Harper Faces Cannabis Legalization Demands Monday, Tuesday

The issue of recreational cannabis legalization will jump to the front of the queue of issues facing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper this coming week. As reported in the Straight.com last week, elected members Canada’s House of Commons, from all three non-secessionist political parties having seats in Canada’s Parliament (Conservative, Liberal, and NDP), will deliver petitions signed by tens of thousands of Canadians demanding that Canada’s Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson (Conservative), deny a request to extradite Marc Emery to the U.S.A.. Emery, a Canadian citizen and resident of Vancouver, has been charged not under any Canadian law but under U.S. federal laws for selling cannabis seeds to Americans via mail order. Also, as reported in this blog last Thursday, March 11, 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has accepted google.com’s request to answer the most popular questions put to him by users of YouTube.com this coming Tuesday, March 16, 2010. As I explain below, each of these events ties the PM and his government to the rails in front of an oncoming, smoke-puffing cannabis steam train; a peace train face to face with America’s war on drugs. Read more

Harper’s Youtube Political Dilemma: Cannabis Legalization

“It sounded like a good idea at the time”. I fully expect those to be the words beginning to thrum in the mind of Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, following his announced acceptance of Google’s offer to stream his response to the throne speech today, and to answer YouTubers’ questions on YouTube next Tuesday, March 16th. It is a decision that has put him in an uncomfortable spot with respect to the issue of marijuana legalization. Read more

Toronto’s 2015 Pan Am Games to Cost Taxpayers $11.6B?

In August of 2009, members of Freedom Party of Ontario (an duly registered political party in the Province of Ontario, Canada, of which I am currently leader) commenced a non-partisan No Tax for Pan Am campaign: Yes to the Games, No to using tax revenues to pay for the games. The campaign got a fair bit of attention (see the official web site: www.notaxforpanam.com ) but time and budget limitations the campaign’s reach/effectiveness. Another factor: a door to door campaign was made infeasible by the bid committee’s increasing of the geographic area occupied by the games. Freedom Party having defeated London, Ontario’s 1984 bid for the 1991 Pan Am Games, the bid committee for the Toronto 2015 games (led by 80’s era Liberal MPP David Peterson, who was also Premier in the late 1980s) spread the venues across towns spanning over 100 kilometres. Read more

Freedom School (blog edition) No. 1 – “Are free markets to blame?”

Yaron Brook, Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California, together with his colleague, Alex Epstein, recently appeared on a local television program “to discuss the roots of the financial meltdown, and why free markets are not to blame.” Before I had watched the video, my initial response to the discussion topic was:

“why free markets are not to blame”…isn’t that the same reason that fairies are not to blame? A is A.

My initial response was misguided, as was Epstein’s. Read more

“The P.O.P”: A New Movie by Paul McKeever (trailer)

In the coming weeks, I will be releasing a full-length film (a documentary), the ‘code-name’ of which is “The P.O.P.”. It features the last three decades of the political activities of Marc Emery, who is these days most widely recognized as Canada’s “Prince of Pot” (a titled conferred upon him by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in the mid-nineties, and popularized by CNN in 1997. I today released a trailer for the film (see below). If you don’t want to miss it when it is released, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel: the movie will be available on YouTube. You can also check back here periodically, or sign-up (on the main page of my blog) to receive updates via e-mail. Read more

The Right Economic Direction for Ontario’s Government

Over at the National Post’s “Full Comment” blog today , the Post is doing its darnedest to prop up Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario leader Tim Hudak as someone who…is known to exist. In the second of two National Post op-eds in (has it been?) as many weeks, Hudak resorts to the tactic of criticizing the other guy but offering nothing unequivocal or unambiguous as an alternative. In the midst of a much-deserved bashing of the Liberals, the best (and only thing) Hudak can offer, in terms of an alternative is this: Read more

Democracy, Dale Goldhawk Style?

As some of you may know, I am the leader of Freedom Party of Ontario, which is an officially-registered political party in the province of Ontario, Canada. There is currently a by-election in the riding of St. Paul’s to fill the seat recently vacated by Michael Bryant, and I am Freedom Party’s candidate in that by-election.

Today, I received the following e-mail from Kelly Todd, the producer of “Goldhawk Live” (Rogers TV – Toronto): Read more

Short Note re: the Mythically Anti-socialist Conservative Party

Gerry Nicholls, former Vice President of the National Citizens Coalition, is apparently still buying the nonsense drilled into peoples heads about Conservative parties. In a Letter to the Editor today, in one of Canada’s national newspapers, the Globe and Mail, Gerry writes, in part: Read more

The Liberal Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks

Two days ago, the Chronicle Herald published a story in which they describe a taped conversation between Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt and her then aide Jasmine MacDonnell.  The two women are heard discussing the issue of the radioactive isotope shortage that has resulted from the May 15th shutdown of a  52-year-old nuclear reactor (the reactor was shut down due to water leakage).  Raitt says to MacDonnell that it is “good” that Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq is avoiding media exposure over the isotope “crisis”, because it will allow Raitt to take all of the credit when the crisis is resolved. Read more

2nd Draft: A Charter for Government (feedback requested)

I begin this entry with an expression of thanks to all who took the time to read, think about, and comment upon, the first draft of the Charter for Government. In particular, I would like to thank David Odden over at ObjectivismOnline.net (in the discussion forum). He was looking for a better integration/explanation of the interaction of rights of life, liberty, and property. Most of what has been changed in the second draft (below) was inspired by his critique. Read more

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