Isreal in Gaza

The past week saw an invasion into the Gaza strip by the nation of Israel, who cited several hundred attacks on Israeli soil as their cause of action. These attacks were apparently made by Hamas, a political party that is currently the leader of the Palestinian National Authority. Hamas is, however, considered by the nation of Israel to be a terrorist organization. So, on Saturday December 27th, Israel launched an air strike on the Gaza strip, killing hundreds of innocent civilians as a precursor to the current incursion by ground troops.

The ownership of the region of Israel has been in contention for nearly all of written history. Since long before the Roman Empire rose to power, the nation between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River has been disputed, from the time that Abraham walked into it's borders on the promise of his God to the Crusades of the Middle Ages. From the promise by Britain that their Arab colonies would become self governing to the creation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1947 by the United Nations, this region of the world has been contested on mainly religious grounds by Islamic, Christian, and Jewish groups as it is considered to be the birthplace of all the aforementioned religions.

And I would hope that someday, all of these religions and countries could someday find a way to bring about a lasting peace in the region that would allow members of all faiths in and out of the holy places and sacred grounds that make Israel so sacred.

It escapes me what exactly the beef that various people have with Israel or it's neighbours is. Maybe those of Muslim faith are angry because Britain broke their promise to them after both the First and Second World Wars, the promise that promised the Arabians self-governing Independence. Maybe those of Jewish faith are concerned that if they lose the homeland that they have been given, they will be in danger of another anti-Semitic tragedy like the holocaust. And maybe those of Christian faith in the Western World are simply too proud or too worried about their oil stocks in the middle east to give up any ground to further the cause of peace.

But the waters of the Mediterranean and the sands of Galilee are soaked with the blood of Jew, Muslim, and Christian alike. It is the responsibility of all parties involved, especially those with the power to make a difference, to find out what the concerns of the other parties are and try to reach a compromise so that the fighting can come to an end. Even a conflict of epic religious proportions can be stopped, and anyone who says otherwise better take a close look at how Canada has lived in peace with two different predominant religions for so long. Every day that there is inaction there is more suffering. Call me naive, but it is not beyond two or more groups of grown leaders to come together and say sorry to each other. The United States and the U.S.S.R. did it after the Cold War, and those two countries were about as black and white as you can get.

We have been fighting for too long over this region of the world. It must stop. Because if we don't, another child tomorrow in Israel will wake up without a sibling or parent. Because if we don't, another angry, confused, and scared kid is going to be convinced to strap a bomb to his chest and blow up anything that has the American flag on it. Because if we don't, that parent of the soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan is going to break down in tears as the officer comes to his or her door with the news that their child is dead. Because if we don't, another citizen of the United States, Canada, or any given country that is considered to be "the Western World", is going to end up prejudiced, bigoted, and angry against the radical Islamics that did that to that family's child. Because if we don't, that dead child's younger sibling beats up a Muslim student at school. Because if we don't, that incident gets reported to the media who then paints all the Islamic people in the world with the same brush. Because if we don't, the radical Islamics in Hamas launch rocket attacks against Israel.

Because if we don't, another child tomorrow in Israel wakes up without a sibling or parent.

The cycle continues, dividing the world at a time when we need to be worrying about bigger problems, like how to feed Africa, China, and India, and how to stop global warming from flooding all of Manhattan. If we cannot unite, then we cannot solve our biggest problems. The problems that threaten to consume us all.

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.