Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Could CN Bring Down Harper?

Well it could. They don't have enough votes to push back to work legislation on CN workers.

Back to work legislation is what CN was hoping for, thus they have refused to bargain. Which is why the Government stepped away from the strike hoping it would go away. It didn't and now they are over ruling their own Labour Board and trying to bring in back to work legislation. When it comes to CN they may be privatized but the State still gives them preferential treatment they got when they were a Crown Corporation.

Now if the Canadian UTU were really militant it would refuse to go back to work. Even if legislated back. Which CUPW did many years ago even though the Government jailed its leadership. Making them Labour Martyrs for years after.

As it is even an attempt to pass the legislation tonight in the House could be defeated. Which is what UTU is hoping for.....high hopes...like that ant and the rubber tree plant.

Ironically the last time CN workers were legislated back to work was when the company was still a Crown Corporation.

Government readies back-to-work order as CN strikers reject voluntary return

The Canada Industrial Relations Board refused to rule the wages-based strike illegal Monday after Blackburn said he wanted the dispute "ended in hours, not days."

The union had said it would send its members back if CN's request for a back-to-work order were approved by the board.

Asked how the union would respond to a legislated order, Wilner said: "Well, they have to get it passed first. Our understanding is that they don't have the votes and they could wind up having to call new elections if they fail."

There is plenty of precedent for federal back-to-work legislation, particularly in the railway sector. Such laws have been enacted 31 times since 1950, including six times in the rail industry, most recently in 1995.

See

Scab Trains Go Off The Tracks

CN Whines

CN Wildcat

American Union Bosses


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Predictable


Yep and this is how it begins. Charest to play up Quebec's nation status

Parliament accepting Quebec is a Nation did not bury the debate.

It was Stephen Harper playing Pandora.

And now the cat is out of the bag and the nation is out of the box.

And Charest is offering a third way between Trudeau Federalism and BQ/PQ Separatism/Sovereignty. Autonomy within a federal system.

"Yes, Quebec is a nation. Quebec is a force for change within Canada and a Liberal government represents this locomotive of change for Canadian federalism," Mr. Charest told more than 2,500 delegates at a party pre-election meeting on Saturday.

If re-elected, the Quebec Liberals say they will hold the first-ever summit of autonomous regions and federated states that would include Catalonia, Wales and Scotland in seeking a greater voice in international forums. The pledge was part of the election platform adopted by the delegates.

But as usual this change in Federalism is from above and not from the people. It is a change in government relations not in governance.

The true sociological doctrines of modern times can be summed up in a few words: Recognizing that, in the political and temporal order, the only legitimate authority is the one to which the majority of the nation has given its consent; that are wise and beneficial constitutions only those for which the governed have been consulted, and to which the majorities have given their free approbation; that all which is a human institution is destined to successive change; that the continuous perfectibility of man in society gives him the right and imposes him the duty to demand the improvements which are appropriate for new circumstances, for the new needs of the community in which he lives and evolves.

1867 Speech of Louis-Joseph Papineau at the Institut canadien



See

Get Over It

Still Quiet

Whipping Boy

Goose and Gander

Mulroney's Ghost




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Saving Capitalism From Itself

While the Flat Earth Society of climate change deniers think they are defending capitalism they are not.

The real advocates for saving capitalism are those who recognize Climate Change/Global Warming is a crisis. A crisis of capitalism.

Unlike the flat earth society that believes in and advocates for an a-historical mythical free market capitalism, these hard nosed realists, the real spokespeople for real existing capitalism accept they need to do something.

But of course they have no solution to the crisis. They only focus on making money off the crisis by ameliorating capitalist excess.

Which is why Sir Nicholas Stern made his announcements about the need for Green Capitalism from the TSX and the Economic Club. Bastions of real pragmatic capitalism.

http://news.google.ca/news?imgefp=bzt61zR7XmwJ&imgurl=cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/02/19/n021976A.jpg "I’m not here to speak to any particular individual. I’m here to share ideas with Canadians, and the key message that was very influential, I think, in the way that Europe is moving forward," Stern told reporters Monday morning at the Toronto Stock Exchange during a joint news conference with Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki. "It’s very clear to me now that you can be green and grow."

Former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern was making his first visit to Canada since last fall, when he published a 700-page report that made international headlines with its warnings that the world could face an economic catastrophe similar to the Great Depression by ignoring the threat of climate change.

"So you have your choice now," Stern said in a speech to the Economic Club of Toronto: "You can be absurd and reject the science; you can be reckless and say we can adapt to whatever happens; or you can be unethical and disregard the future, simply because it’s in the future. That’s entirely up to you."

The remarks earned praise from Clive Mather, president and CEO of Shell Canada, which co-sponsored the event.

"Growth is for sure," said Mather, who has supported the international Kyoto protocol on climate change. "The issue is: On what basis do we grow. Do we grow low-carbon, or do we carry on as usual? And I think, as Nick Stern (explained), carrying on as usual carries enormous risks."

Meanwhile, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) last week outlined a course US utilities could take to drop their emissions to 1990 levels by 2030. For the industry, that would represent a more aggressive timetable than Stern's. In the process, the EPRI report suggests tacking a surcharge onto electric bills to help fund research into carbon-dioxide-light energy sources. EPRI estimates the surcharge would amount to an extra 47 cents on the average monthly electric bill. That would bring an additional $2 billion to the $3 billion the federal government now spends on energy research. One EPRI solution is to add 50 nuclear power plants, an uncertain prospect.


Big Enviro Groups ‘Holding Back’ Anti-Warming Movement
None of [the solutions presented by mainstream groups] address the power structures. None of them address corporations. None of them address a lack of democracy.”

The heat is on environmental groups and politicians to churn out proposals for stabilizing the planet’s rising temperatures, but some environmentalists say existing plans to cool climate change are timid. Their criticism reveals a rift between two approaches: preserving the American way of life at the expense of quicker solutions, or changing the structure of US society to counter an unprecedented threat.

The dominant approach to human-induced global warming revolves around slow but dramatic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions by mid-century. The mainstream environmental community, along with a handful of politicians and corporations, is calling for various regulations and market-based actions to reduce greenhouse-gas output by 60 to 80 percent over the next 43 years.

This goal is based on what some scientists have estimated the United States needs to do to help the world limit the rise in global temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The goal presupposes that some climate change is inevitable. In 2006, a government-commissioned report in the United Kingdom called the "Stern Review" said that the "worst impacts of climate change can be substantially reduced" by cutting greenhouse emissions to meet the two-degree goal.

Market-based solutions

The basic premise behind long-term plans for emissions reduction is that moving away from a fossil-fuel-based energy system will take time because market forces will take a while to make renewable technology prices competitive.

"It’s still possible that we can avoid dangerous climate change and cut emissions in half by mid-century through a process that doesn’t require an immediate shutdown of all of our coal-powered plants," said John Coequyt, Greenpeace energy policy analyst. "We can still do this in a phased – and as a result – economically beneficial manner."

“There’s no reason we can’t get there within the next five to ten years with significant funding.”

In January, Greenpeace published what it called a "blueprint for solving global warming." The plan calls for 80 percent of electricity to be produced from renewable energy, 72 percent less carbon dioxide emissions, and for the US’s oil use to be cut in half – all by 2050.

The timeline is based on removing the market barriers to green energy, while making dirty energy more expensive. It does not call for significant public funding of renewable energy or government investments in new energy infrastructure or public transportation.


See

Capitalism

Environment

Bio-fuels


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Glass Half Full

CTV / Globe and Mail focused their reporting about their latest poll on Mr. Dion vs Mr. Harper, as usual.

That's a glass half empty.

On the other hand the glass is half full.

As their polling also shows that at this point it is just as likely to be Mr. Layton vs. Mr. Harper.

Meanwhile, when asked which party leader had the clearest vision of where he wants to take the country, Harper showed a significant lead over his rivals (percentage-point change from a Dec. 3-4 poll in brackets):

  • Stephen Harper: 50 per cent (+ 18)
  • Stephane Dion: 22 per cent (- 16 from when Paul Martin was leader)
  • Jack Layton: 20 per cent (+ 1)
  • Gilles Duceppe: 8 per cent (- 4)

More than half of respondents also felt that Harper is the most decisive of the party leaders.

  • Harper: 53 per cent
  • Dion: 19 per cent
  • Layton: 20 per cent
  • Duceppe: 8 per cent

Dion also lost out on charisma, which he himself defended shortly after becoming leader of his party.

"I would not have been able to win this race if I had not been able to connect with Canadians ... I have a capacity to communicate with passion and with reason," he said last December.

But respondents seem to have felt otherwise in the poll. Here are the results when voters were asked who was the most charismatic (percentage-point change from a Dec. 3-4 poll in brackets):

  • Harper: 35 per cent (+ 18)
  • Dion: 20 per cent (- 9 from when Martin was leader)
  • Layton: 36 per cent (- 2)
  • Duceppe: 10 per cent (- 4)
Lack of charisma, indecisive, and a whiner.....Dion slams Tory attack ads; wants Harper to withdraw them as matter of honour

Yep, it's as much a race between the NDP and Conservatives as it is the Liberals and Conservatives. Between Layton and Harper as much as it is Dion versus Harper.

And it's a dead heat on the environment. So much for the greening of the Liberals under Dion.


If there is a party in Canada facing a failure in leadership this poll shows only one; The Liberals.


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Button Up


Ok, what is with Harper and his suit coats. This is a serious image problem.

Quick, someone advise him it makes him look fat if every time he rises to answer a question in QP he button's up his suit coat.

And as soon as he sits down he unbuttons it.

To let his paunch out.

Fat I say.

Ill fitting suit.

Someone call a tailor.

A custom made well fitted suit will take pounds off.

Well maybe not......

















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