Why Consult The Public? You’re A Liberal.

Dalton McGuinty, the premier for Ontario, says there is no need to hold any public hearings on its plan to harmonize the provincial sales tax with the federal GST in July of 2010, because voters will be able vote on the subject in the 2011 provincial election. Does anyone else have any trouble with that math? The Liberals don’t care that there will be no say on the matter, because as far as they’re concerned by the time they have to pay for their unilateral move, the HST will have been implemented for a year already.

Mr.McGuinty did the same thing with the provincial health premiums in 2004, when he broke an election promise not to raise taxes to the voters of Ontario. And sure enough, by the time the elections came around in 2007, enough Ontario voters had forgotten about the tax hike and the Liberals were rewarded with another majority mandate.

The federal Conservative government has already come to an agreement with the provincial Liberals on the HST, including the sizable $4.3 billion payout to lubricate the deal. The Liberals have admitted this is as much a cash issue as anything else:

“The feds certainly pushed us; they’ve given us 4.3 billion reasons to do it,” said Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan.

“There are always rats in these debates, and it’s fun to be watching those individuals who are trying to deny the $4.3 billion their government is giving us.”

Interesting how Mr.Duncan makes it look like HST detractors are trying to deny Ontario it’s $4.3 billion gift, rather than save Ontarians from paying 13% on every item in the province. The Liberals have already tried to cushion the blow in the same way the B.C. Liberals did for their infamous carbon tax here, by offering a $1,000 rebate to families to cover the added costs of the HST.

But B.C. is in even worse shape than Ontario when it comes to public consultation, unable to answer simple questions, such as what school boards are expected to do to cover an expected $40 million shortfall because of increased costs resulting from the HST. TD Economics estimates that 20% of expenditures for B.C. residents will increase by 7%, leading to an average increase in household costs of $840 in taxes. The tax is also expected to add 0.7% to the inflation rate in the province as the cost of almost everything will rise.

Both Premier Dalton McGuinty and Premier Gordon Campbell have told voters that they will be judged on the merits of the HST at some future election date. But that’s a rather disingenuous statement to make, since it implies that removing the tax will be as easy as it was to implement. The contracts between the federal government and provinces implementing the HST stipulate that any breach of the contract would forfeit the federal transfer payments made to “ease” the transition of the HST. So while consumers will be hit hard by the new tax, any attempt to change the agreement before 2015 will result in a forfeiture of the federal cash. That makes Mr.McGuinty’s glib remark about voters deciding on the HST in 2011 practically irrelevant. The damage will already have been done.

Not only is the HST likely to increase the burden on Canadians in the provinces that implement it, they would also surrender their taxing authority and rely on the federal government for transfer payments to receive income. Budget shortfalls could result based on any delay in federal transfer payments to the provinces. So when the provinces hand over control of tax autonomy, they do so with the hope that the federal government will come through promptly with the money they need. Ask the municipalities of Canada what they think of the similar arrangement they have with the province.

The Liberals in Ontario and B.C. are hoping to push this through quickly, and then hope that taxpayers forget all about it. And although Dalton McGuinty may certainly get his election test in 2011, there’s no chance it will change anything pertaining to what will probably become a new permanent tax in Canada.

BC Rail Legacy Lingers With Fat Salaries For Executives

The provincial Liberal government is scrambling in the wake of public information about B.C. Rail’s overpaid, under-worked executives. B.C. Transportation Minister Shirley Bond has promised a “review” of the crown corporation which essentially does nothing more than manage the property owned by the province since the Rail itself was sold to CN in 2004. The sale of the public company has since become mired in a scandal over allegations of corruption.

Specifically, the BC Rail scandal is based on the belief that Gordon Campbell’s former campaign manager Patrick Kinsella received $300,000 to sell BC Rail to CN, the company he was still working for at the time. Unbelievably, the courts are still prosecuting a six-year-old case against former aides to Gordon Campbell, [David Basi, Bob Virk and Aneal Basi] who they believe colluded with Patrick Kinsella to hand BC Rail away from the people of B.C. so that the Liberals could line their own pockets. And while the Liberals claim they never actually sold the railway permanently, the rail right of way lease was signed for 990 years.

There are fifteen 60-year options in the lease to renew the contract and CN would not have to pay anything to keep operating for the next thousand years. At each renewal date, the province would have the option of buying back all assets from CN Rail. Conversely, CN has the contractual right to decommission any part of the railway line, at which time the province is obliged to sell them any related BC Rail-owned lands for the sum of a single loonie. According to election records for BC, the Liberal Party has since received over $150,000 in donations from Canadian National Railway.

Meanwhile Ms.Bond is mulling over what is to be done with a crown corporation that essentially serves no purpose, and the executives which make exorbitant salaries in the range of $450,000 to $500,000 a year, for running a railway without any trains. After BC Rail was sold, it was left with 40 kilometres of track and 30 employees, yet their CEO earns as much as the CEO for BC Hydro, a public company with 5,000 employees and revenues over $4 billion per year.

“Certainly we’ve said that we are looking at the future of B.C. Rail Properties, and those are the exact questions that we’re asking,” Ms.Bond said to media Wednesday. “What role is there to play? Is there a role to continue this particular Crown corporation? We’re asking those questions now.”

According to B.C.’s Auditor General John Doyle, BC Rail’s CEO, Kevin Mahoney, earned $494,182 this year which exceeds the government’s own salary cap, and he maintains an open-ended contract. Mr.Mahoney earned $569,975 last year.

The real question is, what are the executives of BC Rail doing that requires such generous contributions to their bank accounts on behalf of the taxpayers of this province? Will the Liberals start cutting salaries or canceling contracts in order to do damage control for their plunging public support ratings? If history is any indication, the answer is probably no.

h/t Joel Johannesen

My Second Interview With Ryan Doyle On CFRB1010

This interview took place on Tuesday, and I was trying yesterday to find a free hosting site so that I could place the file up for my readers to listen to. I do actually have a web server, but my brother runs it and he’s currently on vacation in the United States. Then I suddenly remembered that Shaw provides web space free for their customers [first time I've ever silently praised Shaw], so I was able to upload both interviews. Enjoy:

If the interview won’t load, or if you’re listening in Internet Explorer, you can just download it here [11.39MB] by clicking on the link or right-clicking on the file and selecting “save as”.

Refugee Interview about my story in the National Post

You can also listen to the original interview I did a few weeks back, and again you can download it here [7.74MB].

Beer Garden interview about my article in the National Post

Feedback is welcome. I felt like my second interview was a little more difficult because I didn’t have as many facts about the case as I would have liked. But I have enjoyed doing these radio interviews, and I look forward to doing more in the future.

About That “Half Trillion Dollar” Debt

I’m probably the least likely person to stand up and defend the Conservative Party’s profligate spending, and I think I’ve made a reputation for myself [the benefit of that being debatable] on being consistent about criticizing the exorbitant spending. I didn’t think the stimulus budget was necessary, other than to save the government from being defeated in the House of Commons, and I haven’t been impressed by building community hockey arenas and recreational centres in the name of economic stimulus.

Having said that, is it really surprising we’re nearing the $500 billion debt mark? It isn’t as though this is some new kind of number that’s never been seen before. It isn’t anything like the kind of jaw-dropping record-shattering debt numbers south of the border, where their annual fiscal deficits are three times the debt we’ve accrued in the history of our nation.

I admit there’s nothing good about going into deeper debt. According to the 2009 Conservative budget, we’re to go from a public debt of $458 billion in 2008-09 with $900 million in annual interest charges, to $492 billion in 2009-10 with annual interest charges rising to $2.4 billion. We now know that the projections fall short for fiscal 2009-10, since we’re expected to hit the $500 billion mark by Sunday. Increased annual interest charges make it even more difficult to pay down the debt in the future.

Having said that, the Conservatives have already projected they will go at least $540 billion in the red, so none of this is really any surprise to anyone. It’s certainly unworthy of the kind of the phrase used today by Canadian Taxpayers Federation director Kevin Gaudet, a man with whom I usually agree with on a great many things, who described Stephen Harper’s government as committing “fiscal child abuse.”

Fiscal child abuse? Is that kind of like “housing starts sexual assault”? Or how about “jobs creation break and enter”?

$540 billion is bad, but it isn’t terrible. The Liberals presided over a $562 billion debt in 1996-97, and remained above $500 billion until 2003. The Conservatives inherited a $480 billion debt when they took power in 2006, so if we’re to look at the actual losses in the past four years, we’re sitting about $20 billion worse off than we were:

You’ll also note that the debt to GDP ratio has fallen for every year since the debt was being paid down, and our OECD net debt to GDP ratio fell to 14.9% in 2007 under the Conservatives. While the spending over the past year has been staggering, it isn’t something that can’t be battled back from, as it has been before.

That does mean, however, that the short-term stimulus spending must cease soon, and in it’s stead a fiscal model must be created to balance the budget so that we’re at least breaking even, if not paying down the debt. Despite my criticism, the Conservative Party is correct in saying that we’re better placed than other G22 nations to make a recovery, and if they so choose to make the decisions necessary, I doubt it would be difficult to reign in spending.

The only question is when these decisions will be made, and whether they will risk unpopular cuts to spending without first acquiring the elusive majority mandate.

Some Days It Isn’t Worth Getting Out Of Bed

It’s been slow at work lately, with a lot of highly paid people standing around trying to look busy as we all silently wonder who’s going to get laid off next. It could just be the typical working man’s paranoia, but a healthy dose of fear about your job security means you’ll usually go the extra mile to try to rise above the crowd.

Unfortunately for me, this year I’ve managed to rise above the crowd alright. A few mistakes and some broken glass led to a recent pay demotion, and a loss of confidence from the boss. I don’t know how many of you can relate to that feeling of working for a person who doesn’t seem to think much of your abilities, but for me it’s fairly disheartening. If it were still that boom economy we were all riding back in 2007, I’d probably have taken off my hard hat, packed up my tools, and told him to “have a nice day”. Two years ago there were jobs everywhere, and not enough bodies to fill the positions. Now there’s a recession, and the construction industry collapse in B.C. means that there are lots of people, some ten or fifteen years younger than me, who are ready and willing to take my place.

Today I was mostly doing “make-work” projects, such as driving around in the aerial lift inspecting steel embedded anchors in the underside of the concrete slab to make sure they would thread properly when we actually went to install. But for the most part I was busy trying to find something to do, a situation that always makes me a bit panicky since I find the boss always seems to pick that perfect moment when you are at your most indecisive to show up.

Near the end of the day, however, I was told to do something very simple. I had to install an anchor on a frame that had been installed with just the left side anchored. This would require getting an L-angle anchor and a flat plate of steel and drill a through-bolt inside the aluminum to the other side so that the welder could come along and set the steel anchor to the steel embed. It’s a fairly basic piece of work, but I only had about 45 minutes to get my stuff together and go and do it.

I rushed up to the fourth floor, pulled the ladder over the guardrail, tied off to the safety line, and set my laser level to plumb the frame. I climbed the ladder with the steel anchor and clamped it to the aluminum mullion so that the top could be welded to the embed. Then I took the cordless drill and began drilling my pass hole for the through bolt.

Everything was going fine until I was halfway through my second hole. I was drilling with my left hand and clutching the anchor with my right hand to hold it still, even though it was clamped with vice grips. I hit a burr in the aluminum and my cordless kicked back a bit. It wasn’t enough to hurt my wrist because cordless drills have no torque at all, but it was enough to snap the half-inch carbide bit in half, plunging the broken part still attached to the chuck right into my thumb.

I had my hammer on top of the ladder because I was ready to hammer the through bolt into the hole, but I didn’t grab it as I descended to tend to my wound, which was now making a colourful display of ruby red raindrops all over the concrete slab. I tried to wipe the blood off on a nearby piece of cardboard, but realizing it was really dripping everywhere, I had to unhook my safety and run over to find some paper towel. I found some by my coworkers, applied pressure, and then wrapped my thumb in electrician’s tape.

I ran back to my ladder to finish the job because there was only about five minutes left in the day. When I arrived the site safety officer was there, and he asked me for my name as I ran up the ladder. I told him as I finished the hole, and then threaded the through bolt and finished the job. When I came down off my ladder, he said he was going to “write me up” for several safety infractions.

I had not tied my ladder off so that it would not fall over the edge of the building, just in case some phantom wind picked up and decided to toss it off. And I had left my hammer on the top of the ladder, a safety infraction for the same reason. I was left dumbfounded, mainly because he wasn’t so much concerned about the gaping wound and blood droplets leading away from us like a little trail, as he was concerned about what might have happened. The inanimate ladder falling off the slab. Bleeding worker? Meh.

The worst part is that I know the conversation with the boss tomorrow won’t be about how great it was that I finished the job on time so that the welder could get the anchor placed for glazing. No. It’ll be about how I got written up for a safety infraction. Which will be just another reason to put me at the front of the list for Christmas layoffs.

Some days it isn’t worth getting out of bed.

Harper’s Ethnic Vote Pandering

Photo: The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

To borrow from Norman Spector’s “The column I wish I’d written”, read Tarek Fatah’s condemnation of Stephen Harper’s imitation of Jack Layton in India:

It seems Canadian politicians will go to any lengths to curry favour with ethno-religious communities, who they treat as vote banks. First it was Jack Layton with his now famous call to Muslims “to renew the spirit and faith in Islam,” and now it is Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

If Mr. Layton was bending over backward to win the Muslim vote, Prime Minister Harper went the extra yard — all the way to the northern Indian city of Amritsar to cater to the Sikh vote in Canada by visiting the sacred Golden Temple.

[...]

The fact is Mr. Harper’s visit to the Temple had little to do with religion or business. In fact, it has all the hallmarks of Canada’s ethnic politics, which is an insult to those of us who are from that part of the world and who came to Canada to get away from the mixing of religion and politics.

I guess there is nothing our current Prime Minister won’t try to push him to that elusive majority number.

Taliban “Must” Join Afghan Parliament?

Great Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband has insisted that Taliban fighters should be persuaded to lay down their IED’s and join the Afghan Parliament in order to build a lasting peace in the country. In a speech to NATO in Edinburgh, Mr.Miliband made a few capitulatory remarks: “This is not a war without end.”

This is really how it ends, isn’t it? Yet another western government, moved to action by the growing restlessness of the natives who fear a protracted campaign in some far away land that means nothing to their daily lives. Or worse yet, by the people who believe that NATO is worse for the country than the Taliban.

Indeed, this is a rebranding effort for the Taliban, as perpetuated by that most lasting of urban myths: that there exists a moderate Taliban. The leadership for this terrorist organization has already made it clear that anything short of a complete western withdrawal from Afghanistan will not cause the Taliban to stop blowing up children in crowded markets. And they have threatened that any Taliban who do lay down their IED’s and work with the government will come to an untimely end.

Britain continues to operate under the belief that the Taliban grunts who fight against the ISAF are not ideological supporters, but merely want a way to feed their family. Which is all well and good, but the Taliban operate not unlike a gang. You can enter the gang easily, but leaving is the hard part. This idea of rehabilitating the Taliban had better come with the combined efforts to decapitate the Taliban leadership simultaneously.

As Mr.Miliband observes:

“I, as much as anyone else, want to bring our troops back home to safety. But we cannot leave a vacuum which the Taliban will quickly fill, and under their umbrella, al-Qa’ida quickly follow.

“Counter-terrorism may deal with symptoms, it brings short-term success. But only a comprehensive strategy can deal with the causes and ensure that when we leave, we do so knowing that we will not have to return.”

And speaking of a vacuum filled by the Taliban, Steve Coll of the New Yorker provides a good analysis of how that would work out for both us and the country we’re helping to provide security for.

Obama Underwhelms On World Stage

If it had just been the incident with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia as his one social faux pas, it could be understood. But to see the leader of the free world bowing and scraping to Emperor Akihito is an embarrassment that has rankled more than just a few Americans. People who are used to seeing the office of the President of the United States as a hallowed symbol of global superpower and might, are now bearing witness to the change by a man who seems to think his job requires going about doing curtsies to his social equals.

Barack Obama might be considered an atypical American, which is perhaps why he fares so well among international polls on his popularity. George W Bush was everything that Barack Obama isn’t. He used folksy colloquialisms, regardless of the scene or setting. He used to shoot from the hip in press conferences, giving people the impression that he wasn’t very intelligent because he was not reading prepared speeches from a teleprompter. His easy-going manner with foreign dignitaries was legend: he shoulder-massaged Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, who reacted in a very surprised way. And he wasn’t big on long-winded diplomacy. There was always present the threat of what might happen if people didn’t heed George Bush’s advice, and despite what reservations we might have about the man, he made good on those threats a number of times.

The current President has none of this kind of substance to him. Indeed, his soft words of diplomacy contrast sharply with every President who has gone before him, refusing to create any hint of controversy, even when speaking about warlords and tyrants. His overtures to Iran, his public musings about what is to be done about Afghanistan, and his embrace of Islam with a speech to the Arab world was meant to signal a great change in the United States.

Change can be good. But change for change’s sake is never a good idea. While the ameliorating aspects of President Obama’s foreign policy is well and good, without making alternative plans for those who don’t see eye to eye with the United States, the world’s most powerful military may as well be parked at a Wal-Mart. All the flowery rhetoric and good will speeches in the world cannot change some of the basic truths regarding the impasse that exists in the Middle East, where “hope and change” does nothing to reconcile the Palestinian issue, or make the Taliban suddenly take up knitting.

Teddy Roosevelt may be rolling in his grave. President Obama got the “speak softly” part correct, but there’s no sign of a stick anywhere. If anything, we’re hearing more and more that this Presidency will mark a major withdrawal of U.S. troops from their missions abroad.

As President Obama tours Asia right now, his speech is as manicured to perfection as his appearance. Discussing future relations with China, he said that co-operation would make “both the United States and China more prosperous and secure.” But what does that even mean? What aspect of a closer relationship with China makes the U.S. more prosperous and secure? Other than the fact that the communist regime with a capitalist economy now owns a large portion of America?

Speaking of Japan and China, 25% of the total U.S. debt in 2007 was owned by foreign governments, with up to 44% held by non-U.S. citizens and institutions. About 66% of that 44% was held by the central banks of other countries, in particular the central banks of Japan and China. As of May of 2009, the U.S. owed China $772 billion, or almost exactly the cost of the failed stimulus program created by Barack Obama. Lenders from China and Japan hold 44% of all foreign-owned debt.

Is it any wonder that Mr.Obama bows and scrapes before his economic masters? In the words of George H.W. Bush, we are witnessing a “new world order”, and it’s one in which the United States is represented by a man who speaks softly, and acts even more softly.

We’re Sorry, Your Comment Does Not Meet Our Leftwing Guidelines

It would be funny, if it were meant to be comedy.

Jane Taber wrote a piece in the Globe and Mail about the soon-to-be terminal political career of Michael Ignatieff as he beats on that tired global warming war drum in the House of Commons. There were comments after her piece, but unfortunately they did not make the cut:

I don’t know about you, but I’m awfully curious to find out how every single person who wrote a comment managed not to meet the stringent guidelines of the Globe and Mail.

My Interview With Ryan Doyle on CFRB1010

Here is my interview with Ryan Doyle from a few weeks ago about the Richmond beer garden with Holland House. Since this interview I’ve been contacted by the city of Richmond and they wanted to make sure people knew that the event will be going ahead as planned. [Update - I don't know why, but the file doesn't load in Internet Explorer. Please listen in Firefox, or download it from here.]

Here’s the direct link for those in Internet Explorer.

I’ll be on CFRB again tonight at 9pmEST for those in the Toronto area, or who get it piggybacked to Niagara and Montreal. I think you can also listen to it on digital cable’s radio station list.

It will be about this article.