Scratch An Arab Federation Vice President…

Tarek Fatah has the whole disgusting episode, complete with screen captures, while Barbara Kay vindicates Jason Kenney’s decision to cut these people off the public trough.

It would be nice to just chalk this up to the kind of insanity typical of the CAF, but then you get one of their sympathetic enablers in the very first comment on Tarek’s site:

The French In Quebec Lose Anyway. Ironic.

A little flashback in time on my blog:

It seems that Quebec nationalists have found another thing to be upset about, and it pertains to a rather unfortunate fact: Britain defeated the French in Quebec during the Seven Years’ War in the 18th century and some people would rather forget it even happened. It isn’t so much “historical revisionism” as it is selective hearing I suppose

So the sovereigntists cancelled the reenactment of the 1759 battle in Quebec City. That opened up the doors to another, more willing candidate for some reenactment action. A little town across from Niagara-on-the-Lake, Youngstown, New York:

A New York town should be the big tourism winner after the National Battlefields Commission’s decision to cancel plans to re-enact the Battle of the Plains of Abraham this summer.

Quebec sovereigntists claimed victory last February after the proposed re-enactment of the historic 1759 battle in Quebec City was dropped for safety and security reasons. Most of the people who had been considering going to Quebec City will be in Youngstown, N.Y., this weekend to mark the 250th anniversary of another British victory over the French.

More than 2,500 people will take part in the depiction of the Siege of Fort Niagara, where French defenders of the garrison at the mouth of the Niagara River surrendered to the British on July 25, 1759.

[...]

Eric Bloomquist, programs manager at Fort Niagara, says the re-enactment typically draws about 10,000 visitors every year, but he expects upward of 15,000 this year.

The amazing part about this whole “history” thing, is that no matter how many times you play it, the same side always wins. What won’t be winning, however, is Quebec City’s tourism industry.

The Carbon Tax We Never Voted For

I find it fascinating. I really do. The last major federal election was based upon diametrically opposing viewpoints of a single issue: the carbon tax. On the one side was Stephane Dion’s “Green Shift”, and a plan to incorporate that into an encompassing policy that would guide the actions of the government in almost every way. It was such a radical change for Canadians that many simply resisted it because of the fear of the unknown. The Liberals had never fared so poorly at the polls, leading me to believe that the rejection of the Liberal party wasn’t a vote of confidence for the governing Conservatives so much as it was a clear rejection of environmentalist populism.

Perhaps the phrase “environmentalist populism” seems out of place in the context of Stephane Dion’s 19 seat loss and the end of his leadership of the Liberal party. But I don’t use the term based upon the popularity of the policy, but on the notion of a time-specific policy being driven through by an idealistic politician. In reality, the Green Shift represented a threat to our economic stability at a time when all signs were pointing to a downturn economy. While many were putting climate change at the top of the priority list in boom times, that place took a tumble as the indicators went south. Its difficult to be idealistic when you’re unemployed and have mouths to feed. That generally isn’t a problem for the politician who proposed the policy, on the other hand, since in either case he gets his taxpayer-funded salary and fully-indexed pension.

Now Canada is set to adopt climate-change regulations comparable to those being pushed through mercilessly in the United States, but for a different set of reasons. To keep Canada’s place as the largest trading partner with the United States, they’ll have to conform to certain standards set by the Obama administration in order to avoid massive environmental tariffs:

In an interview Tuesday, Mr. Prentice said it is too early to predict whether the bill that narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives last Friday will be adopted in its current form by the Senate, where it faces a rougher ride.

But he said Canada will bring in regulations to match new U.S. laws governing greenhouse-gas emissions – and vowed to be as tough on Canadian industry as the U.S. government is on its big emitters.

Under the American Clean Energy and Security Act, all U.S. industrial emitters will need permits for every tonne of greenhouse gases they send into the atmosphere. The U.S. oil industry argues that the bill will hammer the refining sector by forcing companies to pay huge fees for the permits, while other industries – notably the power sector – would receive free permits to cover a portion of their current emissions.

The Waxman-Markey bill (named for its co-sponsors, Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Edwin Markey of Massachusetts) also contains measures that would penalize Canadian exporters if Washington determines that Ottawa’s regulations are less vigorous than those adopted by the United States.

This move is a dangerous challenge to NAFTA, and indeed to the entire scope of international trade agreements. By imposing environmental penalties to companies unable to meet U.S. standards, it could change the entire dynamic of trade relations, and even that of our economy. This is no small game being played by the Obama administration, and there are serious fears that it could jeopardize the recovery of the U.S. markets. Additionally, this gives the Americans the chance to decide what gets to be environmentally-friendly and what does not, bending the rules for free trade into one that would favour the interests of the U.S.

But the biggest fear is probably the most valid one. Any cap and trade system that drives out energy-intensive industries from North America to developing nations could devastate our economy and our workforce. As Shawn McCarthy writes in the Globe and Mail, such moves would lose jobs, “while doing nothing to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.”

And that’s the crux of meaningless populist policies, isn’t it? Doing something that seems like the right thing to do at the time, whilst not recognizing the devastating Law of Unintended Consequences behind it. I recently saw an amusing diagram that describes the problem facing the Obama administration:

1. High unemployment, or people making less money means
2. Sales and income tax revenue goes down so that
3. Governments run budget deficits which leads to
4. Governments raise business taxes which means
5. Big business picks up and moves overseas and we’re
6. Back to square 1

h/t Sidelines

Happy Canada Day! [Made In China]

I don’t know what the big deal is over the Canadian flags and pins being manufactured in China. Did the NDP really think that the government was going to hand over the job to a unionized shop with $30/hour workers putting together little pieces of red and white paper and pumping out pins? Here’s a newsflash for the NDP: everything is made in China. It’s all part of that whole international global market thing you may have heard of. Instead of spending $100 million on Canadian labour and materials, you spend a pittance of the portion in China, freeing up the Canadian workforce to do things a little more modern.

Yes, we outlived our industrial revolution, and while I’m sure the NDP would be interested in heading back, I’m pretty sure that door is closed now. Perhaps if Canada was a major flag and pin manufacturer to the tune of several billion dollars, like a General Motors or a Ford for instance, perhaps a Canadian company would have received the “stimulus” contract. But unfortunately for flag and pin manufacturers throughout this great nation, we don’t and we didn’t.

I think it’s rather appropriate, actually, that our Canada day symbols were made in China. What could be more consummately Canadian than the fact that when you get right down to it, we’re not all actually made here?

NDP MP Charlie Angus would like you to know, for the record, that all flags and pins available at the Parliament Hill gift shop were made in Canada. So expect a big spike in sales at the gift shop in short order. There we go. We’ve shored up a few sorely needed stimulus dollars for our gift shop industry.

Ottawa Not So Transparent On Accountability

Photo: Fred Chartrand, CP

The last time I wrote about Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page being rebuked by Parliament for speaking to the media about budget forecasts, I was told that he was overstepping his bounds for his own fame and notoriety. Some said he was redundant because of the position of auditor general Sheila Fraser, and that he merely coveted her media exposure and power. Things are best left to the auditor general, it was said, and if anything gets out of line spending-wise, she’ll get to the bottom of it.

Unfortunately Ms.Fraser is finding out that prying information from our elected officials is as difficult as Robert Marleau and Kevin Page have been saying. She wants to look into millions of dollars in expenses that our Canadian MPs go through each year, to the tune of $128 million, but that task hasn’t been easy. Currently there is no public access to the details of MP spending, with all expenses approved by an internal House of Commons committee, and then audited by a private accounting firm. Those inside the government say that the accountability is already in place.

Liberal MP Mauril Belanger, who sits on the Board of Internal Economy, told CTV News that “there are no scandals like you have seen brewing in England” hidden from the public.

Belanger says there are strict spending rules and safeguards for MPs’ spending.

“The rules are set, the expenditures must be within those rules, and if they’re not, they’re not reimbursed,” he said.

The problem is that even with the best self-regulation in place, it still delegitimizes the concept of transparency in governance. Further to the point, it doesn’t give taxpayers the opportunity to seek out information on the value they get for compensating elected members of parliament. Even if the internal process works, it still leaves observers unable to assess what exactly it is that works. We’ll just have to take their word for it.

There seems to be a general sense of annoyance from Parliament at having watchdogs looking into not only their spending, but their spending forecasts. The muzzling of Kevin Page certainly ranks as one of the more odd developments in Canadian politics. He’s been offered his standard $2.8 million operating budget without serious cuts, but on a serious condition. That he not report on “the state of the nation’s finances and trends in the national economy” to the public or the media, but only to the House of Commons committee.

The concept is paradoxical. A knowledgeable, educated, non-partisan voice being asked to keep all budget forecasts secret until such time that the “confidentiality” can be lifted by the House committee. Now he faces an ultimatum: be quiet, or be forced into obscurity by budget cuts. It isn’t exactly the vision of transparency that was expected when his office was created under the federal Accountability Act. Far from the critic’s cries of his erroneous statistics, which would be simple to brush aside if it were true, his forecasts have concerned members from all parties who can see the public relations damage in having to actually back up their fiscal projections and cost estimates. In this sense, the obfuscation is a multi-partisan effort.

One is left with the sense that our government is telling us “don’t worry, we’ve got it under control here”, whilst quietly shuffling any attempts to find out what it is they’ve got under control under the rug.