Lukiwski Plays Pinocchio

My MP, Tom Lukiwski, who supposedly represents the residents of Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre doesn't like the new proposed changes to the Saskatchewan Electoral Boundaries. I understand why. The existing boundaries carve up Regina and Saskatoon into a bit of a pie adding to them, huge rural components. The rural voters have guaranteed that guys like Tom get elected.

Lukiwski and his Saskatchewan colleagues have been trying to say that unlike Canada's other 25  significant cities, Saskatchewan cities should not have urban ridings. They have mounted a bit of a campaign.

A few evenings ago we got an automated robocall call from a group that claimed to be Chase Research. It was a "push poll" of the worst kind.  My son took the call and then we called the number identified in the call to complain, we were so annoyed. Then when we discovered we could not find any Canadian firm called Chase Research on the Internet we started to get suspicious.

Our reaction was to say, "This has to be a Conservative poll."

Oh, no no says our friend Tom. Quoted in the Star Phoenix he said,    "Certainly, polling is not something I'm doing and ... I'm pretty sure I'd know if any one of my colleagues was doing something like that, and I haven't heard a thing."  Lukiwski just happens to be on the Procedure and House Affairs Committee that will consider the boundaries commission's final report.

So, late yesterday the truth, or something that resembles it, came out. This was a Conservative initiated push poll delivered to us by the firm RackNine Inc. That, for those of you with short memories, is the same firm that, on the behest of Stephen Harper's Conservatives, sent people they suspected would vote for the opposition, to the wrong polling stations during the last election. How could we forget Pierre Poutine?

I don't know about you but I don't think liars and cheats deserve to be Members of Parliament.

 

Pinocchio Peter Strikes Again

You have to admit, it does look a bit like our Defence Minister

I am no fan of the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation but the media seems to love the right wing lobby group these days. Probably because the CTF does the digging journalists don’t seem to have the time for these days.

To be honest I usually find the CTF annoying and I usually think they should be left alone. If they aren’t going on about what the First Nations communities have done with the money, they are attacking public pensions or the cost of social programs. They are generally not nice people.

So you know, when they go after one of Harper’s gang of thugs, he must have done something, way over the top.

We all were a bit shocked when Peter McKay called up the helicopter flight, so he could leave an exclusive fishing lodge in Newfoundland to attend a photo-op in Ontario. He actually had the nerve to call it important government business. He tried to hide all this by claiming it was a search-and-rescue training exercise. No one bought that one and Peter’s nose grew a little longer..

Now, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has released new documents showing MacKay stayed in uber luxury hotels during trips to Germany and Turkey. During one stay in Munich, Mackay's bill was $1,452 per night during a two-night stay then in Istanbul MacKay's paid $770.00 a night.

Oh sorry, we old retired guys on pension, paid for it through our taxes, not Peter.

McKay also spent $4,752 for a pair of Executive Class tickets from Toronto to Edmonton so he could go to the grey Cup game. He had to be there to wallow in what most of us saw as the military's excessive presence in that event. 

Air Canada must have been jumping for joy. Those tickets booked in advance are about $700.

It was also revealed that young Peter spent $3,167 on a trip to Boston for a seafood show. The CTF commented "Again, Minister Mackay regularly attends this event, although the usefulness of a senior Canadian minister attending a “seafood show” is even more debatable than attending the Grey Cup," Who can blame him? I’d love to go to Boston and eat seafood but I wasn't invited. I just don’t think Peter could pass up those free oysters.