At Home in Hespeler

Occasionally I join in on the fun over at the Cambridge Citizen. Here’s my latest:

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During elections, parties struggle to get name candidates, people who have had previous success and can use their name to help the cause along. Based solely on their past, these star candidates often get responsibilities beyond what a rookie politico normally would. Liberal MP Ken Dryden and Conservative MP Julian Fantino are both examples of this phenomena.

Here in Cambridge, the Liberals have stepped up and nominated Queen guitarist – and, not unimportantly, Doctor of Astrophysics – Bryan May. This is a brilliant choice which, frankly, the Liberals don’t seem to be capitalizing on.

On the campaign trail Michael Ignatieff could come out to the faithful giving him the We Will Rock You clap, and Bryan May could step up and play the solo. That would pump up the crowd.

Ignatieff, instead of quoting Bob Dylan, should be sprinkling Queen quotes through his speeches:

Stephen Harper says he is for families.

I’m here to tell you, if he gets the majority he craves, he will tie your mother down, tie your mother down, lock your daddy outdoors.

That‘s not good for families.

Staying with the same song, instead of his tired speech about “that guy being in contempt of the house,” how good would Ignatieff sound if he said:

You’re such a dirty louse go get outa’ my house’.

When Prime Minister Harper attacked during the debate, Mr. Ignatieff could have sung back:

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single little civil word from those guys… (waves his arm n the general direction of Stephen Harper)

Take that American Canadian idol.

Now, if I can improve Michael Ignatieff’s speeches and debate performance markedly, imagine what professional speech writers putting actual effort into the project could come up with.

After Bryan May wins the riding of Cambridge – and the Doctor of Astrophysics will undoubtedly beat the Chiropractor because he is, after all, a much better guitar player – think of the benefit to Canadian’s as a whole. In an effort to reach across the aisle and work with the other parties, Bryan May could play guitar when Stephen Harper gets the itch to gig.

This has the double benefit of improving the band – because Bryan May is one of the best half-dozen guitar players in the world, and he’s a waaaaay better singer than Stephen Harper – and improving relations between the two parties.

In fact, I think other parties should join the trend a create a truly great Commons House Band. The NDP for instance could get Police drummer Stuart Copeland to run in Regina. This would have the double advantage of giving the NDP a strong criminal justice spokesman. The Bloc could put up Who bassist Jean Entwistle in Mink DeVille, which is, I believe, part of the townships. The Green Party could confuse the hell out of everybody and nominate Mama Let Him Play singer and guitarist Gilles Doucette in Vancouver. With a band like that, The House would certainly be rockin’.

Excuse me, the phone is ringing…

Hello?… Yes… Uh-huh… not the same guy… Queen guitarist spells his name with an I… M-a-i?…

Oh, B-r-i-a-n… Yes, as my name is Brian with an i, I suppose I should have noticed that… Does this mean Bryce Springsteen won’t be running for mayor?

election '11 Brian May, Bryan May, Cambridge Citizen, Cambridge Ontario, Liberal Party, Queen

Michael Ignatieff said it, Justin Trudeau sent an email approving of it, Bryan May, my Liberal Party candidate, tweeted it:

If you get the grades, you get to go.

"One! One-Thousand Dollars a year"

The Canadian Learning Passport is the Liberals policy announcement of the day: $4,000 tax free over four years to every high school student who pursues post secondary education, $6,000 for low income earners. That’s $1B a year in students pockets to spend on tuition.

Of course, it’s only $1,000 net if tuition fees don’t increase. Education being a provincial responsibility, the federal government have no say whatsoever on tuition fees. They can throw money at schools, students and books, but they cannot control the cost side of the structure. No problem, I hear you Liberalizing, we’ll work with the provinces.

Yea, well, about that. Here’s the problem. Premier Dad, Dalton McGuinty, has 68% of his budget goes to health and education spending. Of a $113B budget, $77.4B disappears in those two line items. Next up is debt financing (interest on the debt) at $10.3B. There’s no money in the kitty.

Now your Dalton and the Feds just came up with $200M to throw into one of your big 2, your education system. Do you let the kids keep it? Or do you pull $200M from the budgets of the post secondary institutions and let them make it up in tuition?

That’s the problem The Canadian Learning Passport policy has. It will ultimately be, have to be, an indirect transfer payment to the provinces. Once it rolls out, tuition fees will likely go up across the country. It won’t be the students who benefit, or their parents, it will be the schools and the provincial treasuries.

The real problem with education is supply and demand – especially in university. Too many students are going, many who really don’t belong – creating huge demand for the few spaces. That drives the price of those spaces up.

At the other end, of course, too many kids are running around with degrees, to the point where car factories hire university graduates to work on the lines – and those graduates are glad to get those jobs. And it’s not that tuition is so expensive, it’s that jobs coming out of college don’t pay enough to pay off that debt in a reasonable time. Dentists leave school with $100,000 debt, but it is not a crippling debt due to their earnings when they get out. Social work majors may leave school with $25,000 debt, and wonder how they’ll ever pay it off.

Too many students means too expensive going in, not enough payback coming out. And giving kids $1,000 to go is going to push more kids in, raising the cost, lowering the reward.

Good governance is not just throwing money at people and problems, assuming those issues away. Good governance is understanding the direct and indirect impacts your policy will have. The Canadian Learning Passport is the former, with no consideration given to the root of the problem or the result of the spending.

Uncategorized Bryan May, Canadian Learning Passport, Education, Justin Trudeau, Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff

Remember, Julian Fantino doesn’t break the law, Julian Fantino is the law:

Meeting Conservative Julian Fantino last month on the hustings for the upcoming Vaughan by-election didn’t go as Liberal Tony Genco expected. He’d imagined pleasantries between competing candidates…

“I gave him my best wishes…and he told me some of my signs were too close to his campaign headquarters so he’d had his people take them down.”

…“I asked him if he would please give them back — they’re expensive, you know — but he didn’t respond.”

Genco apparently never did get his signs back …

“My volunteers followed all the rules in putting our signs up on public property and they weren’t placed improperly.”

…Asked about Genco’s allegations, a Fantino spokesperson emailed a response: “(Liberal Leader Michael) Ignatieff’s candidate may want to talk about signs; I’m talking about what actually matters to families in our community.”

OK, you want to talk, here’s an issue: Julian Fantino is dictatorial and arrogant ex-cop who thinks the law is his to interpret. He is the kind of man who is dangerous to our democracy.

Hey, Conservatives in Vaughan: do everybody a favour, including the Conservatives, and vote Liberal on by-election day.

by-election fever, Caledonia By-election, Caledonia, Conservative Party, julian fantino, Liberal Party, OPP, Tony Genco, Vaughan

This brave new policy is sordidly familiar, akin to collaborating with the Nazis to stop the flight of Jews

Ron McKinnon, president of the Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam Federal Liberal Association

Silly Liberals, Stephen Harper, Uncategorized Liberal Party, Ron McKinnin, Stephen Harper

“Come on, let’s see that letter from Guy to Mary Dawson,” a senior Ignatieff official says. “I sincerely believe that the Giorno letter is at the heart of this thing because it will show the true nature of Stephen Harper – because he obviously approved it.”

Unlike, say, those nice Liberals, who wouldn’t publicly accuse someone of “unethical or criminal activity…” or of associating with organized crime:

…you don’t get cocaine at a corner drug store, right? You have to get it from somewhere, from someone and usually that means organized crime.”

h/t neocon

Silly Liberals, Stephen Harper Conservative Party, guy giorno, Helena Guergis, Liberal Party, Mary Dawson, Michael Ignatieff, Stephen Harper

If I recieved an email from info@email.liberal.ca that was politicizing the Haiti catastrophe, I would be all over the Liberals, so it seem fair to offer kudos to Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals for using their mailing list to send a message asking people to donate to Haiti relief. Equally, consider this At Home in Hespeler’s call to donate what you can.

Friend–

It’s time to stand with Haiti.

The scenes of devastation beamed from Port-au-Prince and elsewhere have shaken all of us. But they have also reminded us that our first instinct as Canadians is to ask “How can I help?”

Our ties with Haiti are strong. We have a Haitian community in Canada that has contributed so much to our national life, and Canadians across our country are connected to Haiti through friends and loved ones living and working there.

I know that you were just asked to donate on Monday. But this is not about politics.

In these exceptional circumstances, now is a time to come together as people. Now is a time to act.

That’s why I am asking you to please support the relief effort in Haiti by clicking on one of the links below. Yesterday, we asked the government to match funds given to charitable organizations for relief efforts and today the government announced that it would – which means that your giving power is now twice as strong.

Canadian Red Cross
Doctors Without Borders
Oxfam Canada
Oxfam Quebec
Centre for International studies and Cooperation (CECI)
CARE Canada
The Humanitarian Coalition

Let’s show that we care. Let’s help Haiti in this time of need.

Thank you,
Michael Ignatieff

Uncategorized Liberal Party, LPC, Michael Ignatieff

The party base understood in 2006 and Canadian citizens are understanding now. Ignatieff’s supporters didn’t do their homework. They didn’t read his books. They contented themselves with his ability to navigate the cocktail circuit.”
“Some of them are enraged today. I hear: ‘Why didn’t anyone tell us about him?'”
“We told you, loud and clear. You didn’t listen.’

and

 “But they (party members) didn’t accept the 26 per cent (of the popular vote in the last election). Now we’re at 23.”

It’s worth saying that it’s not that they didn’t try and read his books but, like me, they picked up The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, and slept like a baby for two weeks, unable to keep their poor weary eyes open for more than a page and a half of his pompous drivel.

 Then the front thrusts:

Ross Rebagliati, former Olympic snowboarder with the Clitonesque excuses, now running for the Liberal party in  Okanagan-Coquihalla BC, gives an interview to McLeans:

McL: …did the Liberals approach you, or did you approach them?
RR: They approached me. It came up over lunch and I thought about it for a few minutes, and by the end of the meal, I had decided to do it.

RR:… We’re sending our Canadian soldiers overseas to create a democracy in a foreign land, and a lot of them are paying the ultimate price. And we can’t even bring ourselves to vote here, when we have that right and privilege? To me, that’s unacceptable.
McL: Have you been a regular voter?
RR: No I haven’t.

McL: Are there other politicians you admire?
RR: Sure, Trudeau… he had a cool car and all the girls liked him.

McL: What will you be doing during the Olympics this February?
RR: I’ll be in both Whistler and Vancouver… but I don’t have a single ticket. But as far as I’m concerned I’m just going to flash my gold medal. (Note: he’s entitled to his entitlements).

McL: Are you in favour of legalization?
RR: I’m not really going to go there right now. I think the media obviously has a big opportunity to corner me as a one-issue guy, but I don’t want to be that guy.

McL:…What’s your campaign theme song going to be?
RR: I like the Bob Marley song Get Up, Stand Up.

When your star candidates are this good, what can go wrong?

Silly Liberals, Uncategorized Janine Krieber, Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff, Parliament Pub, Ross Rebagliati, Stephane Dion, Warren Kinsella

Greg Weston was one of the journalists in the Parliamentary Gallery who got his nose particularly out of joint with the PMO when it got invaded by Conservatives. He has since calmed somewhat and seems to be offering fairer reportage. Today, he offers up a tidbit I never heard before, but which gave me a good laugh:

"Stop wasting my money!"

It has been almost 30 years since a flock of geese flying across Canadian television screens caused a national flap over taxpayers’ money being used for partisan political propaganda…

Liberal MP Bob Rae, then a member of the NDP, said at the time: “I will never be able to look at Canada geese in the same way again. I’ll see them as Liberals in disguise.”

Even right-wing commentator Gerry Nicholls decried the campaign as “an abuse of tax dollars,” describing the ads as “clearly partisan, clearly Conservative propaganda.”

Gerry Nicholls, Ink Stained Wretches Bob Rae, Conservative Party, Gerry Nicholls, Greg Weston, Liberal Party, NDP, Pierre Trudeau, Sun Media, Toronto Sun

sounds more like a patch honest politicians would wear on their Armani jacket. It is, instead, a rule for an MP sending Parliamentary flyers to someone else’s riding.  It’s wrong, and it should end.

When a bureaucrat designs a "ten percenter" patch.

John Mraz goes over the top,  calling it corruption. It’s not, but it is, as he notes, “the diversion of public resources to politicized ends.” I would not call it corruption more because it’s above board, and of such a small scale. Mraz, a former Liberal campaign manager, also throws a blame grenade at the Conservatives, both here and in the US. Note, for example, fringe Republican Obama birthers are the only ones who are nuts, ignoring Democrats who thought GW Bush was a) the dumbest man ever to learn to knot his own tie b) the criminal mastermind behind 911. In other words Mr. Mraz’s biases get in the way of his thesis.

His thesis, however, is spot on. Ten percenters are wrong. Parliamentarians are using the rule that allows them to send informational material to ridings other than their own, up to a total of ten percent of the constituents in their riding. I have complained before about this policy, but still receive quarterlies from Jack Layton. These things are not informational, they are propaganda. Paper wasted bashing the other party, taking biased surveys, that you can send back at parliamentary expense (i.e. taxpayer expense).

To be sure, I receive the same nonsense from my MP, Conservative Gary Goodyear, but he’s at least my MP. Their is a legitimate argument to be made that an MP needs to communicate with constituents, and needs to offer constituents a forum to let their MP know how they feel on issues. If I find the communiques so offensive, I can always vote for someone else. I can’t, however, choose to vote against Jack Layton MP. So why am I receiving his mailers? And why, far more significantly, am I receiving his mailers at parliamentary expense?

Conservatives and Liberals are not innocent in this, and Gary Goodyear has been the subject of a formal complaint to the speaker on this very subject.

They are all doing it. And they are all wrong. On this, I agree with Mr. Mraz. It’s time to stop the practice of ten percenters.

Politicians acting badly, Silly Politicians 911 truthers, Barack Obama, Canadian Parliament, Conservative Party, Democrats, Gary Goodyear, GW Bush, Jack Layton, John Mraz, Liberal Party, National Post, NDP, Obama Birthers, one percenters, Parliament, Republicans, ten percenters

You see it every summer, some person undergoing  a physical trial to raise money for a favourite charity. Terry Fox and Rick Hansen come to mind, Fox raising funds for cancer research, Hansen for Spinal Cord injury.  But beyond the celebrated cases, many ordinary engage in trial to raise funds for a good cause. Whether it’s baking cookies to send a deceased bakery employee’s brother to college, a motorcycle ride for big brothers and big sisters or a bike ride, sans motor, to raise money for African wells. In my own sphere of friends and family I know of somebody who did the ride to conquer cancer and another who did the relay for life.

When I read that Liberal Party executive director Rocco Rossi is kayaking the Rideau from Kingston to Ottawa to raise funds, my immediate reaction was good for him. So, who’s Rossi raising money for? Perhaps Breast Cancer (he could use a pink canoe)? Alzheimer’s research (a cause near and dear to my heart)? child amputees? No, no and no. Liberal Party executive director Rocco Rossi is Kayaking the Rideau canal from Kingston to Ottawa to raise money for… The Liberal Party.

Not Rocco Rossi

Starting July 23rd, follow me as I paddle from Kingston to Ottawa, raising funds to help make Michael Ignatieff Canada’s 23rd prime minister. If you can’t meet me along the way, you can still support the adventure by donating $23, multiples of $23, or asking 23 friends to donate, join the Party, or volunteer between now and the next election. Use your imagination, the sky is the limit! —Rocco

Pity Rocco couldn’t use his position to raise money for a real cause. Pity he doesn’t see that he’s officially competing for  funds with various charities around the Province. But we all know he believes electing his friend to a position of absolute power will cure cancer, and the rest of the worlds ills. All, and everybody, will be well, just so long as a Liberal is in charge.

Personally, I respect the physical act he’s performing, and think it’s worth something. Rocco Rossi wants $23 for his efforts, I am going to send $23 to the Alzheimers Society of Cambridge as soon as Rocco completes his journey.

Silly Liberals alzheimer's, Kayak, Liberal Party, relay for life, Ride to conquer cancer, Rideau Canal, Rocco Rossi

Today in Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock a by-election is being held to keep John Tory as Progressive Conservative leader or finally dump him like the guy who makes Joe Clark look astute that he is.

If you are a conservative voter in that riding, consider voting for Freedom Party candidate Bill Denby. For that matter vote for the NDP candidate or the Liberal candidate: vote for anybody but John Tory.

If you are a Liberal Party supporter, I would recommend you vote for Tory. He’s your best shot at never losing another election. If, however, your leanings are small government freedom loving conservative, even if Tory wins, you lose.

In Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock today, vote for change. Vote for anybody but John Tory.

by-election fever, John 'Red Green' Tory, John Tory, Ontario Election Bill Denby, Brock, Dalton McGuinty, Freedom Party, Haliburton, John Tory, Kawartha Lakes, Liberal Party, Ontario, Progressive Conservative, Red Tory