Is there a secret cell of environmentalists in the business community? You might think so, given that 7 per cent of executives (11 per cent in the resource sector) support the Green Party, or that Stéphane Dion gets his highest level of support from resource sector executives. Support for strong climate change policies, however, is even more widespread in the business community than that. In the C-Suite survey last May we reported that executives were not enthusiastic about Canada withdrawing from Kyoto. In fact, 40 per cent were opposed, and another 30 per cent felt it should be a low priority. And it appears to matter politically in this group. In the survey just completed, executives were asked if the Conservative decision to replace previous environmental plans based on Kyoto with the new Clean Air Act made them more or less likely to vote Conservative: Thirty-five per cent said it made them less likely and only half as many said it made them more likely. There are five times as many executives in Central Canada less likely to vote Conservative as a result of the Clean Air Act than those more likely.
See:
The colossal cost of fixing crumbling water infrastructure in the developed world has opened the door to government privatization.
Water delivery systems in the industrial world are in “dire need” of repair, says a report released Monday by CIBC World Markets Inc. At least one-fifth of America's municipal wastewater treatment facilities do not comply with federal regulations and in some U.S. cities, more than half of the water headed to consumers is lost along the way.
CIBC economist Benjamin Tal, author of the “Tapping into Water” report, estimates it will take “hundreds of billions of dollars” to fix dated water infrastructure in North America and Europe.
Federal governments are not rushing to fix the infrastructure and municipalities lack the means to do so. “As a result, governments are now much more open to the notion of privatizing their water infrastructure which, in turn, is providing a substantial boost to the private water industry,” Mr. Tal said.
See
"There is a big difference between Canada and the United States," Mr. Azizullah said, tapping his fingertips together in a pensive gesture. "If we attack the Canadians, they call for aircraft and bomb everything in the area. The U.S. only tried to kill the Taliban. The Canadians try to kill everybody."
Makes ya proud don't it. Yep winning the hearts and minds. Not. It's called total war.Mr. Azizullah made clear that he watches Afghanistan's political scene carefully. He gave a current example: Burhanuddin Rabbani, Afghanistan's former president and a prominent warlord who now serves as a member of parliament in Kabul, recently told Afghan journalists that his associates are talking to the Taliban, but he didn't give details about the negotiations. Most of the Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns from the country's south and east, and the upsurge of violence this year has been concentrated in those regions, although the Taliban have been searching for ways of opening new fronts in the north. Mr. Rabbani, of the northern Tajik ethnic group, lost his presidency to a Taliban assault a decade ago, but Mr. Azizullah suggested the old commander might now be willing to switch sides."Rabbani is talking about an alliance with the Taliban," he said. "This could help us greatly, give us power in the north."
Also See:
The payments were made to ensure access to the lucrative Iraqi market, where the United States and Canada were major competitors.
The commission also found that the company, AWB (formerly the state- owned Australian Wheat Board), had "deliberately and dishonestly" devised a scheme for the payments, made from 1999 until the overthrow of Saddam three years ago, that would deceive the United Nations. When the United Nations conducted an investigation in 2005, headed by Paul Volcker, AWB withheld thousands of pages of documents and its lawyers made false statements, the commission found.
Brendan Stewart, AWB’s present chairman, said yesterday that the exporter deeply regretted the way in which its wheat trade with Iraq had been conducted.
This week BHP Billiton, the mining giant, will release the results of its own investigation into the scandal, in which it is also implicated.
In his report, Mr Cole described Norman Davidson Kelly, the founder of Tigris Petroleum, BHP’s joint venture partner, as a “thoroughly disreputable man with no commercial morality”.
Five former and current BHP executives testified at the inquiry.
SEE:
Wheat Board
Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, agriculture, wheat, WTO, G8, WheatBoard, farmers, Western-Canada, barley, wheat, Strahl, Government, Conservatives, Harper, Free-Trade, Klein, NDP, taxpayers, PR, propaganda,
BHP, Billiton, Australia, AWB, Iraq, oil-for-food, UN, scandal, Saddam, HussienTags
Canada
Politics
Harper
CWB
Wheat Board
farming
Supply Side Management
Conservatives
privy council gunning for plawiuk
25 Sep 2006 by Werner Patels
the privy council seems to be gunning for fellow blogger eugene plawiuk.
according to my site stats, someone at the privy council in ottawa (a regular
visitor to my site, by the way) has done a google search specifically for eugene .
