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My religion, my ethnicity, my income and household expenses and what’s inside my house, along with most of the other 53 questions asked in 2006’s 40-page compulsory census form is nobody’s business but my own and the nosy-parker census takers should just butt out of my private affairs. I am supposed to have a guaranteed freedom of religion. This guarantee should cover my right not to dis...
Sad to see the once proud City of Toronto in a downward spiral with little prospect of a turnaround in the near future. Toronto has had only one—maybe two—effective leaders since David Crombie resigned as mayor in 1978. And the chance of this record of failure ending any time soon seems remote. Leaderless and rudderless, the wannabe world-class city meanders along on the edge of financial r...
Last night when I heard that terror suspects had been arrested, I wondered whatever could those Christian extremists be up to? Imagine my surprise when I learned that the suspects are more likely Muslims. Go figure. Three terror suspects have now been arrested. They were, apparently, in possession of schematics and bomb parts, including more than 50 circuit boards that could have been used to d...
The war in Afghanistan has been waged since October 7, 2001, with the first contingents of regular Canadian soldiers arriving in January and February of the following year. Earlier, forty operators from Canada’s Joint Task Force Two had been sent to Afghanistan in December 2001 to work with the Americans in their effort to remove the Taliban. The strategically important centres of Mazar-i-Sha...
Today’s Toronto Sun newspaper breaks a story about a secret government survey that reveals that the majority—71 per cent of those surveyed—of successful Tamil refugees travel back to Sri Lanka. This, of course, raises questions about the legitimacy of refugee claims made by Tamils entering Canada. It’s a small survey to be sure, but the results are disturbing. To think that a significan...
The Tories have managed to widen the gap from one point two weeks ago to five points in the latest EKOS poll. According to the opinion survey, Conservative support is at 32.5 per cent nationally compared to 27.9 per cent for the Liberals—well off the 11-point lead Tories enjoyed over the Grits in early June. The NDP has 17.4 per cent support. According EKOS pollster Frank Graves, the narrowi...
It really doesn’t seem as though we’ve learned that when immigrants bring their national feuds to our shores, Canadians can get hurt and even killed. The bombing of Air India Flight 182 some 25 years ago should have taught us that, but apparently it has not. Events in the form of what Toronto’s Police Chief Bill Blair described as “unlawful and unsafe” protests should have been warni...
I have been following the plight of Omar Khadr the 23-year-old Canadian who is alleged to have thrown a grenade during a July 27, 2002 firefight in Afghanistan that fatally wounded U.S. Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer. It’s been eight years or so since he was captured by American forces in Afghanistan, and he’s spent seven years in the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camps accused of war c...
The Vancouver Sun carries a piece today quoting the Conference Board of Canada’s forecast that Ottawa should return to a surplus position one year ahead of schedule based on how the economy is unfolding. This must come as bad news to the federal opposition parties as they generally want only glum economic news so Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Tories will look bad. ...
Having now lived in Canada for over 50 years, it pains me to see how far we have drifted from an ideal of equality under the law. There was a time not so long ago when our laws were meant to apply equally to all. Unfortunately, though, that time is perhaps lost forever. Under Canadian law, individuals and private organizations cannot discriminate on the basis of gender, race, etc. As we have ...
According to the Toronto Sun, a Leger Marketing online poll found that 54 per cent of respondents favour the government following France’s lead and not allowing women to wear burkas in public for safety and transparency reasons. Only 20 per cent of respondents said Canada shouldn’t consider a ban because it’s an issue of freedom of religion and freedom of expression. A full 15 per cent sa...
The National Post reports that John Tory, former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, is reconsidering his January decision to sit out the November municipal election as mayoral candidate to “pursue a different course with my life and career.” Seeing how well right-of-centre candidate, Rob Ford, has been doing against a predominantly left-of-centre field, heavy pressure fro...
Did I fall asleep and miss when Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) became part of Dalton McGuinty’s government? I must have because, when Ontario Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne held a news conference today to announce strict new rules for young drivers, she was accompanied by the CEO of MADD. And friends who have been pulled over in a police spot-check have reported they had a repre...
The Toronto Sun has an opinion piece by Ezra Levant, blogger and human rights pundit, that’s makes me wonder whether I slipped down Alice’s rabbit hole. Levant tells us about a fellow who couldn’t make the grade at the RCMP’s police academy, washing out after 12 weeks. The man then made a claim to the Canadian Human Rights Commission against the RCMP for, apparently, racism…and won. ...
Industry Minister Tony Clement interrupted his dinner around 7:30 p.m. last night to help rescue a woman from drowning in Ontario’s Muskoka River. After an hysterical woman banged on the front door of his Port Stanley, Ontario home and alerted him and his family to the plight of her friend, Minister Clement, his wife and father-in-law rushed out to the river’s edge where they saw the woman...
Since my last post on the subject of our mandatory long-form census document, I’ve been following the story in the mainstream media. It seems as though CBC News’ Power & Politics and Rosemary Barton, its guest host, are alternately fascinated or distraught by the prospect that our government might chose to handle the national census differently in 2011 than in the past. As most reade...
The mainstream media has been giving a lot of airtime for several months to those who preach about the impossibility of ever balancing the federal budget without raising taxes and/or slashing program spending on health, education and other social services. And all the time Stephen Harper’s government has been insisting that we can grow our way out of deficit within five years by controlling s...
Federal politics in Canada seems to have settled down to the opposition parties not being able to overhaul the Conservatives in the polls and the Conservatives not being able to get into solid majority government territory, 40+ per cent. Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Tories were ten points ahead of the Liberals, up a few points from the poll before. This week, the PM’s part...
When did being “white” as in white-skinned become a bad thing? Somewhere along the way, equality of opportunity in Canada became “whites need not apply.” This seems true in our federal government and on television where visible minorities at times equal or outnumber those of us who descend from Europeans, which flies in the face of Canadian demographics. The most recent example of this...
The RCMP have cleared Helena Guergis and Rahim Jaffer insofar as they reportedly have been unable to find evidence to warrant criminal charges against them. This case is just one more example of the House of Commons jumping the gun and beginning its own committee investigations before police have looked into a matter—so long as some political gain is to be made. The Guergis-Jaffer affair was...
Fresh off recent speculation by Jim Travers in the Toronto Star that Michael Ignatieff, federal leader of the Liberal party, is being considered as a replacement for Janice Stein, Director, Munk Centre for International Studies, I read here and here about the possibility/likelihood that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is a contender for the federal Liberal leadership. Interesting to speculate,...
It does seem excessive to arrest someone for blowing soap bubbles—that is, unless the simple act is seen in the context of a confrontation between protesters and much harried police officers. But we live in an age of absolutes and our police, and military, are expected to carry out their dangerous responsibilities without offending, never mind hurting, the less offensive of their adversaries....
The Canadian government has finally announced it plans to spend $9 billion on the purchase of 65 new fighter jets made by Lockheed Martin, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. A related maintenance contract will likely bring the full cost to about $18 billion. The new stealth, multi-role fighter jets—which are expected to be the next-generation warplane for all NATO member air forces f...
I don’t agree very often with Liberal blogger Warren Kinsella, but his blog post, HERE COMES THE LONG FORM CENSUS ELECTION!, is right on. I have been very uncomfortable filling in the long-form census in the past. I don’t trust any organization with sort of personal information asked for. Time and again we hear of misuse and carelessness by private organizations and by governments, despite ...
The mainstream media is so desperate for news its turning small items into major controversies and rumours into front page stories. We seem to have lost our sense of proportion, and traditional journalistic fact-checking has been replaced with speculation, gossip and rumour-mongering. The Toronto Star’s National Affairs Columnist, James Travers, had a piece in that newspaper a day or two ago...
The same old stale Liberal Party of Canada tune was played again late Monday night in the Canadian Senate when seven Liberal senators failed to show up for the vote on the Conservative “omnibus” budget in the Red Chamber—despite this being a whipped vote. Senators voted 48-44 against the changes made by opposition members of the finance committee to Bill C-9 and passed the legislation. Th...
Further to my recent post about Michael Ignatieff implying that Stephen Harper is the devil, I have noticed that other Liberals seem to share the sentiment. You know, the reference Ignatieff made when, speaking to an audience of Liberal supporters at a Calgary Stampede breakfast on Saturday, the leader of the official opposition said Canadians “can smell the whiff of sulphur” coming off the...
After testing new lows in the polls, Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, headed out to Calgary to try and collect some face-time with everyday Canadians. God knows he needs the exposure to try and convince average Canadians he’s one of them after spending most of his adult life in other countries like the United Kingdom and the United States. “You know you smell the whi...
The host of CTV National News With Lloyd Robertson announced at the close of his Thursday newscast that he plans to retire in the latter half of 2011 after 35 years at CTV. And, according to the Ottawa Citizen, Lisa LaFlamme will take over the anchor’s chair. Robertson is 76, and I don’t know what took him so long to step aside and give someone else a shot at the job. Surely he doesn’t ne...
Anew “eco” fee is being applied in Ontario to the price of some products sold that require special disposal. But don’t worry, folks, it’s not a tax—at least, not according to Ontario’s Environment Minister John Gerretsen. The new fee has been applied since July 1 on products like detergents, aerosol cans and fire extinguishers. The fees range from a few cents for some products to up...
The recent EKOS opinion poll suggests that the federal Conservatives hold a margin of 10.5 per cent over Michael Ignatieff’s Liberal Party of Canada—34.4 per cent of respondents would support the Tories in an election, compared with 23.9 per cent for the Liberals. This is quite a turnabout in Liberal fortunes, for when Parliament closed they were almost within the margin of error of being i...
These days we hear a lot about our rights and freedoms, but very little is ever said about our obligations and responsibilities. Why, I wonder, is that? We all hear New Democrat MPs and their supporters go on about our rights to do all sorts of things and to get all manner of benefits from our governments. But when was the last time anyone heard an NDP leader or elected official remind us of ou...
I watched quite a bit of the television news coverage of the G20 “demonstrations” in Toronto on the weekend and wondered what sort of society we are creating here in Ontario—and perhaps more widely across Canada. When does the so-called “right to demonstrate” in the streets trump law and order and the right of law-abiding residents to go about their business without being impeded or t...
CBC TV and the National Post are reporting that the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down former Canadian media baron Conrad Black’s fraud conviction. His case has now been sent back to a lower court. In my view, even if found guilty, time already served should be sufficient for this man who might have behaved improperly, but never deserved the severe level of punishment meted out by the Americ...
Last night, CBC’s news anchor Peter Mansbridge revealed on The National that, in an interview earlier this week, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) director Richard Fadden revealed that Canada’s spy agency is aware of municipal and provincial politicians in Canada who are being swayed by their connection to foreign governments. “There are several municipal...
I am not sure when our society decided that civil disobedience is an inherent democratic right. This, though, seems to be a commonly held belief of progressives. Frequently, I hear it voiced by those who demand, for example, an end to poverty or support for some overseas civil war or in support of some labour strike or other demand. In the purest sense of the term, civil disobedience in the fo...
In their latest affront to the people of Ontario, natives have demanded they be exempted from paying HST at the point-of-sale like the rest of us. Their demands were backed up with threats of blockades during this week’s G8 and G20 summits, according to interviews with officials at the negotiating table. And, of course, the tax break has prompted native leaders in British Columbia and Atlanti...
One day we read that Jack Layton is boasting about the New Democrats being the party that knows how to make parliament work. His, he has claimed, is a party that can work with other parties to give Canadians legislation their need. Then his NDP party will suddenly hit a stretch where their cooperation ceases and they refuse to compromise on legislation, even that which the other three parties w...
Is it my imagination, or do members of the media give fellow members a greater degree of privacy than they do when reporting on politicians and others in the media spotlight? Why is this? Is their right to privacy more precious than that of non-media players? As I understand the tradition, private lives of politicians are protected unless events normally considered private somehow overlap or i...
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