federal budget
End subsidies to the fossil fuel industry by the next federal budget
The oil, gas and coal industries have come looking for their annual handout of public funds. Don't let these bullies fool you, they don't need our help! Help end public subsidies to the fossil fuel industry by the next federal budget. Visit www.climateactionnetwork.org and take action!
Can Jack get the Cons to agree to eliminate Senior poverty (and more) or do we go to the polls?
Both the Globe and Mail and the Nat Post are reporting that Jack Layton and Stephen Harper had "cordial" talks about what needs to be in the upcoming budget. The NDP have four points they want included. For me eliminating senior poverty by increasing the Guaranteed Income Supplement so that no senior falls below the poverty line is something worth voting for, even if it means postponing an election for a year. The other three are outlined by the Globe which of course leads with its anti-NDP bias.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-and-layton-hold-cord...
The Nasty Post story is worse, and even less informative.
Jack Layton celebrates eight years as NDP leader
If New Democrats get their way, Canada will not have a Spring election, Jack Layton told a standing-room only crowd at the Vancouver Public Library last Saturday afternoon.
Party members were invited to a pre-budget (or pre-election) town hall rally to meet the federal leader who is on a cross-Canada tour that ends in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on Jan. 25. That day Layton will celebrate not just Robbie Burns Day, but also the eighth anniversary of his election as NDP leader.
Deficits will own the podium
No cost has been spared in mounting a giant spectacle of spandex-clad athletes performing dazzling feats in massive public venues.
Certainly, nobody seems to be letting the $6 billion price tag for Vancouver's Olympic extravaganza get in the way.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against sports. I appreciate the nuances of a fine skeleton performance as much as the next person.
My point is simply to question why goals other than mounting gala sports events are routinely dismissed on the grounds that we can't afford them.
Of course, sports extravaganzas often have side benefits. We're told that with the 2015 Pan Am Games coming here, Toronto may finally get its public transit system upgraded.
The falling stock of workers
Blinding moments of insight often come in asides, parentheses or (among academics) footnotes; what seems overbold gets slipped past fast. This happened in a recent Globe and Mail column by Murray Campbell on the decline of Ontario's economy: "The long-term trend toward globalization" (here it comes, pay attention) "-- seeking out lower-cost jurisdictions --". And it's gone. But he said it. All the glam theory and rhetoric on globalization and free trade came down to one thing: businesses taking work from here and shipping it to where people will do it more cheaply.
Notice that he doesn't even specify what the lower costs apply to in those "jurisdictions." It must be an economic factor that dare not speak its name. So I'll name it: workers.
Budget blues
It is depressing. The budget passed yesterday and what felt like a small opening in the door for a new kind of politics, has now slammed shut. The old fractious bombast has re-emerged in full force along with the feeling that government power is now shared between Conservatives wearing liberal clothing and Liberals who are really just tarted-up conservatives. The whole scene feels so strangely out of time.
For a brief period, the shocking answer to a political crisis was cooperation. And it was powerful. The threat of losing the Government transformed the Harper government into a puppet of its own political ambition. The result is that we are stuck with Flaherty's foolhardy attention deficit disorder budget. But Harper has a serious decline in popular support to show for it.