The Economy

As the biggest issue in the minds of Canadians along with our current political predicament, the economic recession is beginning to make itself felt in ways small and large from coast to coast to coast. Gas prices have dropped to eighty one cents in Victoria, British Columbia, and that's saying something for a city not only with a carbon tax but a reputation for prices in the $1.40 range. Dropping oil prices hit industries in Alberta and Newfoundland very hard, causing the losses of jobs, profits, and prosperity across the board.

This is only one example of how the recession of our times is becoming physically well known to everyone in this country. Let there be no doubt that hard times are ahead, and without some sensible action our prosperity will stop increasing, and may begin to slip downhill.

Sensible action though it seems, is a bit too much to ask for. From what I understand of the various bailouts that are being proposed to many businesses here in Canada, they make little sense. General Motors and Chrysler are asking for the Canadian and Ontario governments to give them a bailout of approximately $4 billion dollars.



Indeed, the automotive industry has been one of the hardest hit industries in both Canada and the United States by the recession. However, these industries were already lagging behind in their performance before the recession hit, having been surpassed by auto makers in Asia such as Toyota, Honda, and Mazda. It has been said that when a crisis hits a company, the mettle of it's business practices is tested more so than at any other time. None of these Asian companies have asked their governments for a financial bailout package, because their business practices are financially sound and they can maintain their companies without a crutch from the state.

Of course, one must be aware of all the jobs that are at stake in Canada if the automakers were to shut down. I believe the figure of jobs lost in the automotive industry in Ontario in the past year is close to 100,000, and that figure would likely multiply significantly if the auto makers in Canada were forced to cut costs even more. But bailing out these companies would delay the inevitable. Canadian automakers have offered little in the way of a scheme by which they would put their businesses, well, back in business. To offer the big 3 automakers taxpayers money so they can fix their problems without any plan to do so is like asking every man, woman and child in our nation to shred $120 and hope for the best. It's ridiculous, and irresponsible.

There are better solutions. Make the bailout conditional on a blueprint for success to start with. If GM wants our money, they should tell us exactly how they will make it work for them, and for us. In addition, parliament should discuss regulation of mass employers like the GM and Chrysler that gives us some kind of insurance that these kinds of job losses won't happen again.

But at the very least, don't loan my money away to someone who doesn't even know if they can pay me back.

A time to rant

For Pete's sake, I don't think I've ever been more embarrassed in my life.

For the past two weeks, grown adults who are supposed to be educated, civilized representatives of the Canadian people have made shmucks of themselves in a time of crisis when Canada need leaders, not shmucks.

The election was over, the specter of the economy looming ever larger, and Stephen Harper promised leadership in a time of crisis. And what does he do? In his promised fiscal update when the house resumed in November, the Conservatives and their finance minister Jim Flaherty delivered little in the economic department except for the sale of goverment assets amounting to $2.3 billion dollars. So we lose billions in public property, and we get a projected surplus of $100 million dollars. Now, I don't really know what the property included or what was significant about it, but I could have lived with the update if it had stopped there.

Instead, the Harper government chose to make a relatively minor cut to the public funding of political parties, saying something along the lines of the importance of political parties setting an example to the country in belt tightening. The facts here amounted to a saving of a paltry $22 million dollars by eliminating this subsidy to parties, with the Conservatives taking the biggest hit. This is because as the law stands now, for each vote a party gets in an election, provided it surpasses the minimum amount (which escapes me now), the party also gets $1.95. $1.95 per vote. Now, Harper says that this has never been a popular policy, presumably because political parties shouldn't have to rely on public funding, they should be able to stand on their own.

However what people fail to realize is that this subsidy makes each person's vote count for more. The policy encourages voting for the party you like, instead of the party you think is most likely to win, because even if your party isn't elected, if they get enough of the vote, they get funding that they can use to finance their next campaign. By making people's votes count for less, Harper is weakening the democratic process. And to throw this kind of measure in during an economic crisis makes it seem irresponsible and just plain uncalled for.

Not only is Harper weakening my vote, but he is also attacking other parties with the end to this subsidy. It's not common knowledge that current Conservative financing from donations is at an all-time high, whereas the fundraising machines of other parties have stalled. The Liberal party in particular is hurting, and other parties such as the Bloc Quebecois depend on the public subsidy for financial support. So percentage wise, this is going to chop into the Liberals, Bloc, and especially the Green Party far more than it will the Conservatives. In other words, saying that the Conservatives will be hurting the most after this is not the whole truth.

As I alluded to before, if you don't have money, you can't campaign nearly as effectively. Now, I could personally care less if the seperatist party collapsed, but this tactic to make it happen is underhanded. It's opportunistic and ethically ambiguous. Attacking the opposition parties when he should be working with them (that's what you do in a minority parliament) to fix the economy is a bad decision not only ethically, but tactically too, seeing as he has paid dearly for his actions with an uproar of the opposition parties.

Enough about the $1.95 per vote subsidy. In his update, Harper also cut back the rights for public servants to strike for 3 years. Now I'm not exactly sure who this group includes, but this policy seems like it has even less to do with the economy, and shows a distrust of the Canadian people by the Conservative party. Until there is a clear need to remove the right for public employees to strike, it doesn't make sense to take that right away. If Harper doesn't trust public servants to keep working at their jobs at a time when they are worried about losing those jobs, then there is something seriously wrong with him and his party. The policy seems redundant and showing a lack of faith in the Canadian people.

Finally, he has apparently attacked women's rights. I've skimmed through the economic and fiscal update that the Conservatives released for the details of exactly how women's rights are attacked, but because it was written by the government, it wasn't easy to find. Here's the link in case you have more free time than I do: http://www.fin.gc.ca/ec2008/Ec/ectoc-eng.html
Now I don't know how serious it is, but if it was mentioned as part of the reason that the whole nine yards were bad, it must have been in some way significant, otherwise there wouldn't have been a fuss in the first place.

To sum up, Harper made some bad tactical errors in his economic and fiscal update that have come back quickly to bite him, targeting opposition parties, women's rights and worker's rights in a way that is uncalled for in a minority parliament when he should be working with others, not making enemies out of them. The opposition parties also slam him for not including an economic stimulus package in his mini budget, but it seems to me that this is the kind of thing that needs to be given a little bit more thought before it's put through, so I'm with the government on that count. But all in all, I'm disappointed and embarrassed that my government should choose to be so opportunistic in attack when they should be compromising to work with others in a time of crisis.

The opposition parties have made a bad situation worse. They're all guilty of perpetuating this mess we have now and freezing up the whole process of trying to fix the economic crisis by putting their own interests for power ahead of the interests of those that they were elected to represent. The opposition parties had so many other options for action when Flaherty delievered the update. They couldn't let it pass for reasons that I've made clear, but they didn't have simply up and walk away from the table singing hymns of a coalition government that would bring the conservatives to their knees. They should have pointed out the flaws, voted against it, and demand a renegotiation with an all-party committee that would work together to create a working fiscal update that would create economic stability instead of promoting political chaos.

The whole move towards a coalition by the opposition is nothing but a power trip, and at great cost. I don't know if Dion just wants a chance to become PM, or if Layton wants a chance to sit in cabinet, or if Duceppe wants to finally get Québec to separate from the rest of Canada, but I can find no reason in my mind that a Liberal-NDP government would be any better for Canada than the current conservative one. The country just spent $300 million dollars on an election, and it's too early to put the country into political crisis again.

These are grown adults who are supposed to be setting an example for the rest of the country. They have all the power here, and they need to use it wisely to serve the interests of this country, not to delay action on a crisis that could tear the country apart. Instead, they have chosen to arbitrarily decide that now is the time to take power.

And at what cost? The contingency of this alliance that give the Bloc Québecois the balance of power is a scary prospect. If the Liberal-NDP coalition is forced to implement bills and policies that further the sepratist goal, then we could be facing another referendum on Québec separation within the next two years. Essentially the opposition parties have put in charge of the whole country a party that wants to break it up. Bad move. I don't want to lose Québec. I have French heritage. I love the culture and art and language that contributes Canadian identity. I do not want to see La Belle province separate from Canada, not now, not ever.

In short, the opposition parties struck back far too hard at the faulty Conservative economic update. They abandoned attempts at negotiation, resorting instead to an underhanded power grab, all at the possible, yet extreme cost of losing Québec for good.

The result of this back and forth partisan war between the parties? Government has been taken hostage for another month and a half, and Canada will see no more leadership on the current fiscal crisis until parliament resumes in late January. I expect more of my leaders than petty bickering. The blame is on both sides. Harper may have started it, but Dion, Duceppe, and Layton have made it worse. These politicians should be champions of the people, examples for the rest of us to follow and look up to. Not names that should make us all hang our heads in shame.

The only thing that this chain of events has served to do is weaken my faith in politicians. They have given into that stereotype that all people elected to office are crooks. Their crime? Negligence of their country.

Minority Rights for Acid Rain! (Among other subjugated forms of precipiation)

It's been so long since I've mused over cyberspace. I've heard that people write on their blogs and then tell people to read them because they have some sort of need for attention. I disagree. I don't need attention. I just like being recognized for what I do. And having people like me. That's not attention, is it?

Sometimes I feel sorry for precipitation that isn't snow. Other than snow, no other forms of stuff that falls from the sky gets the same kind of admiration and respect, with a possible exception to rain and sunshine. I mean, snow seems to have this kind of magical quality that people have been brainwashed with that makes them look out the window when it starts to sprinkle down from the heavens and ice the world in it's "wonderfulness", scream to every person in the house that it's snowing, waking them up at what is usually an obscenely early hour, and then going outside in their pyjamas to roll around in this frostbite inducing substance against their better reasoning!

No other piece of precipitation has this power over minds! Rain can be nice at times, like when you hear it on the roof as you're going to sleep, but it doesn't cause kids to wake up in the morning and jump on mom and dad's bed saying, "Looklookmommydaddy! Rainrainitsraining!" and then proceed to go outside, catch hypothermia from wearing no boots while splashing in freezeing puddles and have to stay home watching reruns of Seinfield for the rest of the week. Which isn't that bad, considering that I haven't seen many episodes of Seinfield, but for many people that could be terrible. But no, rain isn't this evil. A typical reaction to rain is, "....unngh." or, "Hm", or, "Why didn't I remember my umberella!", or, "Shoot, now I have to drag in the furniture off of the deck!". No magic, no brainwashing, just rational, reasoned reactions. (And yes, I realize that rational and reasonable mean the same things)

Think about all the other kinds of things that come from the sky! Why don't they have any kind of brainwashing powers! There should be equal brainwashing power rights for all races of precipitation. Sunshine has been lobbying heavily with some success to gain more power over people over the last few years, and as a result it has become cool to go outside to suntan, but the rising costs of skin cancer have retaliated with a campaign against UV rays, while those people who have gotten cancer as a result of too much sun launched the extremely popular global warming doctrine to villainize the yellow giant that we circle.

Acid rain went through a particularly tough time a couple decades ago, with environmentalists segregating it from regular rain, calling it dangerous and harmful. This was obviously simply a case of hatred that stemmed from ignorance, as acid rain doesn't really have destructive properties, it's simply different from regular rain.

And if you think about snow, it's really not all that great, it kills grass and prevents the growing of any other plants. It has to be shovelled out of the way constantly, and it suffocates people in their homes while their children go beserk with their requests to go outside and build snowmen out of it. It blocks traffic, shuts down cities, and makes Canada unattractive as a tourist destination, except for those loonies who like skiing at Whistler!

I say that snow be exposed for what it really is, and that the other stuff that comes from the sky receive the same kind of crazy, brain-washed reaction from small children. Because while snow kills green things, rain gives them water, sun helps them make sugar, and acid rain turns them into compost and fertilizer.

So the next time you see acid rain falling outside, yell, scream, and run outside with your arms wide and your mouth open to receive the another kind of magic from the sky. The magic of that tingling feeling in your mouth, throat, and stomach that comes with granting a subjugated minority group of precipitation equal rights.