are both nice gestures they are simply symbolism, and realistically help very little. This budget should have focused on fixing these inequities through financial means, but instead Harper tried to distract from them through symbolic mentions in the Throne Speech instead.

All of this said, I fully support Liberals in their decision to not force an election. Even though I vehemently disagree with this budget, it is best for the Liberals to hold off on an election right now. First, I feel Michael Ignatieff is right that we’ve had too many elections in the past few years and that Canadians do not want another. We’ve seen significantly declining voter turnouts and adding some space between elections is probably for the best to decrease voter apathy. Second, they want to get through their Canada at 150 thinkers conference at the end of the month, which is going to set their direction. I would prefer for them to get through this conference and have some time to write their platform before we go to an election. This way the Liberals will be more than just an opposition to the current government, but a legitimate alternative. This is what Canadians want and need – an alternative. Once this conference is over they will have one, and this is very good for Canada. This is why I support the Liberal decision to not bring down the government at this particular time. Once the Liberals have more than Conservative incompetence to lean on it will be time for an election, and it will be time for Michael Ignatieff to become Canada’s Prime Minister.