Painting the town blue, Olympics edition

After whipping their base up into a regular santorum of outrage over government funding for swears and lefties and rock stars, the program that supported "Young People Fucking" is still intact, but $40M of moneys to promote Canadian arts and culture has been transferred to fund 2010 Vancouver Five Ring Circus sports events like the $24.5M torch relay.

Well you couldn't really see Steve cutting a ribbon to open YPF, could you?

Ottawa to shift arts funds to Olympic programs

"More than $40-million in savings the federal government will reap from controversial cuts to arts and culture funding will be redirected to the Vancouver Olympic torch relay and two other programs, exacerbating fears that replacement initiatives are not in the cards."

Well thanks, G&M but Kady and Jennifer at Runesmith and Beijing York are already all over this.
Unlike Josee Verner who has been busy explaining the Cons had merely cancelled inefficient programs in order to replace them with better ones. Yeah but not arts programs though, huh, Josee?
OK, so what's this arts and culture funding laundered mainly into sports gonna look like then?

Ottawa aims to put its stamp on 2010 Games
Vancouver opening ceremony must help Harper government 'achieve its domestic and international branding goals,' memo says

"The Harper government says the 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremony must reflect its agenda as the price of its $20-million commitment to the event, an internal government briefing memo [dated Feb 5 ] says.
"The Minister [Emerson] has recently confirmed with VANOC in writing that the Department of Canadian Heritage intends to invest $20-million toward the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games in order to ensure that the event adequately reflects the priorities of the Government and helps to achieve its domestic and international branding goals," the memo says.

Ensure...priorities of the Government?
Domestic and international branding goals?
Good lord, they're going to paint the town blue.

Toon and badly cobbled together post at Creekside.

As DFAIT crawls out of two years of darkness

Elmer and Gilles obviously shorted their respective progeny in the gene department. And the department that was acutely aware of that problem was Foreign Affairs.

David Emerson may be a political opportunist and one of the worst kinds of turncoats, but no one can fault him for his skills and organizational leadership ability.

"I think people are happy we have Emerson as a boss," said one Canadian diplomat. "He's a very seasoned individual." Another Canadian diplomat expressed relief that the department has finally gotten a capable minister after a string impressively underqualified ones. "There was nowhere to go but up," said the relieved DFAIT official. "This is a guy who, unlike any of his immediate predecessors, has experience as a leader, experience as the manager of a large organization and in making decisions in complex operating environments. "With his credentials, his background and his skill set, he's certainly looking better than anyone since [former Liberal foreign affairs minister Pierre] Pettigrew."

And to underscore just how bad Emerson's predecessors actually were ...

"This place has been so beat up that just a steady hand on the tiller will be welcomed," said one.

So, Harper, having made two astoundingly bad decisions and having treated one of the most important departments in government as little more than feet-on-the-desk plum-posting reward and a game of political optics, finally had to go into his largely incompetent caucus and pull out the only person with enough leadership, management and organizational ability to clean up the mess - a lapsed Liberal. (And one whose loyalty might well depend on how freely he can run his department without the PMO interfering.)

As Impolitical says:

Gotta say, it's just sad to read such commentary. The Foreign Affairs department deserves much better than Harper's given them to date.

Indeed. Imagine how different things might have been if Harper had chosen his Foreign Affairs minister on the basis of skill, knowledge and ability in the first place.

Too bad that he placed his own political fortunes ahead the requirements of the nation.

The Urge to Say "I Told 'Ya So . . . . "

While going through files in preparation for the move north in three weeks (Yay!!), I came across a letter to the editor I wrote which was published in the September 5th, 2005 edition of the Vancouver Sun.

The letter was written commenting on the then on-going turmoil over the US/Canada softwood lumber negotiations. Part of it reads:

If the Canadian government does not demand the return of the money collected for softwood lumber tariffs, the U.S. government will continue to violate agreements unless there are repercussions. The arrogance and heavy-handedness the Bush administration practices in international affairs embarrasses many intelligent Americans. The only things these people understand are money, power and most importantly, oil.

With that in mind, a heavy tax levied on Canadian oil exports would have a major impact and might get their attention. After, all, there are plenty of other countries that would be more than happy to buy Canadian petroleum products.

Why do I bring this up today? Well, also in the Vancouver Sun - today's edition - there is an article referencing the aforementioned softwood lumber deal. Guess what? Now the US looks to be "fine-tuning" the deal to the chagrin of Canadians.

U.S. ties Canadian lumber exporters in red tape

Congress passes bill that will make life even harder for ailing forestry industry.

Gordon Hamilton -Vancouver Sun - Wednesday, May 14, 2008


The U.S. Congress passed a bill Wednesday that could wrap Canadian lumber imports in red tape and has the potential to impose limits beyond the restrictions already in the softwood lumber agreement.

The new legislation, added onto an unrelated farm bill by politicians sympathetic to the U.S. lumber lobby, requires importers to certify that all taxes have been paid on the lumber they receive. The bill includes enforcement measures, including intrusive company audits, penalties and fines.

The bill can add cost, waste time and give the Americans "a political weapon" in the lumber trade that it didn't have before, B.C. Council of Forest Industries president John Allan said Wednesday.

_______________


Washington trade lawyer Elliott Feldman said the Americans have, for the first time in the 25-year-long dispute, written softwood lumber into their legislation. He described it as a flagrant breach of the 2006 softwood lumber agreement, under which Canada monitors exports and collects the appropriate tax.

_______________


International Trade Minister David Emerson was not commenting Monday on the U.S. bill, however, the Canadian embassy in Washington is writing the U.S. administration on the issue.

'Ya need to watch who you're kissin' up to, stevie. Many times it comes back to bite 'ya in the ass.

Why do I have this uncontrollable urge to call MP David Emerson and PM stevie harper and loudly scream: "I Told 'Ya So, You Morons!"

But I won't.

I'm much too refined to do such a thing.

Damn it . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moving to Vancouver)

Harper's equalization formula is stealing from somebody else's rice bowl.

Woman at Mile O has a couple of good posts on Flaherty's purchase of Quebec budget.

One of the articles she linked pointed to a very dangerous element in the new equalization formula worked out by Flaherty and Harper. The federal government is now in the property tax game. Not directly, but in the game nonetheless.

Now, when working out equalization payments, property values within a province will also be a part of the formula to determine levels of transfer. In short, what that means is that even if the economy of a province slumps, but property values take their time decreasing, those inflated housing and land prices will prevent a federal transfer from meeting the program requirements of the province.

David Emerson demonstrated that, not only is he a political piece of pond-scum, but he doesn't have a clue how property taxation actually works.

But Emerson said the new formula for sharing wealth with "have-not" provinces is based on firm principles.

"Everybody in the world knows that high real estate prices translate into de facto wealth, which is taxed by local governments amongst others. So I don't know why that wouldn't be part of the calculation."

WRONG!!!

That illuminates the unbelievable stupidity of David Emerson. Property taxes are based on the value of the property alright, but the levy is based on a mill rate. If the actual tax levy rose with the value of the property in British Columbia, nobody would be able to afford the taxes and local government would be swimming in surplus cash.

There is a process which clearly escapes the self-absorbed minds of David Emerson, Steve Harper and Flaherty. All property is assessed for value, local government sets a budget, the amount of money required is determined, the mill rate is established and taxes are paid based on both the property value and the mill rate.

[BC Premier Gordon] Campbell argued last week that the inclusion of property values would probably deny B.C., which won't receive equalization in 2007-08 thanks to a booming economy, future access the program during an economic slump.

"Anyone that says that your property values are in direct relation of your ability to pay doesn't frankly know a lot about what they're talking about," Campbell said last week.

"The fact of the matter is, property values in British Columbia went up by about 24 per cent last year. Peoples' ability to pay did not go up by 24 per cent last year."

I don't normally agree with much of what Gordon Campbell has to offer, but in this instance, he's dead on.

And now, you have the federal government, quite incorrectly, playing a tax game around property values.