Alberta's Padrone Culture

While unions in Alberta have opposed the exploitation of foreign workers which is being promoted by oil companies and their pals in the provincial and federal governments it is also the unions that are fighting for these workers rights.

Exploitation of foreign workers is rife in the free wheeling padrone culture of Alberta.

An advocate for Alberta's temporary foreign workers says her phone is ringing off the hook with people who say they're being treated unfairly by their bosses.

They came for a brief taste of the Alberta Advantage, with each man saying he paid $6,000 to $12,000 up front for a chance to ply his trade for a better wage.

But they wound up with no job, their money gone, crammed 15 to a house in Mill Woods, with no legal right to work in Canada. They had no promise of help getting home and demands from their work agent for even more money, they say.

The agency, Worldwide Workforce, says the men are lying and that the thousands of dollars it did charge went to cover legitimate costs.

In the meantime, two other foreign workers, with a Chinese firm, died on one of the oilpatch projects the East Indian arrivals expected to work on.

Seven of the East Indian men are now working, after residents took them in and introduced them to the International Boilermakers Union, which found them placements with employers who had federal permission to hire temporary foreign workers. Three more may have work soon.

Employment and Immigration and Industry Minister Iris Evans tabled a letter
from Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan in the Legislature today
as proof that she's doing everything she can to protect the growing number of
foreign workers brought into Alberta under temporary work permits.

But McGowan says all the minister's stunt proves is that she really
doesn't understand how her own department functions and what challenges
temporary workers actually face when they arrive here.

McGowan says there are currently no dedicated mechanisms in place at
either the federal or provincial level to ensure that temporary foreign
workers are being treated fairly by employers. Instead, both governments
simply say temporary workers are covered by the same system of workplace rules
as domestic workers.

"The current complaint driven system is flawed for domestic Canadian
workers - but it's a disaster for temporary foreign workers," says McGowan.
"By falling back on the current system, the Minister is basically admitting
that she's not prepared to do anything to help temporary foreign workers. As a
result, she's helping to create a vast underclass of exploitable workers who
don't have access to the same kind of rights and protections in the workplace
as other workers in Canada."

Minister Says Don't Come To Alberta Unless You Have A Job/Home

CALGARY/AM770CHQR - Employment and immigration minister is telling people thinking of moving to the province to stay home unless they have a job and a place to live.
Iris Evans says she doesn't want anyone coming here with unrealistic expectations.
Her comments come as Finance Minister Lyle Oberg pondered tax incentives for developers to get more affordable housing built.
Oberg says his department will be looking at both tax incentives and tax cuts.

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Just The Facts About RCTV

The current crisis in Venezuela is manufactured news, not about freedom of speech but freedom of speech for a fascist opposition movement against the Chavez government and the Bolivarian Revolution.

Two Sides of Venezuela RCTV Shutdown

Unlike most of the mainstream media and RCTV would have you believe, Hugo Chavez is not "closing down" RCTV, but only refusing to renew the broadcaster's public license. That is, RCTV won't be able to broadcast on public airwaves anymore. Putting the obvious negative effects such measure will have on the station's ratings aside, RCTV will still be able to broadcast on Venezuela by cable and satellite. This refusal, in turn, was made on the basis that RCTV violated several laws in the last few years, most notably on its participation on the 2002 coup. Furthermore, RCTV didn't cooperate with tax laws and didn't pay a number of fines issued by the Venezuelan government in recent years.

The day after the coup, a TV show aired on RCTV showed journalists and military coup plotters talking about how they tried to create an atmosphere of violence that would justify the overthrow of Chavez's government, and thanking RCTV for the support. During the coup, RCTV ran adverts calling the people to overthrow the government, and was the first station to broadcast the false claim that Chavez's supporters were shooting at peaceful demonstrators, which ended up triggering the military intervention. It turned out that the RCTV initiative backfired, and it would be enough for Chavez not to renew the license.

As Reporters without Borders doesn’t mention, perhaps understandably so, given its financing by the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy — which also finances rightist opposition political parties in Venezuela — RCTV was an active participant in the violent coup d’etat that deposed President Chávez for almost 48 hours in 2002.

Cartoon Coup D’Etat

On the day of the coup, RCTV abandoned all pretense to report news impartially, calling opposition supporters to illegally demonstrate at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas while showing the constant on screen message ‘Ni un paso atras’: ‘Not one step back.’

It deliberately showed film from one angle to falsely claim that Chávez supporters were firing on opposition demonstrators, when another camera angle would have shown that Chávez supporters were defending themselves from sniper attacks — no opposition demonstrators were in sight. The constant repeated broadcasting of this film was then used as justification for some military officers to declare their ‘disobedience’ to the president, and these declarations were faithfully broadcast to attempt to legitimize a military takeover.

The American editorial writers who fail to mention all this, also fail to comment on the Venezuelan media’s support for the subsequent fascist junta that took control in Caracas and proceeded to dismiss the entire Supreme Court and the Congress, suspend the constitution, arrest the democratically elected president and then sent armed police onto the streets to suppress any resistance.

A junta member, Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, thanked journalists on live TV the day after the coup, saying that the organizers ‘had a weapon — the media — let me congratulate you,’ and the businessman the junta chose to be ‘president’, Pedro Carmona, summoned media executives to Miraflores to ensure that opposition to the coup was not reported.

RCTV’s boss, Granier, denied he ever met Carmona during the coup, despite film showing his presence at Miraflores, and while Granier still refers to the junta leader as ‘President Carmona’, RCTV’s subsequent actions demonstrated that no instructions were necessary to keep it on message.

As Venezuelans took to the streets to demand the return of President Chávez, fighting the police and demonstrating at Miraflores in their thousands against the coup, RCTV, contrary to the constant coverage it awarded the opposition demonstration that led to the coup, intentionally blacked out this breaking news, and as RCTV production manager at the time, Andrés Izarra, later related, Granier himself ordered journalists ‘not to broadcast information on Chávez, his supporters or anyone connected to him.’

As for Granier and RCTV, some in the opposition believe it is no loss to have the station lose its license. ‘RCTV wasn’t even good at propaganda,’ wrote one anti-Chávez columnist citing Chávez’s return after the coup and massive election win in 2006, ‘the point of giving up journalism is to increase the political effectiveness of what is broadcast, and on that score RCTV has certifiably failed.’

Hugo Chavez versus RCTV

Venezuela's oldest private TV network played a major role in a failed 2002 coup.

By Bart Jones, BART JONES spent eight years in Venezuela, mainly as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, and is the author of the forthcoming book "Hugo! The Hugo Chavez Story, From Mud Hut to Perpetual
May 30, 2007

Would a network that aided and abetted a coup against the government be allowed to operate in the United States? The U.S. government probably would have shut down RCTV within five minutes after a failed coup attempt — and thrown its owners in jail. Chavez's government allowed it to continue operating for five years, and then declined to renew its 20-year license to use the public airwaves. It can still broadcast on cable or via satellite dish.

Granier and others should not be seen as free-speech martyrs. Radio, TV and newspapers remain uncensored, unfettered and unthreatened by the government. Most Venezuelan media are still controlled by the old oligarchy and are staunchly anti-Chavez.

If Granier had not decided to try to oust the country's president, Venezuelans might still be able to look forward to more broadcasts of "Radio Rochela."

Venezuela and RCTV: democracy or dictatorship?

The U.S. media, in particular, having for years predicted dictatorship under Chávez, (whose popularity stubbornly remains of the order of 60-65%, much higher than GW Bush's) has of course leapt to make the accusation of censorship and 'the end of media freedom' in Venezuela.

Let's look a bit more closely at this accusation.

In other democratic countries, broadcast companies sometimes lose their licences. Renewal of licences isn't automatic or guaranteed. In 1992, for example, partly as a result of a government-led assessment of the quality of its service, Thames Television, a popular, commercial British TV station, lost its franchise after 24 years of broadcasting.

In the USA, 2 weeks before the 2004 presidential election, there was a decision by the Sinclair Broadcast Group (who control many of the local tvstations in the country) to have its stations run a documentary criticising John Kerry. The Democratic National Committee filed a case with the FCC arguing that such "partisan propaganda" was unacceptable. (See 'Stolen Honor' Newsweek election edition 2004 ) . Kerry's spokesman Chad Clanton said: "You don't expect your local TV station to be pushing a political agenda two weeks before an election. It's un-American." Political and economic pressure applied by the democrats eventually forced the Sinclair Group to cancel the anti-Kerry broadcast. There was even some talk of the Sinclair Group losing its franchise when the Democrats came to power. One wonders what the scenario might have been had the Group actively participated in an anti government oil strike or in legal and political campaigns to remove the government of the day, would their broadcast licence have been renewed? Is overt and active support for the overthrow of an elected government considered a 'democratic' right or 'freedom of speech' in the USA?

See:

Chavez

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Mud Walls

CIDA and the unilingual International Co-operation Minister Josée Verner respond to accusations that it has done nothing in Kandahar for past year, by pointing out that they have been playing in the mud, making castles in the air.

Adrian Walraven, a development officer with the Canadian International Aid Agency in Kandahar, says progress on the ground in Afghanistan can't be measured the same way it would be at home. Walraven says he's seen the difference even a small mud wall can make to an entire village, even if the project doesn't seem snazzy to Canadians.

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Military Senility

The Harpocrite government likes to tout the long years of military experience of the Minister of Defense. Long in the tooth is more like it and suffering from a case of advanced senility. Time for him to go.

Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said yesterday his department has paid the entire burial costs for troops killed in Afghanistan, contradicting his own officials and the families of at least two slain soldiers.

"Since I've been in office, I've directed the department to pay the full funeral cost of fallen soldiers," O'Connor said in the House of Commons.

"And I also directed the department to review the previous Treasury Board policy set by the Liberals to come to a proper resolution and to line it up with current realities. We have been doing that since I've been in office. Any family that had to bury their loved ones is entitled to the full recompense for the funeral."

A spokesman for the Canadian Forces said late last week the military recently discovered that a family had to pay part of the cost of burying their son, who was killed in combat last year.

Opposition parties quickly pointed to the discrepancy, saying they were outraged by the conflicting accounts.

If O'Connor ordered a review of the funeral stipend in the winter of 2006, NDP Jack Layton said, why is the federal Treasury Board going to consider the matter on Thursday.

"This minister's incompetence has been seen before and it appears we're looking at it again in a particularly tragic context," Layton said following question period.

See

O'Connor

Afghanistan






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Stelmach's Silence

Alberta's CEO Ed Stelmach remains silent and on the side lines as Saskatchewan and Newfoundland battle Ottawa over provincial resource rights. A promise made by the Conservatives to all three provinces. So much for defending principles.

As Andrew Coyne pointed out.

But Oberg's charming indifference to the issue -- we don't receive any equalization payments, so what do we care what changes the feds make to it? -- while a welcome departure from the usual federal-provincial hairpulling, hardly shows a becoming concern for the province's taxpayers.

Of course had the Liberals been the government the screaming, and howling from the Alberta government would make the headlines.

At least one Alberta right winger gets this sell out by the Harpocrites. Who take Alberta for granted.

Albertans have understood what the Liberals are about for a very long time. Where I differ with many right wing Albertans, is in their support for Reform politicians and Reform-style policies. The Reformers have a record in government now - and it is pathetic in all respects - yet somehow, they still have a reputation amongst many Albertans and Westerners for "standing up for the West". Their reputation is completely undeserved, and the policies of the Harper government clearly show it.

Meanwhile King Stephen refused to meet with Premier Calvert yesterday letting his henchmen do his dirty work in the finance committee.

A federal Conservative MP says her party never mentioned it wouldn't impose a cap on equalization payments -- a cap that Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert argues is a broken election promise.

The comment from Calgary Tory Diane Ablonczy came Monday as Calvert appeared before the Commons finance committee, making his case on why a province's non-renewable resource revenues should be excluded from the equalization formula, which -- without a cap -- would mean an estimated extra $800 million in annual federal funding for the province.

"You say there was no mention of a cap when this was discussed in election rhetoric, but there was no mention that there would not be a cap, either," Ablonczy said.

That is the logic of desperation.

See:

Feds Screw Alberta, Again

Stelmach

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Why the Conservatives Are Not Libertarians 2

Gee this sounds like Trudeau. The classic liberalism that social conservatives hate.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote;

a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a

minority; the political function of rights is

precisely to protect minorities from oppression by

majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is

the individual).

- Ayn Rand

Why The Conservatives Are Not Libertarians

Not A Libertarian Among Them

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Green PEI

The Green Party in PEI ran for the first time in yesterday's provincial election. They took votes from the Conservatives, and ran ahead of the NDP. This bodes well for Elizabeth May's strategy of running in Nova Scotia against Peter MacKay.

This shows that the Greens are not so much a threat to the NDP, as they are to the Conservatives, taking from their 'progressive' base.

And it shows that provincially and federally we need proportional representation since together the NDP, Greens and two Independents got 6% of the popular vote.

Overall Election Results

Party	Elected	Leading	Total	Vote Share
LIB	23	0	23	52.93%
PC	4	0	4	41.34%
GRN	0	0	0	3.04%
NDP	0	0	0	1.96%
OTH	0	0	0	.73%

P.E.I. tide paints province Liberal red

This bodes ill for the Harpocrites, since PEI voted solidly Liberal in the last federal election, and now the Provincial government is Red.

Look out for more Atlantic Discord!



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Hearts, Minds and Timmies In Kandahar

All that CIDA money that was supposed to aid " women and children" in Afghanistan, doesn't. But it sure helped with getting the Troops a Timmies.

Cut CIDA's role in Afghanistan: think tank

"The failure to demonstrably address the extreme poverty, widespread hunger and appalling child and maternal mortality rates in Afghanistan — let alone boost economic development — is decreasing local Afghan support for Canada’s mission and increasing support for the insurgency."

Norine MacDonald, of the Senlis Council, said the problem is a structural issue because the money the agency does have is not ending up on the ground.

"When you're on the ground in Kandahar, it's sad to say, despite good intentions, CIDA's efforts are non-existent," MacDonald said.

"We are confronted every day by people without food, without water, without shelter, without medical aid. So our efforts are so minimal as to be non-existent."

Troops serving in Kandahar, Afghanistan, received a taste of home Canada Day morning when the Canadian Forces Personnel Support Agency (CFPSA) officially opened the first Tim Hortons outlet at a deployed mission.

SEE:

A Taxpayers Timmies

Temp Workers For Timmies

Harper In Kandahar for Timmies

The Other Afghanistan

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The New Prohibition

Smoking....

Smoking is forbidden in nearly three out of four U.S. households, a dramatic increase from the 43 percent of homes that prohibited smoking a decade ago, the federal government reported Thursday.




SEE:

Casablanca R Rated

Anti-Smoking Hypocrites

Punishing the Victim

Smokers and Smokestack Industries

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The Law Is For The Rich

Laws are made to protect property and property relations not people. In other words them that have the gold make the rules. And don't you forget it.

Poor have no blanket right to counsel
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not give impoverished litigants a blanket right to obtain legal counsel, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday. By unanimously upholding a B.C. tax on legal services, the court riled critics who had hoped that it would give an important symbolic boost to legal aid programs by removing a bar to those who cannot afford legal services.

And those Libertarians who oppose taxes should be outraged over this, but from our Conservative friends not a peep of outrage, only cheering.


See

Libertarian Justice

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

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