frandroid

Of thugs, CEOs and tax increases | rabble.ca:

But here's the thing. If the TD Bank (and the majority of the 150 CEO of the CCCE) can call for tax increases on high income individuals (Clark did not seem to be targeting his own sector), why are the labour movement, the NDP and civil society groups so reluctant to do so?

Very good question Mr. Dobbin, very good question. I'll spare the NDP, since I don't recall anyone campaigning on tax increases, but other sectors like Labour need to prepare the ground so that when tax increases do come, Canadians will understand why they are necessary.  Maybe getting out of Afghanistan will create some cool budget space as well...

I'm late on the news here, but damn...

Out of Africa - The Responsbility to Neglect:

There was no chance to explore the fact that the Rwandan ambassador to Canada, who only discovered the cuts from a press release while outside Canada, has bravely challenged the Canadian’s government’s raw treatment of aid to that country. More time might have dug into the reality that, while the government says it’s doubling aid dollars to Africa, they are merely emergency “tsunami” type funds, not the kind of development investments necessary for any devastated country to emerge from the rubble.

CIDA Shift Married with Foreign Policy Priorities: Oda
Rwanda ambassador urges CIDA to reverse slashes on aid

If you can read French, I suggest reading this column by Vincent Marissal, which describes the current state of French-English relations in this country as seen by Québec. There's talk about the Globe coming down on Québécois for irresponsibly electing the Bloc (what's new?) and a smart reply by Marissal, anglo journalists being annoyed at Harper's French speaking, Graham Fraser's report finding Harper's French speaking commendable but a very weak façade behind which a mostly unilingual anglophone government sits (including unilingual heritage and intergovernmental relations ministers).

True to form, the Liberals will put forward a motion tomorrow calling for the tax-deductibility of foreign-affiliate interest and for lower taxes on income trusts in the name of economic nationalism.

Copied straight from this prog_economics entry.

(This icon should be seen in context of the Harper "fuck the people" icon!)

Someone tell me that the editor at cbc.ca did not accidentally juxtapose the following illustratively ironic headlines:

MacKay to raise Celil's case in Beijing
Independent monitors visit Afghan prison

Maybe I could have mentioned Tout le Monde en Parle in my Top 5... It's Québec's most-watched talk show with 2 million viewers, basically a third of the French-speaking population. It's an intelligent show with a wide, popular reach. Host Guy A. Lepage receives about half a dozen guests who are interviewed and spend about 4 hours on the set; afterwards, their conversations are compressed into a 2 hour show, with Guy A. doing the editing himself. He's not an ace interviewer; he can be witty, but most of his questions are prepared in advance and he doesn't really budge from his show plan. Guy A. used to be part of Rock et Belles Oreilles, the comedy troupe that broke every taboo, and accordingly the show has few limits, should the guests want to go there. Guy Fournier, Radio-Canada/CBC's president, learned the lesson at his expense when he praised the joys of defecation, and later on had to resign after the public outcry (louder in English Canada, I should say).

What's really interesting about this show is that the day's most important actors come to talk about their experiences. Since we're in an election campaign, this week André Boisclair visited the show, to be followed by Mario Dumont and Jean Charest in the next couple weeks. Boisclair really needed a boost, as he is seen as detached from the regular population, too refined and mealy-mouthed. The overwhelming response (both blog entry and in comments, en français) seems to be that he just saved his election campaign on the show tonight. His answers were quite to the point, he was speaking in every day language and didn't flash his idiotic Colgate smile too much. He also addressed the question of "reasonable accomodations" correctly, one of the hot topics of this election campaign. He didn't give any KO, but his few attacks on his opponents were to the point and will stick in people's minds for the week to come. If Boisclair can continue to behave like he did on that show tonight, the PQ might be back in the race, or at least it can stop the bleeding to the ADQ.

The results of the Québec election will bear a serious weight on the federal scene. Harper is praying that the PQ doesn't win, since in a follow-up federal elections, people would be more inclined to vote for the Liberals, the known separatist-fighters. A Québec Liberal re-election, on the other hand, would cement the Harper-Charest relationship. A Charest victory would boost Harper's claim that federalism works for Québec. But in order to give Charest a hand, Harper will release the federal budget one week before the provincial election. Will Harper spend billions of dollars in Québec? A proposal to re-engineer the perequation formula was leaked to the press in January: resources revenues were included at 50%, with Québec being the only winner of the new formula, and Alberta losing some money. Will Harper push this forward? If so, will people in Québec just take the money and run, or recognize the attempt at buying them off and vote accordingly?

The timing is set so that the budget can have its impact on the provincial election, but before it gets voted on in the House of Commons, allowing for some backtracking or simply the defeat of the Harper government. It's going to leave a rather short time for people to react, especially since budgets are such large documents. First impressions and early analysis of the federal budget could have a certain impact on the election... Anyway, we'll see what happens.

Chantal Hébert on the same-sex marriage vote:

Still, Harper has earned a place in the history books for his efforts this week.
[...]
Harper became the first post-war Prime Minister to ask the Commons to consider taking away the rights of a Canadian minority.

She doesn't chew words on Dion either:
Over the course of his leadership campaign, Dion had argued that the Liberal approach of allowing rights to be subject to free votes was unacceptable.

But faced this week with a choice between backing off and enduring the first internal crisis of his short leadership tenure, Dion opted to once again leave his members free to choose, explaining that a motion did not require the same dose of party discipline as a full-fledged piece of legislation.
[...]
Under Dion's two predecessors, a federal party that takes pride of ownership of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has treated it like a pull-down menu, allowing its MPs to pick and choose where they stood on gay rights.

Conservatives nominate anti-Kyoto lobbyist to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the main funding body for science research in Canada.

Conservatives reverse pollution aid for poor countries.