Bill C-38 — Stephen Harper Omnibus Bill

What is important to know about Budget 2012?

Despite a heroic effort by the NDP (New Democratic Party), the Liberals and Elizabeth May of the Greens to delay this evil bill, they could not stop it. The effort now needs to focus on removing Stephen Harper from office and repealing this legislation.

The following essay was written by my MP (Member of Parliament) Denise Savoie and her friends in the NDP party. I have added my comments in green. Stephen Harper is corrupt and deluded. He is dismantling the democracy of Canada step by step and consolidating all that power at his personal discretion. He is dismantling all environmental protection, silencing all scientific and environmental voices and handing Canada over on a plate for resource extraction to foreign multinationals, presumably because they give him large amounts of money for his personal and campaign use. He is also a fundamentalist Christian. He is denies that climate change is a real problem. He wants to run the country without benefit of statistics, science or facts. Voices in his head from the god Yahweh are all this fruitcake thinks he needs. Bill C-38, the government’s Budget Implementation Act, proposes fundamental legislative changes to the federal regulatory system and allows for expedited big resource projects.

The bill purports to be just the spending estimates for the coming year. But hidden in its 420 pages are over a hundred sweeping changes to legislation, mostly repealing environmental protection. Harper was trying to sneak the changes past the opposition and the Canadian people by hiding them in the fine print. That is a deceitful dirty trick. It is something Republicans might do. It has no precedent in Canadian politics. It is such a filthy trick, now that it has been exposed, Harper should resign. But has no shame, so he will not. My language is intemperate and inflammatory. I am furious. Part of what fuels my fury is these men are doing damage that can never be rectified later. They absolutely must be stopped. When you wipe out a species, there is no way to bring it back.

The NDP caucus has been working to have this 425-page bill split into segments so we can study it in depth. Unfortunately, the Conservatives rejected our constructive proposal. As your Official Opposition, we have launched cross-Canada budget hearings to hear from you. On Vancouver Island, people are concerned about the bill’s impacts on the environment, jobs and health care and the effects it will have on our natural resources management and on our fisheries. Here are a few of the many changes proposed in Bill C-38 that will affect our lives:

Environment:

• Repeals and replaces the CEAA (Canadian Environmental Assessment Act), the central piece of federal environmental legislation
• Responsibility for the environmental assessments for most projects becomes the responsibility of provinces and the Federal Government would limit its reviews to discrete areas of federal jurisdiction
• Gives Cabinet ultimate decision-making for major projects, not regulatory bodies
• Repeal of the Kyoto Implementation Act — no more domestic or international accountability measures on climate change.

  We are reneging on our international commitments. Canada is now looked on as the most loathsome and irresponsible country on earth when it comes to dealing with climate charge.

• Allows the government to eliminate the National Round Table on the Environment

Fisheries:

• Elimination of fish habitat protection in Fisheries Act
• Protection is limited to commercial, recreational, or Aboriginal fisheries and their habitat, as opposed to all fish and all fish habitat in Canada Temporary alteration or destruction of fish habitat is not prohibited unless it can be shown to have resulted in the death of useful fish.

  Harper shows the understanding of ecology of a five year old. Harper wants to protect only the stocks of fish that are eaten by humans. He utterly forgets that these food fish for the most part eat smaller fish that humans do not eat. If these smaller fish disappear, the food fish will disappear too. What a blithering idiot! Did he ever make it out of elementary school? Even a child understands this. Further, he is effectively dropping protection for all fresh water species. Only 20% of species will be protected.

  Former Progressive Conservative fisheries ministers Tom Siddon and John Fraser and former Liberal ministers David Anderson and Herb Dhaliwal have written an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper lashing out at the omnibus budget bill that contains Fisheries Act changes they say will inevitably weaken habitat protection provisions.

Natural Resources:

• Exclusion of concerned groups and citizens from the environmental review process for pipelines and possibly other projects.

  Harper has announced that various huge, filthy tar sands pipelines are going through come hell or high water. He does not in the least care about environmental damage, oil spills and the like. All he cares about is money for Albertans and his crony backers. He is like Captain Ahab. He can’t think about any other factor than the money. Joe Oliver’s letter tarring all those who question the pipeline.

• Cabinet granted authority to override a no decision of the NEB (National Energy Board) — politics will predominate over independent expertise.
• Allows the board to exempt pipelines from the requirements of the Navigable Waters Protection Act.
• Allows the NEB to issue permits for development even when the project could affect species listed under the Species At Risk Act
• Environmental scientists can no longer get funding or equipment either at a university or working for the government without an industry co-sponsor to make sure they say exactly what industry wants them to. Harper has effectively silenced the environmental expertise. Further, he has excluded all voices except those with a direct financial interest from participating in environmental hearings. In other words, no one is any longer permitted to speak for the bears or eagles. Environmental decisions are about all kind of non-financial values. He has excluded all but money from relevance. He is the ultimate Philistine.

Jobs:

• No comprehensive plan to create jobs at a time when unemployment, particularly among youth, is high and wages are not keeping up with the cost of living
• Forces Canadians to work two years longer, to age 67, to qualify for Old Age Security
• Cuts workers’ access to Employment Insurance benefits if they don’t take any job the Minister of Human Resources deems suitable.
• Repeals The Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act, which sets minimum standards for hours and wages of construction workers working on federal projects Removes federal contractors from the protection of The Employment Equity Act.
• Harper is allowing cheap temporary, but often highly skilled, labour into the country not subjected to minimum wage or fair wage laws. The idea is to break the unions and make Canadians work at third world wage levels as a present for his corporate backers.

Health Care:

• Short-changes cash-strapped provinces of expected health transfers by $31 billion
• Weakens food and drug regulations to allow the Minister of Health to exempt products from regulatory oversight at her discretion
• Ends vital Auditor General oversight of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency

  This is return to the food non-inspection of the 1920s, contaminated and adulterated meat products. This is obviously penny wise and pound foolish, but it is what his Alberta meat-packing backers want.

• Paves the way for private contractors to perform food safety inspections

Government Ethics and Oversight:

• Removes the Auditor General’s powers to hold government accountable through independent oversight over 12 key government agencies including the Northern Pipeline Agency, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Canada Revenue Agency
• Eliminates CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) Inspector General, who provides oversight on the intelligence agency’s activities and who recently released a report critical of CSIS activities.

  The previous auditor took Harper to task for breaking Canada’s own laws by secretly detaining and torturing people. So he not only fired her, he eliminated her job.

• Eliminates organizations that produce independent policy research including Rights & Democracy, the National Council of Welfare and the First Nations Statistical Institute
• Dissolves the Public Appointments Commission designed to ensure key positions are assigned based on merit instead of insider connections

Arts and Culture:

• $115 million (10%) cut to the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) budget, meaning less Canadian programming, more ads on the radio, less support for arts and culture and 650 jobs lost.

  Canada is always threatening to fly apart. The CBC is the number one unifying influence. The main organisation that makes Canadians listen to each other and care for each other. Harper hates the CBC because it refuses to became a propaganda organ for the Conservative party. So Harper has been killing it as fast as he can get away with. The CBC is the government service I most enjoy and value. I want Harper’s head on a plate for this.

• Loss of access to our historic and artistic heritage through cuts to Library and Archives.

  Harper is firing nearly all the archaeologists. With no one to care for them, we will lose the artifacts that tell the story of your history. We cannot later decide to pick up where we left off. This is a trivial expenditure. Harper is doing for spite, for his hatred of our Canadian cultural heritage, not to save money. He is an Albertan to the core and he despises the rest of Canada.

• A $10.6 million cut to Telefilm Canada and a $6.7 million cut to the NFB (National Film Board of Canada), and the elimination of the Canada Music Fund’s Creator Assistance Program.

  This is really dumb. Every film made in Canada brings in millions, creates jobs, has wonderful spin-offs and encourages international tourism. It is yet another example of penny-wise and pound foolish.

Counter Arguments

I have talked to some Conservatives who gave me the BS party line that this bill is merely belt tightening, shaving a little everywhere, with no political agenda, that the changes will improve protection of the environment. How do I know this is a lie?

• There is not a single environmentalist or environmental scientist in the country to believes them or who supports them.
• Harper is eager to blow $32+ billion on his toy aircraft which are useless for their professed purpose, defending the North because the are short range and are not arctic-hardened. They are designed expressly for surprise, first strike, stealth attacks launch from air craft carriers close to the target, e.g. in US resource wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. Money means nothing to him, so long as it is flowing to one of his backers.
• Harper blew $24 million on costumes for an celebration of the 1812 war with the USA. What could be a more frivolous optional expenditure than that? — a celebration of killing and gangrene.

Action

Joe Oliver, Minister of Natural Resources, plays a similar rôle for Harper that Himmler did for Hitler. Peter Kent, Minister of the Environment, acts as Josef Mengele. They have a hatred for the environment as intense anything Hitler felt for the Jews. The three of them all have to be kicked out of parliament.

One simple thing you can do is take this essay, or parts of this essay, replace my comments with yours and post it on your website, blog or social networking page. Spread the word! If you do that, let me know and I will add a link to your page.

Write or email your Member of the federal Canadian Parliament or any other Member of Parliament or
Justin Trudeau
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1A 0A2
Fax: (613) 941-6900
It is best to hand write your letter. However, in a pinch you can email:justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca No postage is required to send a letter to any Member of Parliament. Only mail sent to the House of Commons in Ottawa (that is, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6) is eligible. Just write the letters O.H.M.S. where you would normally put a stamp.

Conservatives don’t yet have an interim leader.

Thomas Mulcair, Leader of the NDP party thomas.mulcair@parl.gc.ca

The handout on which this essay was based was written by:

Luka Magnotta

A porn star Luka Magnotta allegedly killed an Asian male and sliced his body up and mailed off a torso, foot, head and hand from a Montréal post office. The foot was sent to Stephen Harper’s party headquarters. At first I thought this was some bizarre protest of Bill C-38. I was surprised to discover how articulate Mr. Magnotta was protesting various political issues on his now defunct website. He is quite coherent unlike your usual homicidal maniac. I think he is a narcissist. He vamps about in photos like some 1930s female movie goddess, like Adam Lambert’s evil twin. He has been known for some time for killing kittens on film for entertainment, feeding one to a python and taping one to a tube and drowning it. I suspect he will be one of those folk who give buggery a bad name.

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