NDP, Tories find common ground in quest to tame a thuggish House

[mentalfloss]

If you reread my post you will see that I said the NDP's job as official opposition is to attack those policies that they find objectionable.

Yes, but if the cons counter with a rationally sound argument, then the NDP needs to change their platform and adhere to that.

That's why being adversarial isn't necessarily the right thing to do - all the time. It's the dog and pony show of politics, but it doesn't have to be that way.

 

[petros]

Judging by the throne speech this afternoon (I gave mine this morning thank God for Sunny Boy) Harper Marx and Jack Lenin will get along fine in our heavily subsidized Socialist economy.

 

[Machjo]

Well of all the pressing matters out country faces I am sure glad we got this one in the bag. Now maybe they can get on with more important matters like wall colours and curtains.

Sorry, but basic behaviour is important, as our MPs represent Canada.

 

[Omicron]

http://tunes.digitalock.com/Augusts_Rhapsody.mp3 <-- click here to hear what I'm listening to while writing

The biggest headache of life is the frikkin' mortgage. It's not that we don't pay rent anyway when renting, it's just that the fact of life is that in this climate, at the end of the day, we need shelter. It's a biological geographic fact of life.

In BC vast forests are dying from pine-beetle infestation, because of climate change.

Explain to me why people able to work couldn't just take that timber before it rots and hammer up millions of shelters, just for something to do, for people to have a place to sleep.

Stop treating shelter as a privilege. In this climate it is a right.

I know Canadians. They can do anything, but their human bodies cannot live without shelter against the elements.

Be Canadians and give yourselves shelter.

 

[JLM]

http://tunes.digitalock.com/Augusts_Rhapsody.mp3 <-- click here to hear what I'm listening to while writing

The biggest headache of life is the frikkin' mortgage. It's not that we don't pay rent anyway when renting, it's just that the fact of life is that in this climate, at the end of the day, we need shelter. It's a biological geographic fact of life.

In BC vast forests are dying from pine-beetle infestation, because of climate change.

Explain to me why people able to work couldn't just take that timber before it rots and hammer up millions of shelters, just for something to do, for people to have a place to sleep.

Stop treating shelter as a privilege. In this climate it is a right.

I know Canadians. They can do anything, but their human bodies cannot live without shelter against the elements.

Be Canadians and give yourselves shelter.

Good idea, but there is a maze to crawl through to do this.....................bldg permits, zoning, inspections, approvals- of course the wood is only about 10% of the building, there's the stucco, drywall, bricks and morter, plumbing, electrical, etc. etc. etc.

 

[Omicron]

Good idea, but there is a maze to crawl through to do this.....................bldg permits, zoning, inspections, approvals- of course the wood is only about 10% of the building, there's the stucco, drywall, bricks and morter, plumbing, electrical, etc. etc. etc.

That's not a maze. That's work for people who know how to make stucco and bricks and morter and pipes and shielded wiring... and work for those trained to use them.

The only hurdle is finding frikkin' managers able to organize it without getting caught up being beat off by their secretary in the back room.

 

[mentalfloss]

First impressions of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition

First up for the opposition was Peggy Nash, MP for Parkdale-High Park and NDP finance critic. She went directly to the heart of the government’s economic strategy, asking the Conservatives why their sole priority was a corporate tax plan, when there is no evidence that this approach has created a single job. Why not put jobs rather than bank profits first?

Next up for the opposition, Françoise Boivin. Ms. Boivin last stood up in the House as a Liberal MP from Quebec. She is now a leading figure in the NDP’s not-small Quebec caucus, having played a leading role in getting it elected. How could it be, she wondered, that the government could offer not a single word about the status of women?

And then Robert Chisholm. Mr. Chisholm is a well-respected and senior figure in his party, having led the Nova Scotia NDP out of third party status and to the cusp of provincial government. He staked out a smart position for the New Democrats, offering that trade agreements have their role in building the economy, provided they are “strong.” Will the government work with the opposition on this issue – an implicit offer, with a barb?

Finally, Randall Garrison, the new opposition MP from the B.C. riding of Esquimalt–Juan de Fuca, took on the government on pensions. Where is the commitment to strengthening the Canada Pension Plan? Why are there not more serious proposals to being seniors out of poverty?

I would say, judging from all this, that the Official Opposition seems of a mind to do exactly what the government is doing – more of what worked for it in the last Parliament and in the recent election. In other words, the critics on the opposition front bench look set to bite into the substance of their briefs, and to take on the government on substantive issues – tax policy, jobs, women’s issues, trade, and seniors’ poverty, on that first day – attacking the government’s priorities and proposing alternatives.

Tabloid popcorn, scandal-mongering, and exchanges of mud and character assassination might therefore be playing a less prominent role in this federal Parliament – subject to events – since the Official Opposition actually disagrees with this government’s priorities and policies, and intends to say so.

First impressions of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition - The Globe and Mail