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By The Arbourist, on May 18, 2013, at 12:47 pm What is democracy about these days? Looking to the North American model to the south of Canada, one begins to worry that idea of responsible, accountable government is a sadly antiquated notion. Bill Moyers and his guests detail what is happening in Washington. Revolving doors, “dark” money, influence peddling – a veritable laundry list of bad ethical practice is the norm, and the public good is but a memory.
Take the time, gain some insight and arm yourself with the knowledge of what is happening in what was once a great democratic nation.
Filed under: Politics Tagged: (Read more…)
By Joseph Uranowski, on May 17, 2013, at 10:44 pm There have been 21 federal by-elections since Stephen Harper became Prime Minister of Canada.* Of those 21, the Conservatives held 4 (Labrador, Durham, Calgary Centre and Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette.) Of those 4 by-elections 3 took place since the 2011 federal election.
Even without a permanent leader the Liberals made big gains in the Calgary-Centre by-election. However, until May 13th, Stephen Harper’s party had won all of the by-elections they contested in ridings the Conservatives previously held (they also made gains in several other by-elections.) The Labrador by-election seems like it will be quickly forgotten with the various Senate-related scandals that (Read more…)
By christyk, on May 17, 2013, at 11:44 am The past week I’ve been reading Letters from Nuremburg: My Father’s Narrative of a Quest for Justice by Senator Christopher J. Dodd. The introduction to the book pulled me in, for Christopher Dodd writes comparing Nuremberg to Guantanamo. Nuremberg was the triumph of choosing law instead of revenge, and Guantanamo represents the opposite. In allowing Guantanamo Americans have choosen to act out of fear.
He talks of wanting to filibuster the Military Commissions Act of 2006, because the legislation:
“allows the president to define our commitments under the Geneva conventions through regulation rather than legislation. It allows the president’s interpretation to (Read more…)
By John Klein, on May 17, 2013, at 11:23 am The following stories are ^not related.
Canadians increasingly cynical about state of democracy: Hepburn Voters are losing trust in the way Canada’s democracy works.
Nuh-uh!
Living in the Age of Dumbness By Janice Kennedy, Ottawa Citizen
Right now, at least in North America, human civilization seems to be wallowing hip-deep in an Age of Determined Dumbness.
It’s depressing, and ironic. No other civilization has ever been as educated, informed and technologically advanced as ours.
Even in that article, there’s nary a mention of climate change or pollution to help make that point. There’s not a dumber fact of life (Read more…)
By John Klein, on May 17, 2013, at 7:53 am Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto, is alleged to appear in a video of him smoking crack.
Mike Duffy, former Conservative Senator, is now just another failed Senator, sitting as an independent.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Conservatism has gone horribly wrong in Canada. What else connects these two awful men besides their political party? Stephen Harper.
BREAKING NEWS: @RobertFife has been told Sen Mike Duffy attempted to influence #CRTC decision on Sun Media mandatory carriage. #cdnpoli— CTV News Breaking (@CTVNewsBRK) May 17, 2013
By Mark Brooks, on May 16, 2013, at 10:55 pm
Download: earthgauge-podcast-may16-2013.mp3
This week is our last show before the summer break! I’m taking a few months off to recharge the batteries so we’re ready to come back strong in September for an all new season. On today’s program, we’re going to hear an interview from our friends at Generation Anthropocene who talked recently with international law expert Andrew Guzman. He has taken a step back from analyzing climate change in terms of precise temperature changes, melting glaciers and meters of sea level rise and breaks down all the ways climate change will affect humanity, from environmental refugees to changing (Read more…)
By bazie, on May 15, 2013, at 3:13 pm If nothing else, the BC Liberals’ entirely unexpected and dominating win in BC last night will be a useful lesson in humility for pollsters and those that rely on them to prognosticate about elections. All the polls showed a strong (and possibly growing) lead for the NDP, and poll aggregators like threehundredeight.com were predicting a 98.3% chance of winning the popular vote and the actual results were outside of the predicted likely seat range. Clearly the polls (and thus any model based off the polls) were horribly wrong. Yet on the flip side with the last US Presidential (Read more…)
By John Klein, on May 15, 2013, at 1:44 pm Condoning, protecting, rewarding & compensating #fraud: PMO helped Senator #Duffy with expenses issues: theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/… #Cdnpoli— EmperorStephenHarper (@RobertJensen2) May 15, 2013
BREAKING:@RobertFife reveals that Nigel Wright, PM's Chief of Staff, wrote a personal cheque over $90K to cover Sen Duffy's expenses— CTV Power Play (@CTV_PowerPlay) May 15, 2013
S.17 Senate Conflict Code: "a Senator [shall not] accept… any gift or other benefit… that relate[s] to the Senator's position" #cdnpoli— Stephen Lautens (@stephenlautens) May 15, 2013
“S.17 Senate Conflict Code: “a Senator [shall not] accept… any gift or other benefit… that relate[s] to the Senator’s (Read more…)
By Stephen Elliott-Buckley, on May 14, 2013, at 6:22 pm Here we are: only hours to go until the polls close.
What will be the next BC government?
What are your hopes, fears, dreams, goals?
This page will refresh every 15 seconds, or you can manually reload it.
Please add in your comments below
What are your seat predictions? What do you think will be the final popular vote results? Will Christy Clark lose her seat? If the Liberals lose, will Christy Clark (a) resign tonight, (b) vow to rebuild the party, or (c) take time to reflect on her future?
/*< ![CDATA[ */ setTimeout(function(){live_blogging_poll("6029");}, 15000) /*]]>*/
15.49
OK, final popular vote:
NDP: (Read more…)
By vsp, on May 14, 2013, at 9:29 am
By vanillaman, on May 14, 2013, at 7:00 am It seems the easy victory the NDP were hoping for was all but swept away after the leadership debate. Granted the NDP are still 7% on average ahead of their closes rivals the Liberal party of British Columbia. It actually peculiar when you think about it that most of the recent provincial elections we had greatly diminished the lead of the front runner come election day (Mainly Quebec and Alberta).
This BC election isn’t much different from the Quebec elections. A Liberal party slightly right wing being in power for over a decade, and a new opposition leader coming from the left hoping to change everything. The Major differences of course being that Quebec (Read more…)
By vsp, on May 13, 2013, at 10:59 pm Don’t gloat. Don’t lose that smile. Don’t get distracted. The real goal is the election in 2015. The NDP have been pushed aside. In the 2012 byelection in Calgary-Centre the NDP went down to 2%, and in Labrador they were moved aside in today’s byelection. The Conservatives have been somewhat humbled — taking illegal donations [...]
By vsp, on May 12, 2013, at 11:24 am
By elementalpresent, on May 12, 2013, at 7:18 am …is that you age your way out of the generational gaze. You know the one. The one that fixes on everything younger than 30 or 40, and can’t see anything but narcissism, entitlement, deviance and degrading values. I wrote this blog many months back, and a much shorter and slightly different version of it was […]
By christyk, on May 11, 2013, at 5:35 pm The Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty has made three visits to the social assistance office in the past two weeks and have come out with a partial victory. You can read about the story on their website or at the Sudbury Star, but the short story is that Brenda had been turned down for more assistance in starting up her household again after a three week stint of being homeless. Coalition members accompanied her to the OW office on numerous occasions, and then to the office of the municipal director in charge. From there they were shuffled to a meeting (Read more…)
By vsp, on May 10, 2013, at 7:54 pm The other day this blogger went to a Manning Centre training seminar on visual communications — on building better looking websites, designing election signs, and creating campaign literature. This is the same Manning Centre that has been in the news recently and been a target of a fair bit of speculation on their efforts. As [...]
By John Klein, on May 10, 2013, at 6:45 pm The Onion hasn’t lived up to its journalistic standards of fake news, so I’m writing a piece for The Garlic, and interviewing Carbon Dioxide to get its thoughts on surpassing the dangerous 400 parts per million mark.
John Klein (JK): So, Carbon Dioxide, do you mind if I call you Carbon for short?
Carbon Dioxide (CO2): Sure John, no problem. I’ll even let you abbreviate my name to CO2 without making the two subscript.
JK: Very kind of you, Carbon.
CO2: No problem, it’s my pleasure to help out. It’s the least I can do, for helping to destroy your (Read more…)
By John Klein, on May 10, 2013, at 10:00 am Good news on the RoboCon front: A team of talented, non-political-party-aligned Canadians is working to notify masses of people of the piles of evidence detailing the largest election fraud scheme in Canadian history.
There are piles of evidence. I’ve collected some of the most important bits here for you to listen to, or look through.
==
“The Conservative Party can say absolutely definitively it has no role in any of this.” – Stephen Harper, PM, in the House of Commons, 2012. Now it’s 2013, and Conservative campaign worker Michael Sona is charged with illegal robocalling.
Guelph was Ground (Read more…)
By John Klein, on May 10, 2013, at 1:34 am I found a very worthwhile campaign to fight misinformation and apathy with robocalls and art by non-political-partiers, and hope you’ll assist with its crowdfunding. If you can’t make a PayPal payment, they’ll take Interac email money also if you ask.
I’ll be talking more about this in the morning, along with a few quotes that help show the Prime Minister lied last year about Conservative Party involvement in RoboCon.
==
I was looking back at my early predictions for what the 2012 Robocalls scandal could wind up doing to Canadian politics. A set of scenarios for an early general election (Read more…)
By Regan Wolfrom, on May 9, 2013, at 1:00 pm Is there really any point in talking about it?
Almost every blogger I’ve read in Manitoba who’s covered political issues had mentioned that the NDP has been up to something. Manitoba Hydro Smash-and-Grab, Public Utilities Board Gouge-and-Grab, WRHA Mad-Cow-Expansion-and-Grab, PST Change-The-Law-To-Take-More-Money-and-Grab…
But what’s the point in talking about it anymore? So we keep whining about it, and then maybe if we’re “lucky” the NDP will lose and the “Progressive” Conservatives will win and we can start complaining about the upcoming Hydro Privatization-and-Switch, or the Health Care Slash-and-Switch, or the Education Blah-Blah-and-Switch…
It’s gangrenous (Read more…)
By christyk, on May 9, 2013, at 8:24 am I went last night to a wonderful event put on by a grassroots media collective. They wanted to encourage local writers and local activists. There was lots of good conversations. It was helpful for me as a younger person to hear the stories of activists who have been involved for multiple decades and to see that the struggles have been ongoing. There was some frusturation and despair expressed at times as people talked about how people feel so powerless and how young people today are faced with bleak futures. There was acknowledgement that we are seeing the slow effects of long (Read more…)
By The Arbourist, on May 9, 2013, at 8:01 am Bill Moyers almost always has interesting guests and topics of discussion. The topic of this video is why the American Congress has been so ineffectual as of late(?). A long view, but interesting none the less.
Filed under: Politics Tagged: American Politics, Bill Moyers, Congress Fail, Republicans
By kevin harding, on May 6, 2013, at 11:25 pm At an SFU Public Square event on child poverty tonight, BC Liberal candidate Ralph Sultan evoked boos from the audience when he described the matter as a “single mom” issue.
He later defended himself, saying he was only quoting “facts” as an economist.
Liberal Ralph Sultan says kids living in poverty because of single moms, draws groans from overflow crowd at #bcchildpov #bcpoli
— Gillian Shaw (@gillianshaw) May 7, 2013
Asked Ralph Sultan will Liberals do anything to help feed BC’s hungry kids. Platform is already written ‘ain’t going to happen’ #bcchildpov
— Gillian Shaw (@gillianshaw) May 7, 2013
Also (Read more…)
By James Calder, on May 4, 2013, at 2:53 pm Canada’s Conservative Party abandoned Premier Alison Redford and the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta during Alberta’s last provincial election – they chose instead to support Alberta’s far-right Wildrose Alliance Party.
Now, Justin Trudeau seeks to build bridges with Albertans and their government; all the while pushing for sustainable and environmentally-sound development for Canada’s oil industry.
Said it before, and I’ll say it again – Tories underestimate Trudeau at their own peril.
National Post, Trudeau praises Redford for Keystone XL efforts, slams Harper for not pushing ‘critical’ project:
Federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has praised Alberta Premier Alison Redford for (Read more…)
By The Arbourist, on May 4, 2013, at 1:11 pm Acting responsibly with your money, saving it perhaps?
You sir/madam are an idiot; at least according to the Bank of Canada. “Why are you not out there spending money and making the economy grow?”, asks our benevolent Central Bank. The temerity you have displayed (despicable saver!!), acting responsibly and not going credit debt wild is unacceptable. As a matter of fact, let’s punish you for your responsible fiscal behaviour.
My faithful readership by now is aware of the rambling nature of my commentary so I advise you to go to the CBC right now and watch (Read more…)
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