Category Archives: Federal

Federal, Issues, Municipal, Provincial

Thought Bites

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Hail, snow flurries, torrential downpours, driving rain, high winds and cold temperatures.

Obviously it is once again time for the City of Abbotsford to send in its minions, backed by the strong arm of the APD, to render the homeless even more homeless and destitute; turning them out of what shelter they managed to cobble together and expropriating any meagre belongings they possess.

With no housing the homeless can afford available, with shelters full and the weather a threat to health and life – why would city council not take the opportunity to reduce the number of living homeless on the streets of Abbotsford?

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I see that another annual Abbotsford tradition, council’s annual scare/bamboozle/sell the fudget budget to the pubic, has begun with Mayor Peary opening this year’s season with “what services are taxpayers willing to do without.”

Why do any services need to be cut? The Ratepayer’s association was correct that we could save close to a million dollars by cutting the business development department, a department with no demonstrable benefit to the city.

There are several millions slated for parks. Just why are we developing parks when we cannot maintain our current parks? Given the usury level of fees the city charges who can afford to use all the current fields?

Then there are items such as why the Abbotsford Recreation Centre needs three people to run one centre?

Which raises an important question: why does the City not allow citizens access to the detailed numbers of Abbotsford’s finances and how taxpayer dollars are actually spent. Details that would settle questions such as how ARC is managed, allowing the public to determine whose source is correct, whether it is one person in charge of the pool and one for the rest of the facility OR one person in charge of the pool, one in charge of the ice rink and one person in charge of the operations of the Plan A extension.

Access to adequately detailed information would undoubtedly reveal abundant Fudget fat to cut, saving Abbotsford money and requiring no service cuts.

With less salesmanship and scare tactics, more detailed financial numbers and a budget process that would past muster with BC’s Auditor General, Abbotsford could get its financial house in order before citizens start to lose their homes to the City because they cannot pay their municipal taxes.

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Only in Abbotsford.

It did not take the brains of a rocket scientist to predict that if the province granted council’s request for a 2 cents a litre gas tax it would not be long, given council’s spendthrift ways, for council to want to increase the tax.

Mind bogglingly, city council has outdone themselves with a 50% raise to 3 cents a litre – before the tax is even approved by the province.

Which is why I urge fellow Abbotsfordians to join me in calling for Mike de Jong, John van Dongen, Randy Hawes, Bill Bennett and Gordon Campbell to “just say no” to enabling city council’s spending addiction and give a NO to Abbotsford’s proposed gas tax.

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The fudgeting process throws into stark relief the fact that the ideas of cost cutting, only spending on necessities and NOT spending on things that are not necessities are totally foreign concepts council and staff.

The root of Abbotsford’s financial mess, debt and the constant upward spiral of taxes and fees is council and staffs’s spending addiction.

Well that plus council and staff’s demonstrated lack of any ability for financial planning and realistic budgeting, highlighted by the reports of the need to subsidize the operations of the Sports and Entertainment Complex to the tune of $2 million a year. It turns out that those who questioned council’s promise, during the Plan A debate, that the Complex would make money had/have a much better grasp of arithmetic and financial reality than council and staff.

Still, the first order of business to avoid the embarrassment (not to mention the financial calamity) of council and staff spending the City of Abbotsford into Bankruptcy is doing something about their spend, spend, spend, spending addiction.

Perhaps we can arrange a group rate at Kinghaven? This would have the additional benefit of having council and staff spending time with people who live in the real world and would, perhaps, help council and staff to ‘get real’.

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Mission councillor Paul Horn writing about the homeless issue urged the use of Section 28 of the Mental Health Act to lock the homeless up for their own good as you cannot trust “a person with an acute mental illness to make a major life decision”.

I suspect that having “an acute mental illness” and that this being why they are homeless will come as quite a shock to all those who thought they were homeless because they simply could not afford the cost of housing in the lower mainland.

People who the recession cost their jobs and prevented from finding employment before their Employment Insurance ran out and they discovered the harsh reality that in BC “assistance” levels are such that the entire “assistance” cheque would not cover their rent, much less luxuries such as food.

Or those who are working 40 hours (or more) a week but whose wages are not sufficient to cover the cost of living in Abbotsford or Mission.

FYI – the leading cause of homelessness in Canada is now Poverty and not mental illness.

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I was conversing with a friend who lives under a bridge about what it says about Canadians that we tolerate a federal government that, if you have a bathroom is willing to use taxpayer dollars to help you renovate it, but should you have no bathroom has no leadership or money to address affordable housing or poverty.

A federal government with billions to bailout big business, but no money to help individuals facing a shaky financial future or even homelessness as their Employment Insurance runs out.

A government whose priorities are policies of corporate welfare and increasing the wealth of the wealthiest, but places no priority on slowing the growth of poverty in Canada, much less stopping or reducing poverty levels.

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And it does say something about us that we not only tolerate but continue to elect governments with priorities based on greed and lacking in ethics or principled behaviour.

The BC government can find $3.3 Billion to spend on a bridge but cannot find the funds to keep the Adolescent Psychiatric Unit open in Abbotsford.

But hey, children and young people do not need appropriate care that reflects their age. Just throw them in with the adults and pray that there are no predators.

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Another casualty of the Great Fraser Health Mental Health Massacre was the detox center in Chilliwack.

According to Fraser Health the utilization rate of detox was only 60%. Which comes as quite a surprise to all who regularly sought to help addicts gain admittance to this medically supervised detox service and who were told detox was full and the waiting list was from one to six months in length?

Was the facility only funded sufficiently to open 6 out of its 10 beds OR was it managed in such a way that 40% of its capacity was wasted?

As this was not the only service that was cut due to under utilization in the face of abundant demand we are faced with the disturbing possibility that management and operating practices waste 40% of the health care systems capacity.

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Watching a news report of deaths in a house fire had me wondering where Rich Coleman was.

After all, if the death of a single homeless person from fire last year in BC has Minister Coleman violating the rights of the homeless with the draconian “Assistance to Shelter Act”, how is it this fire death and the many other deaths that occur as a result of house fires in BC do not have Minister Coleman rushing into enacting legislation to have the police force people out of their homes because they are fire death traps?

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On the subject of Minister Rich Coleman, who as the Minister of Housing and Social Development is in charge of income assistance in BC:

Could sending Minister Coleman (rich.coleman.mla@leg.bc.ca) and Premier Gordon Campbell (Gordon.Campbell.MLA@leg.bc.ca ) the definition of assistance along with explanations and examples of what assistance means and what assistance is, possibly enlighten them to the reality that current levels of what passes for assistance in BC is in fact a major barrier to the survival of those who fall into the clutches of the system, much less getting off the system and on with their lives?

Worth a try as it would also serve to put politicians on notice that their priorities need to be ethical and principled behaviour.

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People’s well-being centered priorities at both the federal and provincial levels would relieve the pressure on the Abbotsford Food Bank from the increasing number of people depending on the food bank to eat.

In spite of our local politicians trumpeting Abbotsford as the most generous place in Canada, donations to the Abbotsford Food Bank at Thanksgiving where only a third of last year’s levels.

This decrease in donations comes at the same time information is emerging that across Canada  the numbers of those in need of help from food banks soared.

Could it be government’s lack of appropriate people priorities is not a matter of tolerance on the part of Canadians but is reflective of citizen’s priorities?

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Waddle is the best word to describe people leaving the Salvation Army’s meal centre at lunchtime Saturday November 22, 2009.

Gentlemen from our East Indian community prepared and served lunch; then returned to serve dinner for the Emergency Shelter. On a previous Saturday the women from the East Indian community had prepared and served lunch at the meal centre.

Some in our community are taking action to reduce hunger in Abbotsford.

The food was plentiful and tasty to the point that many struggled to finish what was on their plates before waddling on their way.

Not that the food the ladies prepared was not tasty and appreciated but … sorry ladies, the men were on their game/had their game on and sent diners waddling on their way.

Thank you, it was delicious and much appreciated.

Federal

Come On!!

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The first though I had on reading Ed Fast’s attack on Mr. Ignatieff was:

If the federal Conservatives put even a tiny fraction of the effort they put into whining defensively “there is no need for an election” into collaborating with the other federal parties, Canadians would not be facing the possibility of another federal election.

The difference between Mr. Harper’s true colours, his actual thoughts and attitudes towards the other parties versus his statements to the Canadian public is clearly shown by the video on the CBC news of September 9, 2009.

By the way Mr. Fast (and perhaps you could pass this bit of reality along to Mr. Harper), Canadians did not give the Conservatives a strengthened mandate: they denied the Conservatives a majority having judged Mr. Harper unworthy of being entrusted with a majority government.

As to the negative effect on the dollar and stock market, both the dollar and the stock market have bounced back. Following Mr. Fast’s logic that would mean that, upon reflection, it was felt that election of Mr. Ignatieff as PM was considered a positive for Canada.

“Why are they insisting on a pointless exercise which will cost taxpayers another $350 million?” That was exactly the question Canadians were asking themselves in 2008 when Mr. Harper ignored the law he and the Conservatives had enacted setting the next vote for October 19, 2009.

Perhaps the answer will emerge from the current court action where Democracy Watch is suing Mr. Harper for violating his own fixed election date law, as well as the Canadian Charter of Rights.

Let’s be accurate: the reason Canada has fared better than most countries is that our banking system was not able to engage in any of the financial mismanagement that banks in the USA and around the world engaged in and that necessitated governments in many countries being forced to bail banks out.

Why did the Canadian banks not engage in this mismanagement? Because the Conservatives could not pursue their deregulation of Canadian banks with a minority government; since it was the Canadian people who refused to give the Conservatives a majority government, it is the Canadian people who deserve credit for Canada  faring better than most counties.

Speaking of the economy Mr. Fast, just how will the Conservatives wild spending spree and the massive deficit they created protect the economy and lead to prosperity?

The Conservative government took over a surplus that was being applied to paying down the federal government’s debt, providing more economic manoeuvrability.

Claiming a surplus that existed only by holding billions of dollars in military spending off the books, the Conservative government proceeded to make tax cuts. Not only had the Conservative government stopped paying down Canada’s debt but, when the cost of their military adventurism in Afghanistan was properly accounted for, begun increasing Canada’s debt again.

The Conservatives, through their demonstrated lack of fiscal responsibility or ability, are creating a level of debt that not only will our grandchildren be paying it off (to their economic detriment), but that our great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren will be burdened with.

“Home Renovation Tax Credit …leaving thousands of Canadians betrayed.” That would be as opposed to the betrayal of hundreds of thousands of unemployed Canadians, the record level of Canadians currently on EI and facing the end of EI eligibility and joining the hundreds of thousands whose EI benefits have run out, the thousands of Canadians who find themselves living in poverty or homelessness or hopelessness?

I am sorry Mr. Fast I am not nearly as concerned with homeowners who have money to spend on home improvements as I am with homeowners losing their homes, those who have lost their homes, those without money for food to eat, food banks (the need for food banks in Canada period) lacking sufficient food to distribute to hungry families and especially hungry children – all abandoned, indeed betrayed, by the current Conservative government.

The recession may be over for those earning immoderate government salaries with gold plated pensions (that even corporate executives with their million dollar bonuses wouldn’t dare give themselves), but for millions of poor Canadians, Canadians living in poverty or homelessness, those who have lost their homes and all else – the pain and effects will be felt for years and many will never recover from these reversals.

Talk about being out of touch with Canadians ….

Mr. Fast – these Canadians are not concerned with prosperity, they are concerned with survival.

Mr. Fast’s Letter

Michael Ignatieff just doesn’t get it. Canadians have made it very clear that they don’t want another election less than a year after the last one. More importantly, a federal election will stall our economic recovery which has just begun. In fact, the stock markets and Canadian dollar dropped immediately after Mr. Ignatieff announced that he was bringing down our Conservative Government and forcing Canadians into their fourth election in five years.

Mr. Ignatieff’s ill-considered action is already creating uncertainty and instability within our economy. If an election actually took place, most federal legislative and economic business would come to a virtual halt for three months. That’s bad for our economy, it’s bad for hard-working Canadians. What’s more, programs such as our recently announced Home Renovation Tax Credit would be at risk of cancellation by the Liberals, leaving thousands of Canadians betrayed.

So why are the Ignatieff Liberals pushing for an election that nobody wants? Why are they insisting on a pointless exercise which will cost taxpayers another $350 million?

First, it’s become very clear that our Conservative Government’s Economic Action Plan is working! Last month, the Bank of Canada’s governor Mark Carney announced that Canada’s economy was the first of the G-7 countries to turn the corner on the recession. And it’s no coincidence that the day before Mr. Ignatieff demanded an election, Statistics Canada released figures showing that Canada’s economy actually grew in June! Thanks to the prudent economic stewardship of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada has fared much better than most other countries around the world.

However, what’s good news for the nation is not good news for Mr. Ignatieff’s thirst for power. He fears that more positive news about our Conservative government’s economic stewardship will derail his plan to become prime minister after being away from Canada for 34 long years.

Mr. Ignatieff also wants to trigger an election now so he can hang on to his majority in the Senate. He has used his unelected and unaccountable Liberal senators to block important criminal justice reforms passed by the duly-elected Members of Parliament. The Liberals have also used the Senate to block our government’s efforts to create senate elections and limit Senate terms to 8 years. As more Liberal senators retire and are replaced by democratic-minded candidates, Mr. Ignatieff would lose his power to block the will of Canadians.

Finally, if the Liberal leader waits until 2010, Canadians may have even more reason to feel good about themselves and their great country. Mr. Ignatieff is afraid that voters will be less likely to vote for change when feeling patriotic – and the 2010 Vancouver-Whistler Olympics in February will undoubtedly inflame a greater sense of patriotism and excitement across our country.

Our Conservative Government proved that it was able to govern responsibly and became the longest-serving minority parliament in Canadian history. Canadians returned us to power last October with a strengthened mandate. Surely Mr. Ignatieff and his Liberals can’t believe that Abbotsford residents want another election campaign today?
 While the federal Liberals continue to threaten Canadians with an election, our Conservative government remains focussed on our number one priority: protecting Canada’s economy and continuing to invest in stimulus measures that will secure hope and prosperity for Canadians.

Courtesy of Ed Fast, M.P.

Federal, Media

Another Big Business Bailout

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Obviously Canadians are wrong in thinking the role of the CRTC is to support Canadian radio and television, protect the interests of Canadians and to make decisions that benefit Canadian viewers and listeners?

But then, how were Canadians to know the CRTC’s role had changed to protecting the interests and survival of the broadcast media conglomerates until the commission’s actions revealed this change? Actions that continue the deterioration of Canadian television and the destruction of the local in local television.

The CRTC imposed a new tax on Canadians in order to fund a bailout of large corporate media conglomerates, saving them from their own bad management decisions; decisions that had the conglomerates failing to make payments on (some) loans and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Apparently the media conglomerates slick advertising campaign to have the CRTC impose a new tax on Canadians and bail out the conglomerates was successful.

A campaign that a federal government that was protecting Canadian citizens, rather than the interests of big corporate media, would have charged the media conglomerates with misleading advertising for running.

The failure of the federal government to protect Canadians from this deceptive campaign and the decision to impose a new media tax on Canadian consumers to bail out the media conglomerates is hardly surprising, given the Conservative governments record of making decisions favouring big business and the wealthy, over the needs of average, hardworking Canadians.

After all, would it be reasonable to expect the Conservatives to resist the lure of the media access and gentle treatment on issues and Conservative government actions, merely to act in the best interests of Canadians and Canada?

Evidently the Conservatives found the expectation that they act in the best interests of Canada and Canadians unreasonable; choosing to act instead in the best interests of the media conglomerates.

The Conservative decision to force Canadians to bail out the corporate media conglomerates demonstrates that the Conservatives are capitalists only when it suits them or benefits big business, the wealthy or the Conservative Party.

When letting the marketplace decide the fate of the media conglomerates would result in the bankruptcy of the media conglomerates and thus return control and ownership of local media outlets to local interests, suddenly the Conservatives are all for government intervention in the marketplace.

What is the next step for these market interventionist, interfere in the marketplace Conservatives? A tax on the internet to bail out the media conglomerates print assets?

If, as I do, you support local media and media freedom then contact you local MP and the leaders of all the federal political parties to tell them this support of the interests of the big media conglomerates over the interests of Canadians and Canada is unacceptable.

Tell them that this market intervention to bail out the media conglomerates is unacceptable.

Tell them you support true local television, radio and newspapers; that you are well aware that media conglomerate ownership of local media does not qualify as local media, is detrimental to the health of local media and the health and diversity of media in Canada as a whole.

Tell them: I support local television; I do not support bailing out media conglomerates.

Tell them: I strongly oppose forcing Canadians to bail out the media conglomerates, rescuing them from their own bad business decisions. Particularly in light of the media conglomerates blatantly deceptive ‘Save local television’ campaign, the goal of which was clearly the imposition of a tax on cable customers and the use of the revenue from such a tax to bail out the media conglomerates.

Tell them to let the marketplace decide the fate, the existence or non-existence, of the media conglomerates.

Tell the federal Conservatives that the federal government is suppose to be looking after the interests of Canadians and Canada, not the best interests of the Conservative’s media sycophants.