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		home :: politics :: canada Friday, 05 February 2010 Repeat the HST OK, so, let me start this off by saying I've been reasonably persuaded that the HST is a good thing for BC in the long run. And I think Bill Vander Zalm is an ass, and Bill Tieleman I'm pretty mixed on. But that said, the way the HST was implemented is absolutely inimical to democracy and should be defeated for that reason alone. It is unacceptable for a party to deceive the province into "what's best". Make your case to the people and then govern with an actual mandate. Don't say you're not going to bring in an HST and then do it. posted at: 10:39 Fri 05/Feb/2010 \| /politics/canada \| permalink \| 1 comment \| trackback Friday, 05 December 2008 Con man asks for trust This takes some chutzpah: Prime Minister Stephen Harper claims he wants to build bridges with his political opponents in Parliament. "Obviously we have to do some trust building on both sides," Harper said at an impromptu news conference after the Governor General approved his request to prorogue Parliament until January 26. "Trust-building"??? This from the man who broke his own law that elections would come at a fixed date? Who, having won his early election -- the sort he used to rail against -- then proceeded to call for an end to partisanship right before trying to kneecap his enemies by cutting off their funding? Just how stupid does he think Canada is? posted at: 18:25 Fri 05/Dec/2008 \| /politics/canada \| permalink \| 2 comments \| trackback Thursday, 04 December 2008 OH NOEZ Is it just me, or is the current freak-out about the coalition taking power from Harper's minority government like 15x worse than when Stronach or Emerson crossed the aisle? posted at: 18:21 Thu 04/Dec/2008 \| /politics/canada \| permalink \| 0 comments \| trackback Friday, 29 February 2008 "supposed to be different" James Bow: It shows a remarkable cynicism on Ms. Cadman's part, and is possibly why she is comfortable today in running for the Conservative Party: because she doesn't feel that the Conservative actions were particularly unusual in politics. Except that the Conservatives promised that they would be different. Now, I never thought the Tories were or would be different, or at least not different in the "less corrupt" direction. posted at: 05:12 Fri 29/Feb/2008 \| /politics/canada \| permalink \| 0 comments \| trackback Sunday, 17 September 2006 Subsidies = bad??? Yesterday in the Vancouver Sun, the headline story was about how the 2010 Olympics would cost at least $2.5 billion. The auditor-general arrived at that figure by adding the cost of Olympic-related programs (such as the RAV line and Sea-to-Sky highway expansion) to the direct costs of the Olympics themselves, despite the BC Liberal's insistence that such projects were technically not related. (This figure is still higher than it used to be thanks to cost overruns and other mistakes.) OK, so, $2.5 billion. Or rather: the governments -- federal, provincial, and municipal together -- are on the hook for north of four billion dollars, but revenues from the Games are expected to bring in around 1.8 billion, thus leaving us all $2.5B in the hole. Today, columnist Michael Campbell railed against subsidies. Wow, you might say. Ah, not so -- he's just talking about the Toronto International Film Festival. It'll be subsidized at least by several governments for a few million dollars -- last year, the TIFF took $3.7M in "direct subsidies". Moreover, Campbell is outraged that the subsidies come from multiple agencies and multiple levels of government. It seems to me that every argument he makes could be made about the 2010 Games, only, you know, around 675 times as strongly. continue reading... posted at: 00:21 Sun 17/Sep/2006 \| /politics/canada/vancouver \| permalink \| 2 comments \| trackback

Serenepia

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Andrew Chang
andrewc-blogatofb.net
aka ArC