“lack of sense of inner self-restraint”

If you only read one article on Canada today, I hope you read this.

The University of Ottawa's Ralph Heintzman, who created and headed the federal Public Service Office of Values and Ethics, provides an important insight into what’s happening here: There is a “lack of sense of inner self-restraint on the part of the prime minister, a sense that it is some kind of war and therefore anything is legitimate, that it's quite acceptable for a prime minister to lie, for example, about how our parliamentary democracy works.”
Many good, direct, indisputable examples to support Caplan's arguments.  Read them for yourself.

Caplan tells us what we face, and why.  What we need to add to this is how we can fight this very hostile takeover of our democracy and our identity.

As Caplan, Lawrence, and several other journalists have pointed out recently, the regular systems of keeping such a prime minister and his mouth pieces in check are not only helpless to stop the devastation of Parliament and our institutions, those very systems serve as fodder to promote hate, confusion, and diversion as harper lies about them and re-shapes them into costly or commie gremlins in the minds of the less-than-informed.

If harper and his CONsorts are indeed treating their rule as a war against anything that doesn't promote their narrow ideology and goals (and I have no doubt this is the case), then the rest of Canada - the sane part - had better wake up to the fact that our own government is waging war on us and act accordingly.

I'm not suggesting we break the law.  I am saying we need to get far more creative, we need to be far more vocal, and we need to find legal ways of stopping harper's destructive acts and takeovers even if our efforts fail.  The efforts themselves will draw attention to the issues and to the fact that in many case, if not most, the majority of Canadians don't approve of his changes to our country and will not sit passively by.

The hell with politeness and verbal restraint.  In this, I'm not saying use profanities as a point (although it took one little potty word to finally draw attention publicly to the CON's sick actions and words concerning banning delegates from Durban), but I am saying that any rules - informal or not - of respect for government simply because it is government do not apply.  In a state of war, we aren't expected to say please or thank you as our front doors are being kicked in.

But our counter attacks should be fact-based, and I am proud to say that's not a problem for those currently expressing their outrage against this government.  Hell, harper gives us enough ammunition without having to invent a thing.

Better networking, coordinated efforts, high profile petitions to the GG, more involvement in well organized groups that offer resistance...what else?

One thing is certain: we can't afford to sit back passively with the excuse that this takeover is just to big to take on.  Every voice silenced gives a bigger platform for the hostile CONs and their mindless followers.  And dammit, really rip into those who say all political parties are corrupt, so why bother getting involved?

gee, stevie, I thought you said you weren't going to make any big changes

That didn't take long, did it?


The day after a historic election, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz stirred up a group of farmers by saying that he is pushing to get rid of the Canadian Wheat Board. In a statement to Global News, he said: “It’s time for Parliament to support Western Canadian farmers’ freedom to market their grain and pass legislation to end the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly.”

And the CONs' idea of giving the farmers freedom is to remove their right to vote on the single-desk mandate of the Wheat Board. 

But (wheat farmer Bill) Toews said that means farmers won’t get fair prices, and jobs will likely be lost.  “Winnipeg has a fair amount to lose, that’s for sure,” Toews said.

Toews said the ultimate decision should not be made in Ottawa.  “It should be farmers that make the decision, not government; we've stressed that over the years,” Toews said.

Sure,  but Big Daddy knows best, and now Big Daddy has a majority and will do as he damn well pleases.

No justification

While it is proper that Ignatieff is accepting responsibility for the Liberal mess concerning the vote on Rae's motion to include a broader range of family planning programs, including contraception, in a maternal health initiative for developing countries, there is no excuse for the handful of Liberals who voted against it, or for those who abstained.

According to some of these Liberals, they did so because they are opposed to abortion.

First of all, Rae's motion does not promote abortion, and speeches made in the House explain that it would be supported, only as a health issue, and only in countries where it is legal:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government’s G8 maternal and child health initiative for the world’s poorest regions must include the full range of family planning, sexual and reproductive health options, including contraception, consistent with the policy of previous Liberal and Conservative governments, and all other G8 governments last year in L’Aquila, Italy;


that the approach of the Government of Canada must be based on scientific evidence, which proves that education and family planning can prevent as many as one in every three maternal deaths; and


that the Canadian government should refrain from advancing the failed right-wing ideologies previously imposed by the George W. Bush administration in the United States, which made humanitarian assistance conditional upon a “global gag rule” that required all non-governmental organizations receiving federal funding to refrain from promoting medically-sound family planning.

This line is key to what is so objectionable about the opposition to the motion:

the approach of the Government of Canada must be based on scientific evidence, which proves that education and family planning can prevent as many as one in every three maternal deaths

By voting according to their own moral beliefs, likely based on religious views whether the members are currently believers in a god or not, those MPs are mixing church and state, something that must not be done. They know this, and failed to consider the science and facts above their own nebulous beliefs. In so doing, they are subjecting women and children to their personal narrow ideology.

It is insane (and fanatical) that anyone would not support family planning in a world where over-population has become a huge problem, one which is increasing exponentially. It is madness not to see that family planning is critical in a world where resources are becoming more scarce, where access to clean, safe water is an issue for many, where wars are being fought over arrable land, where sexually transmitted diseases ravage developing countries, where women are still suppressed through their inability to manage their reproductive rights due to lack of access to contraceptives.

By voting against Rae's motion, those Liberals have placed their own personal ideology before the rights and welfare of others while using their position to affect women and children globally. They have failed to separate church and state. They have also gone against their own party's stance on contraception.

While this motion wasn't binding, it was meant to send a strong message that Canada stands for women's reproductive rights and understands that those rights are essential to the health and welfare of women and children. Such a motion, had it passed, would have helped Canada at the G8 by showing that the country, while currently lead by a party of mysoginistic dinosaurs, is not made up of such.

As for the impact of the vote politically - the Liberals ended up looking weak (again), disorganized (again), with a leader who does not have the support of his party (again). Those few opposed could have made their personal views known, yet still have supported the motion for the positive aspects it offered. Hell, the Liberal party has compromised often enough over the past few years on Harper Bills because they didn't want to incur the wrath of voters by voting down Bills that contained some good despite crappy sections wedged in.

Passing this motion would also have shown how the opposition can work together, can agree on issues that stand to improve lives. It would have kept the focus on how dismally neanderthal the CONs are on women's and children's rights. Instead, the story is about what fuck-ups the Liberals are. Even among the left, focus is heavily on the Liberal failure and those few idiots who failed to see how beneficial passing this motion would have been.

To say, oh well, it wasn't binding anyway is no excuse. This was a chance to show some backbone, some solidarity, some strength of unity in the party, and to make a strong, public stand for women's and children's rights. It was also a good opportunity to call the CONs out on their atavistic policies in regards to women, children, and developing countries.

But the Liberals blew it.

What the hell?

This is starting to feel like an episode in the Twilight Zone.

Still, there's word the Tories may go further to ensure prorogation becomes routine.  Government sources say they're contemplating formally shutting down Parliament at the end of every year, so the government can start afresh with a throne speech and a budget.

Do it often enough, it becomes routine, and people come to believe it's the norm.  Normal to kill any work still on the table and start all over again just to kill the same bills the following year.  Normal to incurr waste of taxpayers dollars on wasted bills.  Normal to wipe the slate clean of work done by committees studying abuses and scandals.

Sort of like going to confession on a regular basis:  wipe your sins away without coming to terms with them or being held accountable so that you can go out and commit a whole new set of sins, repeat some of the same ones, secure in the knowledge that never, ever will you be held accountable.

The role of elected representatives will erode further if the federal government makes good on its suggestion to make prorogation an annual event, experts say.   "It's not easy to see how this can work," said David Mitchell, president of the Ottawa-based Public Policy Forum. "It raises the question: Why do we have a Parliament?"

No fucking kidding!  Our vote, our will comes to mean very little. 

Regardless of what party you support, you should oppose this move in any way you can.  Do any of us want this to be the way any party in power - today the conservatives, tomorrow, who knows - by-passes our elected representatives who are supposed to act on our behalf?

The government's use of prorogation shows it believes Parliament has become an "inconvenience" that needs to be managed, rather than an essential part of the democratic process, said Mitchell.

Our will, as represented through those we elect, an inconvenience that needs to be managed?  Oh sure, because the CONs seem to think they know what we want better than we do, and actually consulting with us, or taking our misguided concerns seriously is a waste of time.

(emphasis mine)

But (political scientist Nelson Wiseman from the University of Toronto) doesn't expect much of a public backlash from the move. The public doesn't seem to get worked up about the erosion of Parliamentary power, he said.  His feeling is echoed privately by Tory MPs, and by a poll showing that 46 per cent of Canadians just don't care whether Parliament starts sitting in January or takes a break and comes back after the Olympics in March.

How fucking insulting and offensive is that?  We don't care about the erosion of Parliament?  We don't care that we are losing our right to shape our own future?  We just don't give a damn that our democratic act of voting is just to lull us into believing this is a democracy but actually means very little?

Show these pompous bastards how fucking wrong they are.  Show it in polls, show it by protesting prorogation.  If you don't, then they are right.  You really don't care whether or not we live in a democratic country, and I'll add that you don't give the slightest damn about your children's rights.

And why has our precious media given this monumentally important topic so little coverage?  Maybe part of the problem why so many people don't seem to give a damn is that the media is doing such a shit job at bringing it, and its serious nature, to our attention.