Category Archives: Federal

Federal

The Blame Game.

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Wednesday June 3, 2009: the day that Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party unveiled their new strategy for denying responsibility for the consequences Canadians are suffering for Harper’s actions, policies and ideology – ‘The Secret of Success is knowing who to Blame for Your Failures.’

Henceforth, rather than have any Conservative MP (or the Prime Minister) accepting accountability for what occurs on their watch and under their direction, failures will be blamed on staff members.

Although … given the issues Canadians as a people and a country face, and in light of Harper and the Conservatives demonstrated inability to comprehend or understand the myriad issues (including what it means to be Canadian) that exist outside their limited ideology, there may not be enough government employees for Harper and the Conservatives to blame their failures on.

The appeal that not taking responsibility for failure has for anyone in the shoes of Harper and the Conservatives is understandable.

An affordable housing crisis in Canada? Increasing homelessness because of the lack of affordable housing? Canadian workers who’s EI has run out ending up homeless? Increasing numbers of Canadians and Canadian children living in poverty and in danger of homelessness? Government policies the transfer wealth to the wealthy while more than 90% of Canadians become less wealthy to fund this transfer of wealth? Problems and complications caused by the denial of the recession and refusal to acknowledge the depth and affects of the recession on the Canadian economy and working Canadians? … …

All staff’s fault; Stephen Harper and the Conservatives are not, in their worldview anyway, in any way responsible for any negative consequences of their polices and actions.

A $50 Billion deficit? Staff should have told/convinced Harper and the Conservatives that cutting the GST when the economy was booming, rather than using the money to reduce the national debt, maintaining the higher cash flow and maintaining the option of using GST cuts as stimulus during a recession, was as poor a decision as fiscally responsible Canadians with common sense pointed out, at the time the GST cuts were announced, it was.

No, for Stephen Harper and the Conservatives a good scapegoat is as welcome (more welcome?) as solutions to the issues.

I suppose it is only a matter of time before Mr Harper and the Conservatives, desperate to find any success to take credit for, create successes out of their sea of failures by simply redefining the meaning of success. ‘Stephen Harper today stated that the Conservatives had been SUCESSFUL at preventing the deficit from ballooning to $100 billion dollars.’

No need to accept responsibility and address the issues – just blame your failures on others and redefine what success is.

Federal, Media

PBS Model – not more Corporate Welfare

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Should the media conglomerates Machiavellian “save local television” campaign manage to con Canadians into demanding their MP’s impose a new tax on Canadians and use the revenue to bailout/save the media conglomerates from the consequences of their own bad decisions and management the federal government should say NO loudly.

Rather than rewarding the duplicitous nature of this campaign by using a new tax on Canadians to provide ongoing corporate welfare for the Canadian media conglomerates, the federal government should tell the media conglomerates to take a lesson from PBS and its pledge drives.

Local PBS stations depend upon donations from local viewers, running pledge drives throughout the year to raise the funds they need to continue broadcasting. Vancouver’s “local” Seattle PBS station receives a significant proportion of its donations from the lower mainland. Proof residents of the lower mainland are willing to support financially television they judge worthy of support.

Citizens should be permitted to clearly indicate whether they support the giant media conglomerates that control Canadian media or whether they would prefer the return of local media to local ownership,

Indeed, given the ethically questionable nature of the “save local television”, and that the media has chosen to beguile local charities into endorsing this disguised political campaign, the CRTC needs to impose sanctions on those who formulated and implemented this hustle.

Consider, Federal, Provincial

A matter of Choice, not Vote.

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It is a matter of choice, not a matter of voting.

The majority of people equate being able to vote with being or living in a democracy. They are wrong.

If it was merely a question of being able to vote in elections then China would be a democracy. After all the Chinese government regularly holds elections for elective office that citizens turn out in their millions to vote in. Yet most Canadians would not consider China to be a democracy.

Why? While Chinese citizens get to vote and are encouraged to vote, they are limited to casting their votes for candidates all of whom are from the Communist Party and approved by the Party. They cannot make a choice onthe policies, direction, priorities, practices or behaviours of their government.

Democracy is not defined or contingent upon voting; rather it is a matter of choice, the ability to use your vote to choose and/or have a say in the policies, direction, priorities, practices or behaviours of the government.

Since incorrect policies, direction, priorities, practices or behaviours by the government will give rise to negative, perhaps very negative, outcomes – citizens want to choose MLAs and a government that will pursue policies, direction, priorities, practices or behaviours that will bring about positive outcomes.

If, as in the current BC provincial election, only bad policies, direction, priorities, practices or behaviours are offered to choose among, without some way to reject the bad choices citizens are denied the ability to make a choice that will have positive outcomes.

In being denied the ability to choose policies, direction, priorities, practices or behaviours that will have positive outcome; citizens am denied the ability to choose.

It is the inability to choose, to vote for desired, policies, direction, priorities, practices or behaviours that makes the current provincial election an undemocratic election.

Indeed given the current state of elections in BC and throughout Canada, denying as they do citizens the ability to choose policies, direction, priorities, practices or behaviours they want their government(s) to pursue, Canada has ceased to be a democracy.

While Canada has not yet become as undemocratic as China, until we as a country adopt election legislation that presents citizens with a range of choices reflective of desirable policies, direction, priorities, practices or behaviours or enables citizens to reject all choices if they are considered unacceptable – elections will be undemocratic in nature and Canada will not be a democracy.

Addiction, Federal, Issues

Media needs to address the issues pf drug policy and legalization.

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I was reading Mike Archer’s comments in Abbotsford Today about how the old media (newspapers, television news) needs to learn “how to simply tell it straight” on important issues such as drug legalization which lead to the following commentary by me:

I wrote and submitted several letters/commentaries during our recent blitz of hand wringing and “the sky is falling” reporting that took place during the weeks when gang warfare filled the pages or airtime in the best “if it bleeds it leads” traditional media practices.

I pointed out that if you want to “lock ‘em up” you need a place to incarcerate them which we lack as our prison system is currently full and overflowing. Thus in order to carry out a program of long prison sentences would require an investment of billions of dollars in new prisons and more millions of dollars on a yearly basis to operate the prisons.

It was pointed out that arresting all the drug dealers in BC would have only a transitory effect since within a matter of days new people would have stepped in to reap the lucrative rewards that our policy choices have pumped into the illegal drug trade.

An exploration was made about the manner in which our greed based society, with its economic and cultural inequities, lack of options/opportunities and emphasis on greed, self-centeredness and ME, ensures a steady and ready supply of people willing to be employed in the illegal drug trade with its high material rewards.

Economic analysis revealed that what are termed “successes” by law enforcement pump more money into the illegal drug business providing the illegal business with more funds to spend to import/export/distribute the product (drugs) and increase the economic rewards to those employed in the illegal drug business.

Economic analysis also revealed how important the illegal drug business is in cushioning the effects of the worldwide economic meltdown on the BC economy and the other positive effects on the BC economy of having a major billion dollar agricultural export crop that is recession proof. Even in good times the large cash flow created by the illegal drug business is a major positive factor in the BC economy; whether from the illegal drug business or from the law enforcement employment resulting from keeping these drugs illegal.

The fact that calling it a “drug war” was inaccurate and misleading was examined since the war is not on drugs but on the addicts who use drugs. The victims of illegal drugs are further victimized by the war being waged against them by society and its agencies.

Supply/demand capitalist theory makes clear that the only way to successfully reduce the illegal drug trade is to reduce demand, to stop waging war on the addicts and instead render to them the aid they need to get into recovery and out of addiction. That our policy must focus on putting in place the infrastructure and supports to successfully get addicts into recovery and wellness.

The falseness of the argument that legalizing drugs would lead to increased drug use was revealed by the fact that anyone anywhere can find the illegal drug of their choice. Thus those who would turn to drugs have, leaving no flood of new addiction to occur since those who would be addicts are already addicts.

The insanity of continuing to do the same thing over and over decade after decade was noted.

All this leads to the conclusion that we need a major change in policy to legalize drugs in the same manner prohibition was repealed. Especially in light of the reality that alcohol is the most abused drug, abused more than all illegal drugs combined.

With the economic reality Canada and the world faces we as a society cannot continue to waste resources on ineffectual policies. We no longer can afford the luxury of pursuing a costly and failing policy simply because we are emotionally and ideologically attached to the policy.

We need to have a rational national discussion on legalization.

Yet the traditional media did not print even one letter that questions the intelligence of our current policy.

In their arguments that there should be an internet tax with the monies raised going to support newspapers, newspapers and staff cited newspapers being “important to our democracy”.

How can newspapers and other traditional media claim to be important to democracy when they refuse to examine the reality of the issue of our policies on illegal drugs?

Obviously they can’t.

Which is why you are correct when stating “If it is to survive at all, the old media has to learn, once again, how to simply tell it straight.”

Not to mention being willing to address issues of national importance even if such an examination is not considered “politically correct.”

Mike Archer’s comments:

A story broke in the Vancouver Sun April 15, that read more the like the screenplay to a Burt Reynolds movie about rum-running in the 1920’s than it did a major drug bust in 2009.

The story was about an Abbotsford man who was caught transporting 150 kilos of pot across the border. Every newspaper story I read on the subject called him a farm boy and ran with photos of what looked like three good ‘ole boys who had made a bad business decision.

The Vancouver Sun editors even went so far as to include s sub-head over the story that said: “Jansen basically a ‘law-abiding’ citizen, lawyer says.”

The connections between this story and the stories about gang violence and death, about which we’ve been so concerned, don’t much enter into the whole impression a reader might get from the packaging. If these were good kids who made a bad mistake then I guess the much-demonized Bacon Brothers are just good kids who made worse mistakes.

They’ve both been playing the same game. Why are the two stories treated so differently?

How does ‘basically law-abiding’ go together with ‘trucking 158 kilos of pot across the border’?

These are either drug dealers or folk heros. Let’s make up our minds.

We’re staring a depression in the face as bad as The Great Depression and we can’t seem to get our stories straight about the world we live in. Everyone acknowledges that prohibition didn’t work; in fact it created crime and violence. Our modern version of prohibition isn’t faring any better, nor do we seem to remember how they worked it out nearly a century ago when they faced the same situation.

If ever there was a time for straight talk it is now. The old media has forgotten how to do that. The media (including the new media) is always playing to its perceived audience. Right now the traditional media is wandering blind in a dark cave where none of its tools will shed any light on the situation or tell it where its audience has gone.

Self-censorship is a cardinal sin for a journalist and yet we have reached a point where the old media seems more like packaged information looking for an audience, prepared to be repackaged in an instant depending on the audience.

But consumers of information have become more savvy and more impatient. Today, content matters more than the packaging and an industry that has concentrated on nothing else for decades can’t remember how to do it. The new media has yet to find its place but it will be on the right track if it dares to tell the truth. Abbotsford Today’s Vince Dimanno said as much in his column The Truth Politicians know the media game better than those in the media and are very successful at manipulating it to serve their own ends. If it is to survive at all, the old media has to learn, once again, how to simply tell it straight.

For those who don’t remember how it all got worked out a century ago; the guys who made bad decisions became folk heros, the guys who made worse decisions went to jail or got killed and, oh yeah, they ended prohibition and legalized booze because the ‘war on booze’ just didn’t work.

Consider, Federal, Provincial

Current BC election illegal and undemocratic?

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The judgement that emerges from a deliberate consideration of the choices being offered BC voters in our current BC provincial election is that this election is no more free and democratic than elections in China.

In China voters “choose” from among candidates presented to them from the Communist Party.

Our provincial BC politicians would undoubtedly claim that citizens can “choose” from among the candidates and various political parties.

The problem is what, as is the case in the current election, if none of the choices offered are acceptable?

This is exactly the situation that more and more citizens find themselves in at election time and either have no one to cast a ballot for or, if they want some kind of say, are forced to vote for the least objectionable.

If citizens are denied their right to vote because there is not a candidate who they want to choose to represent them or are forced to vote for the “least objectionable” choices then these citizens have been denied their right to vote for candidates of their choice.

Therefore it follows that the current election in BC is not occurring in a “free electoral system” and thus is not a democratic process.

This is the exact position I find myself in. No party or candidates are addressing the issues and priorities I deem most important. I also find myself with serious policy differences with the positions taken by the parties and their candidates.

In a democracy one would have the option of addressing this lack of acceptable choices among those being offered by choosing to run oneself. Indeed in the municipal election in November of 2008 I was able to exercise my Charter guaranteed right to seek office and thus raise issues.

In BC my right to seek office and be heard is denied me in violation of my Charter rights, a right acknowledged by Elections BC on their own website.

Livings in poverty I am prevented from participating and seeking office through the imposition of the $250 fee required in filing the appropriate documents and running in the election. There are tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of poor and those living in poverty who are in a similar situation and denied the right to run or be represented by peers through the agency of the filing fee.

My right to run is a Charter right and I could seek to have my rights recognized and enforced by the Supreme Court of Canada. All I would need is the money to hire effective legal representation. Of course if I had that kind of money I could afford the $250 and the point would be moot. Catch – 22.

Whether it is tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or simply me – the current electoral system violates our/my Charter rights to seek election, to be represented by peers and/or to vote for candidates of ones choice.

Thus the current BC election is undemocratic in nature. Any results arising from this election can no more be called democratic or claimed to represent the will of the people than an election in a nation such as China can.

Further, since it violates the Charter rights of BC citizens, this election is illegal and any outcome tainted by that illegality.