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Archive of posts filed under the grassroots power category.

Bypassing the dinosaur

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.

The bigger Public Service picture

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 BardeesyWe 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.

The Audacity of Caution

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

Bernier rather than Charest? Mais oui!

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.”

Maxime Bernier – Climate Realist

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-OverFox News

Thou Shalt Not Question the OPP

In Ontario Community Safety Minister Rick Bartolucci’s world, it would seem that loyalty to the OPP outweighs respect for the Canadian flag:

The Opposition should be “ashamed of themselves” for questioning why flying the Canadian flag near the site of a long-running aboriginal occupation in Caledonia is being treated as a criminal act by government agents, Community Safety Minister Rick Bartolucci said yesterday.

Bartolucci said he will always support the actions of the Ontario Provincial Police, as should all elected politicians….

Apparently it is a  criminal act to fly a Canadian flag under certain circumstances in Ontario.  But we are very bad people to be even questioning that.

Unfrickin’ believable!

How much longer are we going to put up with this, fellow Ontarians?

The only thing I’m ‘ashamed’ of is having Dalton McGuinty as my Premier.

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OPP

(Cartoon courtesy of MacKayMay 31, 2006)

The rats are jumping ship

Yvo de Boer has just announced his intentions to resign as executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Can you spell f-a-i-l-u-r-e?

Meanwhile we learn via Terence Corcoran and Lawrence Solomon that ‘at least five major U.S. corporations have pulled out of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership‘. Yet several of our Canadian provinces are still hanging onto the cap-trade scheme.

Why is it taking our Canadian political leaders so long to catch up on the latest news? Why are they not at least acknowledging the mistakes?

As Lorrie Goldstein says today, We’re drowning in climate stupidity.

Demand answers, Canada!

Do not go placidly into that carbon trade cesspool.

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Related

Cap-and-Trade Cracks Up – Myron Ebell, Fox News:

So cap-and-trade is dead. But other piecemeal energy-rationing policies are still very much alive. The Environmental Protection Agency is going ahead with regulating greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is working with Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) on a “compromise” package that can gain bipartisan support. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has passed a renewable electricity requirement and new building energy efficiency standards out of his committee.

And big corporations are still circling the trough. By my count, U.S. CAP still has twenty-three corporate members plus eight environmental pressure groups that front for big business. And of course, BP America, Conoco Phillips, Caterpillar, and many other companies that don’t belong to U.S. CAP still hope to make money off the “right” sort of policies to raise energy prices.

The good news is that public opinion has turned decisively against global warming alarmism and energy-rationing. People have figured out that they, not big business special interests, will end up paying the bills when energy prices, in President Obama’s elegant formulation, “necessarily skyrocket.” And, guess what? In the November elections, the American people will have a lot more votes than James Rogers of Duke Energy or Jim Mulva of Conoco Phillips.

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In case you missed it:

Many thanks to Frmgrl and Bec for the tip about Dave Rutherford’s interview with Jim Prentice yesterday.  Definitely worth a listen.  [Click on Wednesday Feb. 17 at 11 am]

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Friday Update

Denial not just for the deniersPeter Foster, Financial Post

Paying a big price for guilt

Lorne Gunter weighs in on Phil Jones’ recent revelations – They’re finally admitting the science isn’t settled. (National Post)

Haven’t we had it drummed into us ceaselessly that the past decade has been the warmest ever recorded? Prof. Jones’s admission to the BBC then is very significant.

If, instead of bleating for the past 15 years that the sky was about to burst into flame, major climate scientists had been saying the Earth was warming, but not to a statistically significant level, would you have been as worried as you were? Would there have been a Kyoto accord? A Copenhagen summit? Carbon trading schemes? Green taxes? Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth? David Suzuki’s call to throw politicians into jail if they fail to try to stop climate change?

In his BBC interview, Prof. Jones also said that the Middle Ages may have been warmer than now, another key concession given that the CRU has for years denied the existence of the Medieval Warm Period. If the MWP can be made to disappear, then the warming that has occurred since 1900 would be abnormal and something to fear. But if there was an even greater warming 1,000 years ago — before SUVs, coal-fired plants and industrial carbon emissions — then the current warming might be part of a nature cycle and therefore unremarkable…

And yet we see that our Canadian politicians are apparently still clinging to the ’settled science’ beliefs – at our expense.

Chris Vander Doelen said it so well in the Windsor Star:

…It may have been the most brilliant business plan ever conceived: Identify an element emitted by nearly every human activity there is.

Convince the easily fooled they are committing a sin against the environment by emitting said element, carbon; offer to provide absolution through taxation.

Curiously, only the citizens of developed nations are guilty of this new original sin. Citizens of India, most communist countries and most “developing” dictatorships were to be exempt from seeking absolution for their carbon crimes.

To me, the most important lesson to be learned from climate change and its believers isn’t about the environment at all. It’s about mob behaviour and the politics of fear…

So what’s it going to take to get the news out to Canadian taxpayers that the absolution we seek  may not have a measurable impact on a perceived calamity that even the fear-mongerers can’t agree on?

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Related

Dalton McGuinty’s back and spendingChristina Blizzard (Sun):

McGuinty says he wants to make sure the federal government supports green energy initiatives.

“As it (the feds) decides to lend support, for example, to carbon capture in Western Canada, we are asking that it provide comparable levels of support to the green energy revolution taking place here in our province.”

Oh, great. Green energy is the next bright bauble the Liberals are holding up to divert our attention from their out-of-control spending and the 8% tax hike we’ll see on everything when the HST kicks in.

The Green Energy Act will push up the price of electricity. It isn’t just consumers who’ll pay through the nose. Our beleaguered industrial sector that relies on cheap juice to be competitive will take another hit. But the more it costs to turn on the lights, the more money the goverment will rake in to its coffers through the HST. It’s all win-win for them…

Where is the outrage, Ontario?

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[Very important point around the two minute mark.]

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Update:

Olympic carbon offsets for dummies – Sun editorial

The debate is NOT over

Yesterday saw two huge news stories but you’ll only hear one from most of Canadian MSM.  And make no mistake.  Alexandre Bilodeau’s historic Olympic achievement is certainly worth celebrating.

But another major event may be in danger of slipping under the radar unless we force it to the forefront -  Professor Phil Jones is now backtracking on previously-held dogma about global warming and climate change. One wonders what fellow High Priest Al Gore is thinking right now.   In fact, where is he? Hiding in a snow drift somewhere on the east coast?

In any case, Tim Ball was on the Roy Green show yesterday for a brief chat on the significance of all this [click on Sunday Feb. 14 at 2 pm and fastforward to the last 10 minutes].  Roy asked Tim if ‘this thing is totally unraveling right now?’ and Tim answered ‘completely’ and the question is now ‘how long is it going to take for the politicians to realize it?’ They both agreed that the pols would be ‘breaking their ankles jumping off the bandwagon’, but they have a problem having already committed so much money to it.

Tim Ball reiterated that opinion in his column in CFP – IPCC Corruption Included Ignoring Facts and Science:

Watch the Richter Scale as Politicians Jump Off the IPCC Wagon

Jones only concedes some points but they are enough from the high priest of the CRU and IPCC to completely destroy its credibility. What will the sycophants and exploiters like Gore and the Mainstream Media do now? What about politicians who based positions and policy on environment and energy on the IPCC? What about the massive scams of Cap And Trade? What about the extreme environmental groups who have bullied and preached from the moral high ground? What about the scientists who took vehement positions without understanding? It is a very sad day for science, the people and the world.

Well I hope that politicians wake up but I fear they’ll only do the right thing once the public is made aware of the inconsistencies and contradictions. And that will only happen once the media decides to cover the stories or if ordinary citizens start taking up the fight for truth.

As Adrian MacNair brilliantly pointed out, the pols are only going to do what’s popular:

…Don’t expect our politicians to drop everything either. “Conservative” Environment Minister Jim Prentice is still sending Canada’s industry on a suicide pact with the United States’ own Obamachange legislation, and the province of British Columbia still has a carbon tax on fuel that isn’t making the unemployment rate any better right now. They don’t care. They still believe utterly that the public believes utterly in the science behind boiling pots of frogs and hockey stick graphs.

You can’t really blame them. They’re politicians. If Canadians believed that the world faced the grave danger of alien abduction and medical probing, you can bet the government would install some kind of alien-abduction and probing prophylaxis system that would make us feel better. Just like we do when we strip for the peek-a-boo cameras at the airport…

Meanwhile, expect to see some media outlets continue to stick tenaciously to the old party line until media consumers and ordinary citizens start demanding the truth.

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Update:

Al Gore sticks his nose out of the ground – Al Gore sticks to his guns, says ‘climate crisis is unfolding before our eyes’Washington Times

Is Global Warming Dead?Blake D. Dvorak at Chicago Now:

All of which leads the Post’s Dana Milbank, no friend of conservatives or Republicans, to write in his column that all that talk about more frequent and worse hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts because of global warming was about as scientifically valid as the recent babble that record-breaking snow storms in DC disprove global warming. “Argument-by-anecdote isn’t working,” he says. Only too true and it’s about time someone not on the right had the courage to say it.

But Milbank takes his column further. Noting recent revelations and contradictions in the science, he writes: “The science is overwhelming — but not definitive.” There was a time when such blasphemy would earn Milbank the title of “denier.” But that time is swiftly passing and there’s beginning to be a general retreat from the global warming crowd on all the doomsday scenarios and “we have X number of years to save Earth” talk. Milbank notes that even Al Gore’s outfit is switching from TV ads about climate change to the importance of green energy

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Tuesday Update

Lots of great links out there. Too many to keep up with really.

Follow the money: BBC exposed in biggest climate racket on planet – Climategate

IPCC scaremongering is destroying its credibility
Bjorn Lomborg

Less horror and Gore, more honest debate Paul Schneidereit, Chronicle Herald

And this is a blockbuster of a column – Climate: Politics of fear by Chris Vander Doelen of the Windsor Star:

To me, the most important lesson to be learned from climate change and its believers isn’t about the environment at all. It’s about mob behaviour and the politics of fear.

The global warming cult came so close to taking over the free world because it mixed the fear-mongering and moral superiority of old-time religion with the central control of classic Marxism.

The brilliant mix of do-gooderism and totalitarianism explains why those huddling under the climate umbrella are an unlikely coalition of church ladies, the well-meaning, union hardliners and college-age anarchists.

The people who pushed global warming didn’t want to save the planet — they wanted to enslave it through taxation.

The money — trillions of dollars — would have been redistributed by shadowy forces at the United Nations to those with favoured political systems. Capitalism, of course, would have been dead in a matter of decades. Liberty would have disappeared along with free markets

Happy Valentine’s Day

A little Valentine’s Day gift for any readers with a  sweet tooth – Tory Tea Time page.

Just bring your tea or coffee and settle in.

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Technical note: As I mentioned on the Tea Time page, if there are too many recipes they’ll have to be indexed with links to relevant posts so the best thing would be to just offer them in comments on any day’s post on the main page. The ones with peer-reviewed recommendations will get priority. Thanks.