Will Klein Share Chretiens Fate?

I have been saying this for the past year since Klein announced his pending retirement, see here and here, but its nice to see someone on the right finally adimit it, but only after Martin and Chretien are no longer in office.

Deja vu? asks BBSIs it just me or does this sound strangely like the Chretien/Martin debacle? The forces pushing for Ralph's ouster might want to go back and study a little recent history. Do they want to risk a repeat of the Liberal's internal war in their own party?

And of course the real reason for the sexist and racial slur uttered and reported on faithfully by Ric Dolphin for the Western Slander was to show that the old boys network in the Tories are tired of Ralph. They are acting just like the Martinites and their quiet quizzling backstabbers did in pushing Chretien to quit. And look where it got them. Hey there might be a silver lining to all this yet. In other words the upcoming convention and leadership vote may not be going Ralph's way. The rattling of knives you hear are out for the Kings head.

Rick Bell covers the internecine intrique in his latest column in the Calgary Sun.

In this real life story, the king is Ralph and he has said he will leave in 20 months. He made his intentions quite clear last fall when he spoke about people lining up to replace him.

"These guys can kick tires. They can kick tires until their toes are blue but I ain't goin' until 2007 unless the party tells me they don't want me or I'm dead. Alright? Period."

Well, Ralph is very much alive but Tories at next month's party convention will get a chance by secret ballot to tell Ralph whether they want him.

And there are those in the party, and not a small number, who are pushing for the premier to lose the vote on his leadership, or secure a win so narrow he will be embarrassed into exile.

After all, in this place, the person who succeeds Ralph becomes premier, not just leader.

In recent days, an article in the Western Standard takes the rebellion in the ranks to a new depth, quoting unnamed Tories who believe Ralph's wife Colleen is keeping Ralph from leaving. One source maintains once Colleen is no longer the premier's wife she be- comes "just another Indian."

No party people are pointing fingers at the off-the-record racist. In fact, every single Conservative you speak to insists their outrage against this verbal swill be put on the record. But all kinds of back-stabbing bravado continues behind the scenes with no names attached.

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Your Papers Please

Minister of Public Safety Oberfuerher Stockwell Day has decided that he should close down the Firerarms Registry cause its been a billion dollar boondoogle. Instead he wants to replace it with a National ID card and registry. Which will cost billions and be a greater infringement on our personal freedom by impacting all Canadians. Now whose the Statist?! So much for the Conservatives and their paper thin veneer of being Libertarians.

Tony Blair tried this in England to hue and cry and lost the vote. It is a major concern around the world as more and more statists attempt to impose ID cards using the hysteria around the phony war on terror as an excuse to increase monitoring of citizens. In fact statists have attempted to introduce National ID cards well before the 9/11 disaster.

Maybe Oberfuerher Day is being clever and thinks this issue will get the Liberals on side. Liberals will not prop up Conservative government: Bill Graham

The Conservatives are out of step with their rank and file on this issue, while having the support of the same Canadians who support the Firearms Registry, which is the majority of Canadians. And ironcially being the government in Ottawa if they push this National ID card, they will be alienating the West as a 2003 SES poll shows.


Or perhaps Stockwell Day is just hastening the day of Rapture and the coming of the Apocalypse since he is a born again evangelical Christian who believes in that bunkum.




A tip o the blog to My Bhlag and Progressive Right for this.



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How Many Audits Does It Take?

The new Minister of State Security Stockwell Day has announced that he wants yet another audit of the Firearms Registry.

Not satisfied with the previous audits; the first were internal audits done in 2000-2001, followed by the damning Auditor General audit in 2002 then followed by another damning independent audit in 2003 by Raymond V. Hession and KPMG

So how many audits do ya need Stockwell to tell you that the cost overruns were caused by Privatization and Contracting Out of services. Stockwell like Vic Toews, Minister of Justice,cannot believe the facts that are as clear as the noses on their faces. Contracting Out and Privatization created the cost over-runs:

Canada’s Billion Dollar P3 Boondoggle

What the Liberals and Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know

The real story behind the cost overruns at the Canadian Firearms Centre

"Just read your piece on the firearms P3 – quite a revelation. I am amazed we have never heard this before – congratulations for bringing it to light."
Murray Dobbin, author of Paul Martin Canada's CEO

Once again the Tory ideology that privatization, contracting out and Public Private Partnerships P3's are the solution to reducing government spending and costs falls flat on its face in the light of the facts of the Firearms Registry cost over runs. They just can't beleive it to be true. All the new audit will show is what the Auditor General and Hessions KPMG audit did and I reported in the article above.


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Idiot Provacatuer Redux

I posted a teaser, a portion of my article Idiot Provacatuer about Ezra LeRant and his Western Slander running the Mohammed cartoons on Vive le Canada, and what a firestorm of comments it generated you can read them here.




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Russia's Army of Slaves

I blogged here a year ago about the new trend in privatization, that of the use of mercenaries, so called contractors, in the War in Iraq.

It's a new phase of war and the advent of the Market State that Phillip Bobbit writes about which is why his quote runs in my side bar;

A state that privatizes most of its functions will inevitably defend itself by employing its own people as mercenaries.

This is occuring in Russian today as well. It is one of the side effects of the introduction of capitalism, sans democracy, into an authoritarian state.

Russian officer hired out troops for slave labour

Kontonistov was deputy commander of a division of the Strategic Rocket Forces in Siberia's Novosibirsk region, a unit that services Russia's nuclear missiles. He hired out his troops to local businesses, according to Interfax news agency, a practice believed to be commonplace in an army in which poorly paid officers say they have to find ways to supplement meagre incomes.

In the West we call this a Private-Public-Partnership, P3's.

The rest of the article goes on to discuss the fact that the Russian 'conscript' army is a horror show of abuse. Something Russian Mothers have been saying for almost twenty years now.

The cases have drawn attention once again to the wretched conditions suffered by military conscripts. All Russian men are supposed to serve two years in the military between the ages of 18 and 28. Reports of brutal initiation ceremonies and bullying are common.


Conscription in Russia has existed since the days of the Tzar, with only a few breaks.It did not begin with Stalin as some on the right like to assert using him as their boogyman. It began under the Tzar.

The Bolsheviks did not allow a conscript army, rather they formed the volunteer Red Army. Conscription did not come even with the invasion by the Western Expeditionary Forces, which included Canada, at the end of WWI.

The Soviet Military Experience : A History of the Soviet Army, 1917 - 1991

Roger Reese's book covers the entire period of the Soviet Army's existence, from it's revolutionary birth in 1917, until it's counter revolutionary demise in 1991. Reese analyses how the Soviet Army was intended to be unlike no other army ever previously conceived, made up of volunteers and loyal party supporters with the aim of being a tool of political expression for the party as much as a military force. He also shows how idealistic considerations for the running of the Army had to give way to practical issues for the effective running of the Army, and how this moved the Army closer to that of the Tsarist Army which many revolutionaries passionately sought to avoid. He also examines the performance of the Army during the Second World War, and the impact this had on dynamics and the moral state of the organisation, as well as refuting the argument that the Great Purges of 1937 - 1938 had an impact on the fighting ability of the Soviet Army. He then goes on to outline the stagnation of the Army which resulted in it reflecting many of the values of the Tsarist regime it replaced. Reese's focus for the book is a look at the Red Army merely in quantitative terms, but in terms of it's interaction with society and the health of the organisation internally. A interesting and well written read.

Conscription was introduced after Hitler invaded the USSR. It continued after the war as Russia faced off against the US in the Cold War, and it was used to reinforce Russias control over its authoritarian state regimes in Eastern Europe. It allowed for employment of the vast army of otherwise unemployed in Russia. Still even after WWI the Russian Army was modeled on the authoritarian armies of the past, both Russian and German.

It was not Afgahistan that was Russias Vietnam it has been Chechnya. Which coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It left the old Soviet military regime in a powerful position, thanks to the Cold War which placed both the US and USSR under the control of their respective 'Military Industrial Complexes'.

Since the war in Chechnya Russian Mothers have organized, like their Argentinian counterparts the Mothers of the Disappeared, to denounce the treatment of their sons in Russias conscript army.

While few are now sent to serve in the violent North Caucasus, near Chechnya, it is estimated that hundreds die each year through accidents or through the ritualistic bullying inflicted by superior officers. Forty-six soldiers died of non-combat injuries in one week alone last year.

The story goes on to talk about the most recent case of torture by officers of a rank and file conscript. Giving more credence to the case of civilians who suffered atrocities at the hands of Russian troops during the Chenchin war.

The case came amid growing public disgust over the fate of Andrei Sychev, a 19-year-old conscript at a tank academy in the eastern town of Chelyabinsk. He was reportedly beaten and tortured by his superior officers during a drunken rage on New Year's Eve, during which he was tied to a chair and repeatedly hit. He did not receive medical treatment for several days, by which time gangrene had set in, forcing doctors to amputate his legs, genitals and fingers. He was taken off a ventilator only on Monday.

If the bastards can do this to their own, what will they do to the enemy. Well this is what happens in Authoritarian regimes with hierarchical regimentation and a 19th century military hierarchy.

A volunteer army, a free standing militia is always the sign of a free peoples, because it can only exist because people volunteer to support their state. A volunteer Red Army, opps sorry its now Red, White and Blue, the old Tzarist colours, a volunteer Army in Russia is a much need reform.

Unfortunately given that the army is where the surplus unemployed are shipped too, Russia is unlikely to embrace even this modest reform. Instread it will contnue to brutalize conscripts, they are after all expendable, and use them for slave labour. All the atrocities of the bad old days of the Tzar have once again been revealed in 'Modern Russia'.

Unfortunately as we have seen as long as the military funtions based on its 19th century model, even in the United States, then a volunteer army does not assure you of ending abuse, there have been many cases of hazing in the US forces as well, though not nearly as bad as this. Nor does a volunteer army mean that it won't be an army of the otherwise unemployed, as the U.S. has also shown. Finally once in conflict its desertion rates will be high, but no more so than Russias which is high as well. Nor does a volunteer army mean there won't be mercenaries, private contractors, as we have seen in Iraq.

The only real volunteer armies that have existed are those during Revolutions, the Paris Commune in France, the October and February revolutions in Russia, and during the Spanish Civil War. The later was an all volunteer army including International Brigades, volunteers from around the world including Canada, and they were truly a volunteer army, electing their officers, debating strategy, and treating each other as comrades not conscripts.





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Workers vs Worker

In our society we like to pit worker against worker and this is what CUPE faces in Ontario with changes to their pensions plans. Unfortunately their own members have weakened their cause by breaking with union solidarity over plans for a one day walk out.CUPE solidarity breaks This tactic has been dismissed by many as extreme.

Except that when doctors do it, they call it a study session, the public supports them. So maybe CUPE Ontario should call it a study session.

On why blue collar workers and para professsionals are discriminated against by the media and the pundits when it comes to their work being as important as cops and firefighters.

Let's see last time their was a garbage strike in Toronto did the cops, firefighters or doctors clean up the mess? Nope. Neither did the Premier, his cabinet, the MLA's or the politicos in city hall.

And this issue is about downloading the public pension plan to municipalities, which also don't like it. But the cops and firefighters do because while other unionized workers and taxpayers face cost increases they get benefit increases.Premier turns up heat as CUPE tries to cool it


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Paying Peter not Paul

ACE agrees to pay $266-million to investors
Globe and Mail - 10 hours ago
The parent company of Air Canada is rewarding its shareholders with a controversial $266-million payout, barely 17 months after exiting bankruptcy protection. It means ACE's largest shareholder, New York-based hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management LP, stands to collect almost $30-million in cash.

And not a penny to the workers who made the biggest investment of all with wage and benefit cuts. Without which Robert Milton would not have his cozy well paid job and the shareholders would have been shit out of luck. Air Canada Profits From Bankruptcy


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The Crime of Privatization

Here is another example of the criminal nature of contracting out and privatization.

Payments may have lasted six years

The American company accused of offering secret commissions to two Edmonton police officers to get an untendered $90-million photo-radar contract may have offered the inducements for more than six years.

The RCMP did not release details of the charge against Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services, but the publicly traded company was required to report the allegations to its investors through the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to a document filed Wednesday with the SEC, the charge covers the period from Jan. 1, 1998, to June 14, 2004.

The RCMP charged the company Wednesday with offering secret commissions to two members of the Edmonton police service's traffic section. The officers were also charged with Criminal Code offences.

Det. Tom Bell faces three counts of breach of trust and one of accepting a secret commission.

Staff Sgt. Kerry Nisbet, the former head of the traffic section, faces two charges of breach of trust and one of accepting secret commissions.

Let's understand one thing, whether it is legal or illegal, its all about insider deals and low ball bidding. There are no real savings to taxpayers, you and me, the workers who are also employed either in the public sector or private sector. The only savings made in contracting out is by underpaying workers. Profits are pocketed not for the public good but the private fortunes of a few. And here is a perfect case where companies engage in bribery, good old crony capitalism, and kick backs to get contracts. Not unlike the Third World. In fact the very nature of privatization of government services is prone to exactly this problem, not as an anomaly but as business as usual.

"The commission is going to look at where did this go wrong, and how did it go wrong," Billett said at a news conference.

"Do we continue with ACS? Do we extend their contract? The (request for proposals) has gone out and we do have some options," he said.

The charges stem from a 19-month RCMP investigation into allegations that at least three traffic officers accepted perks from ACS. The city granted the company an untendered photo-radar contract worth an estimated $90 million over 20 years, based on the recommendation of the police service.

The fact is that the photo radar should never have been privatized. It was just the cops were too lazy to want to administer it, and the police, the city and the police commission mutually agreed that it was better to spend the money on cops than on civilians to operate the photo radar. Even though it brings in oddles and oddles of money.

So instead a private company was hired untendered, opps there is part of the problem, and then tips cops for their private profit. And this is saving us money? No we are being ripped off. And the police commision should have canceled the contract immediately and brought the whole thing back in house. It will pay for itself, and if the cops don't want to do the work, another city department could.

Here is another irony the RCMP investigation is secret but under U.S. corporate reporting rules the news is released for public perusal thanks to the SEC. So we find out what is happening not from the police commission, a civilian oversight committee but from the SEC. And these guys on the commission still want to go ahead with contracting photo radar out as if nothing has happened. That's criminal.


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Abetting Addiction

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich--something for nothing. George Bernard Shaw

The state in Alberta is addicted to gambling and the proftis from gambling which putrevenues into the governments coffers equivalent to other business, oil, gas and personal taxes. Gambling produces over $1-billion dollars annually in profits for the Province of Alberta

This gambling boom has translated into a windfall of revenue flowing to provincial government coffers. In crafting the 1999-2000 budget, the Alberta government projects that lottery revenue will total $770 million. This lottery revenue comes from video lottery terminals (VLTs), slot machines, and ticket lotteries only and it does not include other gambling revenues, such as licensing fees or income to non-profit organizations derived from horse racing, bingos, raffles, or charitable casino gambling. To place this in perspective, the estimated $770 million in lottery revenue compares with $1.1 billion collected annually from school property taxes, $690 million from health care insurance premiums, $570 million from fuel taxes, $452 million from liquor taxes, $350 million from tobacco taxes, and $346 million from crude oil royalties. Fully 4.5% of Alberta's estimated budget of $17 billion is expected to come from lottery revenues and this compares with 37% from combined personal and corporate income taxes and 14% from all natural resource revenues.EJGI:Policy:Gambling on the Edge in Alberta

And we have Premier who is also addicted. Just like he is to booze and smoking.

And with the Ralph Reich we have seen the government download its responsibilities to charities, who have become addicted to gambling revenues because of the states failure to provide adequate funding for them.

In fact privatization of gambling in Alberta coincided, not coincidentally, with the down turn in the economy in the eighties, and as a result of its success a new form of mass gambling was introduced,VLT's in the ninties. As the Klein government created a debt and deficit hysteria to justify reducing funding to the public sector it increased reliance on VLT's.

Wide spread success of the VLTs and expansion of privatized gambling was part of the governments overall privatization of public services strategy, whatever could be sold off or privatized was.History of Gaming in Alberta

Indeed every single school and hospital in Alberta relies on lotteries, casinos and bingo's to top up funding . These were once the pervue of the Non-profit's, arts groups, community leagues, boy scouts and girl guides. Now gambling is used to offset government funding shortfalls.

Alberta is Canada's gambling hotbed. Nine out of ten adult Albertans gamble on some form of legally-sanctioned "game" and this province has the distinction of having the widest array of gaming entertainment options available to its citizenry of any jurisdiction in North America. Even the kids are getting into the act as seven out of ten adolescents age 12 to 17 have gambled for money, either on a legal game or informally with family or friends (Wynne, Smith, & Jacobs, 1996).EJGI:Policy:Gambling on the Edge in Alberta

But then the individuals who are addicted to gambling, in many cases to VLT's the real problem in the industry,have seen little in the way of help from the Alberta government. And that does not include lottery tickets, or horse racing (which gets tax subsidies from the government because ex Premier Don Getty was a racing owner and enthusiast).

A Canada West Foundation study on gambling in Canada released on June 21, 2005 is alarming but not surprising. The study found that governments took in over $12.7 billion from gambling last year. It pointed to a big difference between how much Canadians report they are spending on gambling and what the actual figures show. Reported annual household spending was $272, yet the average spending level was four times higher, at $1,080. The Canada Safety Council suggests that very high losses by pathological gamblers may account for much of this discrepancy.Gambling problems risk further neglect

What is also interesting is that the debt incurred from gambling corresponds to the decline in savings that is occuring. Money is being spent on gambling that in the past would have been saved and earning interest, a far surer bet.

Alberta has an increasing gambling addiction problem. Until now. The Alberta government has come up with a solution for gambling addicts.

Problem gamblers to get help in casinos
CBC News - 14 hours ago
The province, in an attempt to stem a growing addiction problem, is putting treatment centres in select casinos. The first such centre opened Thursday at the Palace Casino in West Edmonton Mall.
Addictions staff posted in casino Edmonton Journal
Problems gamblers find help on site CBC Edmonton
StarPhoenix - Edmonton Journal - Calgary Sun - all 8 related »

Yep its the Alberta way. And you don't lose any of that gambling money the government is addicted to. I wonder what brilliant genius thought this up.

It makes as much sense as putting alcohol addictions counsellors in bars. Now come to think of it.....This is the prefect solution for King Ralph....this has got to be the dumbest idea yet.....

But it does little for the real source of gambling addiction; VLT's which this supposed solution does not address, because VLT's are in every corner bar and hotel. These are the real source of the states wealth because the games are rigged. You can't play for losing.

Gambling policy designed to create losers
Albertans are being swindled while the province rakes in the money

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Ban Tasers

I have said it before we need to ban tasers from the cops.

Clearly its not tasers that are the problem its the cops. Remember its not tasers that kill people its the people using tasers.....and in this case its turned a cop from a Hero to a Zero.

And he tasered a kid, a kid, in a closed cell. Ohh big man. After he strip searched him, obviously this guy has sexual issues....like just a bit of sadism on the side...sexual violence is about power......but what do you expect from the authoritarian nature of cops as agents of the state...they are either in control or they get outta control.

Laurie Wood, the boy's lawyer, says the case raises more questions about the police department's use of Tasers. "I've always said that a Taser should only be used as a last resort," she said. "I think Tasers are being used by police officers as toys."

Yep this gives new meaning to boys and their toys.

Officer charged in Tasering of teen in police cell
Edmonton Journal - 19 hours ago
EDMONTON - The Edmonton Police Service charged one of its own members with assault Wednesday after an officer allegedly strip-searched then Tasered a 15-year-old boy in late 2003.
Assault charge for 'hero' cop Edmonton Sun
Edmonton cop charged in jail-cell Taser case Calgary Sun
CBC Calgary - Edmonton Journal - all 6 related »

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A New Gun Registry

Just as the Tories are planning to close one gun registry they may have to look at opening up a new one.

TO area mayors consider banning toy guns
CTV.ca - 14 hours ago
Toronto area mayors are being asked to endorse a ban on kids possessing toy guns in public. Scugog Mayor Marilyn Pearce is leading the plan to prohibit anyone under 18 from having toy guns in public spaces.
Leave toy guns to parents Toronto Star
Toronto area mayors eyeing toy gun ban Edmonton Sun
Toronto Star - 640 Toronto - all 5 related »

Now this is just silly. Really silly. No I mean it. This is taking the whole gun thingee too far. After all its not toy guns that kill kids, its Cops. As I have said before we should disarm the police if we really want gun control.



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Western Slander

So the news is that Western Slander editor publisher Ezra LeRant has sent a begging letter via email asking subscribers to help bail out the magazine due to the economic crunch it is facing because advertisers and distributors are pulling out. Now why would that be do ya think? See here. Simon Pole asks; Western Standard Cash Crunch?

Well that never mattered to the Alberta Report, in fact they thrived on controversy it got them more subscribers. Which was always a matter of using that good old fashioned ad rag technique of cold calling subscribers and brow beating them to take out a sub.

Now that is how many an ad rag, you call them the Alternative weeklies in your city, or the niche press, or whatever, they are those free rags you see which are 80% ads and 20% content. Well that's how the business is done.

And Alberta Report did it by dropping copies in dentist and doctors offices, free of charge, just cold mailing free subs to them and so could prop up their publication numbers. Then they had the call centres doing cold calls for subs.

And despite three bankruptcies, one bail out by the Alberta Venture Capital Fund (yep you and me taxpayer) they still collapsed but that was after a record thirty years in business. A lot of ad rags collapse well before that. Though in Alberta the Report was not alone in its longevity, many of Moser Communications publications have lasted that long including his Native News.

I don't think this hail Mary pass by Lerant to save the Slander when Air Canada has dropped the mag, which is the Slanders version of the doctors and dentists office, will amount to much. The Slander is too young to lose distribution and ad business so early in its short publishing existence. Subscribers do not make up the shortfall never did never will, they are actually an ongoing expense. You need a call centre team doing both advertisers and subscribers, and ads bring in more money.

And for the heat he has brought on himself and his rag, well more folks will shy away with advertising, which is the real source of $$$$$$ that these kinds of rags survive on. Without which the publisher/editor doesn't get paid. So Ezra really is begging for his job. Delicious. And no amount of subscribers can keep the Slander afloat it didn't work for Alberta Report it won't for Ezra.

Also see

Standard Western Racism

The World According to Adam

Conservative Conundrum

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Edmonton Bloggers Get Together

Candace at Waking Up at Planet X has taken the initiative to call an Edmonton Bloggers get together for this upcoming Long Weekend. Oh you forgot its a long weekend, yep Family Day....and we're all family here cause we fight and bitch like one....so here is the info.....And no you cannot bring your baseball bat its not that kinda bash......

Edmonton Bloggers Bash

Well, "bash" may not be the best word, given the timing, but here are the details:

Date: February 18, 2006
Time: 1:00 pm until whenever
Place: Brewsters - 104th Ave & 116th Street (the London Drugs part of that monster strip mall)

Spouses welcome. Friends welcome. Firearms...not so much.


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Still Waiting

Yep Canadians are still waiting for this......

The Choice

The time for accountability has arrived.

On January 23rd, Canadians will finally be able to hold the Liberals accountable. Accountable for the stolen money; accountable for the broken trust; accountable for all that did not get done because this government has been totally preoccupied with damage control; lurching from one scandal to another; always trying to avoid the people’s verdict.

For those Canadians seeking accountability, the question is clear: Which party can deliver the change of government that’s needed to ensure political accountability in Ottawa? The change of government that will replace old with new; entitlement with accountability; benefits for some with leadership for all.

Yep which party is that?

At least they kept this promise "benefits for some"

That sounds about right. Like these folks who have benefited from the 'new' government.

• Mr. P3
• Super P3
• Ottawa Conservative Lobbyist Heaven
• You Are Paying For This
• Don't P.O. Garth
• You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

• A Week of Scandal

• Not Your Daddies Conservative Party, well maybe...
• Recall

• A One Day Wonder

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Whats with the Finger?

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Remember This?

This was the campaign slogan for the 2004 election.
I think we still have the right to Demand Better don't you.

And look into his eyes, if they are the gateway to the soul
.....brrrr scary.

I wonder if he is one of those 4000 year old Lizard aliens.



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Harpocrite

A BCer In Toronto blogged about a suitable monicker for our new PM and I voted for Harpocrite which would makes his followers Harpocrates. Cause they have to take loyalty oaths to the Great Leader.

Mr. P3

Another example of the Harper regime planning to implement it's ideology of privatization at all costs is his appointment of Mr. P3 Michael Wilson as Canada's ambassador to the United States.

He is spokesman for the The Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships


As he told the Empire Club back in 1987.

Another way that we are getting government out of the way of the private sector is by privatising Crown corporations that are no longer required to meet public policy goals. Privatisation can bring increased vitality to the companies involved as well as to the economy as a whole.

We can stimulate the performance of the economy but we can also insure a greater degree of assurance for those people who are working in those companies. DeHavilland here is probably one of our best examples of success in privatising companies. We've already privatised eight companies, the most recent being TeleGlobe Canada. We're reviewing possible future moves involving such other Crown corporations and Air Canada and Petro-Canada.

In addition to removing government-made obstacles, we've been promoting private-sector growth in a number of ways. One of the first is in the area of investment, so important to creating jobs right across the country. We wanted to make it clear to people both within and outside Canada that Canada welcomes investment and welcomes foreign investment. Our changes to the Foreign Investment Review Agency and the changed mandate for Investment Canada to encourage investment have been very important in the increase of foreign investment coming to Canada in recent months. This little amount of friendliness has gone a long, long way.

Ironically his call for privatization has been the same agenda the Liberals followed, disasterously with the Firearms Registry, the contracting out of DND computer technology and now with their Super National Agency. It the agenda for the Neo Liberal State in Canada regardless of which party is in power. While the Liberals practiced Reinventing Government by stealth the Tories will hasten it as public policy.

Wilson is Chairman of the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance. Which calls itself THE VOICE OF THE SHAREHOLDER. Which does not mean Joe or Janey Canuck investor but the corporate investment community. The Big buck institutional investors who are promoting P3's.

The Coalition also introduced its first Board of Directors. Chairman: Mike Wilson, President and CEO of UBS Global Asset Management. Other Board members include: Tony Arrell, Chairman and CEO of Burgundy Asset Management; Morgan Eastman, Chief Investment Officer, OPSEU Pension Trust; Emilian Groch, Executive Director, Alberta’s Teachers’ Retirement Fund; Stephen Jarislowsky, Chairman, Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd.; Claude Lamoureux, President and CEO of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan; Don Reed, President and CEO of Franklin Templeton Investments; and David Beatty, Managing Director, Canadian Coalition for Good Governance.

He sits on the Board of Manulife Canada which reads like a who's who of the right wing buiness lobby,Canadian Council of Chief Executives (‘‘CCCE’’),formely the BCNI. Which lobbied during his era as Finance Minister for the FTA and NAFTA. Today they call for the direct integration of the Canadian and American economies. They too will have the ear of the new Ambassador as they did during the Mulroney era.

The corporate financial industry in Canada is a veritcally integrated structure a classic old boys network as Manulife shows. It is this industry which benefited most from Michael Wilsons deregulation during the eighties and ninties. His insight was his reward, he has spent the past twenty years as a scion for that same financial industry.

Wilson is not only proud of his role in getting NAFTA through and the GST but is also proud that the Conservatives went further in their cuts to services and the deficit than either Reagan or Thatcher, which resulted in the economic crash that left Paul Martin with a debt and deficit crisis as Finance Minister.

And Martin merely followed the formula that Wilson had already set in place thanks to a bueraucrat named David Dodge, who is now the Head of the Bank of Canada.

When Dodge moved into the deputy minister's office, he hung a plaque on his door. It read: "Due to current financial constraints, the light at the end of the tunnel will remain off until further notice." It set the tone for his five years in the post-a period of deep, deep budget cuts. When the Liberals came to power in 1993, Dodge intervened to get a reluctant Paul Martin, who coveted the Industry portfolio, to instead take over at Finance. The Tories had abandoned their credo of fiscal restraint; the deficit hit a record $42 billion by the time they were voted out of office. Dodge needed an MP of Martin's stature to get the government back on fiscal track, first of all by reneging on the Liberals' promise to kill the GST.

What Mr. P3 offers Harper is Bay Street credentials he so badly needs now that he is in Ottawa. Oil money got him there, old money will keep him there.

What can we expect from Mr. P3 when he goes to Washington, well this speech from 2003 may give us a clue. It sounds much like the values Paul Martin was spouting during the election. Strangely so. Must be how Finance Ministers think.

Look south to America, look east to Europe, but never forget to look west to China, where the world’s largest and fastest-growing economy is transforming our traditional view of developing and developed nations. For China is both. Yes, most of its 3.1 billion people are incredibly poor compared to North American standards. And yes, Ontario alone does more business with America than China does. But that’s all changing. It’s economy will grow by 7 to 8 per cent this year. And in terms of purchasing-power parity, it is the world’s second largest economy. More important is where China is headed: in the last five years, without much notice by the western media, China has become the low-cost, high-quality production centre of the world.

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Super P3

Harpers announcement that the bueraucrat in charge of the ultimate Canadian P3 boondoogle the Firearms Registry, will now be in charge of contracting out and privatization of the Public Service in Canada. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Under the Liberals plan the President of the Treasury Board announced that the civil service would be combined into one super service centre....uh oh that sounds just like the Firearms registry. Watch for more computer and IT screw ups, outsourcing of jobs, cost over runs and theft and fraud.

Think HRDC cost overruns and Firearms Registry cost over-runs combined because Ms.Maryantonett Flumian was in charge of both. And she was left in charge of the Liberals new super centralized Services Canada, which aims at cutting current public servants and replacing them with contracted out services.
The lack of oversight that HRDC, the Firearms Registry and the DND contracting out operations have suffered from will be now launched on an unprecidented scale under her less then watchful eye.

Now ask yourself did Harper just open the exploding box left for him by the Liberals? Sorta like the one called Adscam that Chretien left Martin.

Or is it a simple case of Conservative ideology dominating good sense; privatization of public services no matter the cost.



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Whining and Dining with the Irvings

Big Oil cries da blues. No, not Exxon or Shell. Our favorite Maritime Capitalist family who stash their cash offshore in the Grand Caymans, the Irvings. Crying the blues the Irving gas and oil monopoly laid off staff in Newfoundland today, six managers, and blamed the government for regulating gas and oil prices.

But wait they are a monopoly, and set the prices since they purchase and refine and distribute the oil and gas. Surely mere government regulation of pump prices can't compare to their control and dominance of the market place. Me thinks the Irivings just want to shift blame for their business practices on someone else. What else would be new with these guys who demand the taxpayers fund their private monopoly.Iriving Family Compact Blackmails PEI

And they aren't just an oil and gas monopoly they are a media monopoly in the Maritimes too.Irvings Media Monopoly Denies Free Speech




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Damn Cold

THURSDAY EVENING	THURSDAY OVERNIGHT	FRIDAY MORNING	FRIDAY AFTERNOON
-29°C	-26°C	-28°C	-10°C
Mainly clear	Mainly clear	Mainly sunny	Mainly sunny
0%	0%	0%	0%
NE 10 km/h	S 5 km/h	SW 5 km/h	SW 5 km/h
100%	37%	48%	27%
Current Weather

-25°C Partly cloudy	FEELS LIKE -34°C WIND NW 11 km/h GUSTS RELATIVE HUMIDITY 52% DEWPOINT -32°C PRESSURE 95.06 kPa VISIBILITY 11 km CEILING 2300 ft
Updated : Thursday February 16 2006, 13:00 MST - Edmonton Int'l Airport

Annual Average Temprature

Edmonton Mun., AB, Canada

	J	F
Maximum	-8	-4
Minimum	-19	-16
Mean	-13	-10

Well ok we have been spoiled. We have not had winter at all this past four months. Usually winter begins on Halloween, first snowfall even if it doesn't last, then slowly fall turns to brrr snowy winter. Well that didn't happen, we had only one week of real cold till now and that was in December for a few days, again mid way through the week. And again it was above zero centigrade then dropped to 20 below. And still no snow. We are as brown here as Lethbridge is which is semi-arid semi-desert.

This last weekend, was it only five days ago, I was wearing a spring coat and it sure as heck was warmer than -3 in fact it was a record 14 above. And now this....which is more like January norms than February. But this too shall pass and this weekend it will be warm again.

Which bodes ill for farmers and this province, which is part of the Palliser Plain, an area across the Canadian and American prairies that suffered from the great drought that coincided with the Great Depression .

In the years between 1857 and 1860, both the British and Canadian Governments sent expeditions across the Prairies to assess the suitability of the region for agricultural settlement. Capt. John Palliser's report and that of Henry Youle Hind both concluded that a portion of the southern prairie adjacent to the U.S. border, an area which became known as “Palliser's Triangle,” and less widely as “The Great North American Desert,” was too dry for successful agricultural settlement. These conclusions were later used by cattle interests to encourage the national government to sell or lease large tracks of land to them at very favourable prices, and to delay the incursion of farm settlement onto land in southern Alberta.

Already folks up north around Grand Prairie and Fort McMurray are reporting seeing more dirt drifts blowing across the roads which should have been snow drifts. Which means that if we have no ground water from snow, we will have parched drought conditions. Which brings with it the ravages of locusts in the south of the province and a plague of grasshoppers in the north. We have already had disasters grass fire conditions in the south of the province, fires normally found in further south climates like the hills of Orange County in LA.

Crews put out Alta grass fire
CARSELAND, Alta. -- A rare winter grass fire fuelled by gusty winds and tinder dry conditions in southern Alberta briefly forced 400 Carseland residents from their homes Thursday.

These may be good times for us urban dwellers so accustomed to frigid winters we plan our holidays to Hawaii around them, but to farmers, and to the ecology of the prairies this aspect of global warming and climate change is unwelcome and could portend a disaster in the making.

Devastating Dry Spells: Drought on the Prairies

Blowing dust, swarms of grasshoppers, and not enough hay to feed the starving livestock. For Prairie farmers, drought can be disastrous. But it's not just the farmers who suffer — a severe drought in Western Canada can hurt the entire Canadian economy. From the devastating dustbowl years of the Great Depression to some of the more recent Prairie dry spells, CBC Archives explores the history of drought in Western Canada.

Climate Futures: A Buyer’s Guide

No…the title is not about “green tags” or stock picks. It’s about figuring out how the majority of US citizens who simply “don’t buy it”…”it” being the risk posed by climate change to personal health, to all of earth’s living systems, and to our children’s future…will sit up and pay attention to the management of climate risk.

What would it take to explode the opinion leader's heads enough to reveal the invisible to them? The Dustbowl years of the 1930’s provide a fair analogy. Just prior to when that historic drought set in, a very large segment of the US’ population lived on farms: at least 45%. Markets for agricultural products were booming, trees were removed from the most productive farmlands, slash-and-burn style, and prairie soils were ploughed from fence to fence. The most erodable hillsides were laid bare. Along came extended drought and the nation’s food basket crumbled. Farm losses were severe; and, unemployment, and population shifts amplified stock market volatility (a point often overlooked by economists who see the Great Depression solely in economic terms). Rural population loss from the Dust Bowl states continues to this day. An oversimplification, granted, but not a gross mischaracterization.

In the several decades following the Dust Bowl, huge Federal programs were established to make farming on the Great Plains and Midwest lands sustainable. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) participants helped reestablish “windbreaks” of trees and were responsible for the replanting of large tracts of forests. Just as important, the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service ASCS), and Soil Conservation Service (SCS) were established and funded by Congress. Because of these three government efforts, soil loss from wind erosion was gradually reduced. When the rains returned almost a decade after the start of the drought, modern industrialized farming practices were developed in lock step with conservation practices. The wind rows are still there. This process, come to think of it, is not that different that what is going on right now in China!

What sort of large scale changes could set off a similar reaction in US governance with regard to climate change? Is there really any chance of that happening soon, what with most climate change impact scenarios being on the scale of half to full century? Yes there is.

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