by Bill Tieleman
"Religion and political expediency go beautifully hand in hand."
– Friedrich Durrenmatt, Swiss author
Premier Christy Clark held an "inappropriate" meeting last week with a former BC Liberal candidate who faces six federal charges for failing to file corporate income tax returns, says BC Conservative Party leader John Cummins.
from Democracy Watch
Monday, April 1, 2013 — OTTAWA – Today, Democracy Watch expressed its pleasure with the fact that the Information Commissioner has officially confirmed they will conduct a full investigation into the muzzling of federal government scientists by the federal Conservative government.
The complaint was filed by Democracy Watch in collaboration with the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Clinic over new federal government policies that attempt to muzzle scientists.
from the National Film Board
As young children, Lyna and Glen were taken from their homes and placed in church-run boarding schools. The trauma of this experience was made worse by years of untold physical, sexual and emotional abuse, the effects of which persist in their adult lives. In this emotional film, the profound impact of the Canadian government's residential school system is conveyed unflinchingly through the eyes of two children who were forced to face hardships beyond their years. We Were Children gives voice to a national tragedy and demonstrates the incredible resilience of the human spirit.
Trailer for We Were Children
from the Pembina Institute
EDMONTON, March 26, 2013 — The health impact costs associated with burning coal for electricity in Alberta are close to $300 million annually according to a new report released today by a coalition of Canadian health and environmental groups.
by John Baglow
Does Canada actually have a foreign policy? Alone in all the world, we have now pulled out of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, the latest in a confusing series of muddled moves that appear only to have accelerated since we were denied a seat on the UN Security Council.
We are left attempting to divine a coherence where none may exist. Relating foreign policy objectives to business profitability, one apparent thread in the tangle, is no simple matter, but no overall strategy suggests itself — only piecemeal measures. Uncritical support of Israel’s Likud party seems unrelated to any broader policy goal. Leaving Africa high and (literally) dry makes little geopolitical sense, but maybe it’s just that there isn’t a buck in it. We should never look for complexity when it comes to Conservative motives.
But the government does enjoy creating little mysteries, lowering curtains that may conceal little or nothing. And so CTV reports:
Baird’s office forwarded questions about the withdrawal to the Canadian International Development Agency, but CIDA did not respond to interview requests.
In an email statement, a spokesperson for International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino said “membership in this convention was costly for Canadians and showed few results, if any for the environment.”
Fantino’s office would not say how much money was being saved by withdrawing from the convention, but documents show that the government committed to providing around $350,000 a year to the convention.
Which brings us to the CIDA-DFAIT merger. We know that CIDA has been drifting this way and that for some time. A recent example of uncoordinated decision-making was the freezing of aid to Haiti without letting DFAIT know. As The Globe & Mail reported:
Haiti’s ambassador to Canada, Frantz Liautaud, said he heard about it through the news media.
“I’ve had no communication from CIDA so far, but I’ve asked right away for a meeting with Mr. Fantino,” Mr. Liautaud said. He said he called Canada’s ambassador to Port-au-Prince, who didn’t know about it, either. “He also learned about it from the press,” Mr. Liautaud said.
Of course, this sort of problem could be resolved by Julian Fantino, the minister responsible for CIDA, having a chat with John Baird, the minister responsible for foreign affairs. But it’s perhaps simpler, given the personalities involved, to put Baird in charge of it all.
Will we see the activities of the former CIDA take a new direction? Very likely — in fact, a direction of any kind would be welcome. But do we know, overall, what the hell we’re doing? That question remains open. And to the rest of the world, Canada must seem, to repurpose the words of Winston Churchill, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
by Stephen Kimber
Richmond, the primary-to-nine school I attended in north end Halifax, is long gone. Er, almost.
The oldest section, ironically the one re-built after the 1917 Halifax Explosion, now serves as a family court building. The other two wings, hastily tacked on after World War II to accommodate then-exponentially expanding baby boom babies, were unceremoniously leveled after the wave crested, young families moved to the suburbs and Halifax finally outgrew its wasteful tradition of parallel Protestant-Catholic schools.
I can’t help thinking about Richmond’s fate whenever the province’s annual March Madness Educational Demolition Derby enters its final fevered days.
by Kelly McParland
Canada, according to Canadian Press, has quietly pulled out of a United Nations convention that fights droughts and desertification.
“Quietly”, in fact, may not begin to describe the furtive means the federal Tories employed in decamping from the convention. It would be completely un-Conservative-like to actually announce such a decision, and offer an explanation. That might suggest the government felt a duty to make public information readily available to the public, which, of course, it doesn’t. Usually, though, if you’re going to pull out of a UN agreement (and CP says Canada will now be the only country in the world outside the convention) you would at least be polite enough to notify the UN itself. Not this government: officials at the UN were unaware of the fact until contacted by the CP reporter, and thus unable to suggest a reason for the departure. They may still be trying to figure it out for themselves…
from Democracy Watch
OTTAWA – On March 27, Democracy Watch announced that it is preparing a court challenge of the federal Conservatives’ illegal appointment of the Parliamentary Librarian as the interim Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), and launched a national letter-writing campaign to make the PBO a fully independent and fully empowered watchdog.
by Ben Parfitt
For months, vested interests in government and the private sector have known that a damning report was in the offing by BC’s outgoing Auditor General, John Doyle.
Doyle’s office has been looking into the provincial government’s claims of having achieved “carbon neutrality” by purchasing carbon offsets, through a Crown corporation called Pacific Crown Trust, mainly in the forms of forest acreage and a project to modify natural gas wells. After almost two years, the AG’s office was inching closer to releasing the report.
by Bill Tieleman
"If Premier Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberal MLAs don't listen to the people and drop the HST, he and his party are finished."
– Former BC premier Bill Vander Zalm, April 1, 2010.
Three years to the day of that warning from Fight HST leader Bill Vander Zalm, the harmonized sales tax is finished, Gordon Campbell is finished and in six weeks most BC Liberal MLAs will be finished.
