If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
At a party convention three years ago -- British Columbia's Conservative Party leader -- Jim Cummins -- remarked how the "BC Conservatives are going t...
Trudeau is trying to find a new niche for the Liberal Party. A preliminary look indicated that he is trying to take the Conservative party's old right-of-centre spot on the ideological spectrum. With fewer differences between the two parties, Trudeau's youth and vitality may come as an asset in 2015 when Canadians go to the polls.
Ten percenters are sent out through the House of Commons (i.e.: using taxpayer's dollars) and they are a mail out that is designed to allow an MP to communicate a few times a year with a mass mailing to 10 per cent of their constituents. In this day and age of technology and multimedia communications do we even need ten percenters?
Secular Connexion Séculaire (SCS) and Centre for Inquiry Canada (CFI) have been tracking with dismay the Harper government's abandoning the defence of most human rights in order to focus exclusively on its concerns for the rights of religious minorities. Four of the six consultants to whom the government spoke were Christian and none were Muslim, Humanist.
If you need a symbol for the budget challenge facing Stephen Harper, look no further than the old Nortel campus in Ottawa's western suburbs. The site is turning into a costly hot potato for the government. Three years ago, military planners shocked analysts with their initial $623 million estimate for fixing the place up. Now the price tag is said to have jumped over 40 per cent.
Those who have been doubly hurt by the Boston bombing and the recent arrest of the two alleged Canadian terrorists on Monday, are the vast majority of hard-working, law-abiding Muslim Canadians. Because once again, Canadian Muslim men, or Canadian converts to Islam, are seen to be planning, organizing or actively engaging in terrorist activities.
British Columbians clearly oppose both Kinder Morgan and the Northern gateway, but I wouldn't doubt we will see the pro-pipeline Harper federal government stick their nose into the B.C. election in the coming weeks, as they twist in the wind watching the fate of their beloved tar sands pipelines land right in the waiting hands of Adrian Dix and the NDP.
Matt Buie, a financial planner and father living in Burnaby, B.C., was recently stunned by a $22,000 roaming charge on his cell phone account incurred by his 11-year-old while on vacation. After Buie spoke out in the media and talked to other cell phone users he quickly realized that he was not alone in feeling price-gouged, and is now taking action.
Personal learnings from the Countering Violent Extremism portfolio echoed the sentiments that Justin Trudeau expressed following the Boston Bombings -- to get to the root cause to prevent future attacks. Last year I had the chance to work with the Department of Public Safety on National Security Policy, and if there's one thing that you need to focus on in preventing any kind of violence from happening -- whether it be localized gun violence or terrorism -- it's the root cause. Mind you, gun violence and extremism are two very different animals, but what they do share in common is an immature and ridiculous sense of expression through violence.
Political attack ads are designed to make you think. Their aim is to get you to look at a person or an issue in a different light, one different from what the media or the party's political spin machine wants you to look at. Simply put, they work. While it seems everyone complains about them, they still watch them.
Our view, which we developed in a recent study entitled Tax Payers and Tax Takers, is that tax relief that results in larger and larger shares of the population being exempt from paying any meaningful taxes leads to more demand, not less, for government.
When an act of terror occurs, it takes time to assess what exactly happened. Two hours after the blast, blood was still being spilled, explosives were still being sniffed out, and loved ones were still being contacted to share the terrible news. It was in this chaos that Mr. Trudeau was asked to react -- even before the President of the United States, the FBI, or the State Governor had reacted. What Mr. Trudeau did was answer the truth. A novel concept for some, but a welcome philosophy to Canadians tired of the dreary, divisive diatribe. We don't know who did this, but surely there are ways we can look at root causes and prevent future bloodshed.
During the leadership race Trudeau was rather ambiguous when it came to tangible policy proposals -- instead insisting it's not the leader's role to hand down decrees from on high to grassroots Liberals, and if elected, he would consult both partisan Liberals and other Canadians so to develop his party's platform from the bottom up. Fair point in theory, but let's wring out what little Trudeau has said so far.
Justin Trudeau's comments about the Boston bombings in an interview with Peter Mansbridge display an ignorance and insensitivity that know no bounds. He appears to give equal moral weight to monitoring those people who point fingers at minorities as to monitoring violent subgroups. In other words, according to Justin, these terrorists are not really at fault.
Dad was once the ATM; he's less absent now, more engaged in family life. As women "lean in" to the workplace and assert themselves, as they should, men are leaning out. This wreaks uncertainty on the economy, but there is a star of brilliant light looming over the ocean, visible in the ever-rising storm.
Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party have not decided to throw Israel under the bus, yet. For now, the Trudeau Liberals would prefer Israel move from ...
