The monster Fair Elections Act, with its "sharper teeth, longer reach, and freer hands", is being fast-tracked to the Senate even before it passes in the House of Commons because Steve is in a huge rush to ram it - and its accompanying muzzling of Elections Canada's investigation into Con election fraud in the last election - through all the hoops in time for the next one in 2015.
If the senators here look fairly relaxed about having a monster in their midst, it's because they already know how this particular story ends. This is the same bunch, after all, who just three months ago voted 51- 30 against having Deloitte partner Michael Runia testify about a phone call he received from his contact Senator Irving Gerstein amid PMO interference in Deloitte's audit into Senator Mike Duffy.
Senator Claude Carignan, Con leader of the Red Chamber of sober second pre-thought, thinks it's "a very good bill" :
“I don’t think the comments from the experts are appropriate,” he said.
Some of the urgent changes "have to be adopted at the end of June if we want to have [them] in application for the next election.”
Yesterday Pierre Poilievre, addressed the Conservative senators in a private caucus meeting. CBC reported what the Con senators told them about it afterwards in what they termed an "Exclusive!" :
"Conservative sources in the Senate tell the CBC's Hannah Thibedeau and Rosemary Barton that Pierre Poilievre, minister of state for democratic reform, is open to changing the section of Bill C-23 that would eliminate the practice of vouching at polling stations."
Even if this second hand info is true - Big whoop.
Con Negotiating 101 :
1. Stick way more than you expect to get passed in a real stinker of a reactionary bill that, in addition to killing off vouching, includes
- gagging the head of Elections Canada;
- refusing him the power to compel testimony from suspected fraudsters;
- stopping EC projects to encourage voting;
- moving the investigator's office under Peter MacKay;
- giving national and local party winners of the previous election the right to nominate the returning officers and poll clerks for the next election
- not including fundraising to previous supporters as a campaign expense; and
- raising campaign donation limits from $1000 to $5000 and $25,000.
2. Be totally intractable about considering any changes at all - very important step.
3. When all the experts - including your own, international press, and even the editorial board of the Globe and Mail, which has endorsed Harper in every election, thinks the bill should be outright scrapped -
it's time to simulate some good faith by giving way on one point to stem the outcry, thereby looking like you have caved a bit to opposition while still getting most of your boatload of backward bs past them.
Thursday Update : Hill Times :
Mr. Poilievre indicated on Wednesday that reports might have been incorrect to indicate he was open to amendments—at least to replace vouching with a new system for electors without sufficient ID rather than offering no special measures at all.“I’ll let you know in a month when the committee actually reviews its amendments,” Mr. Poilievre told reporters. “And I think the bill’s terrific the way it is ...".
Toon monster in the Senate based on Ghostbusters character.
.
20 comments:
.. it will be important historically to link Harper and Poilievre, the first as author and the second as grim handmaiden of partisan, un-Canadian, hysterically flawed electoral legislation.
What difference is there to the unholy author & his handmaiden travesties.. ie Harper & Peter Kent? Just that it was Canada's environment..
not democracy & elections being groomed and assaulted.
And so it goes, across the board.. Harper/Baird & Israeli Rapture Affairs .. Harper/MacKay & F-35 fabrications .. Harper/Flaherty & delay the pensions.. Harper/Clement & its hide and seek with money & where it went.. Harper/Oliver & tar sands to China..
Finding any connection whatsoever to a mandate, election platform or Canadian Values.. or the dreams, needs or wishes of actual Canadians is impossible.
Its not.. and never will be about Canadians.. its all about a toxic personality experimenting with complete sellout MP's to jam and ram twisted logic & policy that he must pull out of his ass..
Our historic hideous hysterical hindsight needs to spotlight smug holier n smarter than thou pricks like Poilievre.. cretins like Paul Calandra, Keith Ashfield, creeps like Gail Shea & Rob Anders.. all perfectly willing to 'groom' & deceive Canadians, rather than respecting their wishes
The Conservative gene pools runs thin.. very thin.. right to the very top, past the unelected zero ethics Jenni Byrne's and Ray Novaks', Soudas, Lecce's, Hamilton's.. to the make believe senior public servant Stephen Harper.
The Harper Government and the comorbid Harper Party are now a single rabid runaway apparatus spewing the bizarre personal dogma of Stephen Harper and a twisted jackal pack of vested enablers.. all backed by 2,500 salaried in house lawyers and hundreds of millions of dollars for outside lawyers..
Can you spell CONTEMPT or CONTROL ? Or CONFLICT ?
No ? How about SOCIOPATH .. ?
How about BETRAYAL ?
Exactly. When I read this crap on the CBC this morning about the Conservative senators criticizing the vouching part of the bill, I immediately thought it was all play-acting.
harper and poilievre know they have a majority. They have a majority and now shame. They're capable of making a big issue out of vouching and then leaving that part in the bill anyway just to say "Fuck You!" to us all.
This bill is garbage and the regime foisting it on us is illegitimate.
Thank you Alison, for being you.
"If evidence voted, this bill would die "
Evidence vote? In the apocalyptic universe of the CONtempt party evidence just like its technology, science, doesn't even exist and/or can be made up of whole cloth, like unreported crime, non-existent voter fraud and literally non-existent privacy invasion complaints about the census.........
Oh yeah, before I forget, the North Coast of B.C. wouldn't be beautiful without the efforts of Enbridge!
Neither Harper nor Poilievre have any honor, decency, ethics nor morals, what-so-ever. Harper has not, one decent bone in his entire body.
To me, Harper is a fascist dictator from way back. Did not the Canadian Nazis, donate to Harper's Alliance in 2002?
Harper's henchmen are, just as bad as he is. They have no self respect, what-so-ever.
Petro-China out in a bid to *help* build the Enbridge pipeline. BC people must not depend on those jobs either.
Harper cheated to win the last election. Harper is getting his ducks in a row, to cheat the next election too.
Do not ever trust Harper to do the best for us. We must expect the worst because, worst is all we will ever get, from that Nazi monster.
Salamander I can link Harper and PP in a cartoon by one of my fellow Canadians, no I do not know them I just have to give a thumbs up on their view, enjoy:
http://www.burgomp.blogspot.ca/
Allison we all knew this was coming a small revision to hide the major components of vote fraud, now you don't have to worry about grandma and pa so who will care about of the rest of the disenfranchised?
Mogs
Two game changing decisions that affect every Canadian; non voters take note:
As 'baby boomers' in our life times we were blind sided; These two decisions we have only now begun to understand have created a significant impact on Canada and all Canadians.
The first literally enslaved us through endless debt by government borrowing and paying interest to private banking institutions versus our public bank; Bank of Canada. The second turned private banking institutions into 'casinos' for the very wealthy known as the 1%. The 1% has proven it cannot lose at these 'publicly funded casinos' through bailouts, (2007-09 melt down and subsequent bailouts).
The federal conservatives under the manipulation of Harper have maintained Canada and Canadian banks were largely unscathed and did not require bailouts, this is a blatant lie. (proof further on) Harper and his hand-picked minions (no more valuable than trained seals) have deceived the Canadian public over this and the media has been more than willing to be complacent with the drivel emanating from the PMO's office.
The first decision, (code named a recommendation), in 1974-75 by The Basel Committee was a group of central bankers belonging to The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), (including Canada under the Trudeau Liberal government), connived to send us into eternal debt slavery. "According to Paul Hellyer, from 1974–1975 to 2010, Canadian taxpayers have paid one trillion, 100 billion dollars ($1,100,000,000,000) in interest on the federal debt to private lenders."*
* http://qualicuminstitute.ca/wp...
Paul Hellyer is a former Minister of Defence and served in the Liberal cabinets of Louis St. Laurent, Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. According to the debt clock the real debt or total debt today is about $620 billion and is increasing by about $45.5 million dollars a day or $1.9 million dollars per hour.*
* http://www.debtclock.ca/
The Canadian government has the option to borrow from the public (our) bank, the Bank of Canada where the interest would go back to the government its people
and communities. (see 1st link) We would have no need to shut down home postal deliveries, veterans affairs offices, search and rescue operations, national parks services, environmental protections and science thereof or world class scientific research stations effectively muzzling scientists. Nor would the federal government need to reneg on medicare, employment insurance, disability payments, seniors assistance, veterans support etcetera to balance the federal budget. "Harper’s Conservatives have systematically and relentlessly undermined programs helping ordinary Canadians while instituting tax cuts and policy changes benefiting the rich."*
*http://www.thestar.com/opinion...
continued...
According to a study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA Canadian "...banks received $114 billion in cash and loan support from both the U.S. and Canadian governments during the 2008-2010 financial crisis."*
* https://www.policyalternatives...
The second decision (a behind the scenes dirty trick): "...that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal
of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet."*
* http://www.gregpalast.com/larr...
This literally created no loss 'casinos' for the elite or 1% at the expense of
the 99% through government bailouts and the 2007-08 crisis proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. These elites now use our money, public tax money paid in
interest, funneled to private banks to gamble on the stock market because the banking industry has been deregulated in fraudulent quasi-legal deception. Who are these 1% and what is their agenda? Some of them belong to a billionaire banker fraternity based on wall street called Kappa Beta Phi and in order to be a member of this exclusive and highly secretive club you must collect equity worth a minimum of $1 billion in federal reserve notes. These people know outright that they make their stolen wealth by taking from the 99% through usury and they scorn and hold us in contempt fellow Canadians. Here is how it looks observing them on the inside "A journalist who gate-crashed a secret fraternity of billionaire bankers has laid bare the booze fuelled, cross dressing antics of its members as they openly mocked the 99 percent and made light of the enormous government bailouts of 2009."*
* http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... &
http://nymag.com/daily/intelli...
This behaviour typifies Stephen Harper's antics who long before he was elected in speeches to right-wing audiences made up of social elitists and 1%ers from all
across north America ridiculed and held Canada Canadians and their governing social safety nets in contempt. "In June 1997, Stephen Harper addressed a Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a right-wing U.S. think tank. His speech unequivocally foreshadowed his ongoing war against Canadian democracy. Harper described Canada as "a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term" with "a standard of living substantially lower" than that of the U.S. On our cherished bilingualism he said "the important point is that Canada is not a bilingual country." The Senate then was a chamber where the Prime Minister "puts buddies, fundraisers and the like. So the Senate also is not very important in our political system." And then he said the New Democratic Party (NDP) was "kind of proof that the Devil lives and interferes in the affairs of men."*
* http://www.canadianprogressive...
After being elected he was the first prime minister in history to be declared
to be in contempt of parliament and through that -also Canadians who don't agree
with him. "The second minority government of Stephen Harper has fallen. Early Friday afternoon, 156 opposition MPs – all of the Liberals, New Democrats
and Bloquistes present in the House of Commons – rose to support a motion of
no-confidence. It was also a motion that declared the government to be in
contempt of Parliament for its refusal to share information that opposition
members said they needed to properly assess legislation put before them."*
* http://www.theglobeandmail.com...
Stephen then went on to cheat in the following election*
* http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/n...
murdering democracy to ensure a majority government so he could silence the opposition once and for all. He followed up duly by mocking our government
oppositions role in parliament by shutting off debate ramming omnibus bills
through parliament by the sheer force of his majority government and not ever
on the merits of the bills and he was giving Canadians no voice or choice eliminating open and honest debate.
Now we come to see the quintessential Stephen scornfully and contemptuously
laughing at all Canadians and the very core of democracy by going through with
"The Fair Elections Act" Bill C-23. http://www.burgomp.blogspot.ca... Stephen definitively has the same mindset and mentality as the wall street whacko 'Kappa Beta Phi' noted above seen in their glory at an inside look making fun of the rest of us. This is Stephen amen, his boy Pierre Poilievre also seems to be enjoying deriding and ridiculing Harry Neufeld whom he scoffs at and says provides the very reason we need the fair election act, something is amiss here. Stephen refuses to grant an inside look because he knows he'd be banished instantly.
I see what Stephen (himself most certainly) and his hand-picked (selected
carefully with a particular purpose in mind) minion sycophants in the know are doing; securing their own future currying favour of the 1% at the expense of both Canada and Canadians. Thereby cementing a place of (dis)honour for themselves in the 1% club and deriding the public the press and their role in parliament all the while laughing merrily behind our backs like the billionaires. The changes they've made to Canadian law are welcomed by the elite. They despise us in a way that is unique to tyrants and dictators. It will take nothing less than the full-scale mobilization of the silent majority to drive these cancerous conservatives from government power, remember they have proven they will flaunt the law and cheat any way they can in this upcoming election starting with bill C-23. "But this is not a normal government. It does not operate in the usual way, nor does it feel bound by the usual rules. After all, if this were a normal government, it would not have as its minister for democratic reform such a noxious partisan as Mr. Poilievre, whose contempt for Parliament and its traditions registers every time he rises to speak in it." - Andrew Coyne: Fair Elections Act proof the Conservatives are no normal government.*
* http://fullcomment.nationalpos...
So all you non voters out there here is your choice don't vote in the upcoming election and be satisfied to be an empty joke enslaved to the 1%, through the
public debt that funds no loss casinos for the very rich and think of you as a cartoon character, and love to gamble with your hard earned cash while you struggle and don't forget by your non-vote you will also enslave generations to come.
You could throw off the yolk being placed on you by wanna-be 1%ers that masquerade as the Harper scandal ridden and rigged election dictator government who feel contempt and a deep repugnance for you by getting loud and getting heard; tell them to shove it up their collective a$$e$ or you will end up licking those same a$$e$ for the rest of your life along with generations to come. Remember Harper only received approximately 40% of the vote and with only approximately 60% voter turnout so he only rode in on and represents only 24% of eligible voters and therefore he in fact runs a minority government for the minority at the expense of the majority. Is this what you want?
Not only that Harper is lying about 'gifting' bankers and helping create 'casinos' for the 1% at our expense he is bragging that Canada is #1 in job creation among G-7 nations and we have in fact according to OECD statistics failed to create employment and had a net loss of jobs during the Harper years of 2008 - 2012. Here are the OECD statistics in 2008 we had an employment rate of 73.3% in 2012 it slid to 72.2 and is on a downward trend, -1.4% may not seem like much but represents; millions of jobless people being refused unemployment benefits under the Harper dictatorship;
http://rabble.ca/sites/rabble/...
They lie they cheat they give away our tax money to the filthy rich and then to add to insult; blatantly moving dollars from the bottom to the top and refuse to tax oil corporations some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet and they don't tax the rich, conservative party of Canada = swindlers of the middle class and denial of any help to the poorest Canadians. Is this the Canada you want?
Harper is lying to you:
http://www.google.ca/search?hl...
Mogs
So sorry my links did not work when I tried them here after I posted; so here they are from the top:
http://qualicuminstitute.ca/wpress/federal-debt/
http://www.debtclock.ca/
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2013/12/13/stop_stephen_harpers_destruction_of_our_social_safety_net_editorial.htm
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/updates/study-reveals-secret-canadian-bank-bailout
http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2562087/Behind-curtains-Wall-Streets-secret-society-Where-cross-dressing-new-members-make-bad-jokes-Hilary-Clinton-drunkenly-mock-Main-Street-laugh-financial-crisis.html
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/i-crashed-a-wall-street-secret-society.html
http://www.canadianprogressiveworld.com/2012/06/14/harper-v-canada-stephen-harper-addresses-right-wing-u-s-think-tank/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-government-falls-in-historic-commons-showdown/article4181393/
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/robocalls-scandal/
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/03/28/andrew-coyne-fair-elections-act-proof-the-conservatives-are-no-normal-government/
http://rabble.ca/sites/rabble/files/node-images/oecd.jpg
https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en-CA&source=hp&q=harper+say+canada+%231+in+job+creation+of+g7+countries+&gbv=2&oq=harper+say+canada+%231+in+job+creation+of+g7+countries+&gs_l=heirloom-hp.3...1562.353609.0.355015.55.18.0.37.0.0.390.3498.2-14j1.1
I have not yet figured out how the rest of you do these posts w/links so fluidly - yet, I hope this works so everybody can see and understand the sources I've referenced, sorry Allison I've not quite got it as you.
Thanks for the patience,
Mogs
Mogs links :
Qualicum Institute
Debt Clock
Couldn't find the Star one.
Centre For Policy Alternatives
Greg Palast
Daily Mail
NY Mag
Canadian Progressive World
Mogs links cont. :
Globe and Mail
Huffington Post
National Post
Rabble
Search for Harper says #1 in job creation
Mogs : Here's how to make a hyperlink.
The red bits make it go, the blue bits are the actual link address like you posted in your comments, and the black bits can say anything at you like. Don't add any extra spaces or it won't work.
You can practise and delete here if you like.
Next on the Agenda a fix for the Charter of Values
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/04/01/saudi-arabia-passes-new-law-that-declares-atheists-terrorists/
Everything you needed to know about what Harper thinks about democracy was already clearly indicated when he made Pierre Poilievre Minister for Democratic Reform and put him in charge of this bill.
Anon@8:44 : And I called it ;-)
Thwap : See update :(
Thanks Alison I apologize to all for the sloppy posts.
Another critic:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fair-elections-act-ex-watchdog-sheila-fraser-slams-bill-as-attack-on-democracy-1.2596652
Steve : Ack ack !
No apologies required, Mogs, of course not, but why don't you start a blog? Or are you Qualicum Institute?
Thanks, Hugh - blogged.
Alison these are the Qualicum Institute Directors from their website:
http://qualicuminstitute.ca/wpress/directors/
They are a retired elementary school principal; a Registered Professional Biologist in British Columbia; a graduate of Business Management at Ryerson University in Toronto and Recreation Management at the University of Waterloo who spent many years working for Parks Canada on Haida Gwaii, included a liaison role between the tourism industry, the community, the Haida Nation, and Parks Canada and also taught environmental education; a graduate in Chemical Engineering from McGill; a graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree at University of Guelph’s Wildlife Biology program and achieved the designation of Registered Professional Biologist in British Columbia in 1999; and a graduate from Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in 1975. Far as I can tell they all live in or near Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island, hence the name.
No I am not part of them I live in the East Kootenays clear across the province. Anyone who has a quote like theirs on the home page are friends and what their vision is, is shared by many of us.
"What we are suffering from today as the greatest sustainability challenge is not poverty, it is not greed, it is not climate change, it is not declining fisheries … or forests or biodiversity. None of those things, though they are very, very important. What we are suffering from today is the lack of competence in our leadership…
— Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, Founder of The Natural Step." -from the home page;
http://qualicuminstitute.ca/
I'm guessing they are fairly new as I hadn't heard of them before except their site came up in a web search on the federal debt.
Mogs
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