Harper’s Response to Quebec Flood Victims ‘an Insult’

While Manitoba controls its flood and got two Prime Ministerial visits and plenty of support, Quebecers are left to deal a retreat of Canadian Armed Forces, all the while, Harper visits the rest of the brigade in Afghanistan. NDP leader Jack Layton took the opportunity to tour the region and called Harper’s actions ‘an insult.’ He is the first national leader to tour the region and many of his newest seats are in the area.

The Conservative Majority Government that campaigned on being ‘Here for Canada’ has turned its back to the 3,000 residents of the Richelieu Valley in Quebec who aren’t getting a break from the rising Richelieu river, nor will they see one any time soon.

An abnormally wet winter and spring has precipitated to a higher Lake Champlain and no where for water along the Richelieu Valley to go, but up. This has been the first time in over 100 years that the Richelieu river has reached these levels which have broken records three times.

The hardest hit of the region is the community of Saint-Paul-de-l’Ile-aux-Noix where Layton visited Monday morning with a few of his newly elected members of his Quebec-based caucus. He promised flood victims that he would speak to Harper directly about their many concerns.

However, residents are skeptical about Layton’s ability to change the situation and what they want is for the military to stay and for the water to go away. One woman in the region said that she has sleepless nights thinking about the mess that she will have to clean up when it is all over. Other residents didn’t care which politician came, they didn’t think it would make any difference.

One of the concerns that residents are raising in particular is Harper’s decision to withdraw the military as water levels rise. When the water recedes, sandbags that can weigh as much as 30 kg will be left for the residents to clean up on their own.

People in the region are now entering the fifth straight week of the flood where people literally need to use boats to cross the streets. Several thousand homes and businesses too, are underwater.

"It's been predicted for quite some time that we're going to have worse weather -- stronger weather," Layton told The Canadian Press. "All the insurance companies have been predicting it, weather scientists have been predicting it. We're going to have to take a look at how we respond, as a society."

Defense Minister Peter MacKay, however, made it clear during his visit to the region last week that the soldiers, which peaked at 800, will assist residents with the developing emergency but not the clean up.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest has been in the region four times announcing that the province would establish three task forces. One would focus on reconstruction, another on temporary shelter, a final on disaster prevention.

Over the weekend, heavy rain and strong winds caused the Richelieu river to rise another 25 cm bringing it to its highest levels for the third time  in 45 days.

"The same level as 6th of May, which I think was the highest," Saint-Paul-de-l'Ile-aux-Noix Mayor Gerard Dutil told CTV News Channel on Monday.

"Hopefully, with the weather persisting, we should be able to do something in the next 10 or 15 days, but we will have to come out of it soon," Dutil said.

If the river peaks as officials expect in the coming days, it will take weeks of good weather for the water to disappear and for a clean up operation to be able to take place.

Despite the Harper Government’s decision to leave Quebecers stranded, a site called SOS Richelieu  has managed to get more than 7,500 people to volunteer for its clean up operation that could start as soon as the weekend of June 11 and 12.

Other relief efforts include a Red Cross concert in Montreal on June 1 and a comedic fundraising event in Saint'-Jean-sur-Richelieu on June 7.

Liberals choose Bob Rae as Interim Leader

The Liberal Party of Canada has chosen Bob Rae to set the framework for the future of the party that will be handed off to another leader in 18 to 22 months depending on when the next convention takes place. Rae will the the Liberals’ fifth leader since Paul Martin resigned in 2006 after he lost to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. With the task of rebuilding the Grits at hand, Rae as an extensive amount of political experience.

Layton’s New Job

Jack Layton has always had a fighting spirit, and he must be so happy that Harper has a majority. This may sound insane, but Harper having a majority actually does benefit him. Since Harper has a majority, he can bark at him and never risk toppling the government. In this case, smooth sailing for him to boost his image. All he needs to do is reject everything Harper does he will look golden by October 19, 2015.

Conservatives will reap the benefits

Stephen Harper has a lot to smile about. He won a majority government with only 39.6% of the vote – imagine if he would have had to try to get the 54% that he has in seats in votes… He doesn’t have to care about what his opposition thinks or says. The fact that he increased the size of government, which will give Canadians a new $9 million bill will likely be forgotten in 4 years.

Conservatives Expand the Cabinet and the Senate

Conservative-minded people are supposed to take a minimalist mind to government. Reduce state intervention, reduce state size, reduce state spending. Today, Stephen Harper unveiled the biggest cabinet ever and appointed 3 unelected ministers to the senate. During his term in office, spending  increased and Harper plans to spend more on prisons, corporate tax cuts and F-35 fighter jets.

WikiLeaks: US Held off on Arctic Sovereignty Claim To Avoid Influencing the 2008 Election

WikiLeaks has leaked a diplomatic cable that suggests that in fear of influencing the outcome of the 2008 election – which gave Harper’s Conservatives a strengthened minority government – the White House delayed the release of a potentially controversial policy directive on the Arctic. The directive, titled the National Security/Homeland Security Presidential Directive, released in January 2009 was one of Republican President George Bush’s last policies before Democrat Barak Obama took office later that month.

Ministers want Action Plan Signs to be Permanent

The Action Plan signs that act to promote federal stimulus projects are popular with Conservative cabinet ministers. The signs are so popular that some ministers want the signs to stick around permanently.

The Canadian Press obtained documents that reveal a formal recommendation for a “permanent signage” program went to PM Harper at the request of his ministers last December 17.

NDP Gain Quebec Conservative Seat Via Recount

A judicial recount of the ballots cast on May 2 granted the New Democratic Party another seat in Quebec. On election night, Bernard Généreux was declared the winner in the Montmagny-L’Islet-Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup riding with a 110-vote lead over the NDP’s François Lapointe. A tabulation error granted the Greens 100 votes from the NDP but the NDP candidate still managed to win by nine votes.

WikiLeaks Strikes Again… This time Concerning the Arctic and Afghanistan

The Americans just aren’t buying Harper’s arctic promises, but instead thinks that it is nothing more than a political joy ride, a WikiLeaks cable suggests. The cable came from the US Embassy in Ottawa and was posted by an online whistleblower.

It turns out that what happens behind the scenes contradicts the public message that the American and Canadian governments are getting along…

Kiss the Surplus by 2014-15 Goodbye – It was only a ploy to get your vote

The election results are barely a week old and the Globe and Mail Reports that the revised 2011 budget that will be presented next month will not show a surplus by 2014-15 as promised in the Conservative platform. This is the same platform that Flaherty tweaked publically and announced $11 billion in cuts to make the surplus appear a year sooner than that. 

However, despite the lack of appearance in the Budget, Flaherty insists that he will have economists look at it and get back to us… that is politician lingo for “never going to happen, sorry folks.”

“We will do the strategic and operating review and we will book [those savings] once the review is done. That will get us to balance a year earlier, but is not part of the upcoming budget,” Chisholm Pothier, Mr. Flaherty’s spokesperson.

Stephen Harper made the primary pitch of his campaign revolve around his economic management – the same management that diminished a $13 billion surplus in under 2 years – before the recession – and put Canada into a record $56 billion hole. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said in November 2008, that there would be no deficit, and Harper said that there would be no recession 3 months after the economy slowed and the books hit the red. He warned that the spending promises in both the Liberal and NDP platforms would be detrimental for the economy and that he needed a majority government to maintain stability.

On CTV’s Power Play, Flaherty denied that he was committing to eliminating a year earlier – as he and his party did in the 2011 election.

Flaherty told Power Play, “No. I think we have to look at all of the data. We use an average of the private sector forecasters, as we have done for years now, to make sure that we’re on the right track, and in sync with the view of the private sector on the economy, so we’ll look at all these things, there’s a couple of platform commitments too that we’ll look at as well, but fundamentally it will be the same budget that was introduced on March 22.”

In other words, Flaherty just admitted that the Conservatives lied when they went around waving the extra $11 billion in cuts the the year advancement in deficit elimination and said that they found the $11 billion in the budget when he clearly states that he did not.

The Conservative Platform stated: “Through accelerated reductions in government spending, a re-elected Stephen Harper government will eliminate the deficit by 2014-15.”

The Conservatives claim that they can afford jets and corporate tax cuts and prisons when they are stating that they want to make cuts in public spending. (Logically, cuts mean cuts, not added spending and then cuts… spending extra defeats the purpose.)

On an added note, Harper warned that if the NDP were elected, gas prices would sky rocket… less than a week into his mandate, and gas prices skyrocketed…

Maybe the economy wasn’t the Conservative strong suit after all…

Supreme Court of Canada makes ruling

The Supreme Court of Canada decided that private government documents should remain private after the case was initially brought to the court by Stephen Harper’s Reform Party in the 1990s.

The court ruled unanimously on Friday morning that daily agendas produced by the Prime Minister and his cabinet are not subject to public scrutiny.

 

The Irony… This Week’s most Ironic Stories Surrounding the Government of Canada

There are a few pieces of irony that accompany this week’s news stories… These ironies consist of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision to keep government documents secret, the promised surplus that won’t be seen in the upcoming budget, and the American mocking of Harper behind closed doors – as exposed by WikiLeaks – while publically supporting him. An ironic week indeed; let’s get started.

Is There Something Wrong With Canada’s Electoral System?

If you take the results of this election – percentage-wise and compare the actual seat count with the hypothetical based on proportional representation, you will see that the Canadian people have been cheated. With a governing majority based off of 40% of the votes, it doesn’t require much knowledge to realize that 60% of the population that voted – 61% – are not represented in this equation. This scenario means significantly less seats for the Conservatives, and a Green Party that meets the official party status with 12 seats. Maybe it is time that Canadians considered electoral reform to ensure their voices get heard. It is democracy, isn’t it?

A Twist in Canadian Politics, the NDP Come in Second–Not Without Controversy and Diverse Faces

In Monday’s election, the NDP was handed 102 seats in the House of Commons in a silencing Conservative majority mandate. Among these 102 candidates, the bulk comes from Quebec where new and fairly young candidates are being investigated for being elected illegally. Within a few days of the result, not only is the NDP undergoing damage control, but they are being targeted for statements made by their deputy leader concerning the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Conservatives win a majority government

The Results are in, the Conservatives won a majority government which secures them for 4 years of uninterrupted power. They and the NDP were the big winners while the Liberals were wiped out and the Bloc Quebecois decimated.

For the next four years, people will have no choice but to accept the actions of the Conservative government as there is no say for the people when there is a majority government – regardless of the incumbent party. Below we will compare the new parliament with the old one.


The Conservatives only needed 155 seats to form a majority and with 168 seats, they cleared that limit by a comfortable margin. The big gainers, however, are the NDP who single-handedly reduced the Bloc to 3 seats from their mighty empire and raked up 103 votes to form the new Official Opposition. The Liberals fall to third with a distant 33 seats and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May beat her Conservative opponent to bring their only seat to parliament.

Seats at Dissolution on March 25:


Seat projections as of 12:13am May 3 from the election of May 2:


Stephen Harper’s Conservatives will now rule for up to 9 years and be 4 years shy of the Liberal era. It marks historic gains for the NDP and historic losses for the Liberals.

Notable Candidates who lost in their ridings were: Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Party Leader and Gilles Duceppe, Bloc Quebecois Leader.

Changes


On a final note, it is a shame that a party that has disrespected democracy in every fashion has been given not only a second chance, but an over-powering will to have their long desired power. It is highly recommended that people reflect the true consequences of this result and reflect upon whether it is the choice that they wanted to make. This is not to sound anti-Conservative, nor is it in any way to present any bias against the conservatives, but the actions that they have waged – each fully covered on the site – are truly unacceptable to democracy and if it would have been any other party, they would also have been denounced in the present for their current and most recent actions.

The results of this election are likely due to the NDP surge that split many other ridings that they did not capture. This allowed the Conservatives to enjoy a free ride on the fault lines that were created as they conquered through ‘the split.’

Election is Tomorrow: Conservatives ban more protesters from rallies and their Record Highlighted

From the student to the environmentalist to this, a father and his wife who claim they are nobodies but are denouncing Harper’s Conservatives, tossed in the rain with distress on their faces. Harper has slapped democracy again. Yesterday, Michael Ignatieff welcomed a group of Conservative supporters to his crowd, and today, the Conservatives ban what they would consider a foreigner – a person who does not share their views. Tomorrow is the election and everything must be considered. In the previous post, we covered the agendas, and there are several features and posts on the incumbent's government. Governments should be held accountable for their actions and Harper’s party is avoiding it at all costs.