Blue Like You

This editorial by the Edmonton Journal really makes sense to me. Why does a Prime Minister necessarily have to choose Cabinet Ministers according to provincial criteria?

If most of the talent is out West, so be it. Those are the people who should get the plum positions, IMHO.

And as the Journal suggests, Thunder Bay may have a lot more in common with Fort McMurray than Toronto.

It’s time to think out of the box - and out of provincial constrictions.

Now, let’s move on to Senate reform.

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Sunday Update: I caught the rerun of CBC’s ‘At Issue’ this morning. Andrew Coyne seemed to be supporting this point of view - namely that we should start talking more about competence instead of regionalism and gender, when it comes to Cabinet building. Chantel Hebert seems to agree to a point. The relevant segment starts just past the half-way mark.

Tuesday Update : Gee, this sounds familiar… Regions aren’t everything - Globe :

…A better idea would be for Mr. Harper to spend less time preoccupied with geography, and more of it worried about merit. Certainly, he cannot overlook any region entirely. But the reality is that there are more talented Conservative MPs in Alberta and British Columbia than in the rest of the provinces combined. And in a government in which few ministers have distinguished themselves, it is nonsensical to have people such as Diane Ablonczy, James Moore or Jason Kenney biding their time as backbenchers or junior ministers while colleagues from elsewhere are in over their heads…

No, apparently not. This morning’s Record updates us on the latest problems and plans of our self-imposed Canadian heroine.

She still has trouble sleeping, because of all those horrible memories of her ordeal in the Mexican jail. We also learn that her Canadian prison mates were less than charming:

Martin’s notoriety was not lost on some of the inmates at Grand Valley, who made her feel she was "in more danger than in Mexico," she said.

The prison allowed her mother to visit the day after she arrived — a departure from regular policy, Tieleman said.

"You can’t blame them," she said of the animosity toward Martin.

"It’s a difficult situation you’re living in and she came back with this, for lack of a better word, celebrity status. "

More abuse. Poor woman. How will she ever get over it?

Well, the article informs us that she is considering a book or movie to facilitate the emotional catharsis. No doubt that would also help ease her financial situation which must seem like a Liberal leadership candidate’s millstone :

…A fundraiser is being planned for Martin and will likely be held in Kitchener in July, said Graham, the former executive director of the Blues, Brews and Barbeques festival. Money raised will go toward the $100,000 worth of legal fees and expenses Martin still owes. Clearing those debts will be one final way to put the events of the past two years behind her, Martin said. "It belongs to that same stage in my life," she said. "I really want to put that all away."

If Brenda can promise that we’ll never hear about this again, I’ll make a donation myself. But somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.

…Both Martin and Tieleman expressed an interest in reaching out to other Canadians in foreign jails and pushing reform in consular services.

"The real legacy that has to happen with this is that it never happens to another Canadian," Tieleman said…

You’ve got that much right, Deb. We can’t afford it.

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Totally unrelated : A few technical adjustments going on here behind the scenes today, so Comment Moderation is on. I hope to be able to check comments later on. Thanks for your patience.

Via Girl on the Right , we have this provocative Toronto Star letter from Toronto City Councillor, Adam Vaughan :

…Letters from outside the city and indeed from across North America have been trickling in since council made its decision. My favourite letters are the ones being sent from the U.S. Gun owners there are now urging a boycott of Toronto. Considering that most of the problems with guns on our streets emanate from south of the border, I couldn’t be happier …

What do you say, U.S. Tourists? Could you possibly make his dreams come true and boycott Toronto altogether? Get your friends and families to join in. Toronto clearly doesn’t want you.

On the other hand, there are some other fine Canadian cities that would welcome you. I’m thinking Calgary, Niagara Falls, Montreal…

I’m sure they’d be willing to help out Adam Vaughn and take some of these gun-totin’ U.S. tourist dollars off Toronto’s hands.

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Saturday Update : Alright, alright! We have a heavy lobbying group for the city of Edmonton in comments - another great Canadian city for U.S. tourists to discover. And it sounds so much more appealing than Toronto the Bad !

CBL - David Miller Lies Again .

This decision is about as dumb as it gets. The CBC is actually planning bump Marketplace out of its slot in favour of U.S. programming. In fact, Connie Woodchuck says it has been temporarily shelved (H/T National Newswatch ).

Marketplace! This is just dumb, dumb and dumber . Only by cancelling The Mercer Report or Hockey Night in Canada could they top this one.

Marketplace is one of a meager selection of Mothercorps productions that has any redeeming value at all (IMHO). Witness the relevancy regarding the recent "Product of Canada " announcements regarding consumer food products!

But they’re keeping Little Mosque ?

This just proves what a ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money this archaic institution has become. Why shouldn’t it be offered on a user-pay basis just like every other broadcaster in this country?

Back in a previous post we discussed the merits of the CBC and the debate is still raging on . I should be selling tickets.

Please join in either there or here and air your thoughts.

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Update : Interesting Globe piece here by Marsha Lederman regarding the fact that Marketplace doesn’t run commercials during the body of the show. Well, couldn’t they change that?

And you gotta love the hubris here:

…He (Richard Stursberg, vice-president of English services) added that CBC’s audience and ratings improved this year, and he vowed to maintain the uptick in 2008. "We are on a very big roll," he told the crowd. "CBC continues to be the most important cultural institution in Canada. We beat Global in prime time for the first time since 1995."

Reader ‘Orville’ sent me a very thoughtful comment yesterday by email regarding the Bernier affair. He has agreed to allow me to publish it and I invite your comments:

Can we keep things in perspective and limit the hyperbole and the Liberal manufactured indignation and fear mongering. The papers left behind by Bernier, although considered classified, were not, as only the CBC would call ’sensitive’.
Fact of the matter is that the content of the papers was available to anybody, subversive or otherwise, by a simple request via the access to information of the government.
Contrast this with the debate created by Ralph Goodale, when he was finance minister,and there was evidence of a leak in the finance department about Income Trust legislation, which even the CBC would consider intolerable, by a competent government in which people could have trust.
Judy Wasylycia-Leis cajoled and demanded that a reluctant Ralph Goodale conduct an investigation into the income trust debacle in 2005. It was apparent to anyone with common sense, that the unusual activity on the market, just prior to Goodale’s announcement, suggested there may have been a breach, and an investigation was required to assure Canadians that the Finance department and the Government was innocent of any wrong doing. Any competent finance minister would not have required the prodding and would have taken the lead in initiating an investigation given the unusual market activity prior to his announcement. Because of Ms. Wasylycia-Leis and others, but no thanks to Mr. Goodale and the Liberals, the RCMP launched an investigation and now have been proven correct for doing so.

At the time Mr. Goodale said his department ‘was squeaky clean’
Mr. Goodale on national TV assured the Canadian people that there was no leak and that ‘The department is very meticulous about these matters.’
Paul Martin the Prime Minister, on national TV, assured Canadians ‘Mr. Goodale has said there was not a leak from his department’ obviously in a blatant attempt to divert the Canadian people’s attention away from this serious matter and from a blundering Finance Minister.

Mr. Goodale owes Ms. Wasylycia-Leis and others an apology for the smear and innuendo that he directed towards them and the accusations he made that they were guilty of cheap partisan politics. Mr. Goodale deceived the Canadian people and I suggest that he humbly apologize to them on TV, the medium he chose to delude them by in 2005. Ms. Wasylycia-Leis and others (some in the financial community) with memories of Adscam in mind, and common sense of the facts in this situation, were doing their task and a pursuit on behalf of Canadians, since Mr. Goodale and the Liberal party in an arrogant manner refused to do so.

So it seems that Orville feels that the Income Trust leak debacle was far worse than the Bernier affair, and the whole situation still requires some kind of closure.

Well, I suppose it’s up to the voters to make the final judgment. I guess my question is, if things are really as bad as the Liberals seem to be suggesting, then why don’t they take the government down on a vote of non-confidence?

Or have they somehow divined that Canadians are outraged, but still not to the point of wanting to have an election?

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Update : Looks like Chucker is daring them to force an election too! The Quebec Cabinet Deficit :

…And here’s the joke of it all. There is a simple remedy for this supposed disaster. It is a remedy entirely in the hands of the opposition to administer: vote the government down and have an election thereby handing over a truckload of more seats to the Tories in Quebec.

And if this is true, now’s the time to go for it, Stephane!

Globe - Bernier’s friends, aides assail Couillard.

Since Toronto is usually on the leading edge of simplistic, socialist policies, it’s in everyone’s best interest to pay attention to David Miller’s proposed ban on guns and recreational gun clubs - or as the National Post calls him, "the ignorant demagogue" who became "mayor of Canada’s biggest city…"

Decreeing bans seems to be the preferred plan of action with left-leaning politicians - If you ban it, it is done.

But not quite. Because as the Post editorial points out, this experiment failed badly in Britain:

In Britain, after the tragic 1996 elementary school shootings at Dunblane, Scotland, all private handgun ownership was banned and all handguns confiscated. Even England’s Olympic shooters, for a time, were forced to shuttle across the Channel to France for practice. Since then, though, New Scotland Yard and the Home Office estimate that the inventory of illegal handguns in Britain has expanded by three million. Gun crime has nearly doubled. And many cities now have more gun crime than comparable U. S. cities. Police refer to Manchester as Gunchester.

Yes, heaven forbid that David Miller should actually try to face the problem square on with increased police patrols in problem areas, and perhaps recognize the special challenges of certain ethnic communities that seem to have accepted a lack of paternal responsibility as the norm.

But what this knee-jerk problem-solving technique really does is hurt the law-abiding private citizens that actually follow the rules. People like reader Lisa , whose family is directly affected by this nonsensical approach by His Blondness . Lisa has a great post up today about this issue and some of her family members have been interviewed by the Star .

Sadly, today there was another fatal shooting outside a Toronto school, and you can bet David Miller will be using this latest incident as further evidence that Toronto should be jumping on the gun BAN dwagon.

Because political correctness demands that you never really face the problems. - you just make sure you are seen to be making decisions - even if they’re just bandaids that can’t possibly stop all the hemorrhaging of human life.

- And worse yet if you place those bandaids over your eyes, you can’t see the real problems.

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Thursday Update : Getting on the ban wagon - Michael Den Tandt (Sun):

…Mayor David Miller wants all guns banned. Also he would outlaw gun-making, ammunition, and target-pistol ranges. It doesn’t matter to him that most gun crime in Toronto is perpetrated by criminals, wielding illegally-obtained handguns. Guns are bad. Ban them…

Friday Update : This is definitely worth a read - Toronto wonders what’s happening to the tourists by Girl on the Right.

Should all electronic distractions be banned from vehicles? What about screaming kids? Aren’t they distracting too?

Jeff Allan took calls this morning regarding McGuinty’s about-face on this one.

Jeff says six months ago Dalton decreed that there was no need for this legislation because it is adequately covered under careless driving.

I’m planning to pick this up again later. Please express your opinions on this subject if you have any strong feelings one way or the other.

Are you o.k. with your GPS being banned too?

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Thursday Update : Why Miller, McGuinty, and a whole lot of other polis lie - CBL .

Please excuse my using this post as an opportunity to vent. Right now my blood pressure is probably sky-high, and I need an outlet.

Are you getting as frustrated as I am with call-centers located in India, Southern U.S. and anywhere-but-Canada for a so-called local company?

I’m not going to go into specifics but it’s happening everywhere, or so it seems - especially in the electronics, communications and appliance service industries.

You call with a problem and are ‘helped’ by someone who has no idea about anything and you can’t even understand them anyway. Then they promise you that they’ll get a company representative to get back to you with the answer.

Of course you wait and wait - and call again. And then you have to start all over again!!!

Well, this time I really let that poor schmuck answering the phone in Florida have it.!!! I pity her but you know what? I got an answer to my problem ten minutes later - with apologies and action !

So I guess the squeaky wheel really does get the grease. It’s just too bad that I almost had to blow a gasket to obtain it.

As the adaptation from Congreve’s play says, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ .

And, as in some tawdry soap opera, Julie Couillard seems to be holding nothing back in her attempt to clear her own name and take down the once-promising career of her ex-lover into the bargain. National Newswatch has a plethora of news and pundit links for your reading pleasure. Many Blogging Tories and Libloggers, and New Democrats Online have also weighed in on this one.

On the upside, we may have the answer to CBC President Hubert Lacroix’s lament about the need to increase ratings . The plot is already there - it just needs to be fleshed out .

And of course we could always count on the CBC to be non-partisan and produce dramas based on scandals from previous governments as well, right?

In your dreams.

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Update : Jack Layton was just on the Jeff Allan show this morning, stating that they will ask the RCMP to investigate this matter.

CTV -More fallout expected… Comments are interesting. Especially this one from someone who is likely an NDP supporter (See comments following this post):

Election Time?
All we need now is a confidence motion (Most likely from the NDP) that asks if this minority government is fit to run the country based on presumed security breaches. This motion SHOULD be tabled before June’s summer recess. Let’s find out from the Liberals (And the Bloc) how serious they consider this to be: Enough to take the moral stand for the betterment of Canada and it’s citizens or simply sitting on their hands again and abstaining to vote because of the risk of losing a lot of seats in an election: Saving their political bacon.

I say the latter is probably a good bet.

Duff on Jeff Allan - In the old days, faced with a similar situation the Liberals likely would have put him in the Senate!

Duff also mentioned that classified material is closely guarded and the whereabouts of each document is carefully watched, which makes one wonder where the checks and balances were for the month that Couillard allegedly had the material?

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Wednesday Update : Couillard a helpless victim? Cry me a River - Globe.

David Asper on the Maxime Bernier pile-on - An attack driven by hypocrisy and sexism . (Post )

L. Ian MacDonald’s piece in the Gazette is a good read - "Bernier didn’t fly too close to sun. He never got off the ground."

Thursday Update : Women and the ethics vote - Terence Corcoran.

Bernier resigns over classified documents left in an non-secure location. David Emerson will take over for the time being. (H/T National Newswatch )

Star - Embattled Bernier resigns .

Stephen Taylor has an update with Bernier’s letter of resignation .

ChuckerCanuk has a great post up and good discussion in comments.

Let’s face it. This did not turn out well. But as Stephen Taylor says, "Today was a bad day for Conservatives, but it represents an opportunity for the government move forward on its agenda without this distraction."

I would also suggest that it’s time for the Prime Minister to consider promoting some of his very hard-working MPs. Steve Janke nominates Jason Kenney for Foreign Affairs.

Couillard interview here .

Sandy weighs in here .

Don Martin is particularly caustic tonight - Maxime Bernier’s grave mistake .