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By Liam, on May 22, 2013, at 1:52 pm The Conservatives are losing their favourite, time-tested tactic to reset public opinion: just say the word “sponsorship.”
For seven long years, anytime they could be criticised for ethical lapses, for cronyism and corruption, for pork and for secrecy (in a word, umm, always), they could simply refer back to “sponsorship” and be assured that the public would growl at horrific memories of Liberal sleaze, and we’d remind outselves how grateful we should be that things are, at the very least, not that bad.
Except that they are. And you know that they are when a Prime Minister not only (Read more…)
By Norm Farrell, on May 14, 2013, at 2:45 pm An article I published almost three years ago is timely on this election day. Voters have an opportunity to change direction. If we do not, the plundering of British Columbia will accelerate. Gordon Campbell began with a set of principles and slid into corruption. Christy Clark started without principle.
Earlier in Northern Insights, the article Indeed, Power does corrupt contains words of Paul Graham that are a diagnosis and could be the prescription for reform in British Columbia.
“The problem here is not wealth, but corruption. . . We don’t need to prevent people from being rich if we can prevent wealth (Read more…)
By Obert Madondo, on May 8, 2013, at 9:38 am By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive: Green Party Leader Elizabeth May suggests that PM Stephen Harper’s handling of the Panashue affair violated the Conflict of Interest Act. The Saanich-Gulf Islands MP wrote to federal Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson on May 3 and asked her to “undertake an examination, and issue a public ruling, with regard [...]
The post Labrador Byelection: May says Harper violated Conflict Of Interest Act appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
By Norman Farrell, on April 29, 2013, at 6:26 pm In an 1830 speech, Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster said that government should be
“Made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.”
British Columbia’s present ruling political class may pay lip-service to this fundamental ideal of democracy but, repeatedly, their behaviour demonstrates the priority is to serve special private interests. Premier Clark said that unashamedly in the leaders’ debate on radio, explaining why TI, the province’s vital pharmaceutical watchdog, was being eliminated. It’s teeth had already been blunted.
In Saturday’s Times Colonist, former Deputy Minister of Health Lawrie McFarlane wrote:
“Tuesday’s announcement by Adrian (Read more…)
By Akaash Maharaj, on April 12, 2013, at 8:40 am My article in the Globe and Mail: My one conversation with Margaret Thatcher about the Liberal Party of Canada began with a chill in the air, and ended with our host mopping his brow. We were all polite, but there were daggers behind the smiles and venom coiled around the courtesy…The news of her death, coming days before the party chooses its new leader, brought her verdict back to me.
By Akaash Maharaj, on April 10, 2013, at 6:01 pm I am enormously grateful to the Board of the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption for their confidence in naming me their Executive Director, and I will work tirelessly to justify their faith. I feel deeply privileged to have a chance to work with GOPAC’s global alliance of democratically elected parliamentarians to fight political corruption and advance the rule of law around the world.
By Norman Farrell, on April 8, 2013, at 6:16 am CEO Gordon Nixon, 12.6 million dollar man
The Royal Bank of Canada (aka RBC) is responding to public complaints that spread rapidly following reports the bank will be terminating Canadian staff who are training temporary foreign workers to take over their jobs. This is like the condemned being forced to clean and load weapons for their firing squad.
The bank’s response is as believable as Premier Christy Clark’s claim that 400 million people witnessed the Times of India film awards that cost BC taxpayers $11 million this week. About 30,000 people saw the pre-election show at BC Place but
. . . → Read More: Northern Insight: Royal Bank of Canada – exporter of jobs
By Norman Farrell, on April 7, 2013, at 12:32 am RBC replaces Canadian staff with foreign workers, CBC, April 6, 2013
“Dozens of employees at Canada’s largest bank are losing their jobs to temporary foreign workers, who are in Canada to take over the work of their department.
” ‘They are being brought in from India, and I am wondering how they got work visas,’ said Dave Moreau, one of the employees affected by the move. ‘The new people are in our offices and we are training them to do our jobs. That adds insult to injury.’ …”
If this style of business offends you and you are
. . . → Read More: Northern Insight: Boycott of RBC – make this a movement
By Norman Farrell, on March 28, 2013, at 5:47 am Finance Minister Mike de Jong must demand resignations of the senior executives and directors of Pacific Carbon Trust. They are officials of a publicly owned enterprise but instead dedicated their loyalty to vested interests that do business with PCT.
Additionally, director Mike Watson appears to have a conflict of interest since he is principal of a public relations firm hired by PCT to deride the work and reputation of Auditor General John Doyle.
John Doyle, British Columbia’s Auditor General
“Of all the reports I have issued, never has one been targeted in such an overt manner by vested interests, nor
. . . → Read More: Northern Insight: Pacific Carbon Trust officials must resign
By The Arbourist, on March 26, 2013, at 8:04 am Patriarchal Nonsense.
How many more examples do we need to understand that our society is still in love with patriarchy and misogyny? Adria Richards makes a reasonable gesture, calling people out for their crappy remarks, and for her trouble she is fired and gets rape and death threats.
We’re completely ready for the post-feminism society. For-sure. David Futrelle over at Manboobz has the story.
“And so the Internet has found a new woman to hate. Most of you are probably already familiar with the Adria Richards debacle that’s developed over the past several days. If
. . . → Read More: Dead Wild Roses: Adria Richards: How many more examples?
By BlastFurnace, on March 21, 2013, at 1:12 pm What a pleasant surprise to hear that the House of Commons gave third reading to an opposition bill, C-279, that would include gender identity as an aggravating circumstance in determining if a criminal act was motivated by hate and therefore deserved an extended sentence. More astonishing is that 18 Conservatives, including 4 ministers (John Baird, Jim Flaherty, Lisa Raitt and James Moore),
By BlastFurnace, on March 16, 2013, at 10:27 pm First and biggest news of the week was the upset election of 76 year old Jorge Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who interestingly has taken the name Francis I. No sooner was he elected, and leading up to his investiture next week (since 1978, new Popes have refused to take the three tiered crowned during a coronation, preferring to be inaugurated instead like pretty much every
By The Arbourist, on March 14, 2013, at 8:04 am I’m not really into the whole prostitution is what happens between consenting adults argument. I find that it reeks with the notion that the experiences of a lucky few, a sub set of a sub set, somehow overlays what happens to most people who get involved in prostitution; that would be degradation, pain, and suffering. Layer that with helplessness, fear and shame and your have a tried and true recipe for broken human beings.
Prostitution is not okay. It is never okay and thus the topic is set for your Thursday DWR PSA.
Thank you to Buy
. . . → Read More: Dead Wild Roses: Prostitution – Hurting Women and Children; Always.
By The Arbourist, on March 7, 2013, at 8:08 am One of the cheap rhetorical tricks that forced birth advocates often use is the idea that somehow “Science” (ya know science, that vast shadowy monolithic structure) supports their crappy arguments and thus lends weight to their assault on women and their rights. One of the easiest tells illustrating the rhetorical, rather than scientific vein of this particular argument, is that idea that we have a definite grasp of when “life” begins. Unsurprisingly, the anti-choice position relies on a gross simplification of what the bio-medical position actually is on when life begins. The irony is very rich as
. . . → Read More: Dead Wild Roses: Clarification for our Anti-Choice Friends: Life at Conception? Err..No.
By BlastFurnace, on March 1, 2013, at 10:34 am I really have to hand it to some social conservatives who are so sexually repressed they recoil at the word sex. I don’t know if Charles McVety of the Canada Family Action Coalition is quite that regressed, but his playing on people’s worst instincts would be comical were it not for what’s at stake — the kind of country that we want Canada to be. Especially when it comes to personal choices.
By matttbastard, on February 23, 2013, at 11:03 am Silly Prince George Citizen, holding a staff writer to account for generously liberating other writers’ work:
To our shock and dismay, multiple incidents of plagiarism were uncovered from work over the last number of months. The staff member plagiarized various online new publications, while writing opinion pieces that appeared in this space. Entire paragraphs were copied and then blended into articles, removing a word here and there, or adding a clause to link certain phrases, but leaving the words of the original writer all or mostly intact, without attribution to the original writer or publication.
As of Tuesday morning, that
. . . → Read More: bastard.logic: Ethics in Exile
By BlastFurnace, on February 5, 2013, at 3:22 pm Mike Duffy, a supposedly neutral journalist and Ottawa pundit for nearly 30 years for both CBC and CTV before he became transparently neo-con and did everything he could on air to make Paul Martin Jr kick the political bucket was rewarded for his total lack of journalistic integrity with an appointment to the Senate from his supposed home province of Prince Edward Island.
Here’s where it gets
By The Arbourist, on February 3, 2013, at 3:50 pm Ah yes, the perennially wrong anti-choice, forced birth lobby loses again, and again and again. You never get to ignore the bodily autonomy of women and this comment from Pharyngula details precisely why.
“I’ll tell you why I hate those hypothetical near-birth abortion scenarios. It’s not that they’re stupid, or that they never happen, or even that there’s a real world problem of them encouraging the antichoicers to think of this nonsense as a real thing. All of which are true, too, and seriously annoying. But [that's] not why I get the white-hot HATE.
The hate is because the
. . . → Read More: Dead Wild Roses: Hypothetical Near Birth Abortions – Why Pro-Life is *always* wrong.
By Norm Farrell, on February 3, 2013, at 5:03 am Since the beginning of time, the public built facilities in partnerships with private industry. Typically, government determined needs according to its priorities, hired consultants for design and tendering, awarded work to the lowest bidder and financed with its usual sources, typically the lowest cost borrowing available. As long as all phases were completed with competence, the project succeeded without surprises.
However, sharp operators with no expertise beyond influence peddling, were left out of the process. So they invented the term public-private partnership, the infamous P3, and claimed for it special efficiency. Partnerships BC was created to sell the concept to
. . . → Read More: Northern Insight: P3 primer for British Columbia
By BlastFurnace, on January 30, 2013, at 7:39 pm As the House of Commons is now back in session, I have the following questions:
Is it too much to ask that titles of bills and acts are as neutral as possible so as to state the purpose — eg. “Criminal Law Amendment Act No. 1, 2013″ rather than propaganda such as ”Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act”?
Is it too much to ask that our Members of Parliament be allowed to ask real questions
By Norman Farrell, on January 28, 2013, at 3:46 am When a kid, I lived with a marvellous black Lab. A good-natured, well-behaved mutt, he discovered roast chicken unsupervised on the stove top one day. With no one around, temptation was irresistible. He made his move. When I walked in, that chicken was on the floor, being devoured. Commands fell on deaf ears. In fact, he ate faster and growled angrily, turning in circles to shield the prize from expropriation. He knew the chance for real treasure didn’t come often and might not come again so his aim was to maximize pleasures before opportunity ended.
I’m reminded of the dog
. . . → Read More: Northern Insight: Feeding frenzy has begun
By The Arbourist, on January 23, 2013, at 8:13 am There are no just wars. The death, the depravity, and destruction should never have any pretense of being a noble endeavour. War is like being dragged face first through fifteen kilometres of shit, nobility and honour be damned. We’re going to look at a “bad” war, that is a war that we did all the things we usually do, but couldn’t manage to spin a victory or even a “Mission Accomplished” out of the briny wash. Vietnam seems to cause soul-searching in the US. It should do that at the barest of minimums.
. . . → Read More: Dead Wild Roses: Tell me again about Just War Theory
By CanadaToo, on January 13, 2013, at 9:26 am The political arena is strange. So much of the time it’s about “defining” the opposition. News flash – the left is not against capitalism.
Greed is visceral. We all know what it is. It is all around us every day but it is no longer directly visible to us. The direct connections have been disguised, hidden or broken completely.
It is often greed that drives someone to knowingly dump toxic
By David Climenhaga, on January 10, 2013, at 1:19 am Finance Minister Jim Flaherty before application of his Smashbox and Cover Girl. Below: Mr. Flaherty after his makeup makeover. Warning: Any resemblance to J. Edgar Hoover is certainly purely coincidental. Below that: FBI icon J. Edgar Hoover and the real Mr. Flaherty. Jim Flaherty portrait by Edmonton artist William Prettie.
Who would have thought that when Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said he was going to powder his nose … he was! (Ba-Bam!)
OK. That’s already enough. Get the drummer off the stage right now! You get the idea.
But seriously … and I mean that, people, seriously … beyond
. . . → Read More: Alberta Diary: The cheek of Jim Flaherty … expensing his Maybelline while preaching austerity!
By CanadaToo, on January 8, 2013, at 11:04 am I will be the first to admit this post is somewhat speculative. However, given the blatant actions of the Harper regime over the years I don’t think I’m going to be proven wrong. Additionally, the Harper regime may not be the first Canadian government to enact this type of campaign but it is certainly the most brutal.
Consider recent events.
Harper government involved in a myriad of tiny
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