Ralph Nader Speaks . . . .

On the Canadian election, U.S. politics, the "security perimeter" and proportional representation.

All in less than 8 minutes.

Concentrated, rational analysis . . . .

Gay conservative Loses Cool . . . .

Ricky at Queer Thoughts posted our local Vancouver Centre's conservative candidate's melt-down at the queer debate last week.

Watch the video.

Attending it as I did, it was an uncomfortable portion of the debate. Speaking to other gay constituents later, the feeling was common. We were embarrassed for his actions and confused as to why any self-respecting homosexual could support a conservative government, much less run as a candidate for that party . . . . .

SPP and Election '08 : From Star Wars to listeriosis

Margaret Atwood gets it. (h/t West End Bob)

So does Kevin Brooker, columnist at the Calgary Herald :
Beware Government deals made secretly

"With all of the structural problems in the U.S. economy, is now the time to give deep integrationalists encouragement to do what we never asked them to do in the first place?"

Mr. Brooker is refering to the Con's summer release of their Competition Review Panel report "Compete to Win" , which recommends loosening up foreign investment restrictions and ending the prohibition on bank mergers.

Well just lol. The U.S. economy is tanking and we already have one of the world's most foreign dominated economies, but as usual, not U.S.-dominated/decimated enough for the North American Competitiveness Council, aka the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.

Let's do a little review of "Compete to Win", in their own words, courtesy of Integrate This! :

"The chief mechanism to deal with Canada–US border issues, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), has yielded too little progress in improving crossborder flows. In this context, the Panel believes that it is imperative to intensify our bilateral effort with the US, focusing on facilitating the flow of goods, services and people across the Canada–US border"

URANIUM MINING
"The Minister of Natural Resources should issue a policy directive to liberalize the non-resident ownership policy on uranium mining..."

COMPETITION
"The Minister of Industry should introduce amendments to the Competition Act (to) align the merger notification process under the Competition Act more closely with the merger review process in the United States..."

TAXATION
"The federal, provincial and territorial governments should continue to reduce corporate tax rates to create a competitive advantage for Canada, particularly relative to the United States."

CANADA-U.S. ECONOMIC TIES
"Addressing the thickening of the Canada–US border should be the number one trade priority for Canada, and requires heightened direct bilateral engagement at the highest political levels."

REGULATION
"Canada should harmonize its product and professional standards with those of the US, except in cases where, and then only to the extent that, it can be demonstrated that the impairment of the regulatory objective outweighs the competitiveness benefit that would arise from harmonizing."

As Mr. Brooker notes :

"When these people sit down to discuss, say, environmental regulation, do you think it is to make those laws tougher?
Do you suppose they're spending much time thinking about how to preserve workers' rights?

And how about Canada's vast freshwater resources, which were specifically excluded from NAFTA. What are the chances that emergent "security" needs will put water back on the table and thus guarantee the U.S. permanent access, just like they got with our oil?"

The always incisive Laura Carlsen, director of Americas Policy program at the Center for International Policy, answers Mr. Brooker's questions with a quote from someone who should know :

"In April 2007, on the eve of the North American Trilateral Summit, Thomas Shannon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, described the SPP's purpose with remarkable candor: The SPP, he declared, "understands North America as a shared economic space," one that "we need to protect," not only on the border but "more broadly throughout North America" through improved "security cooperation." He added: "To a certain extent, we're armoring NAFTA."

Carlsen notes: "This was the first time that a U.S. official had stated outright that regional security was no longer focused on keeping the citizens of the United States, Canada, and Mexico safe from harm, but was now about protecting a regional economic model."

Of course the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, Canadian wing of the NACC, not only have always known this, they are very keen to take credit for the idea. From their website :

"As our Council made clear in launching our North American Security and Prosperity Initiative in 2003, it is in Canada’s fundamental interest to pursue bilateral and trilateral agreements that will keep our border with the United States as open as possible, and this requires hard work on issues related to security....In this context, we would restate our view that it is in Canada’s interest to participate in the ballistic missile defence program."

Oh goodie! Pudding!


While I was over at the CCCE website perusing their "Blueprint", I ran in to this :

"In 2003, our Council proposed that the federal government adopt a “five percent solution”, which would require that each year, each minister and each deputy minister identify the least effective five percent of spending under their direction. This identification of relatively ineffective spending would provide a pool of resources that could be reallocated to new purposes if and when needed."

A 5% cut in each department's operating budget?
That sounds oddly familiar. And voilà!

"A Canadian Food Inspection Agency employee was fired on Friday for sharing with his union information he found in a Treasury Board document that CFIA planned to make a 5% cut in its operating budget by outsourcing responsibility for food inspections and the labelling of products to industry.

It's like watching a prophecy unfold, isn't it?
The CCCE proposes something; the Cons turn it into listeriosis.

On Oct 14, be sure you are not voting for these puddin' heads.

Cross-posted at Creekside

No more Mr. Nice Guy

Remind me again why Ken Dryden is not at least leader of the opposition, if not Prime Minister?

Then there’s the blue vest, the “Mr. Nice Guy” ads. Ad firms are paid millions to tell the story their client wants told. It’s much easier for them when it’s a new “product” or a new “person” launch. When the information they provide is the only information - when the public knows nothing else. The problem for Mr. Harper is that the public does know something else. They’ve been watching him for 2 ½ years and Stephen Harper, they know, may be lots of things, but he’s not a “nice guy.”

He’s not. Nice guys don’t cut literacy programs. Nice guys don’t cut funding to women’s groups, aboriginal groups, health and childcare and poverty and disability groups. Toying with them month after month, teasing them with silence and desperate hope. If, they say to themselves, if I don’t say anything, if I just go quiet, maybe I might get something. Please. Then crumbs, or nothing.

Nice guys don’t decide there’s only one voice in this country that matters. Not these voices of our communities. Not those of his own Cabinet or Caucus. Not voices in the arts who get their programs cut because they say things that might make us squirm. Not any voice competent and professional who disagrees - Linda Keen, Adrian Measner, Jean-Guy Fleury - who then feel the pulverizing weight of a Government machine come down on them just so they know: you don’t mess with “the vest”.

Arts groups, literacy and poverty and childcare groups - it’s the same story. Nice guys don’t make the weak weaker and the vulnerable more vulnerable.
Nice guys don’t act like there are Canadians and not-quite Canadians. Those who fit Mr. Harper’s understanding of how life is supposed to be lived, and those, Canadians too - single mothers, addicts, gays and lesbians - who don’t.

And nice guys don’t take someone else’s person, as he did Monsieur Dion, they don’t take their personality, their character, their life, what they’ve worked hard to build, what is decent and substantial and good. What they’ve earned. They don’t take that, twist it, stretch it, caricature and distort it. They don’t buy air time
and in front of millions of people, assassinate it. And pretend, ahh, that’s just politics.
Oh, and the puffin and the poop - oops, sorry. Didn’t mean it. Just like I don’t mean all the other just-as-new ads on the Conservatives’ website, that reach tens of thousands just like the Mr. Nice Guy ads on TV, that are just as abusive as the others in the pre-Mr. Nice Guy time.

If it quacks like a duck, put a blue vest on it, it’s still a duck.

Dryden goes on to say a bunch of other good things - mostly pointing out the small, petty nature of the Harper campaign and the need to address larger issues and provide a vision of a Canada that is greater than the sums of its parts, the notion that the election should be about more than the ability of the Conservatives to buy taxpayers off with their own money.

Seriously, remind me why the Liberals picked Dion and not Dryden, because I'd really like to know. I think Dryden would have mopped the floor with Harper by now. I wish I could vote for him. Say what you want about the track record of his party over the last ten years, Dryden's vision of A Big Canada (someone please find me a transcript of that speech!) is the closest to mine that has been enunciated by any politician since Trudeau.

cross posted from the Woodshed

End our national nightmare now

Dear fellow Canucks,
I know there is a distracting spectacle south of the border what with the minority elitist who was raised by a single mother on foodstamps running against the son-and-grandson-of-admirals, 11-house owning everyman for leader of the pack and all, and that whole global financial meltdown thing happenning, but we have an election going on too. I read the polls every day and I have to ask-- what the hell is wrong with you people?

Watching things in the Excited States over the last eight years, we've all seen what happens when you put a bunch of proudly ignorant neoconservative dingbats in charge for an extended period. Given Stephen Harper's propensity to crib from the Republican playbook, do you really think its a good idea to give him a majority? Really?

Aside from the apology for the Residential School tragedy, name one thing he's done right in the last two years, name one promise he's kept -- no, really, I'll wait, you go ahead and google around and tell me all about his successes with the nuclear safety watchdog, with the Arar affair, with ongoing, neverending war in Afghanistan, his environmental record --- and let's not forget about his insatiable hunger for the flesh of innocent children. The more you look, the more reasons you'll find to dump this chump.

The most recent scandal over bad meat has Tory fingerprints all over it, but the media seems more concerned about a few tasteless jokes by the minister in charge rather than his removal of inspectors from meat plants.

Recently he's been beating the usual conservative drum about "getting tough on crime" by sending 14-year-olds to prison for life, except in Quebec. I've addressed this kind of brainless pandering before. It's all part of the usual conservative obsession with talking tough and striking macho poses. A key element of right-wing politics is the notion of a "strong" leader who will "act decisively." Yes, well, we can see how that has worked out in the past for Germany, Italy and Spain and how it is working out now for the United States. Strength and resolution are all well and good, but if you make stupid, wrongheaded or just plain evil decisions and then stick to them in the face of all evidence, that doesn't make you a maverick or strong leader, it puts you somewhere on the spectrum between stubborn fool and diabolical meglomaniac.

I know Stephen Dion is not Pierre Trudeau and Jack Layton is no Tommy Douglas, but for the love of Lester Pearson, Maurice Richard and Laura Secord -- would you all just pick one of the two and stop Dead-Eyes from getting re-elected by dividing and conquering yet again?

(crossposted from the Woodshed)

Bring Chris Reid back!

From Fern Hill at Birth Pangs :

"In another coup for the blogosphere, a Conservative candidate who was outed as a right-wing. gun-totin’, fetish fetishizing nutbar by Big City Lib has withdrawn from the campaign.
But that’s not the end of the story.

Blob Blogging Wingnut and her unsavory pals want him back.

Chris Reid is pro-life. Proudly pro-life. I’ve seen him publicly defend unborn children in facebook debates.
But Suzanne, he’s gay…
So I’ll say a rosary for him.

So, there we have it. Nutopia priorities. Gays marginally tolerable if anti-choice.

We at Birth Pangs agree. Bring Chris Reid back! He’s the perfect example of the havoc the Conservatards will wreak if they get a majority.

UPPITY-DATE: From the You Can’t Make This Stuff Up Department: Some staunch homophobic nutbar Conservative supporters do not want him back. Seems he represents a ‘homo plot’ to torpedo the Reforma-Tories. "