If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Anything that has a market should be allowed to remain in business. But that's the problem: Sun News doesn't have a market even though, contrary to the misinformation peddled by the broadcaster, it is literally available to any Canadian who's willing to subscribe to a cable or satellite service that carries the channel
Fiscal responsibility has been the hallmark of the Harper government from day one. It's therefore quite interesting to see in year seven of his reign that the opposition is focused on trying to destroy the credibility the Tories have on that front. It's a good strategy on their part, enabled by some help from the government side.
Prime Minister Harper is proving a political populist by practice and fiscal hawk by necessity; his finance minister, Jim Flaherty, is actually more the reverse. That tandem is holding, for now. A new Bank of Canada governor means renewed focus on the country's economic direction.
Harper-bashers direct their most virulent criticisms towards scarier Harper initiatives they presume should exist but don't actually. Ratcheting back same-sex rights. Crushing the CBC. And so on. With anti-Harper straw men and conspiracy theories playing such a large role in Canadian politics these days, the journalist's mandate as neutral arbitrator of fact and fiction has never been more needed.
As I understand it, Harper's plan is to place someone on the CBC's board to monitor and participate in labour negotiations on behalf of the government is different than having a government representative in the newsroom vetting stories. Harper's plans should definitely be thwarted but that is, ultimately, only a tiny step toward actually fixing the CBC.
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.
