Not even remotely effing safe for work

continued ....
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Hey, federal political parties - this is how it's done.

In three days Albertans go to the polls. Here's how that's looking as of yesterday according to 308 :

May 5 Update : 308 has updated Vote and Seat Projections - now even higher for NDP.
    and the results :

As part of his election platform, Calgary-Klein Green Party candidate Noel Keough made a great case for raising corporate taxes in Alberta - the lowest in the country - by just 2% in order to raise $12-billion annually for Alberta's decimated public coffers : 



An environmental design prof at the University of Calgary, he also put forward solid policy on fossil fuels and advocates a PropRep voting system replacing first-past-the post - the better to more fairly represent Albertans.

But then he looked at the very close polling for his riding, and at an all-candidates debate in Calgary two days ago, Keough announced his decision to step out of the race and support his NDP rival rather than split the vote. Notable that he referred to this decision as a party decision. Keough : [bold:mine]

"So, with a heavy heart, but a firm conviction in my decision I am stepping out of the race immediately and putting my full support behind the New Democratic Party and their candidate Craig Coolihan. The policies of the NDP are not in perfect alignment with The Green Party but they are the most closely aligned. A win for the NDP in Calgary-Klein will advance Green principles and will make Alberta a better place to live."

Putting your constituency and province ahead of the party system - what a novel idea.
People have said the Greens couldn't have won the seat anyway. Not the point. Keough did the one thing he could within his power to help voters avoid splitting the vote by trying to guess how they should vote strategically.

Well, federal NDP, Libs, and Greens? We're waiting for a sign you plan to follow Keough's example here.

As Canadian Cynic observed : "forget strategic voting, here's strategic candidacy."

As for the rest of us, support for Prop Rep should be the line-in-the-sand litmus test for whether we support a local candidate.  Between election fraud and the Stephen Harper the Economist's disastrously incompetent corporate-driven fiscal policies, we just can't afford another unrestrained and poisonous first-past-the-post 24% minority misrule. 

FairVoteCanada is soliciting citizens in all ridings across Canada to get local candidates of all parties to sign a pledge to support PropRep so we'll know who we can afford to vote for before the next election. Go. Sign up to do it.

Meanwhile, a Globe and Mail editorial from the very paper which has endorsed Harper in every election since 2006 is now shilling for Prentice : For Alberta, Jim Prentice is the best choice.

I only mention this entirely unsurprising endorsement so you can enjoy the thorough shellacking they get for it in comments.

The Edmonton Journal editorial: 
In this election, we are picking a CEO for the province makes the same mistake and gets a similar shellacking.

And then there's the threat from five CEOs in the Edmonton Sun : Corporate business leaders warn of risks to Alberta NDP government : "We won't make donations to charities."
Think the commenters under that threat aren't pissed?

"In response, NDP leader Rachel Notley pointed out the donations of the five businessmen to the PCs in the past five years have topped $86,000 collectively."

ObligaTory shot of then Minister Jim Prentice with PMO fraudster and "special adviser to Minister Prentice" Bruce Carson above.

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"What is Plan B?"

asked Armine Yalnizyan of Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on CBC's The Current this morning. "What if your plan is not oil?" 

I'll get back to Yalnizyan's Plan B in a moment, but preceding her on the program was TD Bank VP and chief economist Craig Alexander. He spoke to that Bank of Canada survey of 100 executives that came out this week, 62% of whom called for diversification to reduce Canada's dependence on the energy sector as oil prices collapse.

"Energy plus metals and minerals mining amounts to less than 10% of Canadian economy but 25% of the entire Albertan economy," he said, where loss of oil jobs and stagnant wages will also affect retail spending despite a projected $900 saving per family per year at the pumps. So no growth for Alberta and Saskatchewan this year and under a 3% increase for BC and Ontario.  

Two and a half years ago and before the collapse of oil prices, he was calling for investing in childcare and early education in his TD report :
“It is very much an economic topic,” said Alexander. "If you are concerned with skills development, productivity and innovation, you should really care about this subject."

"For every dollar invested, the return ranges from roughly $1.50 to almost $3. For disadvantaged children, the return runs into the double digits ...  it follows that more focus should be put on investing in, and improving the system,” the report says." But later, when we can afford it.


CCPA's Yalnizyan says that time is now :

"In our global economy we need our best and brightest to be our best and brightest. We can ill afford to discount Canadians who cannot afford to upgrade their skills at any point in their lives, not just when they're getting out of high school." 

We are part of global economy in which Canada has fallen from 8th to 11th place while current government policy is directed at "ripping and stripping our natural resources," she said, despite those collapsing oil prices and the coming expense of population aging.

Plan B? Mission-oriented public policy is required, she said, because without it we will just get higher healthcare costs without necessarily any improvement.
Taking your hands off the wheel won't necessarily deliver what we need so how can we make life cheaper for the people who, unlike our corporate hoarders, spend every dollar they earn in the economy? 

"The global economy is transitioning and pivoting away from fossil fuels to renewables and we should be contributing to this fight to find the most energy-efficient ways of using and generating energy .

Focus on healthcare costs in a different way. Spend on social determinants. What causes all round good health?  Better housing, public transportation, education, even income redistribution. Population health-based intervention. 

While 10% of the economy is in the energy sector, 11% of our economy is in the health sector. Use that engine of the economy to improve peoples' lives and get a better bang for the buck.

We spent $14-billion on dental care for children in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in late 70s and early 80s. The mouth is the only part of healthcare that isn't covered."

$14B sounds like a lot to have spent on childrens' health until you consider that the government already spends $13B a year in taxpayer-funded subsidies to oil and gas industries. 

The program wrapped up with Stephen Gordon, economist at LaValle University. 
Shorter and presumably not ironic Gordon : "Oil is our precious. Why can't we just leave the markets a-l-o-o-o-o-o-n-e?"
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Protected species

Brilliant cartoon from Bruce MacKinnon illustrating Canada's unprecedented decision to opt out of 76 of 77 resolutions not to trade in endangered or protected species like manatees, turtles, and swallowtail butterflies at last year's Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species [CITES] 

Environment Canada has not explained why they won't support the bans but it's possibly related to pique at the proposed ban on commercial trade in polar bear parts put forward at CITES by the US and backed by Russia, which banned polar bear hunting in 1956. The other polar bear regions - Alaska, Greenland, and Norway - have all banned it aside from the traditional practice by indigenous peoples. 

According to the United States Geological Survey in 2007, the decline in sea ice is expected to lead to the extirpation of approximately two-thirds of the world's polar bear populations within the next 50 years. 

Environment Canada reported 75% of Canada's commercially traded polar bear skins or bodies were exported to China in 2011. 

Insert mental pic of polar bear balancing on tiny ice floe floating out to sea here.

As MacKinnon so aptly illustrates, the only species Steve has shown any real interest in protecting so far is the tar sands ... 

 Feds leave $321-million unspent for green programs, overspend on oil and gas 

research, ads 

"The federal government failed to spend a total of $321-million Parliament approved for “environmentally responsible” programs last year—nearly one-third of the money that was available for that purpose—while spending more than the $438-million that had been set aside to fund programs that primarily supported the oil and gas sector through scientific research, market development and government advertising."

Liberal MP John McKay :

“We’re not nearly dead last in climate change progress for nothing, we worked at it, and we worked at it by emphasizing the oil sands in preference to everything else. So when we have this impending oil deflation, the price of oil deflation, all of our eggs are in that basket and because all of our eggs are in that one basket, we’re just watching that basket sail down the river, and there is no plan B."

Insert mental pic of Canada balancing on tiny oil derrick floating down the river here.
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Joe Oliver, CFIB, and the Fraser Institute

FinMin Joe Oliver admitted last week that his department had outsourced government policy to the lobby group Canadian Federation of Independent Business, and further, had not done their own analysis of CFIB's work even though the lobby group represents the businesses the new policy was intended to benefit. The new CFIB/FinMin policy takes $500M from the EI fund and gives it to small businesses - ostensibly to create jobs.

CFIB wasted no time taking credit for this piece of government policy.

On their webpage CFIB shows this photo of CFIB President Dan Kelly at the government's "Jobs and Opportunities" dedecked lectern, with FinMin Joe standing demurely off to the side. 
A sidebar on the main page headlined "We Make a Difference - Victories" boasts :
"Big breakthrough on payroll taxes: CFIB joined federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver to announce the creation of the Small Business Job Credit".

CFIB certainly has the right to flaunt their influence over Con policy. 

Two and a half years ago, they announced their success in lobbying the government "to make the Temporary Foreign Worker Program more responsive to the needs of employers", including a 10-day response time to LMOs, "a simplified online application process", and "a new more flexible wage structure". 

And lo, Human Resources Minister Diane FInley made it so.

In fact, over the past four years from Nov 2010 to Nov 2014, Con MPs have quoted the CFIB more than 280 times in the House and in committee on everything from the Wheat Board to Canada Post to the temporary foreign workers program to federal budgets.

Here's a few from one week this past October :

With CEO Dan Kelly sitting on the Advisory Committee to the Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, the CFIB currently have 46 lobbyists listed to lobby 39 separate government institutions on 28 matters of policy for the year 2014, including "fair access to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program" and "support for Bill C525 (An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code) that secret ballot voting should be mandatory prior to union certification."

At left, also from Press Progress, is the short version of the apparently joint $550M CFIB/FinMin EI policy. 
Estimated to create 25,000 person-years of employment over the next several years, this figure was later corrected by the parliamentary budget officer to 800 jobs at a cost of $687,500 per job.


However CFIB President Dan Kelly explains the whole jobs jobs jobs thing wasn't even the point :

"The job-creation benefit of it is essentially secondary to the fact that this is essentially an EI cut because employers and employees should not have to pay higher EI premiums than is needed to pay for the cost of the program. So this is essentially returning EI rates back to their break-even level."

No fault to the CFIB here - they're just doing their job for their guys, 109,000 small and medium Canadian businesses and franchises.

Perhaps notable though is that according to their Contact page, the CFIB Exec Vice President was formerly Director of Environment and Regulatory Studies at the Koch-funded Fraser Institute while the VP of Communications interned there.

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Eat the banksters

Between September 2008 and August 2010, Scotiabank received a $25 billion bailout amounting to 100% of the bank's value - or as Steve and Jim preferred to call it at the time : "liquidity support" ***.

Last year Scotiabank made a record $6.7 billion in net profit and CEO and president Brian Porter netted a total compensation package of $6,902,242 for the same year.

Nonetheless, Scotiabank announced yesterday it will cut 1,500 jobs, including about 1,000 in Canada.

Aren't you glad you moved your bank account to a local credit union as soon as you heard about their use of temporary foreign workers over Canadians?

Meanwhile, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz - estimated salary for 2013 of $436,100 – $513,000 - suggested that unemployed Canadian youth should work for free to pad out their CVs if they can't find paying jobs .

Kids in the Basement Should Take Unpaid Work, Says Poloz

"The Bank of Canada estimates about 200,000 young people want to work or work more, and Poloz said they may be scarred by prolonged unemployment that prevents them from moving out on their own. “I bet almost everyone in this room knows at least one family with adult children living in the basement,” Poloz said."

Poloz did not mention that "scarred" Canadian youth suffering twice the unemployment rate of the general population are having to compete for jobs with a global market of temporary foreign workers encouraged by the same cabinet that approved his Bank of Canada appointment. 

Nor did he mention that an average student debt of $25,000 also likely precludes moving out of the basement, should your parent(s) be fortunate enough to have one from which to subsidize business with your free employment.  
Marginalised communities, people with low-income backgrounds, and single parents are less likely to be in a position to assist their youth to upgrade their education to a marketable skill so that they will be in a position to compete with the 285,000 "higher calibre immigrants" Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander intends to import next year.

Yeah, you pretty much have start off rich, Poloz did not exactly say.


*** During the 2008 to 2010 crisis of confidence in global credit markets, "liquidity support" granted to Canadian banks was a pre-emptive bailout relieving them of the necessity of having to sell off assets to pay down their debts.  
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Clampetts clownshow distracts from FIPA

Gosh, was it only five years ago that Alberta Energy spokesman Tim Markle said "Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta", even as Harper was blowing off the Kyoto Accord, supposedly due to China's crappy environmental record, and pledging to build a monument to victims of communism? 

Beginning Oct 1 for the next 31 years until 2045, under the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement Harper just ratified on Friday, Chinese corporations will be able to directly sue the Canadian government for any public interest measures that interfere with their ability to make a profit in Canada. 

Do you think China-owned Nexen, Sinopec, and PetroChina just might consider Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline to be somewhat integral to getting their $30B investment in the tarsands home to China for refining?  
Think Steve can count on Christy Clark to ensure no BC environmental protection laws might harm China's assets?
Think it's an accident Steve released this news on a Friday during the Ford brothers' Clampett Dynasty pitch?

Two years ago in Vladivostok, Harper announced his signing of the FIPA deal with China. MP Don Davies introduced a motion in the House to not ratify it. His motion failed. All the Libs and Cons voted against his motion not to ratify FIPA, including 24 Con MPs from Alberta and 19 from BC.  
You can contact those quislings through this HoC page showing that vote.

NDP Petition : Stop FIPA Now     
Green Party Petition : Stand Up to the Sellout to China          
LeadNow Petition : Stop the Secretive, Reckless & Binding Canada-China FIPA


Council of Canadians : Harper government sneaks through Canada-China FIPA despite ongoing court challenge

The Tyee : FIPA 'is the price China demanded to open its purse strings for investing in the resource sector in Canada.' and 

Harper's Sneaky, Undemocratic, Terrible Deal with China 

Montreal Simon : Stephen Harper and the Great Chinese Betrayal 

Update : Laila Yuile : Who's Harper working for?



.

New Conservative ad, now with added bonus tracks

from me, celebrating Stephen Harper's economic record. Fixed it for them.



Blurb accompanying original Con ad : We're better off with Harper

"With over 1.1 million net new jobs since the recession, Canada’s economy is on the right track – thanks to the strong leadership of Stephen Harper and Canada’s Conservatives."

God bless, now.
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Steve's Economic Action Scam

1. Vastly inflate the stats for supposed job vacancies and skill shortages in Canada by basing them on a program that counts online classified ads, including one on eBay that features the same jobs posted multiple times.
2. Refuse to divulge the questionable source of the now vastly inflated stats being used to implement government policy because - commercial confidentiality.
3. Tighten up eligibility requirements for employment insurance because - hey, tons of jobs out there going begging.
4. Send Kenney off to Ireland to encourage 10,000 Irish students to come to Canada with their newly issued open work permits just as Canadian students hit the street looking for summer jobs.
5. Mandate employers to post 'help wanted' ads on the government job bank site where they sit undated for up to six months or a year after they are filled, thus providing further evidence for the illusion of a serious labour shortage .
6. Give employers a time limit of four weeks to not respond to Canadian job applicants, after which they are free to import hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers thus driving unemployment up and wages down. 
7. Mission accomplished.
8. Quietly delete the bogus inflated stats from gov. labour market data after you get busted for basing government policy on an eBay service whose proprietor explained "the job postings on the site are rising in part because the site itself has had major growth in terms of popularity."

Are we done with the myth of Conservative competence in all matters economic yet?

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Jason Kenney's math mojo

Employment Minister Jason Kenney explained that "none of us know exactly what is going on in the labour market of today" because ... math!!!  
The quest was made even more difficult by ignoring StatsCan's official statistics showing a declining job vacancy rate in favour of using data based on hiring "an outside software program that searches for online job ads" and adds them up.

This data showed the "job vacancy rate has been increasing steadily since 2009" - which, as it happens, turns out to be spectacularly useful for bolstering the Cons' corporate-friendly argument in favour of importing temporary foreign workers.

But why did the wonky Kijiji-based data falsely show an increase in labour shortage in Canada?

Chris Harris, Kijiji’s head of Jobs and Housing, provides a clue. 
He explained : "the job postings on the site are rising in part because the site itself has had major growth in terms of popularity."

Awesome. 
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Update : Good read from Susan Delacourt: Trolling the web for job data, Conservative-style

Shorter : The problem wasn’t fake ID in the 2011 election; the problem was fake phone calls. The same Cons who were outraged at the supposed intrusiveness of the gun registry and long form census have spent the last decade scooping up info on Canadians for their CIMS political database -- yet were strangely unfussed about the data breach of CIMS in the last election.
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Steve & Barry do the 2013 G20

Barry's crew : 

"America’s credibility will be an immediate casualty if the U.S. fails to respond to Syria now with military action."

This after 2 years and 200,000 casualties and UN reports two months ago that nerve gas attacks were perped by the *rebels*
And I'm sure the Syrians about to be bombed will be gratified to ensure America's credibility does not become a casualty.

Meanwhile ...
Harper offers Obama climate plan to win Keystone approval

Sources say PM willing to accept emissions reduction targets proposed by the U.S.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama formally proposing "joint action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas sector," if that is what's needed to gain approval of the Keystone XL pipeline through America's heartland.

Photo : Adrian Wyld/CP

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Steve : "Justin Trudeau has shown poor judgement"

Trudeau's poor judgement ? Yeah, let's go with that.
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$3.1-billion : Now is the time to commit accounting

The Sixth Estate : Who is the Auditor General Protecting on $3 Billion Boondoggle?

Auditor General Michael Ferguson on As It Happens yesterday :

"... or maybe in fact it was spent on things other than the public, uh, the anti-terrorism-type initiatives. Now there was also the ability for government, for departments, to get approval to re-allocate some of the funding so that could have been part of the story as well."

So $3.1-billion, nearly 25% of the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism Initiative, was perhaps re-allocated and spent on "things other than the anti-terrorism initiative" it was budgeted for.  Then in 2010, the Treasury Board stopped tracking it altogether.

Awesome.

Fun fact : The day before 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld held a presser to "declare war on the Pentagon bureaucracy", citing that the Pentagon's own auditors couldn't account for 25% of their spending either.

But this is Canada so instead we have an auditor general who says : "We didn’t find anything that gave us cause for concern that money was used in any way it should not have been."
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Media : Chavez failed to build gigantic skyscrapers

Many vile and stupid editorials have been written about Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez following his death on March 5 from cancer, but none of them are quite as honest as this one from business writers at Associated Press :

Little Reaction In Oil Market To Chavez Death

"Chavez invested Venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world's tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi."

... duly reposted at the Calgary Herald, and also the Edmonton Journal who deleted the ridiculous paragraph above while I was writing this post.

h/t to FAIR, who fixes AP's original headline for them : Chavez Wasted His Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Built Gigantic Skyscrapers

Harper : "At this key juncture, I hope the people of Venezuela can now build for themselves a better, brighter future based on the principles of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights."

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, 2012 :  "As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.".

With voter registration in Venezuela at 96.5% and an 81% turnout in 2012, Chavez received 55 to 63% of the popular vote in his last four elections compared to Steve's 29 -39% in his last four.

Silly Venezuelans - they shoulda voted for a "better, brighter future" based on neo-liberal skyscrapers instead of $500 billion in social programs.

See Purple Library Guy at Pogge    and    Dr. Dawg    and Venezuela Analysis [h/t Beijing York in comments]
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The contract

Reuters, July 15, 2010 : "Contrary to Liberal myths, this was a competitive process. Canada participated in an extensive and rigorous competitive process where two bidders developed and competed prototype aircraft," said a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay."


Stephen Harper, HoC, Nov 3, 2010 "Mr. Speaker, once again, not only was there a competitive process to select this aircraft, but the previous government put money into the development of the aircraft for the Canadian military. That is the position.

We are going to need to replace the aircraft at the end of this decade, and the party opposite knows that. But instead, for the sake of getting the anti-military vote on the left, with the NDP and the Bloc, the Liberals are playing this game.
The mistake is theirs. It would be a mistake to rip up this contract for our men and women in uniform as well as the aerospace industry."

Peter MacKay, Minister of National Defence, HoC, Dec 13, 2010 : "Mr. Speaker, let us look at the actual contract. What the Canadian government has committed to is a $9 billion contract for the acquisition of 65 fifth generation aircraft. This includes not just the aircraft, but also includes the onboard systems, supporting infrastructure, initial spares, training simulators, contingency funds. This is a terrific investment for the Canadian Forces." 

Toronto Sun, Jan 14, 2011 : "I don't understand how the Liberal MPs from this region could want to cancel the contract," said Harper. "It's incredible."

CTV, Jan 14, 2011 : "I do find it disappointing, I find it sad, that some in Parliament are backtracking on the F-35 and some are talking openly about cancelling the contract, should they get the chance," Harper said at the Heroux-Devtek plant in Dorval.


Stephen Harper, presser, Apr 8, 2011 “The contract we signed shelters us from any increase in those kinds of costs, so we’re very confident of our cost estimates.”


Quotes from back when there supposedly was an actual, you know, contract that followed from a competitive bidding process.


Coyne on the AG's report :  “In lieu of a formalized statement of operational requirement or a complete options analysis,” Public Works informed Defence it would go along with the sole-source dodge if it were provided a letter, “confirming National Defence’s requirement for a fifth generation fighter and confirming that the F-35 is the only such aircraft available.” Wait, it gets better: The letter was produced “the same day.” Still better: “There were no other supporting documents.” Still better: “It is important to note that the term ‘fifth generation’ is not a description of an operational requirement.” 
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Happy RoboCon Election Fraud Budget Day

Lucky scheduling break for the Cons, eh? - getting Election Canada's Marc Mayrand to testify on 2011 election fraud on the same day they released the 2012 budget.

"We are free to choose our future," Flaherty said in his budget speech. "We have made our choice."


Election Fraud : Calling it "absolutely outrageous" and " totally unacceptable in a modern democracy", Elections Canada Marc Mayrand told the PROCommittee EC is investigating 800 specific complaints of electoral phone fraud in 200 ridings across ten provinces and one territory. 250 files open right now including 70 out of the 7,000 complaints in Guelph.

2012 Budget : Elections Canada budget to be cut by $7.5 million a year.


Election Fraud  : CBC's Terry Milewski : Misleading robocalls went to voters ID'd as non-Tories
2012 Budget : CBC budget cut by 10%


Well I guess that'll learn 'em.


The budget features "streamlining" environmental review processes, plus gives $8 million to the Canadian Revenue Agency to target registered charities that are "too overtly political", translation : "opposition from environmental groups to the massive Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline."
New RevCan money will investigate "the extent to which these are funded by foreign sources." 

But foreign tarsands-to-tanker funding from China is still a-ok, even at the cost of Canadian jobs ... 


PetroChina bids to help build $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline


"Chinese investment in Canada’s energy sector could move to a new level if PetroChina wins a bid to build the controversial Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline.
The largest of China’s three state-controlled oil companies has expressed an interest in building the $5.5-billion project across the northern Canadian Rockies and is considering purchasing an equity stake, said Pat Daniel, president and CEO of proponent Enbridge Inc.
[W]ith a workforce of almost two million and cheaper labour costs than its North American counterparts, the Chinese company stands a good chance of presenting a competitive bid."


Well so much for Pipeline Steve's Canadian 'jobs, jobs, jobs' angle in that case. Also :


WSJ : Canada To Allow Wealth Funds To Invest In Its Financial Institutions

"The Canadian government said Thursday it plans to introduce legislation to allow foreign and domestic sovereign-wealth funds to invest in Canadian financial institutions."

So. After somehow being the apparent beneficiary of massive election fraud in which they gained a majority government, The Harper Economy™, as Pogge says, "is primarily based on ripping anything that might be of value out of the ground and shipping it out of the country as quickly as possible."
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Steve flexes his sino-pecs from China

Star : Harper blasts foreign money in oil sands debate while welcoming China

        *cough*

Reuters : Canada PM vows to ensure key oil pipeline is built 


CBC : Harper ties China trade deals to Canadian values 

"Canada does not — and cannot — disconnect our trading relationship from fundamental national values."

Meanwhile ...


CTV : Chinese dissident writer gets 7 years' jail for poem

"a poem he wrote urging his countrymen to gather at a public square"

Sinopec seeks appeal in oilsands death case

A Chinese state-owned corporation wants the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn an Alberta court judgement ruling that would force it to stand trial in the deaths of two oilsands workers and 53 safety charges.

Patrick Brown : Harper in China : Great, Glorious and Always Correct 

In the Great Hall of the People, Harper told Premier Wen Jiabao that Canada and China enjoy “a strategic partnership based on respect and admiration.” Wen answered that Harper’s visits “opened a new page in our bilateral relationship,” which translated into English means, “We’re glad you finally got with the program.”

Then Harper said he would be raising human rights and consular issues. That’s when the journalists were ushered out of the room. It felt just like Ottawa.

Confused?
Mound of Sound explains : Okay, I Get It.
Harper Needs China to Buy Bitumen So Canada Can Buy F-35s to defend Canada Against China
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Stephen Harper - 12 billion dollar man

The Jurist explains the math.

While Stephen 'Jets & Jails' Harper did not directly mention raising Canadians' OAS pension eligibility age from 65 to 67 in his SOTU speech from the Davos 1%-ers bunfest :

"We've already taken steps to limit the growth of our health care spending over that period. We must do the same for our retirement income system."

... Con house organ the National Post cranked out three  articles  this month stating the Cons are considering it.

PMO Office today: "Fact: If we do nothing, OAS will eventually become too expensive and unsustainable"

Fun fact : Steve's projected MP pension is +$5M if he retires in 2019.


In other not-quite-$12-billion Con news, Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page estimates the Cons' plan to cut the corporate tax rate from 18% to 15% will cost $11.5 billion in government revenue next year. 

And Mound of Sound reminds us in comments that $12 billion is also the yearly amount slashed from government revenues by the Cons 2% cut to the GST. 

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Monday Update : G&M : Research belies PM's warning on OAS

"Expert advice commissioned by the federal government contradicts Stephen Harper’s warnings that Canada can’t afford the looming bill for Old Age Security payments."

Seems the finance committee heard from six expert witnesses who said the OAS is in fine shape with no need to raise pension eligibility age so the committee's final report reflected this testimony but ... 
but there was a dissenting minority report from Cons on the committee advising a pension review so naturally Steve is going with that instead. 
Ideology uber alles. 
Apparently undaunted by this disclosure, Steve pressed on in the House today with his dire OAS frowny face. Wanker.


You get how this works, right? Steve says burgeoning OAS threatens social programs.
By setting up a false choice between working two more years or having social programs, he gets seniors' consent to up the age eligibility. This course of action is much easier than negotiating with unions or the provinces to get cuts .
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