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Was Stephane Dion just ahead of his time?

Posted by Joanne on 21 March 2010, 9:04 am

Electricity prices and associated costs will be skyrocketing in Ontario. No doubt about that.

According to a recent column by the Star’s Tyler Hamilton (Why paying more for electricity is good for you), the new strategy is to deliberately increase ‘dirty’ power costs to force consumers to use less:

…How do jurisdictions with more expensive electricity cope? It’s simple: they use less of it. That’s the remarkable thing about higher prices. It’s an efficient way to squeeze waste out of the system.

“People would be surprised at how powerful that pricing lever is, and frankly how little the price increase needs to be to deal with climate change,” says Heintzman.

Homeowners, businesses, governments and industrial facilities will be motivated to offset rising costs by doing a better job of managing their energy use and investing in energy-reducing retrofits...

So basically you will be forced to go green and you will like it.

And remember Dion’s Green Shift where some of the money derived from the carbon tax would be diverted into maintaining ’social justice’? Well it seems that Dion was ahead of his time:

…Some will need help. A new $650-million industrial efficiency program designed by the Ontario Power Authority is an example of how government can ease the transition. The program, open to 60 of Ontario’s largest industrial players, will pay up to 70 per cent of the cost of an energy-saving project. Each project aims to reduce energy use by 30 per cent.

Likewise, there are both federal and provincial programs to help homeowners lower their bills through energy retrofits in advance of rising energy prices. The trick is to make sure low-income and fixed-income consumers get support through rebates and changes to the tax structure.

If it all sounds eerily familiar to the Green Shift plan proposed by Stéphane Dion, former leader of the federal Liberal party, that’s because it is.

Dion’s failure to sell the plan doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea. It means he failed to communicate it properly or the population, confused by opposition fear-mongering, just wasn’t ready for it…

So are we ready now to have power costs and taxes jacked up so that we can be forced to save Mother Earth and appease our social conscience as a bonus? This is a left-wing dream scenario and it is about to happen.

And what was the problem when Dion tried this? Was it the message that Canadians were against or was it the messenger? Or both?

And why would we be ready to accept it now as we try to recover from the recession?

Of course that would assume that we had a choice.

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Related

No payoff in off-peak power conservation – Star (re: ‘Smart’ meters)

And from the general realm of Environmental Propaganda:

Time to fight back against oilsands propaganda – Sun

‘No facts, please. We’re British’ – Edmonton Journal

Filed under AGW, Big Environment, Big Green, Carbon Shaft, Climategate, Dalton McGuinty, Energy, Flicking politicians, Follow the money, Green Shaft, Just trust Dalton, Lemmings love taxes, Nanny State, Premier Hudak in 2011, Stephane Dion, Your tax-dollars, climate change, democracy, economy, environmentalists, grassroots power.
1 Comment

Liberals aren’t doing their job: Travers

Posted by Joanne on 16 March 2010, 8:09 am

I always hesitate to link to a Jim Travers column because I believe it encourages him to continue on his mission to disparage the Conservatives and also probably validates  Roy MacGregor’s theory of lazy journalism.

However if you peel away the layers of hate, contempt and barely concealed (and all too common) murder metaphors in Traver’s piece today,   They used to behead kings what Harper is doing [sic*], you begin to see that he is extremely frustrated with the opposition:

…For opposition parties, there’s a catch in that apparent humiliation: It serves Harper surprisingly well. Conservatives would almost certainly consider censure a loss of confidence, plunging the country into an election fought, at least in part, over the red herring issue of support for the troops.

Opposition parties don’t want to go into a campaign defending their patriotism. So it’s extremely unlikely that an NDP effort to reinforce Parliament’s supremacy, or a less well-known, lone-wolf effort by one Liberal MP, will gain the needed traction.

In one way, that’s a shame. A loss of Commons confidence is the appropriate response when a prime minister tries to seize powers that once belonged to monarchs.

In another, it’s simply pragmatic. Even if the government falls over disregard for democratic principle, the central election issues will be leadership, jobs and the economy. On those, wobbly Liberals are in no hurry to test their strength…

Translation: The Liberals are incompetent cowards.  And perhaps a bit self-serving?

Travers closes by suggesting that if the Opposition parties don’t get rid of the Harper government then they are neglecting their democratic duty by not representing their constituents:

…By ducking the responsibility to hold Harper accountable for what happened in Afghanistan on his watch, Parliament is allowing the Prime Minister to drift that much further beyond its oversight, discipline and control.

So what we have here is a lefty journalist chewing out the Liberal party for backing down from their job of holding the Prime Minister accountable.

I think I can suggest a Facebook site where  Travers can vent some of his frustration:   Canadians Against Liberals Not Doing Their Job.

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Note:

*When I first started writing this post around 7 am this morning the headline at the Star was “Once upon a time, they beheaded kings for acting like this”. We’ll see how many times it changes today.

Noon headline update: I see they’ve at least corrected the grammatical error and added the word ‘for’.

Related

Memories of beheading threats past.

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Update:

Don’t forget that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be answering your questions on Youtube tonight (Tuesday) at 7 pm Eastern.

Filed under Accountability, Afghanistan, Blog Power, Coalition of the swilling, Election fever, Facebook, Harper best PM ever, Harper smartest PM ever, Iffy, Iggo Waffles, LPC, Liberal Party of Donolo, MSM bias, Media Watch, Michael Ignatieff, Press puffery, Protests, Stephen Harper, Support our troops, The LPC is dysfunctional, democracy, grassroots power.
30 Comments

Bypassing the dinosaur

Posted by Joanne on 11 March 2010, 7:58 am

Don’t miss Prime Minister Stephen Harper live on YouTube at 10:45 Eastern this morning! He will be discussing the recent  Throne Speech and budget (that  just passed with a little help from his Liberal friends.)

You are also invited to submit questions for a YouTube interview on Tuesday evening (7 pm EST).  This format has been recently used by President Obama.

Going straight to the people without the biased MSM filter. Who knew we were that smart to be able to interpret things for ourselves?

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Better version here on the Prime Minister’s own YouTube channel.

Friday Update

Budget aftermath: Planes, pompadours – L. Ian MacDonald (Sun):

...Flaherty’s travel arrangements became news last weekend when CTV broke the story that he had flown to London on a government jet rather than going commercial at a cost of $800.

As it turned out, one reason Flaherty used a government plane was so he could be up in time to do an interview with, uh, CTV, which initially reported he had commandeered a Challenger at a cost of $9,000, much more than the Cessna Citation he actually flew on at a cost of $3,100. Oh, and because he was doing 11 radio and five TV interviews in the morning, three staffers were along. So their equivalent commercial costs of $2,400 meant Flaherty was actually saving $100…

Filed under Barack Obama, Blog Power, CPC, CPC majority solution, Canadian Government, Canadian economy, Harper best PM ever, Harper smartest PM ever, Iffy, Iggo Waffles, LPC, Liberal Party of Donolo, MSM bias, Press puffery, Science/tech, Stephen Harper, Stephen Harper Rock Star, YouTube, grassroots power.
63 Comments

The bigger Public Service picture

Posted by Joanne on 9 March 2010, 8:15 am

A few days ago I asked if Canadian taxpayers had the stomach to challenge the Public Service sector on their compensation packages, which would be an inevitable result if the present government really dug in their heels on substantive and meaningful cuts rather than Stockwell Day’s first timid nicks.

At the end of that post I had added a link to a very pertinent article in the Globe by Karim Bardeesy – We can’t fix the public sector in one budget. Bardeesy invites us to look into the future and assess what kind of frills we feel we can do without in terms of reducing the costs of government services, especially in view of the fact that many collective agreements won’t be up for renegotiation for some time yet:

…Governments and taxpayers also need to revise their assumptions. They must ask whether tax increases are necessary to keep funding for public services adequate. Or they’ll need to start choosing which services they no longer expect to be publicly funded.

It’s easy to focus on politically expedient short-term battles between government and the public sector. The future of services that Canadians value will depend on those who’ll start the larger conversation.

I see Stockwell Day’s first efforts as a token gesture to get that debate going. And already we are hearing the screams of protest from the entitled public service, as Paul Rutherford tells us:

…Every federal department — except National Defence — will see its overall budget frozen at 2010-2011 levels for the following two years.

In an otherwise bland, so-so federal budget this was one of the bright spots.

It’s an effective way to begin the climb out of our massive deficit.

Canadian families and businesses are showing restraint — government needs to also, say the feds.

But no sooner had the ink dried on Flaherty’s budget, when the whining began.

“Why don’t they tell the people of Canada what services they can no longer expect?” Public Service Alliance of Canada national president John Gordon said.

Gordon has fired the first grenade claiming every time the feds come calling, their members are asked to make huge sacrifices, resulting in reduced services for Canadians and more work for public servants.

But are Canadians as fussed over what might go missing down at the local federal office more than an out-of-control deficit that needs to be reined in?

In a word: No…

Rutherford seems to think that taxpayers would support deeper cuts and I suspect he is right judging from the latest Angus Reid poll showing that 81% favour freezing the overall budgets for the offices of ministers and departmental operating budgets, as well as the 92% who support the freeze on wages for MPs, cabinet ministers and senators.

But Bardeesy is correct that it ultimately comes down to how much we are realistically prepared to give up ourselves in terms of services so that our tax burden becomes less oppressive. Trying to do things smarter with less is a great objective, but ultimately we have to decide what we can live without – and then convey those thoughts to our MPs and to every other level of government that seem to delight in emptying our wallets.

The Public Sector unions are going to go ballistic and the NDP will surely be stoking the fires on their behalf.  Are we ready for that fight?

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Update

Interesting debate between Amanda Lang and Kevin O’Leary yesterday (starts just after the 4 minute mark).  Kevin says “Fire all of them!”

That reminds me of Ezra Levant’s ‘Action Plan‘ from a few years ago, which still rings true today: Fire. Them. All.

And the CHRC is a great place to start.  Yeah, I think we can live without them.

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Upperdate

O.K.  I’ve decided to start a list based on comments and I’ll put my own at the top.

Where Stockwell Day should start cutting:

1. CHRC

2. Long Gun Registry (Lee)

3. CBC  (Bluetech – with certain exceptions)  [West Coast Teddi suggests privatizing it.]

4. Special Interest group programs and ministries (Greg)

5. Groups like Rights and Democracy (Jad)

5. Ten-Percenter reductions (Bec)

6. Wheat Board (Bec)

7. Cut all NGOs with advocacy roles (Dr. Roy)

8. Cuts to agricultural subsidies (Dr. Roy)

9. Exiled Maritimer suggests pension changes among other things.  But Sandy recommends caution regarding travel expenses and severance.

10. Union contracts frozen and MPs perks cut to the bone (Wilson)

11. Bombardier subsidies (Doug)

12. Cut the GG’s budget. (Maz2)

13. Cut $1.95 subsidy to Federal Parties  and many more ideas including the sale of Via Rail (Rich)

Where to look for efficiencies:

1. Tax code simplification (Lee)  [Dr. Roy suggests a flat tax]

2. Elections Canada (Bec)

3. Skulman has several efficiency suggestions detailed here including incentive changes for the public service and allowing the private sector to take over some of the services.  Mary T would also like to change the work ethic.

4. Two term limit for politicians and they only qualify for a pension if 50% of those they represented agree; a true ‘exit’ poll. (Wayne)

5. Bonuses to department heads based on how much money they did not spend in their budget. (Wayne)

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The ideas just keep coming and coming!  I never expected this kind of response. Please check the whole comment section for more fantastic grassroot suggestions on how to get the bloat out of Government.  And please forward your favourites to our elected officials. Thanks.

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Friday Update

Severance pay bonanza: Blizzard – Sun

HST a potential boon to Ontario’s tax collectors – Globe:

…The 1,250 public-sector employees in Ontario who will transfer to the federal government’s tax-collection arm will pocket as much as $45,000 in severance pay, even though they won’t lose a single day of work.

But the 300 civil servants in British Columbia who are also joining the federal government won’t get a similar generous sendoff.

Why the different approaches? Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said the government is simply honouring the terms of the province’s collective agreement with its public-sector workers. The union representing the employees said they are entitled to severance pay because, even though they will immediately land new jobs with the federal government, they will no longer work for the public service in Ontario…

Tax staff to be paid $25M in severance, rehired – National Post:

…But the Canadian Taxpayers Federation says Mr. McGuinty could cancel the agreement.

“It’s insane. The Premier should not pay out a single penny, period,” said federal director Kevin Gaudet.

“For once the Premier should stand up for the taxpayer instead of organized labour. It shouldn’t be about funneling cash to his union buddies. It should be about people who pay taxes. Taxpayers already lose once with the HST. Now they’re losing twice.”

Filed under Appeasement never works, Canadian economy, Entitlement, Only one tax-payer, Unions, Your tax-dollars, grassroots power.
99 Comments

The Audacity of Caution

Posted by Joanne on 1 March 2010, 7:52 am

Dr. Jack Kruuv, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Waterloo has a few choice words for Maxime Bernier in today’s Waterloo Region Record:

“Politicians should keep their trap shut, when they don’t know what they are talking about.”

And since politicians represent the people that elect them, then by extension he is telling us to keep our traps shut. So much for open debate in Canadian taxpayer-supported universities.

This is the kind of attitude that we’re up against.

Have at it, BLY nation.

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Update

Fantastic post at American Thinker by Rick Moran (H/T Maz2) where he savages Al Gore’s NYT op-ed – Al Gore’s weird, disconnected op-ed on climate change:

…In other words, Gore obviously believes we should sit down, shut up, and let him and his buddies reach into our pockets and remove trillions of dollars without demanding proof of the scientific basis for his power grab…

Sound familiar?

Phil Jones on the hot seat – not sharing data is “standard practice” – WUWT (H/T Maz2)

And a terrific comment  from a reader at the Daily Mail:

“Prof Jones today said it was not ’standard practice’ in climate science to release data and methodology for scientific findings so that other scientists could check and challenge the research.”

It is standard practice in every proper science to release date and methodology in the greatest of detail so that every aspect of the research and of the argument can be ‘falsified’ (using the Popper meaning of the word).
That is how science works.
That is why science works.
Not to do so puts climate research at the level of iridology, homeopoathy, and alchemy.
Add political agenda, and finding, and you have a bastardised pseudo-science barely worth another look. Unscrupulous people making money out of the latest political bandwagon, to justify further taxation by this dreadful government.

Which many of us have suspected for a long time.

- PeterMac, Ronda, Spain, 01/3/2010 18:45

Filed under AGW, Al Gore, Arrogance, Big Environment, Big Green, Climategate, Follow the money, Global Warming, Science/tech, Your tax-dollars, climate change, democracy, environment, environmentalists, grassroots power.
43 Comments

Bernier rather than Charest? Mais oui!

Posted by Joanne on 26 February 2010, 8:16 am

Both Chantel Hebert and Susan Riley ponder the possibilities of a Maxime Bernier leadership bid after his awesome opinion letter in La Presse. But Riley lost me at “oil patch foot-draggers”, so we will shift our focus to Hebert’s more objective column.

Chantel’s theory is that Bernier is indeed setting the stage for a future leadership bid, and that Conservative party members would prefer Bernier to Jean Charest as the Quebec candidate. Well I can tell you that based on the readership of this blog, Charest doesn’t stand a chance in h-e-double hockeysticks.

Furthermore, Hebert suggests that the Progressive Conservative MPs may be out of touch with the larger grassroot movement, and therefore Jim Prentice may be vulnerable against a potential leader who appeals more to the base.  That certainly is a possibility. Prentice is a gifted politician but I’m not sure how much the base can identify with him:

...On Wednesday, Environment Minister Jim Prentice scrambled to distance himself from Bernier’s double-edged praise of his climate-change approach.
And the zero-growth policy the ex-minister advocated in his Calgary speech is unlikely to find its way into Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s upcoming budget.

But then auditioning for a return to the cabinet table is not what this is really about.

Bernier’s long game has always been to go after the top job.

These days, he is making the most of his unsolicited freedom from cabinet solidarity to stake out ideological ground that could stand him in good stead with the rank-and-file Conservatives who will select the next party leader…

Previously I haven’t wanted to indulge in these kinds of discussions because I’ve felt it was more the opposition and media trying to stir the pot and insert some divisions into the party. However I can tell you that the patience of the grassroots loyalty has been sorely tested in recent months and there are a few issues that will be deal-breakers if our concerns aren’t acknowledged. Less government interference, more fiscal restraint and a commonsense environmental approach are all dear to the hearts of my most of my readers and by extension a large segment of the party supporters.

And what are the alternatives if the CPC veers much further to the left?

I suppose we would have to sit home during the next election.  Pity.

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“It’s not debatable.”

Filed under Big Environment, Big Green, CPC, Canadian Government, Canadian economy, Carbon Shaft, Climategate, Global Warming, Jean Charest, Quebec, Voter cynicism, climate change, environment, grassroots power.
59 Comments

Maxime Bernier – Climate Realist

Posted by Joanne on 25 February 2010, 8:14 am

Thank you Maxime Bernier for being the first politician to have the courage to publicly acknowledge what we all have been aware of for the last several months – that the so-called ’settled science’  is unraveling and the alarmists’ hysteria is a crock as Lorrie Goldstein points out today – Mad Max makes sense.  [Sidenote:  MP Colin Mayes was pilloried by climate alarmists for expressing doubts to a constituent in December.]

In case you missed it, Maxime Bernier had the audacity to suggest that perhaps a bit of healthy skeptism might be in order before committing tons of money to attempt to solve a unsubstantiated problem that may or may not be able to be solved by human intervention.  The opposition parties are saying that this is proof of where the Harper Government really stands on climate change, but many of us grassroot supporters only wish that were so.

Lorrie Goldstein is also a climate realist and truth seeker who feels that PM Harper should be taking the same approach as Bernier, but he gives the Conservative Government a back-handed compliment:

The good news is Harper is better on climate change than the opposition parties. The bad news is, that’s not saying much.

That’s for sure. Here is the alternative, Lorrie:

“The fact is, no one with any scientific credibility denies the science behind man-made climate change,” said Liberal science, industry and technology critic Marc Garneau, the former head of the Canadian Space Agency.

No one with any scientific credibility – Oh you mean Phil Jones? Bernier refers to him in a portion of his letter that was edited out by LaPresse:

…Phil Jones has admitted that we still do not know if the medieval period when the Vikings colonised Greenland was really warmer than today. But that if that was the case, it would contradict the claim that our era has been exceptionally warm due to human activity…

Marc Garneau must be living in a cave somewhere to make a statement like that. Does he not keep up with the news?

Lorrie Goldstein points out that we can still take a healthy, common-sense approach to the environment without buying into the alarmism:

…The reason he should pull Canada out of the UN-inspired Kyoto-Copenhagen madness, now, is that none of what it leads to — global cap-and-trade markets and/or carbon taxes — has worked in the real world.

Besides, unelected warmists have had their day with their never-ending “do what we say or the planet gets it” hysteria.

Canadians want sensible policies to (further) reduce air and water pollution and automobile emissions, make oilsands development environmentally sustainable, conserve energy, clean up toxic waste dumps, safely dispose of nuclear waste, provide clean drinking water to native reserves, preserve forests, put scrubbers on coal-fired electricity plants and expand public infrastructure, including effective public transit.

(As for renewable energy, let’s figure out what works and is economically viable before ramming unwanted industrial wind factories down people’s throats in rural communities, while savaging their democratic rights.)

All of these things make sense regardless of where one stands on climate change…

But back to Mmmm-Mmmm Maxime Maxime as some of my readers refer to  him. Is it possible that Bernier is setting the stage for a future leadership bid?  Robert Silver seems to think so.  He’s comparing Bernier to Sarah Palin!

And ChuckerCanuk thinks this could herald the beginning of the Second Quiet Revolution in Quebec.

Jim Prentice seemed a bit testy yesterday when questioned about Maxime’s remarks:

“I did not talk to Maxime about that (letter) before it was published. As you know, there are many points of view on the science debate that is currently circulating around,” said Prentice in an interview in Washington, where his is discussing climate and energy issues with U.S. officials.

“The views that Maxime has put forward are his personal views. They are not the government’s view. I don’t specifically share them. He is certainly entitled to his perspective, but it is his perspective as an individual. It’s not the government’s perspective.”

Is it possible that Jim Prentice wishes he could also be as forthright as Bernier, but that he is shackled by his Cabinet position and by the fact that Canada must also be careful about policies that could affect trade with the U.S.?

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Update

Britain’s Weather Office Proposes Climate-Gate Do-Over – Fox News

Filed under AGW, Big Environment, Big Green, Climategate, Copenhagen, Follow the money, Global Warming, Goldstein, Kyoto, UN, Your tax-dollars, climate change, environmentalists, grassroots power.
64 Comments
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