Segacs's World I Know

Archive for the ‘Canada eh’ Category

If you don’t have enough reasons to vote against Harper and the Conservatives in the upcoming election, here’s some scary food for thought:

4 out of 9 of Canada’s Supreme Court Justices have mandatory retirement dates within the next five years. Guess who appoints Supreme Court Justices? That’s right, the Governor-General in “consultation with” (read: direction by) the Prime Minister.

And who do you think Harper will stack the courts with, given the opportunity? Given his government’s record, I only shudder to imagine.

The Supreme Court wields an enormous amount of power. And to show what can happen with years of stacked appointments, we need only to glance at our illustrious neighbours to the south, the United States:

Think it couldn’t happen here? Think again:

Pro-life supporters successfully influenced an as-yet unannounced government decision to deny funding to Planned Parenthood, says a Conservative seeking re-election.

Brad Trost, incumbent for Saskatoon-Humboldt, addressed the Saskatchewan Pro-Life Association’s annual convention Saturday and thanked its members for their help in killing federal funding for the group.

In a recording of the speech, obtained by the Liberals and provided to the Toronto Star and Le Devoir, Trost claims a number of parliamentary victories for the pro-life movement, including a decision to deny funding for the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

This is all part of a decision that was rendered by the Conservative government to exclude abortion funding from its maternal health plan for developing nations. Having denied access to abortion to women in other countries, now the government is setting its sights on our rights as Canadians.

And, lest you think that it’s only women’s reproductive rights that are under attack, rest assured that Stephen Harper doesn’t discriminate like that; he’s determined to attack all women’s rights.

But don’t worry, Stevie. You may hate women, but women hate you too:

Now here’s hoping that more Canadian women get jolted out of apathy and turn out and vote.

(Hat tips: Kirsten, Andrea, and the good people over at ShitHarperDid.com.)

What does your party believe? I’d venture a guess that only a small number of Canadians who vote actually bother to read their party’s platforms… or the platforms of the other parties.  Even if we concede that politicians break campaign promises all the time, shouldn’t you know what your party is promising before casting your ballot?

Read the platforms here:

• Liberal Party of Canada
• Conservative Party of Canada
• New Democrat Party of Canada
• Bloc Quebecois (in French)
• Green Party of Canada

Then, when you’re done, check out the candidates in your writing. Read up on their voting records, if they are already MPs. Read their blogs, find their  Facebook pages, check out anything they’ve written or published. Make sure you know who you’re voting to send to Parliament on May 2nd.

An uninformed electorate gets the government that it deserves. So get informed.

A new BMO report suggests that on average, Canadians pay about 20% more for the same goods and services as our American neighbours do — even though the loonie is above par:

BMO’s survey compared 11 items, including golf balls, Blu-ray movies, running shoes and cars.

There is no denying Canada is smaller and that means less competition, which in turn means higher prices.

But Michael Mulvey, marketing professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, also noted some of the biggest difference in prices between the U.S. and Canada are in the areas where there isn’t free trade, such as telecomunications.

I’ve ranted about the higher telecommunications prices before. Those are due to price-fixing by the corrupt CRTC — something not mentioned in this study.

But for consumer goods where actual competition exists, how do we explain the price gap?

Taxes, for one thing. The study is comparing pre-tax prices, so you might think that’s not a factor. But there are taxes all the way down the chain of distribution, not just at the end-consumer point. That 15% you pay in combined GST and QST is merely the tip of the iceberg. The higher taxes down the line help pay for our essential social programs, like medicare, but they do make things more expensive.

Another factor that is mentioned by the study is the size of the country, and the fact that distribution and shipping is more expensive when you have a sparser population in a less concentrated area. This helps explain why prices would be more in, say, Yellowknife. It doesn’t explain why something retails in downtown Toronto for 20% more than it does across the border in Buffalo, NY.

The rapid rise of the dollar is another factor. When the Canadian dollar was worth 60 cents US, we understood the price gap. Now that it’s above par, it’s frustrating to see this gap. But the price adjustment period takes longer to catch up than the loonie takes to rise in the first place. The gap is closing somewhat — just more slowly than we might like.

But the main reason is merely supply and demand. In a market economy, prices are less about what something costs to produce and more about what the market will bear. We pay more because we pay more because we pay more. It’s circular. If people stopped buying things that were too expensive, the prices on them would drop. They would have to.

Lots of people would like to complain, protest or mobilize to correct this. What they don’t understand is that these prices aren’t being fixed by the government, and the economy cannot – and should not – be centrally managed in order to make people happy.

We do have choices. We can drive down to Burlington or Plattsburgh, shop in lower US dollars, and come back across the border — and pay duty (or not, as every good Canadian knows the tricks of how to avoid that at some point. Not that I’m endorsing that, mind you.) We can order online and pay the extra shipping charges, though the vast majority of US online retailers won’t ship to Canada, frustratingly enough.

Finally, a little perspective: Prices are higher in Canada than they are in the USA, but they’re lower here than they are in a lot of other places in the world, including South America, most of Europe, some places in Asia, or Australia. We constantly compare to the Americans because we’re so close; it’s hard not to get jealous and feel like the outsider with our face pressed to the glass when we get American ads on TV, radio or digital media splashing prices around that are inaccessible to us. But if you saw what people were paying elsewhere for the same items, you might appreciate our prices a bit more.

I hear it all the time. Heck, I’ve even said it myself. In our first-past-the-post system, only a handful of the 308 ridings nationwide are really, truly up for grabs in the election. For the rest of us, it can be easy to say things like “my vote won’t count” or “it doesn’t matter” or, my favourite, “why bother?”

If, like most Canadians, you don’t happen to live in a swing riding, here are the top 10 reasons why you should go out and vote anyway:

10. The polls can be wrong. Even if you think your riding is a “safe” seat – either for your candidate, or for an opposition one – the polling data could be wrong. Your vote may well count more than you think.

9. Parties get funded based on the number of votes they get – roughly $1.75 per vote. By voting for your favourite party or candidate, you’re funding the party and strengthening it for future elections.

8. Voter turnout keeps falling, and was at a historical low of only 58.8% in the 2008 federal election. That means that the Tories were voted in by only 22% of eligible voters. To elect a government that truly represents the population, the population has to turn out and vote.

7. Get your issues heard. Voting for a certain candidate sends a message to other candidates and parties that your issues are important. This might affect how they vote on key issues in Parliament.

6. If everyone assumes that their vote won’t count, then maybe they’ll all stay home and your vote will actually count more than you think. Candidates have lost supposedly “safe” ridings before because of this. It could happen again.

5. Second place doesn’t matter? Sure it does. A strong second-place showing could mean momentum for a candidate or party next time around. It could lead the party to target the riding for more funding or election spending, believing that it is “in play”. It could buoy more people to vote for that second-place candidate next time, in the belief that there’s a chance of beating the incumbent.

4. Egypt. Tunisia. Bahrain. Saudi Arabia. Iran. Libya. All the people in the world out risking their lives to demonstrate for the right to vote, which we so casually take for granted.

3. Voting is a right, a privilege, and a responsibility of living in a democracy. Take it seriously.

2. If you don’t vote, you forfeit your right to complain.

1. If you don’t vote, you don’t get any chocolate cake.

As the campaign progresses, I’d like to share a few links to some interesting interactive election-related tools and sites:

• Vote Compass: An online quiz on issues that is supposed to help you see which of the major parties holds views most similar to yours. Surprisingly accurate for such a short quiz.

• How’d They Vote? Contains a running database of all federal MPs and their voting history in Parliament. A good way of knowing where your local MP stands on issues.
• Cyberpresse 2008 Interactive Map: Google Maps interactive overlay for every riding in the country, showing the 2008 vote breakdowns by polling district. Fun to play with, and shows just how close some of the ridings were.
• Election Prediction Project: The folks at EPP are at it again, making riding-by-riding predictions based on commentary and past results, rather than trying to extrapolate popular support percentages like the pollsters. They have a decent enough record that their site is worth a look.

If you know of any other useful sites or tools, let me know.

High-ho, high-ho, it’s election time again in Canada. And it sure does feel an awful lot like 2008:

• 4 out of 5 of the party leaders are unchanged. Only Iggy is new this time around, though his post-election political days are probably as numbered as Stephane Dion’s were.
• The party positions and platforms are largely unchanged since 2008 as well, at least on the big issues.
• Elizabeth May is once again angry about being excluded from the debates – and, like last time, I predict she’ll probably get her way.
• Jack Layton is still sporting his used car salesman ’stache.
• The Tories are once again sitting in comfortable minority-government territory, at once unlikely to lose and unlikely to form a majority.

So remind me again why we’re going to all this expense and trouble?

I would love to see the Tories get the boot. Between the long-form census debacle, the convenient-for-Harper prorogation of Parliament, corruption scandals, arts funding cuts, attacking women’s right to choose,  social engineering in the guise of economic policy that punishes anything other than the “traditional” family values, and Harper’s megalomania, the reasons abound. I simply cannot believe I live in a country where we keep electing this party.

Unfortunately, the only hope for replacing the Tories, the Liberal Party of Canada, is still in shambles. Ignatieff’s personal popularity is fairly low (no doubt made worse by those horrible Tory attack ads), the vote-splitting on the left bolsters the NDP and Greens at the Liberals’ expense, and the Bloc is standing at nearly 50% popularity here in La Belle Province.

My vote, which I have no problem saying will be for the Liberals, is a wasted vote, since I live in Gilles Duceppe’s riding and unless he gets morphed into an alien and starts singing Vegas showtunes in the shower, he’s going to run away with it here. But I will still trudge out and cast my ballot – on my birthday, no less – even though I know it won’t do any good at all.

No, I’m not a huge fan of Michael Ignatieff. I liked Stephane Dion a lot better, even though he failed to rally widespread support. But I’d much rather have a party in power that I agree with ideologically on most points, as opposed to one that I believe is steadily taking the country in the wrong direction.

The CBC has launched a short but fairly accurate online tool to help you gauge your political positions vis-a-vis the major parties. Check it out. And make sure you vote, because if we’re paying for this pointless election anyway, you might as well get your voice heard.

(Even if I do sometimes wish I could vote for the onion ring.)

You can tell it’s an election year when the government actually bothers to do something useful. Harper, seeing the writing on the wall after massive petitions and public outcry, has issued an ultimatum to the CRTC about its recent usage-based internet billing ruling: back down, or we’ll overrule you:

Last week, the CRTC ruled that usage-based billing, the model used by large Internet providers such as Bell Canada and Rogers Communications to charge customers extra for exceeding monthly download limits, will apply to smaller providers, too. Until now, those smaller providers could offer unlimited Internet packages; the ruling means they no longer can.

There have been hints already from Industry Minister Tony Clement that the federal government may quash the controversial ruling, and the prime minister has asked for a review of it. But the government’s blunt ultimatum to the CRTC suggests any review would be pro forma.

This was a terrible decision by the CRTC – yet another in a long line of them that have backed Big Telecom’s demands over the rights of the consumer and the marketplace. Usage-based billing would have stifled innovation and choked off advancement, it’s true. But let’s not forget that, thanks to the CRTC, Canadians pay the most in the world for cell phone plans, pay for incoming text messages (despite another Harper campaign promise… anyone remember that?), and enjoy tons of lovely censorship of TV and radio. All because the CRTC is supposed to protect the interests of all Canadians, but only protects the interests of three: Bell, Telus and Rogers.

As for the government, let’s not forget that this is one decision, taken under overwhelming public pressure, in the face of hundreds of other decisions that have gone against consumer interests. The real solution isn’t to review this one decision; the real solution is to review the CRTC’s overall mandate and existence.

Just when I think I can’t possibly hate the Harper Conservatives any more… their attack ads on Ignatieff and the Liberals are some of the most annoying, boorish, ill-conceived spots I’ve ever seen – and considering this is politics, that’s saying a lot.

And I’m not even talking about the ads that were pulled.

A man who was thought to be inside his house in a standoff with the RCMP had actually let himself out the back and went to buy cigarettes while the Mounties supposedly had his house under siege:

A man slipped away from the scene of a week-long armed standoff in Newfoundland and got a lift out of town to buy smokes while police guarded what turned out to be an empty house for nearly 16 more hours, the RCMP said Monday.

The Mounties said the man snuck past their security perimeter on Friday night after they gathered on one side of his house to pump water into it with high-pressure hoses in an effort to resolve the standoff in Bay Bulls, N.L.

“In essence, we had one side of the house fully covered and positioned and another side that wasn’t,” Sgt. Boyd Merrill said in an interview.

Right, because it’s not like it would ever occur to someone to try the other door.

This is the kind of amateur-hour tale that you might expect from a small, underfunded local police department, not from the highly-trained and professional RCMP. I don’t think that this is quite what they meant by the Mounties “always get their man”.

(Please, no Newfie jokes, or Red Rabbit and Damian Penny might get together to kick your asses.)

A coworker, on hearing the recommendation of the Senate Finance Committee to finally, finally get rid of the penny: “We have a Senate that actually does something?”