Monday, September 28, 2009

May Wants In

Elizabeth May, Green Party Leader, wants in on the debates during the next election. She's even willing to take legal action to make it happen. I, for one, wouldn't mind if she was in them.

From an article by Abbas Rana in The Hill Times:

"If the consortium of TV networks doesn't include Green Party Leader Elizabeth May in the highly-publicized TV leaders' debates in the next election campaign, she says she will call on Canadians to put help reverse the move and is also threatening legal action.

"Well, I think I'll have to ask Canadians to do what they did last time and deluge media with the demand that I be included. Court action was possible last time, I suppose it would be possible again," Ms. May told The Hill Times last week."

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Harper proposes job-killing permanent tax on everything

From this commentary by Robert Silver in the G&M.

"Embedded in the forecast for EI premiums in the government’s Update is an assumed increase in the EI premium rate in 2012."'

Ding, ding, ding. "Increase in the EI premium rate"...that sounds an awful lot like a payroll tax increase to me. What does Orr have to say about that?

"Mr. Flaherty pledged to return to balanced budgets without a tax increase. Isn’t an increase in EI premiums a tax increase?"

To repeat, isn't an increase in EI premiums a tax increase?

The answer? Yes, yes it is."


So for all the rhetoric of not raising taxes, to reduce the debt, by Harper, Flaherty & whatever other Con gets a microphone in their face it isn't true - no matter what they say. And they must think we Canadians are too dumb to see that obscure little amendment?

I, for one, would much prefer to see the GST raised back to where it was before Harper lowered it by 2 cents. It's a much easier & less painful way to begin debt recovery than raising payroll taxes.

Conservative Govt. - always hiding the truth.

Good post on this by Impolitical. Go read.

Monday, September 7, 2009

2 More Canadian Soldiers Dead in Afghanistan

This brings the total number of our soldiers killed to 129.

"Killed in the explosion were 36-year-old Maj. Yannick Pepin and Cpl. Jean-Francois Drouin, 21 who were killed by an the IED explosion around noon local time in the Dand district, southwest of Kandahar city on Sunday."
Both men were members of the 5 Combat Engineer Regiment and were stationed in Valcartier, Que.

For all the information go to CTV here.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Supreme Court & Khadr

From The Gazette:

Supreme Court moves quickly, will rule on Khadr on Friday

"Omar Khadr, a young Canadian man being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could learn his fate on Friday after Canada's top court announced yesterday it would rule on an appeal by the Conservative government to stay a repatriation order.

The Federal Court of Appeal recently upheld an earlier court ruling that Khadr, 22, an accused terrorist, be repatriated from the discredited U.S. military prison in Cuba. But the Canadian government announced on Aug. 25 that it would appeal the case to the Supreme Court of Canada and filed a motion to stay the repatriation order. It is unusual for the Supreme Court to issue a judgment on a case so quickly."


I hope the SC refuses to hear the appeal that Harper has filed. All he ever does is run to the Courts for anything he doesn't like, for anything that doesn't favour him & his sick Conservative Party with it's sick ideology. Enough already.

Pay More, See Less

This totally infuriates me & rather than just link I have chosen to cut & paste the following article:

TV networks free to air unlimited ads

Old limits of 15 minutes per hour no longer apply

By Sarah Schmidt, Canwest News ServiceSeptember 2, 2009 4:03 AM

Television viewers in Canada now get to pay a little bit more and might have to view more advertising courtesy of new cable and broadcasting rules that came into effect Tuesday.

Conventional television broadcasters are free as of Tuesday to air as many advertisements as they wish, up from a maximum of 15 minutes per hour under the old system that died on Aug. 31. And beginning on their September bills, cable customers will start to see a new line on their monthly invoice amounting to a 1.5 per cent increase.

For Bell TV customers, this translates into about $1. The hike for Rogers customers will vary depending on their cable package, but will come in at less than $1.

The additional cash will go into the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF), created by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and funded by cable and satellite companies. The CRTC initially set the contribution at one per cent of their gross broadcasting revenues, but increased it recently by a half percentage point for the new broadcasting year.

These new charges passed on to consumers could be a prelude to even higher monthly bills. Hearings begin later this year over a system of payments known as fee-for-carriage, which would allow the country's largest TV networks to charge cable and satellite companies for signals.

In the meantime, Canada's conventional television networks -- CBC, CTV and Global -- have a new stream of revenue open to them. After increasing the number of minutes the country's big broadcasters could air in an hour from 12 in 2006 to 15 in 2008, the CRTC lifted the cap altogether beginning on Sept. 1, 2009.

Mirko Bibic, Bell Canada's head of regulatory and government affairs, said he has no doubt the broadcasters will come out the winners now that restrictions on advertising time limits have been removed.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Michael Bryant Arrested

Former Ontario Attorney General, Michael Bryant, arrested in hit & run with a cyclist. Some very interesting eyewitness accounts in this article from The Star.