A Week in the Life Under Harper

If nothing else give us pause, the cuts to services being dribbled out to the public day by day, the result of the cuts in the Harper budget, should.

I'm not going to go into detail ad nauseum but, if Stevie hadn't reduced the GST and cut corporate taxes, there wouldn't be a deficit.

The first one that sticks its head up is the cut to a program which provided internet services through libraries and community centres. A service used by seniors and under privileged people who either don't have or can't afford a computer. The program costs peanuts in the larger scheme of things.

Two programs under the stewardship of the Ritz Cracker, Gerry Ritz the ostrich farmer cum agriculture minister from Saskatchewan.  The Regina leader post, always willing to give up space in their letter to the editor section to the government ran letters today from Ritz and from the head of the Food Inspection Agency.

We all should remember the Food Inspection Agency. The last time we heard from them was when 33 Canadians died as a result of the infamous Maple Leaf listeria crisis. At the time it was suggested that inspectors were not able to spend time of the meat packing floor under Harper and his gang of thugs. Their role had become mostly administrative.

We all remember Gerry Ritz "Death by a thousand cuts, or should I say cold cuts" remark during that period.

Well now, as they serve inspectors with layoff notices, they are saying "Don't worry. We "will not make any changes which will not in any way put the health and safety of Canadians at Risk."

I am not sure I feel reassured.

Meanwhile Gerry can't understand why people might be upset at the Prairie Shelterbelt Program is being done away with. First he says there is no longer a need for the program then claims there is great potential for the private sector to take it over.

That Gerry sure can be confusing some times.

Those who follow the CBC have been reading the mixed messages coming from the Harper Government for some time now.

Shortly after the last election Federal  Heritage Minister James Moore gave the CBC and its supporters a reason to relax. He assured us that the Cons weren't going to use their majority  to slash the national public broadcaster. In fact, pledged Moore, the government would "maintain or increase support for the CBC."

That assurance was tempered however by comments by a couple of his colleagues.

•  Dean Del Mastro, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage suggested "The government should get out of the broadcasting business."  
• Jason Kenney, Minister of Immigration said, "The CBC lies all the time."

The fact is the CBC has been cut by a succession of Governments going back to Brian Mulroney.  It is an old strategy, and it works. If you cut an institution again and again over a long period of time, as it struggles to keep its head above water it flounders bit by bit, until it eventually becomes irrelevant.

Developers do this all the time. They buy up houses in a community one by one. Let them run down. Rent them out to bad tenants then, when by design the neighbourhood becomes an eyesore, they petition city hall for the right  to tear the buildings down and build apartments buildings.

That is what Harper is trying to do to the CBC.

It goes on and on. No time to remind you of the Robo call scandal except to say that Elections Canada investigators on the trail of the "Pierre Poutine" suspect in the robocalls case have apparently been asking questions about the actions of staff at Conservative party headquarters in Ottawa. Some suspicious conduct there which will have to be followed up.

Then there are the jet fighters, Peter Mckay is still defending his actions.

We all remember Rob Anders, the Calgary MP who was moved from a Veterans Affairs Committee after he fell asleep during a hearing, then ranted that a couple of presenters who were atually Con Party members were NDP hacks.

He has a new spot new position on a little-known House of Commons committee to loosen Canada's firearms rules. His ultimate goal is to repeal strict gun control provisions "shoved down our throats" by the Liberal government in the mid-nineties.

Anders said he will use his position on the regulations committee to put the RCMP Canadian Firearms Program — which administers Canada's gun control regime — under the microscope. Those rules mean that gun owners have to lock and safely store their guns when not in use. They also put restrictions on the owners of restricted and prohibited firearms.

Anders is joined on the committee with Yorkton's right wing crazy MP Garry Breitkreuz, who for years led the Conservative charge to scrap the long-gun registry.

Surely that is enough. It all gives me a headache.

The Harper Economic Record

Jim Flaherty would have Canadian’s believe that the retread budget and the fiscal policy he intends to inflict on us Canadians will save us from another recession and bring prosperity back to the country. The only way to do that he says is through cutting fat in Ottawa. When he talks about bloated Ottawa administrations somehow I don’t think he is talking about the PMO. Don’t expect cuts there.

Flaherty expects Canadians to believe that the Blue Meanies alone can save us all from financial oblivion. I think he expects us to believe that if it wasn’t for him, Harper and the rest of the Blue Man group we would have gone the way of Ireland long ago.

Now he boasts that the Conservative policies will bring us out of deficit spending by 2015. A year earlier that expected. No one actually believes he will but, it gets good media coverage and Canadians are a forgiving lot. After all this government has the new and daunting task of keeping the spendthrift socialists away from the door of the Bank of Canada vault.

What Flaherty forgets is that without the unnecessary reduction he made to the GST, we wouldn’t need to make the cuts he is now suggesting are crucial.

The other thing that Harper and Flaherty don’t ever want Canadians to look closely at is what the Conservative financial record really is.

Brian Mulroney in 1993 had run up a $38 billion deficit. Canadians were shocked. 

Under Liberal leadership, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin had beaten the deficient and by 2006 when he lost the election the Government was running a $16 Billion surplus.

Under the Harper/Flaherty regime the deficit is up over $55 Billion.

And these guys ran on their economic record. We must be really stupid.

What gives with Stimulis Spending?

Ever wonder why Canadians are cynical about our governments these days. There are actually a long list of reasons but, let's pick one. Have you ever tried to get a sense of how all this stimulus spending is doing besides racking up debt at the rate of $1200.00 a second. Just reading about stimulus spending is enough to make your head spin.

• Harper said yesterday, on his way to China that 97 % of stimulus dollars have been committed for this fiscal year.
• The same report Harper was referring to says 40% of the projects have been started. (By "started" the government means they have gone out for tender which makes you wonder about all those "shovel-ready" projects we heard about at the start)
• The Liberals are pointing out that the same report shows that as of today, only 7% of the stimulus projests have been actually started (useing the definition most of us use) which has to make you wonder. If we are as deeply in the red as even the government says we are, where are we going to be by the time this money is actually spent?
• Curiously only 1% of a $1.9 billion fund for social housing has been spent
• An additional $1.5 billion of social housing money has been just trickling out the door and other funds which were earmarked to improve social housing are stalled and pretty much the same level.
• Harper claims that Canada leads the world in economic recovery
• The Liberals say there are questions about the effectiveness of Harper's economic stimulus program as new GDP numbers show that Canada’s economic recovery is the second worst among G7 nations, lagging behind Japan, Germany, the United States, Italy and France.
• The Liberals say that of the 1000 projects they tracked, only 12% were actually generating jobs.
• Harper claims that his government's spending will create 220,000 jobs.
• Senior bureaucrats overseeing economic stimulus spending told MPs recently that the government isn't tracking how many jobs are being created by projects that are supposed to kick-start Canada's economy.

Confused? It is no wonder.

According to the TD Bank the combined Federal and Provincial deficits equal $90 billion. Represented by a stack of dollars, placed on it side that amount of money would be large enough enough to circle the earth almost four times.

According to the government we don't have to worry about rising taxes to pay down that deficit either. Following Tory tradition the payback plan most likely will entail lowering business taxes and royalties. In fact, Tories never really have the worry about paying back what they spend while they form government either. They never really stay in power long enough to have to concern themselves about it.

That will be the Liberal's problem.

Too Bad Obama Won't Get to Skate on the Canal

Well the saviour of the Western World is visiting Ottawa this week in his first state visit, if we can actually call a seven hour touch down a state visit. It is kind of State visit lite. He's not even here yet and already, I have had it up to here with this Obamarama.

Don't get me wrong. After two terms of what was possibly the worst administration in American history, suspicion of the United States' motives, particularly in the area of foreign policy had made many Canadians very wary of the USA. Barrack Obama is a breath of fresh air. His administration is welcomed by most Canadians if not by our prime Minister, who must see this new guy as a threat to his own very conservative policies. If Obama accomplishes a fraction of what the American people, and the World expect, it will be a great step forward.

Nevertheless, I am a bit put off to see the media clamoring to outdo each other with fawning displays of articles, opinion, photographs and route maps. I never quite get it. These trips are to a very large degree tightly scripted ceremonial events anyway. To be frank, I am just about Obamaed out before he even arrives.

The very least, what it does do however, is to start to pull us out of the political doldrums that have settled over Ottawa. After our brief flirtation with the idea of a coalition government was kiboshed when the Governor general put the boots to the idea, things have been pretty dull in our nation's capital. These are trying times for political junkies like me. Hopefully things will start to pick up. This week we are starting to see shades of the old Harper style re-emerging from its brief hiatus;

• The PMO refused to say what cabinet ministers might be meeting with US officials even though the Americans had already released some of the detail
• Harper's people very tersely told reporters that if any one of them had the temerity to shout out a question at the press conference, scheduled in the PMO, the event would be shut down immediately.
• It typical Harper style, the Leader of the Opposition's meeting with the US President has been relegated to an old hanger at the airport. All fifteen minutes of it.
• The Governor General will be kept well away from any television cameras. And she thought Stevie was her new best friend.

This visit is all Harper, all the time.

So, welcome to Canada Barrack Obama. Too bad you won't get a chance to skate on the Rideau Canal. Perhaps the Secret Service can't skate.