A new political sunrise.

[JLM]

Knowing as I do the leftward slant to several of the most popular posters on this site I thought I would chuck out a small dose of political reality.

Canada once was known as a Liberal country at heart and the Liberal Party of Canada was known as "the natural ruling party".
No more.
The Liberal Party of Canada is now a shattered has been.

Change is a coming.

PM Harper is a strategist and an incrementalist by nature.
It took multiple Liberal majorities to slowly and thoroughly convert Canada's political, judicial, legal, military and civil services to a leftward orientation.
It will in turn take a long time and a lot of hard work to reverse that course.

Here is how it starts:

The blatantly Liberal Govenor General's Clarkson and Michaelle Jean have been replaced by a Conservative steady-eddy realist David Johnston.

The Liberal Speaker of the House Peter Milliken has been replaced by Conservative Andrew Scheer.
Many of us can remember the good old Chretien days when RCMP investigation after RCMP investigation plagued the majority Liberals.
But the good old Liberal Speaker deflected and killed all such talk in the house.
And then there was the parting Liberal hand-grenades lobbed by Milliken on his way out the door.
Well those days are over and now it will be a Conservative Speaker lobbing any future grenades.

The Auditor General in my view was hardworking and fairly unbiased.
She is now gone and it will be a Conservative appointment.
One can only assume the new Auditor General will have a slightly more practical and conservative background.

The Supreme Court of Canada.
The Supreme Court has since the time of Trudeau viewed itself as both a creator and a helmsman of Canadian ethics and institutions.
Liberal ethics, policies and institutions it goes without saying.
Three Justices are now stepping down, they will be replace by Conservative appointments.
In the next 4 years a few more will be stepping down and they too will be replaced by Conservative appointments.
I presume we can now look forward to the Supreme Court of Canada starting to champion Conservative policies ,ethics and institutions.

The Senate.
PM Harper and the Conservate Party of Canada would prefer to institute a triple E senate.
The provincial Liberals in Ontario oppose this as does Quebec and the Maritimes.
So PM Harper will just continue to stack it with Conservatives.
Every Conservative bill will fly through the house, all other bills for the foreseeable future will die on the floor.

Canadian riding adjustments.
The Conservative Party of Canada under PM Harper will be adjusted on a provincial basis to fairly represent Canadian population growth.
Thus BC, Alberta and Ontario will get a bunch of new seats.
The Maritimes and Quebec both oppose this change (of course).
This will geographically tend to slightly benefit the federal Conservatives in future elections.

Cutting the federal per-vote subsidy.
This will primarily benefit the federal Conservatives in future elections as the Conservatives have an extremely effective grass-roots funding network in place.
It probably will also help the NDP in future elections as the NDP has always had a rock solid grass-roots funding network in place.
It will absolutely cripple any future Quebec based sepratist parties like the BQ.
It will also badly further wound the ailing Liberal Party of Canada.

The above is factual reality.

We can only speculate on what further changes the Harper administration will bring down the pipe.

If I was a die-hard left wing believer I would probably ask my family to place me on suicide watch.

Trex

Good post Trex, and I have a couple of things to add - Liberals = Conservatives about 95%, the main object for both of them is to get as much as they can out of the trough, they both been led by complete A$$holes, eg. Trudeau and Mulroney, but I agree that for the moment we are probably not too badly off with Harper but I'll be watching his pockets and when they start to bulge time to throw him to the dogs. But once he's taken care of violent criminals and gotten rid of gun control and hopefully can improve healthcare (which I doubt, as it's not up to him but to us the user to smarten up) and if our taxes start to creep up, then out he goes! :smile:

 

[cranky]

I know a guy that breeds breeding stock for hog farms, all his pigs are fed top quality feed and are treated extra carefully. Yet, the slaughter houses refuse to pay him a premium for the 80% of his stock that goes to slaughter......Do you know what he does? He bought himself a bunch of freezers, and hired a butcher....he sells his pork through word of mouth, and by reputation.

Do you know what would happen if a farmer was to try and sell wheat to flour producers?

 

[petros]

I know a guy that breeds breeding stock for hog farms, all his pigs are fed top quality feed and are treated extra carefully. Yet, the slaughter houses refuse to pay him a premium for the 80% of his stock that goes to slaughter......Do you know what he does? He bought himself a bunch of freezers, and hired a butcher....he sells his pork through word of mouth, and by reputation.

Do you know what would happen if a farmer was to try and sell wheat to flour producers?

Soon to become outlawed as well. The death of the independant producer has already begun. Check ON laws.

In Ontario, no one can sell, transport, deliver or distribute meat unless:

• The animal was inspected prior to slaughter (antemortem), approval for slaughter in accordance with the Meat Regulation, and the carcass was inspected following slaughter (post-mortem) and was approved for use as food in accordance with the Meat Regulation or the regulations under the Meat Inspection Act (Canada);
• The animal was slaughtered in a plant operated by a provincially licensed operator or a federally registered establishment; and
• The meat is stamped, labelled or tagged with an inspection legend.

In addition, no person can operate a slaughter facility without a licence.

 

[cranky]

many regulations are tied to the licensing, not to the seller. do you know what it is for your posted information?

For example, if you consider a band aid company.....the company needs a medical license, and this means that they need to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into a Quality Management System.

However, a general store does not need a medical license or a quality management system to sell bandaids to Mom and Dad because they are sold to 'the end user'. If the general store was to try and sell band aids to the local hospital, they would be considered a distributor and would require special licensing.

 

[petros]

many regulations are tied to the licensing, not to the seller. do you know what it is for your posted information?

For example, if you consider a band aid company.....the company needs a medical license, and this means that they need to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into a Quality Management System.

However, a general store does not need a medical license or a quality management system to sell bandaids to Mom and Dad because they are sold to 'the end user'. If the general store was to try and sell band aids to the local hospital, they would be considered a distributor and would require special licensing.

It's coming to the prairie soon too. No vet records, no Fed inspection, grading no licensed cutting wrapping, no stored in unoffical facilities means your product isn't going to be sold legally.

 

[wulfie68]

You are probably right about that. And that attitude will last until some nutcase armed with a long gun lays waste to another bunch of innocents. At that point there will be demands to add long guns to the registry once again.

Sure, there will be demands by the same idiots who thought it was necessary the first time around, when Marc Lepine went on his rampage... and they will be looking for an easy but incorrect fix for a complicated problem yet again. The incident at Dawson College proved that the registry doesn't stop those types of events, regardless of how hard Alan Rock and all the supporters of his folly swore it would.

As for the rest, I agree that Harper is an incrementalist and strategist, and that his policies may reshape how our gov't conducts business for decades. I don't think that the shift will be noticeable, and likely any positives will be credited to a future gov't, much the way many credit Chretien and Martin for eliminating the debt, when it was Mulroney who set the stage that allowed the country to grow out of it.

Honestly, at this point what I am most looking forward to, is 4 years of stability, where an election isn't threatened everytime the gov't introduces a bill.

 

[Cliffy]

Honestly, at this point what I am most looking forward to, is 4 years of stability, where an election isn't threatened everytime the gov't introduces a bill.

That's what they told my mom when they put her on Valium for thirty years: "This will make you stable." Politics is the new opiate of the masses.

 

[cranky]

that must be some pretty wacky tobaccy that the left is smoking.

 

[Cliffy]

YouTube - ‪CCR - Bad Moon Rising‬‏

 

[petros]

Just because I like it alot ....

 

[Bar Sinister]

You are so right!!!! Canadians aren't that stupid........and that is why finally they voted for a majority Conservative government.




What on Earth is so wrong with allowing a Farmer who's blood sweat and tears are put into growing and reaping his crops and then allowing him to decide if he should be a part of the CWB or sell HIS OWN crops on the FREE market at HIS OWN CHOICE????

And why oh why is that only CERTAIN provinces have to adhere to this farsical communist nonsense????

Outside of the fact that you obviously have no idea what actual communism is all about I suggest you read my post again. The problems with abolishing the CWB were pretty clear; the fact that you did not understand them is your problem.

BTW as I pointed out in an earlier post, 60% of Canadians voted against the Harper government. It is the undemocratic nature of our voting system that allowed the Conservatives to win - but not until they promised socialistic programs like income splitting.

the CWB creates a no competition setting for it's members but not farmers outside of it's grasp. Currently it's grasp is manditory for some of the provinces, not all.

To say that it absolutely won't work if you shrink or grow its grasp - and isn't that what you are trying to say? - is totally inacurate, imo.

No - what I said was that scrapping the CWB would leave grain farmers in Canada at the mercy of international cartels and would take away the advantage offered to farmers in times of low grain prices. This controversy about the CWB has come up before - it always does when international demand for grain increases - but it goes away as soon as grain prices decrease. If farmers could be sure that grain prices would always remain high and that huge monopolistic outfits like Cargill would not use their leverage to keep the price paid to independent farmers down, there would be no need for the wheat board.

BTW if you don't know what Cargill is here is a link Cargill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The problem is, the world of the free market is not quite so free as many think. Huge transnational firms control most of the trade in food crops and they are quite capable of manipulating prices to their advantage. Quite often farmers acting on their own are offered "take it or leave it prices," that leave little margin for profit. The CWB has always been able to stand up to such organizations by pooling the bargaining power of its members and getting the best possible price; especially in times of low prices.

You might also note that a completely free market in grain is much more advantageous to farmers who have relatively easy access to international markets. In other words if you are a Manitoba farmer and can load up a truck full of grain and head across the border you have quite an advantage over a grain farmer from someplace like Grand Prairie.

Finally, the US is not particularly open to individual farmers who compete too strongly with US farmers. A case in point occurred a few years ago when the US illegally blocked shipments of barley to American brewers as Canadians were underselling Americans.

 

[Omicron]

How does it happen that New York Capitalists can convince grain farmers that both are on the same side and must vote for the same party such that it's good for the grain farmer to take the lowest price for his crops?

 

[cranky]

Outside of the fact that you obviously have no idea what actual communism is all about I suggest you read my post again. The problems with abolishing the CWB were pretty clear; the fact that you did not understand them is your problem.

BTW as I pointed out in an earlier post, 60% of Canadians voted against the Harper government. It is the undemocratic nature of our voting system that allowed the Conservatives to win - but not until they promised socialistic programs like income splitting.



No - what I said was that scrapping the CWB would leave grain farmers in Canada at the mercy of international cartels and would take away the advantage offered to farmers in times of low grain prices. This controversy about the CWB has come up before - it always does when international demand for grain increases - but it goes away as soon as grain prices decrease. If farmers could be sure that grain prices would always remain high and that huge monopolistic outfits like Cargill would not use their leverage to keep the price paid to independent farmers down, there would be no need for the wheat board.

BTW if you don't know what Cargill is here is a link Cargill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The problem is, the world of the free market is not quite so free as many think. Huge transnational firms control most of the trade in food crops and they are quite capable of manipulating prices to their advantage. Quite often farmers acting on their own are offered "take it or leave it prices," that leave little margin for profit. The CWB has always been able to stand up to such organizations by pooling the bargaining power of its members and getting the best possible price; especially in times of low prices.

You might also note that a completely free market in grain is much more advantageous to farmers who have relatively easy access to international markets. In other words if you are a Manitoba farmer and can load up a truck full of grain and head across the border you have quite an advantage over a grain farmer from someplace like Grand Prairie.

Finally, the US is not particularly open to individual farmers who compete too strongly with US farmers. A case in point occurred a few years ago when the US illegally blocked shipments of barley to American brewers as Canadians were underselling Americans.

then we aren't talking about the same thing. I haven't once suggested that we scrap the CWB, just make it availabe to a smaller group of farmers that feel that it has value.

 

[Topaz72]

Enjoy your time at the the top,because what goes up MUST come down. The power is Harper's for the next four years and what he does with that power time will only know. Presently, NFDL. is quite angry for closing a rescue centre, they have upped the taxpayers portion to $5.50 for THEIR pensions, they only pay $1 towards it., they spends millions to make sure their MP's got back in and now taxpayers have to suffer for their outrage spending, they hired 30,000 Fed. workers when they came in, how many of them will lose their jobs and go in EI, which will reduce EI and they won't have the tax revenues coming in. So the 60% of us who didn't vote for the Tories , will seat back and watch how they destroy little by little this country and the program Canadians rely on.

 

[petros]

60% of us who didn't vote for the Tories , will seat back and watch how they
destroy little by little this country and the program Canadians rely on.

I have two words for you; Get active!

 

[JLM]

I have two words for you; Get active!

Fat chance, the ones you hear whining seldom get active. (Why would they want to jeopardize something to whine about) :lol:

 

[petros]

Useless bum whinos?

 

[JLM]

Useless bum whinos?

Yeah, it's a joke, 60% didn't vote for the Cons, but they forget 70% didn't vote for the N.D.P. and 80% didn't vote for Liberals and 90% didn't vote for the Green and 95% didn't vote for the Bloc! :lol:

 

[captain morgan]

Yeah, it's a joke, 60% didn't vote for the Cons, but they forget 70% didn't vote for the N.D.P. and 80% didn't vote for Liberals and 90% didn't vote for the Green and 95% didn't vote for the Bloc! :lol:

Amazing and very convenient how that works, eh?

 

[mentalfloss]

Yeah, it's a joke, 60% didn't vote for the Cons, but they forget 70% didn't vote for the N.D.P. and 80% didn't vote for Liberals and 90% didn't vote for the Green and 95% didn't vote for the Bloc! :lol: