As you all know by now, unless you’ve been loitering in a cave someplace, the federal Conservatives have cracked out their official package of promises to the public this week. I’m still trying to make up my mind as to whether this kind of timing is brilliant or daft. On the one hand, it comes out too late for the HypoGrits and others to twist it around with the usual fearmongering spin and pretty much guarantees the Tories will eat up most of the news in the last week of the campaign. On the other, it doesn’t give Bob Q. Canuck a whole lot of time to digest just what it is that the Tories have to offer. Time will tell, I suppose.
The whole platform can be found in .pdf form here (I put it on my own server because the original link was moving like a turtle on heroin; I guess it’s a popular download…) and is damned well worth a careful read. Just make sure you grab a coffee first; the darned thing’s over 40 pages long… 😯 So much for the “no platform” meme, eh?
For those of you looking for a quick once-over, here’s my take on what jumped out at me (but don’t forget to take the time to look it over for yourself later):
Reducing Taxes on Diesel Fuel
A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will reduce the federal
excise tax on diesel and aviation fuel by half – from four cents per litre to two cents per
litre – reducing the price of transportation by truck, train, plane and ship, and helping to
bring downward pressure on consumer prices.
This one’s pretty much a no-brainer. The rising price of diesel has jacked up the price of everything. From farmers needing it to run tractors to the fact that nothing teleports itself to the store where you buy it, this is going to pull the government’s hand a little further out of everybody’s pocket.
Restricting Unfair Text Messaging Charges
A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will prevent
telecommunications companies from charging fees to customers for receiving
unsolicited commercial text messages. We will amend the Telecommunications Act to
strengthen the power of the Commissioner of Complaints for Telecommunications
Services, including the creation of a code of conduct for wireless services. We will also
create a compliance and deterrent power that allows the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to block these and similar unfair charges in
the future.
[…and…]
Protecting Against Internet Spam
A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will introduce legislation
to prohibit the use of spam (unsolicited commercial email) to collect personal
information under false pretences and to engage in criminal conduct. The new law will
reduce dangerous, destructive and deceptive email and web site practices, and will
establish new fines for those who break the law.
Both of these sound good on the surface (who the hell likes the idea of having to pay for SPAM???) but, as anyone who knows anything about IT will tell you, it’s itchy stuff whenever a government tries to legislate technology. I’ll wait until I see the actual legislation on this one…
Increasing Trade with Emerging Markets
A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will continue to pursue
trade agreements, such as those successfully reached with the European Free Trade
Association, Colombia, Peru and Jordan. We are committed to seeing these deals passed
by Parliament. In light of the recent setback at the World Trade Organization
negotiations, a re-elected Conservative Government will move aggressively to improve
Canada’s network of bilateral and regional free trade and economic agreements.
To improve Canada’s position as a global trader, a re-elected Conservative Government
will proceed with plans to open new trade offices in China, Mongolia, Mexico, Brazil
and India (in Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad).
This will be a good idea, IF it means that we also get access to these markets ourselves. Contrary to the Liereral mythology, trade with China has long been a one-way street… 🙄
Reforming or Abolishing the Senate
The Conservatives and Stephen Harper believe that the current Senate must be either
reformed or abolished. An unelected Senate should not be able to block the will of the
elected House in the 21st century.
As a minimum, a re-elected Conservative Government will reintroduce legislation to
allow for nominees to the Senate to be selected by voters, to provide for Senators to serve
fixed terms of not longer than eight years, and for the Senate to be covered by the same
ethics rules as the House of Commons.
HALLELUJA!! It’s about God damned time! This alone should get the Tories a majority. The unelected, unaccountable Senate has, for too long, been a hung stumbling block to the will of the Canadian people. Hell, I’ve been ranting about this for years now and, let’s face it, everybody knows that this has been coming for some time now…
Limiting the Federal Spending Power
A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will ensure that any new
shared-cost program in an area of provincial or territorial responsibility has the consent
of the majority of provinces to proceed, and that provinces should be given the right to
opt out of the federal program with compensation, so long as the province offers a similar
program with similar accountability structures.
Now sit back and watch da Librano$ absolutely shriek about anything that might get in the way of them being able to bribe you with your own money. Seriously, just watch. I give it until the end of the week… maybe.
Ensuring Responsibility and Rehabilitation for Young Offenders
A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will replace Canada’s young
offenders’ law with new, balanced legislation that focuses on deterrence and responsibility.
The new law will make the primary goal of the legislation to protect society and the
primary goal of sentencing to discourage others from committing crimes. The law will
ensure that young offenders who are convicted of very serious and violent crimes will face
appropriate sentences and that upon conviction they will be named. As under the old law,
the age at which the sentencing provision applies (14, 15 or 16) will be determined in each
province.
[…and…]
Replacing Automatic Release with Earned Parole
A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will replace the automatic
release of prisoners after serving two-thirds of their sentence with earned parole for
behaviour and rehabilitation in prison.
More no-brainers here. Don’t look for the Leftbots to see it that way, though. After all, thugs just need hugs, right? There’s a whole bunch of good stuff along this line starting on page 36; make sure to check it out.
Ending the Ineffective Long-Gun Registry and Reduce Guns in our Streets
A re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper will ensure that all
firearms belong to licensed gun owners, and that all restricted firearms, including
handguns, are registered. But we will end the wasteful, ineffective long-gun
registry.
Instead, the Conservative Government will direct resources to measures that will
actually reduce the number of guns on Canadian streets, including investment in
better enforcement at our borders.
As a first step, a re-elected Conservative Government will launch a Joint Force
Land and Marine Border Patrol Pilot Project with the Customs and Border
Services Agency and the RCMP to patrol unguarded U.S. road and marine
crossings to Canada in Quebec.
Where’s a bigass happy-dance graphic when you need one? That asshat white elephant should have been taken out behind the barn and shot years ago.
Well, that’s all I have time for right now. Like I said, make sure you read the whole thing here and pick out what you like about it. Unlike the other parties, this one really does have something for everyone, and without any pie-in-the-sky bullshit.
… are finally going to start getting what’s coming to them.
About God damned time, isn’t it?
Canada.com is reporting how PM Harper has finally trotted out the first plank in the Tories’ tough-on-crime portion of the election campaign. I don’t know about you, but I was starting to wonder when the hell they were going to get around to this angle (law and order is, after all, a Tory strong suit; you’d figure they’d start hammering on it earlier).
OTTAWA – Conservative Leader Stephen Harper promised to scrap Canada’s young offenders law and replace it with a tougher version under which youth who commit serious violent crimes will no longer be able to keep their names out of the news.
The new law would impose automatic, stiffer sentences for people 14 years of age or over who are convicted of serious violent crimes, such as murder or manslaughter.
Upon conviction, the names of these individuals would be made public.
‘We need to, and will, restore balance to the young offenders law,’ Harper said in a speech outlining the first major plank of his Conservative party’s tough-on-crime platform.
Under the new law, judges would also have the discretion of publishing the names of young offenders who commit repeated minor offences, a senior party source said.
The new law would also make it easier for prosecutors to apply for pretrial detention of youth charged with violent crimes.
“We need to, and will, restore balance to the young offenders law,” Harper said in a prepared text of a speech outlining the first major plank of his Conservative party’s tough-on-crime platform.
Harper said the new law would balance the rights of victims against the need to rehabilitate young people. “Of course offenders have rights,” Harper said. “Victims have rights too.“
“Victims have rights too.” Why the hell is it that the Tories seems to be the only ones who actually get that??
… until you get it through your God damned heads that we aren’t screwing around about this stuff!!”
That was basically the message that Troy Justice Minister Rob Nicholson had for the Grits, Dippers and BlocHeads, if they think that they can get away with the kind of obstructionist crap that they’ve been pulling in the last Parliament when it comes to Tory crime legislation.
It pretty much boils down to something like this: “Hey, assholes; you think you’re having cash troubles now? Try fighting ANOTHER election as soon as we’re done this one! You wanna get in the way of our keeping our promise to the Canadian public that we’d get tough on crime and the scumbags that commit it? That’s the price you’re gonna pay. We can afford it; can you??”
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – A minority Conservative government would rather force another election than back down on its law and order agenda, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Sunday.
Nicholson told a rally in Mississauga, Ont., that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already made clear he would not tolerate any more “obstruction” like the government faced last October when it introduced the Tackling Violent Crime Act omnibus bill.
“We’re making it very clear about how serious we are about getting that anti-crime agenda through Parliament,” he said.
“We will be taking a zero-tolerance approach. Our crime measures will be confidence measures, we are determined that our law and order agenda will be passed.”
The Conservatives have tried to make crime, with an emphasis on getting tough on criminals, a major issue in the election, in part because it appeals to core supporters.
[…]
Nicholson said the Conservatives aren’t interested in banning handguns since pistols are already effectively outlawed.
“I think the problem in this country is people who steal guns and people who use them for improper purposes,” he said. “It’s not sportsmen or antique collectors that I believe (are) the problem.”
Although he criticized all opposition parties for stalling Conservative bills in the last parliamentary session, Nicholson aimed his sharpest criticism at Dion, saying he had put “partisan gains ahead of public safety.”
Let’s face it, folks; the HypoGrits are hurtin’ for cash. Between paying off their leadership run debts, crappy fundraising results, and the fact that they’re going to lose a buttload of votes in this election (each worth about $1.75), another election could push these bozos to the brink of bankruptcy.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. 😉
The Tories, on the other hand, have the biggest damned war chest on the Canadian political map right now. The restrictions against corporate donations have put a stranglehold on Liberal funds while the Conservatives are raking it in hand over fist, all from ordinary, everyday Canadians. I won’t bother going into the irony of the fact the so-called “natural governing party,” which supposedly represents the Real Values Of Real Canadians® can’t pay its bills without help from the big, bad, Big Business® (whom the Tories are supposedly beholden to). That would be a whole post right there.
The important thing is that, if the Grits want to pull any more bullshit stunts in the next Parliament, they better damned well be ready to back ’em up.
Ah, fer the love of… Some days, I just wonder if I understand anything at all.
I know that I promised yesterday that I’d have some footage of PM Harper’s appearance in London last night. Things went south from the get-go. Cam battery was deader than Elvis so I had to resort to using my phone (lovely quality, that). Then, when I tried to upload the damned thing to YouTube, it croaked because the vid was too long.
Not to worry, though, I’m not done yet. I’ll try to post the raw files later today and see if that works. (I apologize ahead of time for the crappy quality but, like I said, it was done with a phone…)
11:00 – Turner Trounced
Dang. The problem with staging a stunt is, when you don’t let the crew in on the joke, you might just get caught…
And to think that some folks still have it in their heads that the PM made a mistake by losing that loose cannon… Go figure.
19:05 – Update: AITGWN has more. this poor bastard just keeps digging himself deeper and deeper…
12:20 – Okay, let’s try this
Alright, I got the files uploaded to the server so let’s see how this works. It’s in two parts and, due to a bunch of technical mumbo jumbo that I’m not going to get into right now, it might or might not play properly in your browser. Sorry about that.
If they won’t play in your browser, the direct links are here, for the first part and here, for the second part. They’re in the .3GP format, so you’ll need something like QuickTime to play them. Again, sorry for the quality but it’s what I had to work with… 🙁
12:30 – Update to this: Okay, that didn’t work worth crap. Trying to embed the vids here made a mess of things and slowed down the loading of this post to a crawl. Sorry folks, but it looks like the links are as good as it gets…
13:05 – They’re still out there
Lest we forget about the malevolent HRCs in our midst, the National Post has an article yesterday by Joseph Brean to remind us:
The foremost legal precedent for deciding these cases is the 1990 Supreme Court of Canada decision about the neo-Nazi activist John Ross Taylor, in which Section 13 was held to be a justifiable violation of the Charter right to free expression.
It defined hate messages as those expressing “unusually strong and deep-felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification.”
Simon Fothergill, a lawyer for the Attorney-General of Canada, said Mr. Lemire’s challenge of Section 13 is “relitigation” of settled law, and amounts to “harassment” of the government, which won the Taylor case by a 4-3 decision. A decade later, in 2001, it amended Section 13 to include the Internet.
[…]
Mr. Fothergill answered that if Section 13 puts a chill on public discourse, it is only to be around the fringes of hate speech, and that this is not “a terribly bad outcome.”
“A little bit of chilling … is tolerable,” he said.
“TOLERABLE?” Is this asshole utterly out of his God damned mind??? And why the hell haven’t we heard so much as a peep out of ANY party on this subject so far in the campaign? Too uncomfortable an an issue, perhaps? Tough shit, bud; you wanna be in charge, you have to have the balls to do what needs to be done! And God knows, these things need to be reeled in.
Nest time some vote-hunting blowhard (from whatever party) bangs on your door, be sure to find out where they stand on this issue, because it’s just going to get worse if we don’t tackle it NOW.
13:22 – Another update: How’s this for a coincidence? I just got me a call from Steven at the CPC’s fundraising dept. What are the odds?Once again, the Tories were hoping for a buck or two to help out with the campaign. He was a nice enough guy (not as knowledgeable as Fred was on the issue, but still nice) but I had to tell him the same thing I’ve told the last four people that called me: No action on HRCs, no money from me.
17:49 – Holy crap!
I agree with Warren Kinsella. 😯 No, really, I actually DO. Yes, you heard me right. And don’t look at me like that.
I don’t know how it happened, either, but there it is. And it’s not just on one thing, strangely enough; I agree with him on a whole bunch of stuff. Like:
Things are going badly for the Lieberal campaign
Free advice is worth what you pay for it
Warren is a has-been
I guess it just goes to show you, even a blind squirrel finds a nut some days.
18:10 – Practicing what he preaches
Say what you want about Steffy Dion, he sure does practice what he preaches. He’s always going on and on about how we should do this and that for the environment and, lo and behold, Steffy turns out to be one dead serious recycler. Trusty Tory has the goodies:
That’s right, folks, the old 1993 election campaign promise. This goes hand in hand with Dion’s continued election campaign against Brian Mulroney!
But, hang on a second. Didn’t Paul Martin promise this in the 2004 campaign? See for yourself.
Recycle, recycle, recycle! Because it’ll actually happen this time. They really, really mean it. Besides, it’s not as if the Green Shaftâ„¢ is earning them any love…
23:23 – Ker-SPLAT
Coincidence? Poetic justice? Prophecy? You tell me…
MONTREAL – Stephane Dion’s aging plane was forced to make an emergency landing on its way to London tonight in what Liberals hope doesn’t become a symbol of the party’s faltering campaign.
The leased 29-year-old Boeing 737 was en route to London from Sherbrooke, Que., when it made an unexpected stop shortly after 8 p.m. at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport.
On the bright side, at least I don’t have to put up with that waffling weasel in London now. 😉
Sorry in advance for the slim postings today, ladies and gents, but the PM is coming to town today and while I do scrub up pretty good (or so I’m told), it takes quite a bit of scrubbin’…
Yes indeed, Stephen Harper is coming to town today and my son and I are going to be there. I’m going to try to capture the speech for his civics class and if I manage to pull that off, I’ll be posting it here later today. Until then, well, I gotta go clean up… 😉
Doors open at 5, hope to be home by about 8 or so (depending on how long things run; always questionable during a campaign) and hope to have something up for you nice folks by before 9…
Until then, here’s some random stuff I tripped across…
Um, look again, dude.
The whole platform can be found in .pdf form here (I put it on my own server because the original link was moving like a turtle on heroin; I guess it’s a popular download…) and is damned well worth a careful read. Just make sure you grab a coffee first; the darned thing’s over 40 pages long… 😯 So much for the “no platform” meme, eh?Reforming or Abolishing the Senate
Ending the Ineffective Long-Gun Registry and Reduce Guns in our Streets
… are finally going to start getting what’s coming to them.
[…]
17:49 – Holy crap!
