Eco-Tax: Tim Hudak's Truth Diversion

On July 1, 2010, consumers began seeing a new fee on the receipts they received when they purchased any of a number of products designated by the government to be on a “Phase 2” list of “municipal hazardous and special waste” (MHSW): such things as thermostats, fire extinguishers, aerosol cans, batteries, fluorescent bulbs, pharmaceuticals, syringes, and mercury switches. The media widely reported that some consumers were upset or confused by what they were seeing on their receipts. Hoping to gain electorally, Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leader Tim Hudak jumped right in and commenced a months-long campaign of lies and hypocrisy that must not go unaccounted for. And so, I begin. Read more

Ontario's Liberal / Conservative Deficit-Fighting Farce

One can only shake ones head in disbelief. As Ontario’s Liberal and Progressive Conservative MPPs began a 10 week winter vacation they each proposed spending cuts to “fight” the deficit: the government currently adds more than 18 billion to the provincial debt every year.

The Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives proposed essentially the same thing: reviewing Ontario’s agencies, boards, and commissions (the so called “ABCs”), looking for inefficiencies, and then deciding what to do to reduce them (e.g., cuts, mergers of agencies, etc). In the case of the Liberals, they’ve come out with an actual target: a 5% cut. As is the apparent habit of PC leader Tim Hudak, the Progressive Conservatives have not even said how much they would cut, never mind disclosing what they would cut.

That the specifics are entirely missing does not really matter though, because announcing that one is going to “fight” the deficit by making single-digit cuts to ABCs is like announcing that the government will clear over six feet of snow from the streets of Lucan using a window scraper. It can’t be done. Read more

Marc Emery, Civil Disobedience, and the Fate of the Cannabis Culture

Tomorrow, anti-prohibitionists will hold “Free Marc” rallies around the globe. They will call for the release from prison of publisher and political activist Marc Emery, who was sentenced to five years imprisonment last week in a Seattle court for operating a mail-order cannabis seed business that served Americans – among others – from his store in Vancouver Canada. However, Emery’s written submissions to a sentencing judge last week have left some anti-prohibition activists thinking that Emery now condemns law-breaking and the civil disobedience that landed him in jail. Read more

You're in for a Shock: Disturbing New Facts About Ontario's Green Energy Act

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is telling everyone that his decision to increase the price of electricity is “responsible” because it will force consumers to pay for the power they consume.  It will end an irresponsible old subsidy, he implies, but that implication is false.  In reality, his price hike is designed to pay for an irresponsible new subsidy. Read more

McGuinty's MMA Flip-flop a Way of Securing Pan Am Stadium for Hamilton?

I’m asking, not telling, but here are the dots.  You can connect them yourself.  

The Pan Am Games is an international sporting event.  The location for such events is chosen years in advance, in a contest.  Entering the contest happens as follows.  A number of good ole boys get together, smoke some cigars (literally), and dream up a scheme in which they will fill their city with new stadiums, track and field facilities, pools…and fresh new transportation infrastructure, like new roads and mass transit.  They are a mixed lot: politicians or former politicians who want to be praised and remembered for what they brought to their city, hotel owners and, of course, construction companies.  They call themselves a “bid committee”. 

Read more

Shedding Light on Day: "Unreported Crimes" Code for "Cannabis Offences"

There is a perfectly logical – if disgraceful – reason why Canadian Treasury President Stockwell Day (a Conservative MP) yesterday cited “unreported crimes” as the reason for spending $9B on the building of more prisons.  I submit that, with the phrase “unreported crimes”, Day is implicitly referring to cannabis offenses and other consensual drug-related offenses for which minimum prison sentences will be imposed if Bill S-10 becomes law.  The Conservative government’s announcement today that it has expanded the range of things constituting “serious crimes” provides additional evidence to that effect. Read more

Bullshit, and the Ironic Invalidity of the Census Debate

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” – Professor Harry G. Frankfurt, “On Bullshit”, pp. 55-56.

The ironic truth is that a debate focusing largely upon the validity of census data is comprised of so much bullshit as to make the debate itself invalid. Witnesses and Parliamentary Members at committee hearings, columnists, and even those who write letters to the editors of our vestigial newspapers have decided that the this issue – more than most others – demands that all concern over truth and falsehood must be abandoned if the debate is to be resolved favourably.  The debate has turned even serially honest thinkers, writers and speakers into at least second-class bullshitters for the purposes of either backing or opposing the Conservative government’s decision to make completion of the long form census voluntary; to repeal laws that impose penalties of fine or imprisonment for failing or refusing to fill out the long form census and remit it to government. Read more

Optional Long Form Census a Blow to Racism

Canada’s Conservative government has announced that completion of Canada’s “long form” census will cease to be mandatory in 2011. Shrieks of condemnation can now be heard from a wide range of interests. None of them are justified. To the contrary, this is one step the Harper government has announced in recent history that is actually praiseworthy. Read more

Free Speech, Policing, and Falsified Assault as a Pretext for Arrest

The video speaks for itself.

Within one minute after the peaceful arrival of two Canadians at the Niagara Falls constituency office of Canada’s Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson, a police officer arrives on motorcycle. He says he has been called to the scene. He asks that the video camera recording him be turned off. When the camera person refuses to do so, the officer – shockingly – asserts that the camera filming him is “interpreted as a weapon”. Read more

Harper is not Harper: the libertarian Conservative delusion

Libertarian Conservative writer Gerry Nicholls wrote a blog post on the National Post’s “Full Comment” blog the other day in which he did his best to argue that A is not A. His subject was a book by Marci MacDonald titled “The Armageddon Factor”, in which she writes of the influence that evangelical Christians have over Canada’s Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and over matters of policy in Canada. The thrust of his argument is that the book will not succeed in turning people away from supporting the Harper Conservatives, but that it may actually drive social (read religious) Conservatives into the Harper Conservative camp. I see at least three problems with this theory. Read more

« Previous Page — Next Page »