We should have the same desire expressed by Sir John A MacDonald to Queen
Victoria, the Mother of Confederation, "to live under the sovereignty
of Your Majesty and your family for ever."
A Christian Monarchist Canadian Tory Blog
I attended an award dinner in honour of Ezra Levant. The guest speaker was Mark Steyn. It was a fund raiser for mt friend Joseph Ben Ami's Center for Policy Studies. It was an amazing evening. Lots of old friends including Fred Litwin, Kathy Shaidle, Debra Gyapong, Stephen Taylor, Arnie and too many more to list.
The event was sold out! Rob Snow from CFRA was the MC. I got to give the Loyal Toast to Our Sovereign Lady.
Mark Steyn was in ripping form. I particularly enjoy hearing him say that Ezra went Magna Carta on Jennifer Lynch's medievel ass. And of course that since Brigitte Bardot has been fined in France, Ezra is the Bridget Bardot of Canada.
More from Barrel Strength.
Congratulations to Ezra and Joseph. A stupendous evening.
richard warman is suing my friend Arnie over at BCF. Arnie is one of the good guys. warman uses the hrc section 13 very frequently. Please help my friend arnie by donating to his kitty.
This is your fight too, well except for the lawyer stuff anyway;)
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Fewer and fewer Americans accept the theory that humans are responsible for global warming, according to the latest Pew Poll. The number of believers across the U.S. population as a whole now stands at 34%.
My friend Tarek Fatah was in Montreal for the last few days promoting his new book, The Jew is Not my Enemy(buy the book!). He spoke yesterday at Beth Israel Beth Aaron Synagogue. It was great to see him again. He gave a wonderful speech. Most of his points you can here on the Current clip and the Tommy Schnurmacher Show Clip below. He is a brave principled man. It is with the help of those like Tarek Fatah, Raheel Raza and Salim Mansur that we will expose the jihadis and defeat them. I don't want to make enemies of all Muslims. I only want to defeat the jihadi who are apostates.
Listen here to Tarek on The Current.
Listen here to tarek on the Tommy Schnurmacher Show.
Steve Paikin had a segment on Maxime Bernier and the RLQ. It was quite interesting. My friend Gerry Nichols was on the panel. eric has a new piece in the Sun and there was a piece and an editorial in the Metropolitan. This weekend Joanne and Eric will be on Tout Le Monde en Parle> This is a very popular TV Show on Sunday nights in Quebec. The six co founders will sson meet again to discuss what to do next. I am sure we have some surprises coming!
I recently attended the nomination meeting for my friend Agop Evereklian for ierrefonds Dollard. Agop is an extremely hard working man. He was chief of staff for HM Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney. He has gathered a huge multiethnic coalition in the riding. It was a joyful evening with a young volunteer performance of song and dance.
The turn out was huge. We should donate, volunteer for and vote for Agop! He will be a breakthrough for our party in the greater Montreal area.
Lord Black has an interesting piece at NRO. I recently attended a luncheon of the Conservative Business network in Montreal with HM Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson (who I have know for many years). It was a lot of fun and there wer many of my friends in attendance. HM Minister made some remarks on our tough on crime agaenda, which I generally support. After his speech I asked HM Minister about decriminalizing small amounts of drugs and increasing rehab beds like in Portugal. I said that jailing addicts serves very little purpose. He agreed with that and said that there are already drug courts that divert users from jail to rehab. He also said HM Government would still go after grow ops and dealers. At this point , I actually support the Portuguese law and would decriminalize up to 6 days worth of all drugs, but encourage rehab!
There was a an increase of 600 percent in the federal drug-control budget, from $1.5 billion to $18 billion, between 1981 and 2002, and it is almost certainly now over $25 billion, and yet cannabis as an industry is an almost perfect illustration of the unstoppable force of supply-side economics. Between 1990 and 2007, there was a 420 percent increase in cannabis seizures by drug-control authorities, to about 140,000 tons; a 150 percent increase in annual cannabis-related arrests, to about 900,000 people; a 145 percent increase in average potency of seized cannabis (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol content); and a 58 percent decline, inflation-adjusted, in the retail price of cannabis throughout the United States.
We have had massive coverage of our Oct 23,2010 conference in Quebec City. We have started many debates and have annoyed and frightened many on the left. We have had quite a bit of coverage outside of Quebec as well.
My friend Marc Navarro-Genie at the Frontier Institute has written about us in the Epoch Times.
The debate has started. Which is excellent news for Quebec and all of Canada. All Quebec political parties need to pay attention!
The party ignored his warning and seemed to forget it as soon as Bouchard left office. Now the province faces the rising frustrations of a new generation saddled with paying for the old grocery bill.
About 500 people gathered this past weekend in Quebec City to re-establish “courage and vigor” through a new political movement, Reseau Liberte-Quebec (RLQ, Freedom-Quebec Network). If successful, this movement could transform the Canadian federation.
Those prime ministers we consider great - John A. Macdonald, Wilfrid Laurier, Mackenzie King, Pierre Trudeau - all created, shaped or preserved the country, against great odds. The most reviled - Robert Borden and Brian Mulroney - left the country dangerously split.
Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin, in his well-received book, Harperland: The Politics of Control, displays other priorities. None of its 19 chapters explores Stephen Harper's record on national unity. The index runs from "abortion" to "Youth for Christ" - but "national unity" goes missing.
Instead, Martin focused on Harper's psychology, his need to control, his secretiveness, his duplicity, his ruthlessness, his paranoia - what Martin calls "the dark, vindictive side of his character, a side that at times he could not subdue and that on several occasions, threatened to bring him down."
The book is not a biography, presenting Harper whole. Martin develops a thesis, identified in the book's subtitle: The Politics of Control. We are offered a dramatic portrait of Harper's psyche at war with itself, between its bright side and its shady side. The meticulous accumulation of evidence accentuates the dark side. The leitmotif explaining Harper's major decisions and actions since he became prime minister is his compulsive need to control.
glen murray has shown himself to be not very clever and a bigot by his latest shenaningans. This is the quality of cabinet in mcliar's government. It is time to defeat dalton and his incompetents. glen murray's attacks on conservatives show unable to debate ideas. Instead he just shows his own bugotry.
In an apparent response to an anti-gay ad targeting mayoral candidate George Smitherman broadcast on Tamil radio last weekend, Glenn Murray, Ontario’s Research and Innovation Minister and former mayor of Winnipeg, tweeted: “If u vote Ford u r voting for bigotry.”
He then goes on to criticize the provincial Opposition leader and the Prime Minister: “Ford, Hudak and Harper use fear tactics against Tamils and gay men. I am proud of the Tamil and gay Canadians I represent.”
The openly gay Mr. Murray also retweeted a message from another Twitter account that said: “ford, hudak and harper — the trifecta of republican-style, right wing ignorance and bigotry.”
Mr. Ford, who spent his first day as mayor-elect coaching football at Don Bosco Secondary School, responded: “Those pathetic comments aren’t worth a response.”
During Question Period at Queen’s Park on Tuesday, Mr. Hudak called on Premier Dalton McGuinty to order Mr. Murray to make an unconditional apology.
“The accusations of the Minister of Innovation and Research were offensive, beneath the role of a Cabinet minister,” Mr. Hudak said. “The minister had the opportunity to deliberate on the words he chose; he had the opportunity to deliberate whether the message was appropriate.”
More power to the grassroots! I am quite happy that those who were elected and were responsible for persecuting my friends the Jaworskis, are now gone!
Most importantly for us, Ward 3 candidate Corinna Traill — the most vocal supporter of the Liberty Summer Seminar, who promised to propose a motion specifically addressing the Seminar — won with an impressive margin of victory. With all of the polls now reporting, Corinna Traill won a decided victory over her nearest competitor 1,694 to 1,012.
Second most important is the fact that Jim Abernethy, who suggested that my mom and dad could “beg” for forgiveness (upsetting not just us, but popular Clarington blogger Marven Whidden), was defeated by Adrian Foster. In fact, Abernethy nearly came in third, edging out Paul Adams by less than 400 votes.
My friend and RLQ conferencier writes about the Quebec Freedom network in the NP. She was very impressed with ADQ leader Gerard Deltell. We having been getting a lot of coverage in Quebec and the ROC.
The meeting inspired quite a reaction from those who, to put it politely, don’t share their views. The day before, local union leaders held a press conference to denounce the RLQ. Saturday morning, someone dumped a load of manure on the steps of the hotel. By lunchtime, twenty-odd protesters had convened on the opposite street corner, chanting socialist slogans. The women’s bathroom was defaced with the words, “RLQ=fascism.”
My friend John Williamson is now the Tory Nominee in the riding of New Brunswick Southwest. Congratulations John! John is a brilliant and thoughtful man. He has a great sense of humour. He is very hardworking. He has been an editorial writer from the National Post. His family has lived in New Brunswick for many generations. He studied at my Alma Mater McGill University. He has an MA from the London School of Economics. He has been National Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and has been Head of Communications for HM PM Stephen Harper.
I urge everyone to volunteer , donate and vote for John. He will be an excellent MP.
It was a decisive, first-ballot win for Williamson, who took 58.9 per cent of the vote. The final tally was Williamson, 700 votes, Wilson, 258 votes, Sparks, 122 votes, and Quartermain 108 votes.
Williamson, 40, was the first candidate to declare in the race to succeed long-time MP and former federal cabinet minister Greg Thompson.
Thompson announced his decision to retire from public life in January. He is still the MP and will remain so until the next federal election, expected to be held sometime within the next 12 months.
"I want to ensure that the riding has strong representation in Ottawa," Williamson recently told the Telegraph-Journal.
"I know how the federal government operates, and I think I can get things done here. I think I could give the citizens of New Brunswick Southwest the strong voice it deserves in our nation's capital. Greg Thompson has big shoes to fill, but I do think my experience would lend itself to this challenge."
The sprawling riding is scattered over 10,000 square kilometres. It stretches from Dumfries in York, and Coles Island in Queens, to St. Stephen, St. Andrews and the Fundy Islands in Charlotte County.
its power generation and distribution. That is an excellent idea. Privatizing Hydro Quebec and the other state monopoly power companies has always appealed to me.
President Goodluck Jonathan, who early next year will stand in an election that could split his party and spark violent protests, has asked investors to participate in a grandiose privatisation programme meant to raise $35 billion over ten years. He wants to flog state power-generation and distribution companies, and put the grid under private management.
The scheme may be his—and his country’s—best hope of salvation from chronic power cuts. At a prayer meeting on October 4th Mr Jonathan was reading a biblical passage in front of many of the country’s elite when the grid failed and his microphone cut out. He walked off in a huff.
Ordinary Nigerians are angry too. The power supply, they say, is “epileptic”. Nigeria is a big oil exporter, but its people get only a few hours of electricity a day. The entire population–around 150m–is said to use as much grid power as the area around Narita airport in Tokyo. South Africans consume 55 times more energy per head, and Americans 100 times more.
I think npr has shot itself in the foot. Their stations depend on donations to survive. There has been condemnation from virtually everyone on this truly foolish move. npr has shown itself to be intolerant and very left wing. Juan Williams is a liberal. I watch him on Fox News Sunday. he often says things that I disagree with. I am glad he has a great paying new contract with Fox. liberal media outlets are afraid of conservative voices and now it seems of any voice that defies leftisr orthodoxy. I have given money to to Vermont Public Radio and Television. I enjoy watching BritComs like Keeping Up Appearances on the Vermont Public television. I like the idea of user pay for "public television and radio"( the cbc should have that funding model) I will stop my support and will tell them exactly why.
Really, should anyone be surprised by National Public Radio’s firing of analyst Juan Williams? Liberals and leftists are far and away the most intolerant people in public debate. As my friend and fellow National Post columnist, David Frum, likes to say, liberals are all in favour of free speech and a diversity of opinion until they encounter views that differ from their own. Then they are shocked to find people who actually disagree with them and their first reaction is to try to silence their critics.
In the case of Williams, a long-time National Public Radio (NPR) personality, there are three other factors at play: the political correctness inherent in every left-of-centre media outlet, pressure from Muslim special interest groups, and Williams’ sideline employment (now full-time employment) with Fox News. These three – coupled with built-in liberal intolerance – created the perfect mix that lead to Williams’ sacking.
Yesterday was the Quebec Freedom Network's first event. It 3as a smashing success. We had a lot of coverage. we had close to 500 people in attendance. It was pretty much standing room only. We had protesters from the alternative socialist ( about 15 of them). We were even denounced in le devoir.
The speeches were great. Ezra was amazing. He had 3 standing ovations.
Jeff Fillion's talk here.
Listen to Frederic Tetu's speech here.
Listen to Maxime's great speech here.
Gerard Deltell's( Leader of the ADQ) amazing and passionate speech here.
Listen to Eric Duhaime here.
All our speakers Ian, Joannne, Adam, Tasha, Jacques Brassard and all of the others were amazing. For me Tetu, Bernier and Deltell were the best.
SRC( French cbc) did a special on us before our event.
I disagree that iffy and the grits have any momentum, but Chantal Hebert sees a loss in Vaughn as a grave problem for iffy and the grits. The last line of her column should give power hungry grit MPs pause.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff will face his first real electoral test in an upcoming byelection in Vaughan, Ont., a riding long held by the Liberals. (Adrian Wyld / CP)
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff will face his first real electoral test in an upcoming byelection in Vaughan, Ont., a riding long held by the Liberals. (Adrian Wyld / CP)
The federal Liberal party has been up and down in the polls since Michael Ignatieff became its leader almost two years ago, but he still has to pass his first real electoral test.
That test is expected to be upon the Liberal leader shortly and if the Conservatives can help it, it will kill Ignatieff’s already modest momentum in the bud.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is within days of calling a series of byelections to fill vacant seats in Manitoba and Ontario, including one in the Greater Toronto Area riding of Vaughan.
Ignatieff’s first bite at the election apple last fall was a bitter experience. His party placed a distant third in four ridings spread right across Canada. The saving grace for the rookie leader was that it had been decades since the Liberals had held any of the seats then at play.
The upcoming vote in Vaughan is different. When Maurizio Bevilacqua resigned his seat to run for mayor in late August, he had held the riding since the 1988 free-trade election.
I heard President Klaus and met him a few years ago at one of the climate realist conferences. Having lived through communist regimes, he really understands environmentostalinism. Read the whole speech here.
It is not a new doctrine. It has existed under various headings and in various forms and manifestations for centuries, always based on the idea that the starting point of our thinking should be the Earth, the planet or nature, not man or mankind. It has always been accompanied by the plan that we have to come back to the original state of the Earth, unspoiled by us, humans. The adherents of this doctrine have always considered us, the people, a foreign element. They forget that it doesn’t make sense to speak about the world without people because there would be no one to speak. If we take the reasoning of the environmentalists seriously, we find that theirs is an anti-human ideology.
To reduce the interpretation of the causality of all kinds of climate changes and of global warming to one variable, CO2, or to a small proportion of one variable — human-induced CO2 — is impossible to accept. Elementary rationality and my decades-long experience with econometric modelling and statistical testing of scientific hypotheses tell me that it is impossible to make strong conclusions based on mere correlation of two (or more) time series.
Thanks to BCF. This video explains many of my Toronto Municipal election picks. Time to take out the garbage ( time to contract out garbage collection services as well).
I recently saw this unusual play at CanStage. Apparently I should expect more of this with the new artistic director. The acting was good, but I didn't like this play. Soulpepper is looking better and better.
A spokesman said her condition was not serious but was better treated in hospital than at home. Her son, Mark, said the admission was "a precautionary measure". She is expected to leave hospital within days.
Lady Thatcher had to pull out of a party held at Number 10 Downing Street for her birthday last last week after falling ill with suspected flu.
The 85-year-old sent a message to David Cameron, who hosted 150 guests in her honour last Thursday, saying: “On this particular occasion I have had to accept that the Lady is not for returning. Please, please enjoy yourselves.”
She is understood not to have fully recovered from last week's illness. Aides called in a doctor to assess her condition this afternoon and she was taken from her home to hospital shortly afterwards.
Mr Cameron said her wished her a "speedy recovery".
Susan's new album is sellinglike hotcakes! She was on Oprah. As the only brown kid in elementary school with a high pitched voice and as a hyper achieving nerd. I know about being bullied. It got much better in high school.
I really hope she will come to sing in Canada soon!
This Toronto municipal election has been quite odd. I am fairly Rob Ford will be Toronto's mayor inspit of the open electioneering of the red star and the Toronto elite. Articles like this can only help. It's not worth talking about the loser, bully, ehealth denying slitherman. God help Toronto if he is elected.
There are lots of great candidates for Toronto Council and school boards like in Ward 10, popular, current TDSB Trustee (York Centre) James Pasternak is now running for council . He is running with Robin Shugar, who he has endorsed to replace him in his current position. Both are strong advocates for their community and are looking to stop the waste at City Hall.
The experienced and hard working Rob Davis deserves to win in Ward 15. I spoke to Davis on CFRB recently and he says he shares many of Rob Ford's ideas and can work with Rob if both are elected.
Then's there's lefty sandra bussin, who will be defeated by Mary-Margaret McMahon who now has the backing of Martin Gladstone (who has dropped out of the race) for Ward 32.
Liz West is a great candidate in Ward 30. She is in a very tough race in Jack Layton territory to unseat unpopular former communist paula fletcher in Riverdales ward 30. West is a TV host by profession and strong fiscal conservative. The Toronto Sun has ward 30 pegged as a race to watch. West is reminicent of a young Margaret Thatcher. The third place candidate , Andrew James, just dropped out of the race and has endorsed West as residents are uniting to get rid of Fletcher.
It is as important that Davis, Pasternak, Shugar, Matlow, West, McMahon, Minnan-Wong, and West be elected as it is for Rob Ford to be elected. It is time to rid Toronto council of the ndp spendthrifts!!
Multiculturalism is not just a recognition that different groups have different cultures. We all knew that, long before multiculturalism became a cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about "diversity," without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits.
In Germany, as in other countries in Europe, welcoming millions of foreign workers who insist on remaining foreign has created problems so obvious that only the intelligentsia could fail to see them. It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious.
"We kidded ourselves for a while," Chancellor Merkel said, but now it was clear that the attempt to build a society where people of very different languages and cultures could "live side-by-side" and "enjoy each other" has "failed, utterly failed."
This is not a lesson for Germany alone. In countries around the world, and over the centuries, peoples with jarring differences in language, cultures and values have been a major problem and, too often, sources of major disasters for the societies in which they co-exist.
The MLI ( headed by my friend Brian Lee Crowley) has released about rdicalization behind bars. This is a serious problem in other countries and we should discuss it , before it is a huge problem here. It is good that some Canadians understand the jihadi threat.
Have you seen the new Tory website? As someone who has contributed many thousands of dollars to the Tory party, I don't like it. It seems old fashioned and not very compelling. If we want to attract more young people to our party we need to make the web more of a priority. This website is certainly not an indication that we are putting much emphasis on the web. I appreciate the hard done to put these things together, but we should probably bring in outside help, to make our presence on the web far more compelling. I dare say we have many volunteers whose imput could improve the situation. This wasn't all that clever either. I guess all I can do right now is sigh ( and email people).....
Maxime Bernier was on Coulisses de Pouvoir on SRC. He talks about his Toronto Speech and of course about the Quebec Freedom Network. Even the globe is congratulating Maxime.
It is a great honour for me to be invited to speak here today, at such a prestigious venue.
When I told a friend I was coming here, he said: Oh, this is the club of the Toronto Tory establishment. And I thought: Wow! They still have a Conservative establishment in Toronto?
In Montreal, we certainly have a very old Liberal establishment, and a strong PQ establishment. But the Conservative establishment must have disappeared about 100 years ago. Mind you, we don’t have an NDP establishment either, so I guess that’s one plus for Montreal!
In any case, it is very fitting that this club has existed since 1882 and counts Sir John A. Macdonald as one of its founding members, since my talk will take us back to the Fathers of Confederation. So I hope I am not going to offend anyone by starting with a quote from a political opponent of Sir. John A.
Wilfrid Laurier was another of our greatest prime ministers. He was a classical liberal, not a liberal in the modern sense. He was a supporter of individual freedom, free trade and free markets. I think if he were alive today, he would probably be a Conservative!
In a speech before the Quebec Legislative Assembly in 1871, Laurier said:
If the federal system is to avoid becoming a hollow concept, if it is to produce the results called for, the legislatures must be independent, not just in the law, but also in fact. The local legislature must especially be completely sheltered from control by the federal legislature.
If in any way the federal legislature exercises the slightest control over the local legislature, then the reality is no longer a federal union, but rather a legislative union in federal form.
Now, it’s obvious that what Laurier feared has unfortunately come true. Ottawa exercises a lot more than “the slightest control” over local legislatures. The federal government today intervenes massively in provincial jurisdictions, and in particular in health and education, two areas where it has no constitutional legitimacy whatsoever.
This is not what the Fathers of Confederation had intended. The objective of the 1867 Act was not to subordinate provincial governments to a central authority. But rather to have sovereign provinces within the limits of their powers, dealing with local matters that directly affected citizens; and a sovereign federal government within the limits of its own powers, dealing with matters of general national interest.
The Privy Council in London, Canada’s highest court of appeal at the time, indicated in 1937 that these were “water-tight compartments,” essential to Canada’s original structure as a federal state.
During the 20th century however, this fundamental principle was gradually pushed to the wayside. That century witnessed the rise of communism and fascism, two totalitarian collectivist ideologies. In a milder form, collectivism was also a very fashionable idea in democratic countries. We saw everywhere the growth of the state, the rise of central planning, of command-and-control Keynesianism and of government interventionism. No advanced country escaped this trend.
In Canada, government activism grew both in Ottawa and in the provincial capitals. Predictably, federal planners decided that to make central planning more efficient, Ottawa had to have its say on all kinds of social issues, despite the fact that these matters were the responsibility of the provinces in our Constitution.
At first, it was done in the proper manner – by amending the Constitution. This is why after the Privy Council ruling in 1937 which said that Ottawa had no authority to establish an unemployment insurance program, the BNA Act was amended to allow it. In 1951, old age pensions were established in the same way.
However, several other programs, from family allowances to grants to universities and hospital insurance were set up which clearly did not respect the constitutional division of powers. Some of these programs are direct transfers to individuals and tax measures. While others, such as the health and social transfer programs, are money sent by Ottawa to the provinces, to the tune of nearly 40 billion dollars today.
This intrusion into provincial jurisdiction was accomplished by the so-called federal spending power.
No constitutional provision to legitimize this federal spending power was ever adopted. The Supreme Court of Canada has never explicitly recognized this power either. The federal government was certainly aware that the power to spend in areas of provincial jurisdiction does not exist in the Constitution, because it has twice attempted to constitutionalize it. First in 1987, in the Meech Lake Accord, and again, in 1992, in the Charlottetown Agreement. Both these attempts failed.
These constitutional amendments would have left intact the existing intrusions. And they would have allowed new federal programs in areas of provincial jurisdiction to be set up if a majority of the provinces consented to it, with an opting- out clause providing compensation only if a province offered a similar program.
This however, would still be a clear violation of the intent of the Fathers of Confederation and of the basic principles of our federal system.
I believe that our goal should not be to enshrine the current violations of the Constitution, nor to set up a process that would allow further federal encroachment into provincial jurisdictions. We should be going much further than that.
Why not take a principled stance? Isn’t this what we Conservatives should be doing when confronted with such matters?
Clearly, our goal should be to bring back the balanced federalism envisioned by the Founders. It should be to restore our federal union, as Wilfrid Laurier and most people understood it back then.
This would be done by putting an end to all federal intrusion into areas of provincial jurisdiction. Instead of sending money to the provinces, Ottawa would cut its taxes and let them use the fiscal room that has been vacated. Such a transfer of tax points to the provinces would allow them to fully assume their responsibilities, without federal control.
This proposal is in no way original of course. It has been the position defended by successive Quebec governments for several decades, regardless of the political status they favoured for Quebec.
More recently, two of the greatest conservative statesmen of our generation, Preston Manning and Mike Harris, made the same proposal in their series Canada Strong and Free, published by the Fraser Institute and the Montreal Economic Institute. The Fraser Institute also published other studies in recent years on this topic. If we want to solve this problem once and for all, we have to keep putting this issue on the agenda and discussing it.
As we saw two months ago during the premiers’ meeting in Winnipeg, the provinces have already started to pressure Ottawa to increase health transfers when the ten-year health agreement expires in 2014. If transfers do not increase as fast as provinces want them to, you can be sure that the debate over the fiscal imbalance will be back in the news three years from now.
This is a recipe for permanent discord. The provinces act like special interest groups who would rather get money from the central government than increase their own taxes. But at the end of the day, the money comes from the pocket of the same taxpayer.
It also guarantees confusion and a lack of accountability. Despite the existence of the Canada Health Act, it is provincial governments that are mainly responsible for managing the health care system. But the debate over federal funding makes it difficult for the average citizen to see who is responsible for what.
Why do we have waiting lines for surgery, overcrowded emergency rooms and not enough family doctors? Is it because of bad provincial management or because of insufficient federal funding? Each level of government can blame the other to score political points.
There would no longer be any ambiguity if each province stopped depending on federal transfers and raised the amount of money necessary to manage its own programs.
Freed from federal conditions and unable to shift the blame to another government, provinces would also be more inclined to experiment. Especially in finding better ways to deliver health care services.
The genius of federalism is that we can try more than one type of solution to solve public policy problems. If one province finds a better way, others will copy its good policy. It allows provinces to deal with their own specific challenges and needs. It’s also easier to find out what doesn’t work. Just like in a free market, ideas compete with each other and the best ones emerge in the competition.
On the contrary, a one-size-fits-all solution imposed on everyone from the centre precludes experimentation, kills innovation and makes it awfully difficult to extricate oneself from failed policies.
Now, it’s obvious that today’s central planners, those who believe in top-down decision-making by the central government, will not like what I am saying.
Our Liberal opponents constantly come up with new ideas to intrude on provincial matters. Not content with the existing intrusions, they would like a national childcare program, a national pharmacare program, a national home-care program, and what have you! They fall for anything big, centralized, bureaucratic and costly.
As Conservatives, on the contrary, we should be defending the principle of subsidiarity, which is inherent in our Constitution.
This means that issues should be handled by the smallest or lowest-level competent authority, the one closest to the people. This way, each province, each region, each community, develops according to its citizens’ preferences. It allows unique or different particularities to be expressed. And it prevents conflicts.
Also, the central government would probably be more efficient at managing its own important files if it stopped meddling into provincial affairs.
All these arguments are not only relevant for Quebecers, but for all Canadians. As a federalist Quebecer though, I am acutely aware of this issue, for obvious reasons.
For half a century, Quebecers have been offered two extreme choices: a centralized type of federalism or separation from the rest of Canada. None of these extremes have the support of a majority of Quebecers.
In fact, it has been a truism for over a generation that there is only one constitutional position that could rally a large majority of Quebecers: a more autonomous Quebec within a united Canada. Essentially, what they want is our country as it should be if we simply followed the constitutional arrangement that was agreed to in 1867. I firmly believe that a significant proportion of Canadians from other provinces could also support this idea.
We don’t need to reopen our Constitution. We don’t need to change our Constitution. What we need is to restore our Constitution.
I am convinced that if what I am proposing here were implemented, we would at once remove one of the most potent arguments in favour of separation. Separatists have been pointing for decades at federal intrusions in provincial matters as proof that Quebec’s autonomy was threatened and that federalism could not be reformed.
Nationalism can be a destructive force when it promotes intolerance and division. But it can also be a force for good, when it seeks to defend local autonomy against the homogenizing forces of larger entities.
Without Quebec nationalism acting as a counterweight, Canada would very likely be an even more centralized federation today. It would have an even bigger, more wasteful and unresponsive bureaucracy, trying to micromanage local issues across this huge country from offices in Ottawa.
Ending the federal spending power, eliminating the federal programs that violate the division of powers, and transferring tax points to the provinces would be the right thing to do from several perspectives.
First, it would be the constitutional thing to do. A Constitution is not meant to be a flexible arrangement which evolves from one decade to another depending on political expediency. When we tolerate violations to the Constitution, the entire moral foundation of our political system is shaken to its core.
Second, it would be the federalist thing to do. Solving this problem would send a powerful message to Quebecers and strongly reinforce support for Canadian unity in that province. Finally, it would be the Conservative thing to do. We Conservatives believe not in big, interventionist, centralized government. But in small and limited government, government as close to the people as possible.
For all these reasons, I believe this proposal should be brought back to the forefront of our political debates. And stay there until we’ve managed to implement it. If we succeed, we will have restored our federal union to its former greatness, and contributed to making the 21st century what Laurier would have called the Canadian century.
I see the Segal Center production of A View from the the Bridge by Arthur Miller. miller wrote the play as a reply to Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront. The play is a modern Greek tragedy with a little less death.
The acting was superb. The sets and lighting amazing. A truly excellent production. I urge you to see this production!. Good review and a bad one.
But the 49-year-old native of Blackburn, a village in West Lothian, Scotland would never have dreamed the dream of singing on the international stage, if her mother had agreed to abort her on the advice of doctors.
In her autobiography, The Woman I Was Born To Be, Boyle reveals that doctors recommended a “termination” to Bridget Boyle, who already was a mother of eight children, because they feared physical complications.
Boyle reveals that her mother rejected this advice as “unthinkable” since she was a “devout Catholic.”
Susan Boyle Sings for the Pope
I was saddened to hear of the death of Barbara Billingsly. She played the wonderful mom on Leave it to Beaver. She will be missed by her real family and her TV family. R.I.P.
Tony Dow released the following statement in reaction to Barbara’s passing away “America’s favorite mother is now gone. I feel very fortunate to have been her ‘son. We were wonderful friends and I will miss her very much. My deepest sympathies to her sons, Glenn and Drew, and her entire family,” said Tony Dow.Earlier today, Jerry Mathers, who played Wally’s brother, “The Beaver”, also spoke out about how saddened he was that Barbara was gone.Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers will always remember their on-screen mother and friend and it is great to see how closely knit a television cast for a TV show are. Dow and Mathers were both grieved and remembered Billingsley in good words and thoughts.
Good for Chancellor Merkel for stating the obvious. Multiculturalism is a failure in Canada as well. It creates ethnic ghettoes and separates us from each other. It is toxic.
She said the so-called "multikulti" concept - where people would "live side-by-side" happily - did not work, and immigrants needed to do more to integrate - including learning German.
The comments come amid rising anti-immigration feeling in Germany.
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A recent survey suggested more than 30% of people believed the country was "overrun by foreigners".
The study - by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think-tank - also showed that roughly the same number thought that some 16 million of Germany's immigrants or people with foreign origins had come to the country for its social benefits.
I don't think he will. This nyt interview has some mea culpas, but he is still proud of his socialist record. It looks like there will be 55 extra house seats and 8-10 new GOP Senators. bo will forced to reconsider his policies.
I recently attended a Tory fundraiser in the riding of Jeanne Le Ber. We had a big contingent of Quebec Tory senators including Senator Angus, Senator Brazeau, Senator Seidman and Senator Housakos. HM Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice was also in attendance. It was great to see many friends like Rodolphe Husny,Tory candidate in Outremont and Agop Evereklian, Tory candidate in Dollard Pierrefonds. Agreat evening.
Remember kyoto was defeated under (a dem president) 95-0 in the senate of the United States. It was a fraud then and a fraud now. Fortunately it doesn't look like the fraud will be extended in cancun.
So kyoto basically transfered jobs and C)2 production to poorer countries. There is net increase in CO2 with this strategy. So even if the chicken littles believe in their fraud, this is not helping lower CO2. The truth is the chicken littles want to impoverish the west and reduce population. The chicken littles are anti human.
But a couple of recent studies now seem to show that Kyoto was as big a fraud as the most militant enviro-skeptics ever suspected. And it looks as if the 95 American senators were 100 percent right: the much heralded Protocol was a singularly stupid piece of counterproductive social engineering that encouraged the migration of good jobs to China and other low wage countries — without helping the environment at all.
The left leaning Guardian newspaper in Britain let the cat out of the bag yesterday, reporting that while the EU’s emission of CO2 declined by 17% between 1990 and 2010, this apparent progress was bogus. If you add up the CO2 released by the goods and services Europeans consumed, as opposed to the CO2 thrown off by the goods and services they produced, the EU was responsible for 40% more CO2 in 2010 than in 1990. The EU, as the Guardian puts it, has been outsourcing pollution — and jobs — rather than cutting back on greenhouse gasses.
I don't always agree with Geert Wilders. ( Banning a book is dunb) I do support his free speech
rights. He has been found not guilty on the specious charges laid against him.
The public prosecution department on Friday afternoon stated that Geert Wilders is not guilty of discriminating against Muslims. Earlier on Friday it announced he should also be found not guilty of inciting hatred.
Prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman reached their conclusions after a careful reading of interviews with and articles by the anti-Islam politician and a viewing of his anti-Koran film Fitna.
They said comments about banning the Koran can be discriminatory, but because Wilders wants to pursue a ban on democratic lines, there is no question of incitement to discrimination 'as laid down in law'.
On the comparison of the Koran with Mein Kampf, the prosecutors said the comparison was 'crude but that did not make it punishable
Another guilty khadr that the grits are trying to free from prison. The grits ( pseudo chretien) helped free the terrorist father and now they are desperately trying to free the terrorist son. The grits want a pardon for the double murderer in Montana. Notice a pattern?
I have no idea if Omar Khadr is guilty or not. I suspect most Canadians are in the same boat.
We know he came from a family devoted to terror. We know his father was a proud associate of Osama bin Laden and did his best to raise his sons (women don’t count in that world, unless they can be talked into blowing themselves up) to reflect his hatred of all things democratic and Western.
I haven't written very much about the loss of the un, because frankly I don't care. Sucking up to tyrants to get votes makes me ill. I am disappointed in the United States, but it just confirms that bo wants to offend all of his allies. Rex has a good piece on this non stiry.
No self-respecting country will feel “embarrassment” from “losing” such a vote. You can only feel real embarrassment if you’ve been declined or rebuked by someone or some institution you respect. Not getting Hugo Chavez’s support? Not winning over China, which has a Nobel Peace Prize winner in its gulag? Not winning over Iran, as it threatens the monstrous stoning, which it may commute to a “merciful” hanging, of a woman for having sex? Not winning over Libya, Sudan or Saudi Arabia? How is any of that an embarrassment?
