Funny how the current deficit budget is now universally referred to as “The Conservative Deficit”, even after this current budget was forced upon us by the Liberals, NDPers and the bloc-heads after a mid-winter stand-off on the Governour General’s front stoop. As I recall, the Conservative’s Economic Update, brought forward in December, did not make us go into a deficit at all. It was after the three stooges reared their ugly heads and blackmailed the country, that the current deficit budget was tabled. In fact, the Libs and Dippers were crying foul that the $30B wasn’t enough.

So now it’s the “Conservative Deficit” eh? And as usual, Canadians just happily go along with it. After all, we Canadians like to hear what we want to hear and will go along with whomever says it at the time. Eventhough at another time he may say something completely different.

First they had Mr. Dithers, then they had The Dion-Witch Project, now they’re stuck with Mr. Flip-Flop. Those Libs just can’t get their act togther, can they?

For all you boomers out there:

Yes, I received another email from my good friend Jack Layton this afternoon. After he chalked up his “historic gains this election”, he sat down with Mr. Harper and told him how to fix this economy thing, and, he says, he hopes Harper can put aside his petty partisan ways and listen to him. Jackie hopes Mr. Harper mentions the following suggestions in his throne speech:

• Cancelling the scheduled 2009 unconditional corporate tax giveaways;
• Investing in the new energy economy to create jobs and fight climate change;
• Investing in a national training strategy;
• Cracking down on the banks receiving government support but still charging outrageous credit card and ATM fees;
• Protecting pensions and RRSPs so that Canadians can sleep at night knowing their retirement is safe and secure.

Jackie, don’t get me wrong, these are good suggestions. Really good, but I don’t think in this time of economic uncertainty that ATM fees are really all that important. Or fighting climate change. Or national training, whatever that is.

All throughout the letter my good friend Jackie mentions me and my family and how he wants to help us. All we have to do to weather this storm, is to “stick together and put family first”. On three occasions in the short letter my pal Jackie tells us how to accomplish this: by giving him some money. Just $20. That’s enough. But give ’em more money!

My buddy Jackie is going to help me and my family weather this economic storm by taking more money out of our pockets!

I am richer for having such a good friend.

Jack, I need you to tell me this is a global catastrophe, and that something needs to be done! Snow on October 28th? Where are you?

We woke up to some 4 cm of snow today (I know, the STORM TEAM from A-News announced 15 cm yesterday, but hey, we’ve got that STORM TEAM all fitted out with the parkas and the ski-goggles, so we’ve got to use ‘em!), and, of course, Ottawa’s streets are filled with idiots who do not know how to drive. On my modest 20 minute drive to work I came across three cars in the ditch and one spinning out of control coming up to a stop sign you can see from four miles away. On top of that, there were numerous cars with the windshield “cleaned up” by windshield wiper instead of snow brush, leaving the driver to peer through two small half-moon holes in a white sea of snow. This was 4 cm of snow, people. Neither a STORM nor weather worthy of a WATCH or WARNING. Slow down, clean your car properly, watch your fellow road users and you can easily stay on the road.

And Dalton, never mind banning gadgets, how about banning idiots?

This is the first election I’ve heard the opposition parties say: If the Conservatives win a strong minority or a slight majority that means they got 40% of the vote which means 60% of Canada did NOT vote for them. 60% of Canadians DO NOT WANT them. That means 60% of Canada voted for US and so we should govern.

So I did some research into past elections and, applying the above ‘rule’, where you don’t have the Canadian people’s blessing to govern if you don’t get more than 50% of the vote, the history of our country would have been quite different:

• 1867: Conservative won with 50%, Macdonald can stay.
• 1872  Conservative won with 49.9%. Macdonald thrown out. Liberals and Other govern. (Blake PM)
• 1874: Liberals won with 53.8%. Mackenzie can stay.
• 1882: Conservative win with 53.4%. Macdonald can stay.
• 1887: Conservative win with 50.7%: Macdonald can stay.
• 1891: Conservative win with 52%. Macdonald can stay.
• 1896: Liberals win with 45.1%. Laurier thrown out. Conservative & Order govern (Charles Tupper PM)
• 1900: Liberal win with 52%. Laurier can stay.
• 1904: Liberals win with 52.5%. Laurier can stay.
• 1908: Liberals win with 50.6%. Laurier can stay.
• 1911: Conservatives win with 51.2%. Borden can stay.
• 1917: Conservatives win with 57%. Borden can stay.
• 1921: Liberals win with 40.7%. Mackenzie King thrown out. Other and Conservatives govern. (Arthur Meighen PM)
• 1926: Liberals win with 43.6%. Mackenzie King rown out. Conservatives & Other govern. (Arthur Meighen PM)
• 1930 Conservatives win with 49%. Bennett thrown out. Liberal & Other govern. (Mackenzie King PM)
• 1935 Liberals win with 44.4%. Mackenzie King thrown out. Conservative, Social Credit & Other govern.
• 1945: Liberals win with: 41.4%. Mackenzie King thrown out. Progressive Conservatives, CCF, Social Credit & Other govern. (John Bracken PM)
• 1949: Liberals win with 50.1%. St-Laurent can stay.
• 1953: Liberals win with 50%. St-Laurent can stay.
• 1957: Progressive Conservatives win with 39%. Diefenbaker thrown out. Liberals, CCF, Social Credit & Other govern. (St-Laurent PM)
• 1958: Progressive Conservatives win with 53.7%. Diefenbaker can stay.
• 1962: Progressive Conservatives win with 37.3%. Diefenbaker thrown out. Liberals, Social Credit, NDP & Other govern.
• 1963: Liberals win with 41.7%. Pearson thrown out. PC, Social Credit, NDP & Other govern. (Diefenbaker PM)
• 1972: Liberals win with 38.5%. Trudeau thrown out.PC, NDP, SC & Other govern. (Stanfields PM)
• 1974: Liberals win with 43.2%. Trudeau thrown out.PC, NDP, SC & Other govern. (Stanfields PM)
• 1979: PC win with 35.9%. Joe Clark thrown out. Liberal, NDP, SC & Other govern. (Trudeau PM)
• 1980: Liberals win with 44.3%. Trudeau thrown out. PC, NDP, SC & Other govern. (Joe Clark PM)
• 1984: PC win with 50%. Mulroney can stay.
• 1988: PC win with 43%. Mulroney thrown out. Liberals, NDP, SC & Other govern. (Turner PM)
• 1993: Liberals win with 41.3%. Chretien thrown out. Bloc, Reform, NDP, PC & Other govern. (Lucien Bouchard PM!!)
• 1997: Liberals win with 38.5%. Chretien Thrown out. Reform, Bloc, NDP,PC & Other govern. (Manning PM)
• 2000: Liberals win with 40.8%. Chretien Thrown out. Canadian Alliance, Bloc,NDP, PC & Other govern. (Stockwell Day PM)
• 2004: Liberals win with 36.7%. Martin thrown out. Conservatives, Bloc, NDP, Green & Other govern. (Stockwell Day Harper PM)
• 2006: Conservatives win with <50%. Harper thrown out. Liberals, NDP, Bloc & Green govern. Dion Martin PM.

So, to recap, with this new ‘rule’ we’d have had: No Jean Chretien (+), A BQ as PM (-), No Paul Martin (+), No Free-Trade (-), One term of Trudeau (+), Right Government for past 15 yars (+)

Hmm… more pluses than minuses. Maybe they’re onto something here…

Jack Layton sent me another email (calling me his friend, I’m so lucky) containing the following quote:

Every vote for a New Democrat elects a New Democrat MP and stops Harper. And every vote for a New Democrat will spark the change that’ll move Canada forward.

“Every vote for a New Democrat elects a New Democrat MP”?!? I hope Jack Layton is running 6.4 million candidates, if he gets 20% of the vote, he’ll need them!

Hypothetical scenario:

Minority Conservative Government. First vote of confidence will be on Tough on Crime for Young Offenders. It will (obviously) be defeated. Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens will go to the Governor General, and form a new coalition government. We’ll get:

1. Prime Minister Stephane Dion
2. Minister of Finance: Bob Rae
3. Minister of Defense: Jack Layton
4. Minister of the Environment: Elizabeth May

If this doesn’t scare anybody I don’t know what this country is a-comin’ to.

And this is a VERY REALISTIC scenario. The Bloc, Greens and NDP have already said they’re open to it. Dion has REFUSED to rule out putting May in his cabinet, indicating he’s open to a coalition. The only way to stop this is by electing a majority Conservative government.

h/t to Lowell Green‘s radio show

In this week’s edition of the Lanark County EMC is a “Meet the candidates” section for my riding, Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington. It profiles the four major candidates with a little biography and a blurb that was obviously sent in a good while ago to meet the deadline.

Here are the candidates:

Dave Remington, Liberal. Napanee Mayor… blah blah blah… business community… blah blah blah… ah, the good stuff: Most important issue this election: The Green Shift. Other issues of importance: education, health care, agriculture, the environment.

Sandra Willard, NDP. Home health worker. Most important issue: global warming, jobs, keeping health care private, supporting single parents and keeping uranium mining out of the riding.

Chris Walker, The Green Party. Renovation contractor, renewable energy consultant. Most important issue: the environment. Other issues: the arts, health promotion, renewal in faith in the democracy.

Scott Reid, Conservative. Incumbent. Seeking fourth victory. Most important issue: THE ECONOMY. Other issues: state of our local rural economy.

I know this is just a rinky-dink newspaper in a largely rural riding somewhere in the middle of nowhere. However, it lays bare the painfully obvious: before their leaders discovered the economy last Thursday and turned it into a national ‘crisis’, neither the Liberals, the NDP nor the Greens had anything even remotely economic in their platforms, whereas the Conservative had it front and centre. 

Who is out of touch with Canadians now, eh?

President Ken Lewenza of the CAW, Canada’s largest private sector union, asked his members to vote strategically to stop a Harper majority from becoming a reality.

“Stopping a Stephen Harper majority is one of the most important challenges progressive Canadians have ever faced” — Ken Lewenza

In this story, it is obvious he blames the Tory Government, rather than the fact that people do not want  trucks and SUVs anymore, for closures in the Ford plants, GM plants and numerous auto parts plants.

He wants his members to vote Liberal or NDP depending on your riding. Hmm.. Liberals want to put a carbon tax on every auto plant out there, making cars more expensive (read: layoffs). The NDP wants to tax “big corporations”, like, say, GM and Ford (read: layoffs). The Conservatives are the only ones proposing tax cuts for corporations, so I don’t really see his motivation here.

I said it before, the closure of those plants has nothing to do with government: it has to do with the lack of foresight and market research by the ‘big three’: Ford, GM and Chrysler. They did not realise people were switching to smaller, more fuel efficient cars until it was too late. Toyota and Honda, on the other hand, clued in a long time ago, and are actually building new plants in Ontario.

Last year I sent an angry email to the NDP explaining to them that Global Warming, as it was then called, is not man-made, and that they were wrong in their environmental policy. I promptly got a reply thanking me, and that they too were concerned that human-induced global warming is destroying the planet (?), and then they added me to their email list calling me “friend”. So I sent another email asking them if they even read the email that comes in, to which I got no reply.

And so, this evening I received another email from my NEW Democratic “friends” begging me for money because they want to put a new ad on TV but they don’t have the money, so if I could please send them some.

Here’s the link if you want a preview of the new ad:

https://secure.ndp.ca/campaign/index.php?campaign=08EOD6&amp;language=e

He now seems to be complaining the Conservatives are promising too little! He calls them “token tax cuts”. I suppose he’s never heard of a ‘recession’. He also complains that the Conservatives are helping their coporate friends, and not your kitchen table… or something. Ya gotta mention the friggin’ kitchen table again, eh? He himself, Jackie, will “protect people by training them for jobs in the future” (yes, he’s a psychic now), and “reward companies to keep jobs here”. Wait a minute, “reward companies”… isn’t that the same as “helping corporate friends”? Nah, can’t be…

Price tag of NDP promised so far from ctv.ca:

• A moratorium on expansion of Alberta’s tarsands and requiring oil companies to reclaim land strip mined for petroleum production. No cost provided.
• $8.2 billion over four years to create, protect and foster growth of “green-collar” jobs and manufacturing.
• A “cap-and-trade” system to create incentives for big business to reduce their emissions. No cost provided.
• Slash greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. No cost provided.
• A price-monitoring agency to investigate price spikes and consult with provinces about regulations. No cost provided.
• Cap credit-card interest rates at five per cent over prime.
• Outlaw automated banking machine fees, saving consumers at least $104 per year.
• $120 million a year in additional funding for women’s groups.
• $1 billion over five years to expand medical and nursing schools, increasing the number of student spaces by 50 per cent.
• $125 million a year to forgive student loans for medical-school grads who spend 10 years as family physicians.
• $100 million for skills training and job creation.
• Comprehensive review of Canadian banking regulations. No cost provided.
• A national daycare program, enshrined in law, with 150,000 spaces in the first year. $1.4 billion a year at first, growing to estimated $2.2 billion.
• Home-care program for seniors. $250 million in the first year growing to $1 billion a year by Year 4.

I like the “Slash greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. No cost provided.”. The biggest plan of all, 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the one that will bankrupt the country, has “no cost provided”. That’s probably because the cost will be more than the Gross National Product.

Please send Jackie some cash. I’m tired of getting his begging emails.

Free University Education, Anyone?

The Liberals promised to make University virtually free for most students. Yes, in a country with a crumbling health care system, crumbling infrastructure, crumbling Military, we need to make universities free for most people. Students can’t possibly be expected to work to make about $6000/yr to pay for tuition & books. That means, well, you’d have to work two nights a week and an entire Saturday! And you can’t go out and drink anymore! We can’t have that, so we’re all gonna pay their tuition for them. Nice. You know, we already have extremely low tuition fees. Name me any other country where you can get a year’s worth of quality University education for under $5000. They promise 300,000 grants and bursaries of $3,500 – $4,000 each. That’s around $1,200,000,000 ANUALLY. That is in ADDITION to the $25B education endowment fund. I suppose our carbon tax will pay for that. Oh wait, it was going to pay for those fisheries announcements earlier. Or income tax cuts. Wait, I’m confused…

The NDP came up with a national child care program because “families shouldn’t have to struggle to find quality child care”. Yes, nothing says quality like a government run program. $1.45B for this in the first year. Where this comes from, I don’t know. It’ll fall from the sky I suppose.

The conservatives came up with a plan to ban all Cigarillos. Wow. How about banning cigarettes? They are lethal, you know. They kill more people annually than all guns, long guns, knives, and car accidents combined. Tobacco kills over 45,000 Canadians every year. That is 123 PEOPLE A DAY. They also kill 1 in 3,300 to 1 in 5,500 Non-Smokers each year (that is about 16 every day). So, in addition to being a suicide machine, there are a murder weapon. And as such, they should be banned. If only the government wasn’t relying on the taxes they bring in. Damn.

Sorry, I just don’t like smoking.

I was eagerly awaiting the 6 o’clock news yesterday. I was waiting for Jack Layton to come on again. I saw him on that very same news show on January 12ish, when it was a nice and balmy 10 degrees out. He was sitting on his Toronto rooftop patio in his summer jacket, and he said “I am here outside, in the middle of January, with my summer jacket on. Clearly, there’s something wrong here. This is a global catastrophe!”. So, since yesterday was the coldest March 6th EVER in eastern Ontario, with Pembroke going down to -32 overnight, I thought I’d see Jacky on his Toronto rooftop again, with sixteen winter coats on, freezing his ass off, saying “It’s March 6th! I’m freezing my ass off! Clearly there’s something wrong here!” But alas, Jacky did not show. There was no segment on the cold weather. Jacky had gone into hiding. He will emerge, no doubt, when the next global catastrophe occurs. To fight it… for the people.

Since winter has finally arrived in Canada, and all Global Warming talk has ceased, the all knowing leader of leaders, Jack Layton, has picked a new cause. No, it is not world hunger, imminent nuclear threats, air pollution, water pollution, crime or poverty. No, it is the ultimate threat to decent society: banking fees on ATMs that belong to banks other than your own. The $1.50 that you have to pay for being so lazy that you could go to an ATM that is owned by your own bank, but decided to go to the other guy’s ATM that is three steps closer to you. It is $1.50 you pay so you can get money out of a machine where you currently are, versus driving to your bank and getting it there. You should be thankful, you saved $5 worth of gas on the trip. But wait, Jack Layton is going to save us from these evil fees. He’s getting results for the people!