Sorry, folks if you were expecting one of my usual goofy diaries. This isn't one of those. I do occasionally write in a serious vein, and this is one of those times.
While there's been a lot of stuff happening in the States...nasty blizzards; Republicans still stamping their feet and pouting, trying (yet again) to get rid of the ACA, and still engaging in oneupmanship on who's the stoopidist; dissing of vets; those deluded anti-vacc twits with their chemically pure children (and yes, Canada has those ijits too); and other assorted zany, ...there's been a lot happening on the political front in Canada, almost none of it good.
Read on past the twisted cheeze puff to get the freshly updated list of the political shenanigans Canadians have been dealing with.
There are several important things that have been in the news lately and that have some import to the majority of Canadians:
Early last week, Joe Oliver, Minister of Finance, announced that the federal government would be delaying the budget report until April. It's normally done in February. The reason for the delay is the sudden and continuing decline in oil prices, and since the federal government relies quite heavily on revenue from oil and other fossil fuels, the quick decline in the cost of a barrel has put balancing the budget into a tailspin. Yes, the feds have a contingency fund of $3 billion, but that will only offset part of the loss in revenue. The government will still face an $8.2 billion dollar shortfall this year. But it's okay....the parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) has a PLAN:
The PBO listed asset sales, delaying capital spending or making accounting adjustments to public-sector compensation as the kind of options the government could take in order to turn a small projected deficit into a projected surplus. The PBO also notes that the 2015 budget will simply be a forecast and that it won’t be until the fall of 2016 that official records will show whether the deficit was erased.
So selling some stuff, not paying some bills, and cutting programs will make the budget look okeydokey...until after the election. Smart!
But I just wonder what programs will be cut, what assets sold and what spending won't be happening.
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Harper has for some years now, been critical of environmental groups. They get in the way of his awesome expansion plans for his bosom buddies in oil and gas. The environmental groups have been actually quite successful in delaying the Northern Gateway and the KXL pipelines. So much so that the then Minister for the Environment, Joe Oliver, began calling them names...like "radicals". It became rather a badge of honour for Dr David Suzuki and other environmental groups to be "radical". David Suzuki even used it for a banner design:
But in the last few years, name calling just wasn't enough. Harper sicced Revenue Canada on the groups in an effort to intimidate them.
The rules say a charity can devote no more than 10 per cent of its resources to political activities, and none to partisan activities, but critics say the guidelines are fuzzy or can be Byzantine in their complexity.
A special squad of 15 auditors has so far targeted some 52 charities, many of them critical of Conservative government policies. Environment groups were hard hit in the first round in 2012-13, but the net has since widened to snare social justice and poverty groups, among others.
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And to top all of this off, the Stephen Harper has decided to expand the scope of CSIS, the nations security office. This move is supposedly in answer to the two attempts on the nation's capitol and parliament, and the threat that Islamic radicalization poses to the nation...hah! Really! While radicalization of individuals within Canada can happen, it's a very minor problem and none of the attacks on Canadian soil were focused entirely by radicalization. What this Bill (Bill C-51, The Anti Terrorism Act) does do is help Harper find and eliminate opposition to his plans.
Even Edward Snowdon warns of the dangers of letting our governments fearmongering lead us to giving up our rights
“If you are a Canadian citizen, you have a greater chance of dying by being struck by lightning; or by going to a restaurant and eating a meal that will give you an intestinal disease; or by slipping in your bathtub, hitting your head on the ceramic tile than you do dying in a terrorist attack,” said Greenwald.
He criticized what he sees as the Conservative government’s tactic of using fear to untether the weight of public scrutiny to push the anti-terrorism measures into law. “Your government continuously hypes the threat and tells you that unless you give it more and more power it will be incapable of saving you from this threat,” he said.
“And this fearmongering is a very dangerous, yet very effective form of persuading people to submit to things you otherwise wouldn’t submit to."
Both of the young men who killed soldiers in the two separate events last fall were struggling with mental health and drug addiction problems. Perhaps it would be a far better move for Harper to increase funding and counseling for mental health programs, than run around like Chicken Little, saying "ISIS is coming"!!
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And lastly, it seems even the jihadists themselves are delighted with Harper's move to demonize and arrest his own constituents on baseless fears of "terrorism" according to The Beaverton.
“Certainly we disagree on many things. Israel for example. But making it legal to target groups of his own citizens and detain them without charge for longer, or to allow his agents to use undefined methods to enforce his will without public accountability is a step in the right direction, and a move that I would make if I were leader of his disgusting nation.”
Online message boards associated with Islamic State groups have also praised the PM for solidifying a terrifying image out of them for the “infidel Canadians” to fear, which they say was as effective PR as “a dozen beheadings.” Commenters noted the proposed legislation comes in light of Canada’s own reaction to “two miserably executed and poorly planned attacks” by Islamic terror “hobbyists” late last year that killed, “fewer people than Canada’s own unclean Maple Leaf pork products.”
I'm so grateful we have to opportunity to vote this narcissistic, fascist dictator out of Office this fall!!!