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2017-05-09 BC Election
British Columbia goes to the polls on 2017-05-09 to select a new provincial government. As of 2017-02-18, the polls show the NDP (New Democratic Party) in the lead, then the Liberals, then the Greens.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The NDP
have focused on financial benefits for the middle class. They promised so many goodies, it is unclear how they could afford them all. The NDP want to reduce greenhouse gases, but it not high on their agenda. Their leader is John Horgan, a jolly, enthusiastic, almost manic guy.The Greens
have focussed on environmental issues. The catch is a vote for the Greens, in most cases will split the vote with the NDP, allowing the Liberals to take the seat. The Greens have some high-profile candidates like Andrew Weaver and Sonia Furstenau (who doggedly got the toxic dumping in the Shawnigan water supply stopped.) I expect these candidates to outpoll the NDP, therefore it would be strategic to vote Green in those ridings.The Liberals
are anti-environment. They do whatever the sunset fossil fuel industry asks them to. Their financial policies always benefit the richest citizens at the expense of the poorest, corporations over people. e.g. tax cuts for the rich, subsidies for people buying million dollar homes.The Liberals lie outrageously and try to make it sound as if oil spills can’t happen or can be perfectly cleaned up and increased greenhouse gases are good for the environment. They do everything that can to keep the people from understanding oil spills can only be 5% cleaned up and bitumen spills 0%.
They improperly spend millions of taxpayer dollars advertising the Liberal party. The leader, Christie Clark drives me nuts with her education-free accent. It is like having a hillbilly for premier. She mispronounces almost every word. She demands payment just to get her ear. They have embarked on a massive site C hydro electric dam, which even they say is unnecessary. It has massive environmental impact.
2017-05-09 BC Election
Christie Clark of the Liberals just squeaked by with a minority government of 43 seats. The NDP got 41. The Greens 3.
All politicians win by lying, but Clark told planet-killing whoppers. She sold climate change denial. She assured us that there were no ecological downsides to mining and transporting fossil fuels. She promised that in the almost impossible event of a spill, state of the art technology would slurp it up in hours as if it had never happened. She lured us with promises of fabulous wealth and jobs from a century to come of betting the province’s economy on sunset fossil fuel extraction and transport. Perhaps the most outrageous lie was that building bitumen pipelines would be good for the environment and for CO₂ emissions.
The naïve public believed her because she was the premier and was a convincing folksy liar.
I think the NDP erred by focusing all its attention on free money schemes e.g. $10 a day daycare, a renter’s grant… These are just gimmicks to hand you money by taking it out of your other pocket. By downplaying the environmental side of its platform, NDP lost votes to the Greens. Their list of goodies was so long it was clear they could not fund it all without major new taxes. Leader John Horgan refused to address the anomaly.
During the election the Greens cosied up to the Liberals, taking money from them to split the NDP vote and refusing to criticise the atrocious Liberal environmental policies, the worst in Canada. They primarily attacked the NDP. That is where eventually they got their votes. However, had the Green party not existed, the anti-environmental Liberals would not be in power. Ironically, then the Greens are not a net force for the environment, though many of the people running for them are sincere environmentalists.
Will the Greens form a coalition with the anti-environment Liberals or the weakly environment NDP? If they pick the Liberals, their voters will feel betrayed and that could be the end of the Green party.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
5% for Schools
95% of Canada’s budget in Afghanistan is for killing Muslims and destroying buildings. 5% is for clinics and schools. Guess which part gets 95% of the TV coverage. If you are cynical, you might think even that 5% is purely for P.R. to sell the war.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Abolish-the-Canadian-Senate Petitions
RollUpTheRedCarpet.ca
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
HallOfShame
Abolish Canada’s Unelected, Unaccountable Senate
AbolishTheSenate.ca
Change.org petition
Reform or Abolish the Senate petition
GoPetition
Aboriginal Hunting Rights
The courts have given first nations people carte blanche to ignore all hunting regulations. This is an extremely stupid thing to do:
- The population of both aboriginal and non-aboriginal people has exploded since the treaties were negotiated. Native populations have grown 550%. Animals, such as caribou, that were once plentiful are now endangered. They cannot sustain unlimited hunting of the herds by anyone.
- The native people originally hunted with spears and bow and arrows. Today they use high powered rifles, high power magnification scopes, ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles), snowmobiles, polyethylene kayaks, outboards… Each hunter puts as much bigger dent in the stocks today than his grandfather did.
- There is far less wilderness than there used to be to sustain wildlife. Everyone must cut back, or all the species will go extinct.
So what should happen? Native people need to obey the same laws as everyone else to ensure that wildlife is sustainable. First national people must not be allowed cheating practices, such as hunting at night, that are catastrophic to the animals. It is reasonable to give native people a disproportionate share, just not one so big it destroys the resource for everyone.
The issue came to a head on 2017-03-27 when Rick Desautel, an American Sinixt First Nation man, killed an elk in Canada without a licence. Hunting at night is obviously dangerous to other hunters and puts excessive population pressure on the animals but first nations people won the right in court to do it. It is comparable to giving natives the right to drive drunk.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Accent
Why do people with extremely thick accents call in to radio shows much more frequently than people without?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Afghan War Budget
95% of Canada’s budget in Afghanistan is for killing Muslims and destroying buildings. 5% is for clinics and schools. Guess which part gets 95% of the TV coverage. If you are cynical, you might think even that 5% is purely for P.R. to sell the war.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Albertan Selfishness
Albertans think they can wish climate change away simply by ignoring it. By raising greenhouse gas emissions, they are trying to kill off the entire planet. The point of this human sacrifice is to create jobs in Alberta. The trade-off may be worth it to Albertans who apparently hate their kids and grandkids, but I assure it is not worth it to me or any other British Columbians.
You Albertans don’t have a right to kill me just because you are too stupid to find a legitimate way to earn a living. My life trumps your wallet. Since what Albertans do negatively affects all mankind, Albertans may not claim the decision is their’s alone.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Andrew Scheer
On 2017-05-27 Andrew Scheer was elected leader of the Conservative party of Canada. I think he is a dud. Why?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- He is a climate change denier.
- As a Catholic, he opposes gay marriage.
- As a Catholic, he opposes birth control.
- As a Catholic, he opposes abortion.
- As a Catholic, he opposes euthanasia.
- As a Catholic, he will probably use the government and schools to promote Catholicism.
- He has an unappealing appearance, fat, smug, stuffed shirt.
- The is a Conservative, the party of bigots.
Appeal of The Conservative Party
Why would you vote for the Conservative Party of Canada née CCRAP (Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party), pronounced see-crap?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- You are a fundamentalist Christian. You believe if the King James bible was good enough for Jesus it is good enough for Canadians and it should be forced down the throats of the heathens followed by wallop of castor oil.
- You are a bigot and want to make sure those uppity homos are kept in their place, preferably dead.
- Your young son is likely going to become serial murderer. He is already eviscerating neighbourhood cats. You want to ship him off to Afghanistan where he can rape, pillage, torture and murder to his heart’s content and still be treated like a national hero.
- You are allergic to pollen and you hate mosquitoes. If you had your way, all the wetlands and forests would be paved over for condos. Frogs and loons disturb your sleep. You wish someone would poison them all for you. Almost nothing matters to you but your investments. You have no kids. You could care less if the world ended the day after you died.
Assimilation
Just what should Canada expect in the way of assimilation from new immigrants?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source
- They should learn English or French.
- They should know what is legal and what is not legal at least as well as your average native-born Canadian citizen.
- They should understand that Canadian civil law trumps religious law, cultural customs and laws in their home country. They must understand that Canada is stricter on matters of sanitation, animal cruelty and child abuse than other countries.
- They should agree to educate their children with the curriculum of the Canadian school system. They may not home school their children, or send them to unaccredited or religious schools that do not teach the same core curriculum. Public school is the most efficient way to teach language skills to the next generation. Schools that repeatedly fail to teach the core curriculum should lose accreditation.
- They should be able to dress as they please, speak in whatever language they please, eat whatever they please, unless it is explicitly illegal.
- Judges should make sure there are no laws whose true purpose is just to harass some religious or national group.
Assimilation
There is a movement to delay assimilation by encouraging second generation Canadians to use the native tongue of their parents. Some want them taught by immersion in school. The myth of the Tower of Babel points out how language separates. Using minority languages separates. It makes the second generation immigrants think of themselves as separate from mainstream Canadians. We don’t need yet another excuse for feeling separate. People get ridiculously emotional about languages. They are just a scheme for aurally coding ideas.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Balanced Bullshit
It would be nice to build new pipelines to get our resources to market, to sell off the entire tar sands, to use state-of-the art ships that cannot leak or fail and reduce emissions. However, is just a politician’s pipe dream. Even one pipeline produces as much emissions as our entire emissions target. It is simply not possible to both reduce emissions and continue selling fossil fuels as usual.
You have to choose. Do you want to live, or do you want to be rich for a while then have your family go extinct? The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) lets politicians lie about a balanced approach. What they mean is wishful thinking approach.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Being Rob Ford
Imagine you were Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto, obscenely obese, male chauvinist pig, detested like Rush Limbaugh for your boorishness and person accused of dozens of unproved crimes. You have just been accused of being brain-fried enough to let yourself be filmed smoking crack. There are several witnesses to the film, but the alleged film itself is being held ransom for the highest bidder. This scandal has gone viral world wide. You are a laughing stock in every spot on the planet. Let us assume you are innocent. What would you do?
You would go to the police and ask them to test you for crack use (nothing else, please). If you are innocent you can wave the paper and confidently dismiss the video as a fake.
If you are guilty, this would not work. It would just confirm your guilt and someone would be sure to leak the result. So, you have to somehow destroy the master video and all copies. Pretty well the only way you could do that is to have all your tormentors killed. If they were killed, you would be the prime suspect. Your phone is probably tapped and you are probably being tailed just in case you try that. You might try outbidding the newspapers for the video. But those with the video are drug pushers (professional criminals) and would happily sell copies to other parties which would ruin you. So pretty much all you can do is hide out in the men’s room and pray for a miracle. Here’s a hail-Mary thought. Perhaps you could buy a copy of the video and bribe an expert or two to declare it a fake. Or you could just fess up and ask innocently, Doesn’t everyone smoke crack? What’s the big deal?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Bigoted Legionnaires
In 1965, the Royal Canadian Legion insisted on imposing a British flag on the French citizens of Canada. This is a bigotry that will mark them for centuries to come. Today, they cheered Canada’s illegal invasion of Afghanistan and cheered those who illegally aided and abetted the war as heroes. They are little different from Nazis. They are drunken, bigoted louts.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Blasphemy
Up until 2017 in Canada, criticising the Christian church was a crime, namely blasphemy, with a penalty of a year of hard labour.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Brat
I would like to send Christy Clark to bed without her supper. She asks why she should do more than Ontario to reduce greenhouse gases. I ask why should Christy Clark do only a small fraction of what is needed to save the planet. This is like squabbling about who is going to leave the building first when it in on fire.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Bush Twisted Chrétien’s Arm
Why did Canada attack and occupy Afghanistan? In his autobiography, My Years as Prime Minister, Prime Minister Chrétien explained that Bush twisted his arm and promised that if Canada joined the Afghan war, he would let them off the hook on the planned Iraq war. Chrétien caved to the threat. So the reason Canada is in Afghanistan is cowardice — refusal to stand up to the American bully.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Calgary Pride
I think Calgary’s plan to carry on with the Stampede right after the 2013 flood is unwise. Why?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- The city’s hotels and motels are needed for people displaced by the floods. There is no room for a large influx of tourists.
- Inviting tourists to a city that is dirty, soggy and unprepared to feed and house them will hurt tourism for years to come.
- There have been an unacceptable number of accidents harming both people and animals in recent years at the stampede. Trying to run the games on water logged grounds will make the problems even worse.
- The city should not be spending its stretched resources on a party when there are still people in dire need.
- The decision to go ahead no matter what is a childish ego trip of mayor Naheed Nenshi.
Canada and Israel
Canada’s foreign minister John Baird threatened Palestine demanding they not take their dispute with Israel to the world court. What a strange thing to do! Every time Palestinians kill an Israeli, Baird loudly condemns the violence, however, any time the reverse happens, he is silent. What makes this even worse is Israel kills 28 Palestinians for every Israeli the Palestinians kill.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Canada Day
Canada Day is a most excellent holiday. The weather is always perfect. You have complete freedom to do whatever you want. You don’t have to eat any special food. You don’t have to buy any gifts. You don’t have to go anywhere. You don’t have to visit anyone. You don’t have to pretend you are proud your ancestors beat the crap out of some other nation. There are some traditions developing like getting drunk, face painting and honking car horns, but these are still not mandatory.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Canada Post
Canada Post’s primary use in future will be delivering online purchases. To do that efficiently it should maintain massive automated warehouses and drop ship. Vendors will send product in bulk to the warehouses when the inventory is getting low. They will pay a storage fee for inventory. American and global companies could then cheaply ship to Canada. You could get overnight delivery as standard. From the point of view of customs, the goods would not to be considered to have entered Canada until they were sold to individuals.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Canada’s Budget
In Canada, the federal government is primarily responsible for defence. The provincial governments are primarily responsible for health care and highways. The municipal governments are primarily responsible for transit, roads, sewers, water, police, fire, regulating construction, homeless people… Oddly, the federal government has nearly all the money and the municipal governments have the least. The feds sometimes make gifts to the other governments for politically popular projects. Because they are awash in cash, the feds tend to spend rather frivolously, for example:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Stealth aircraft not suitable for use in Canada’s cold winters, that are intended for middle east aggressive wars from air craft carriers which Canada does not own.
- Day care for teenagers and children of stay-at-home mothers.
- Propaganda for the war of 1812.
- Tax cuts for the richest citizens.
Canada’s Federal Budget for 2016
Those criticising the budget for too much spending should specify just they would cut.
Those criticising the budget for not enough spending should specify just what they would cut to fund their pet project.
The cuts I would like:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
subsidised daycare
Our planet is overpopulated. We should not be promoting fecundity. Perhaps help those with adopted or special needs children. Why should those who cannot afford kids subsidise those that can?home buying subsidies
Renters are subsiding home owners much richer than they are.the military
It spends its money interfering in other parts of the world. Let it focus on what is actually needed for defence.subsidising Albertans
They were handsomely paid for decades. They should not have to go on the dole to get over a rough stretch. They were anything but generous when they were flush. On climate change, they say Screw everyone. Our short term profits are more important. They do not deserve a helping hand.Forcing expensive painful medical procedures
on people months from death.Tax loopholes and subsidies
for the well to do. The tendency is to coddle the rich since they give the biggest political contributions.
Canada’s Refusal
If Canada does not drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, some country will have to nuke us so we cannot continue to emit, or at least assassinate all the federal government MPs (Member of Parliaments). Emissions will come to be seen as an act of war.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Canada’s Shame
I have always been proud of Canada. We were a nation of decent people. However, we have lost that in recent years. I am now ashamed to be Canadian. There are three main things that changed:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- According to Jean Chrétien, in his autobiography, My Years as Prime Minister, Canada allowed itself to be bullied by George W. Bush into illegally attacking Afghanistan, which had done nothing to justify that.
- In our mad dash for cash, we were twice voted the worst country on earth vis a vis greenhouse gas emissions. Our federal government has made war on the environment in hundreds of ways. That trashes our fundamental moral value.
- Canada has become self-centred and selfish. We reneged on our promises to help third world countries.
Canada’s Trump
Kevin O’Leary is running for leader of the Conservative party. His life philosophy is rich people are better than everyone else, so they should be pampered rotten. Poor people are losers, so they deserve every misfortune that befalls them. The wealthy have absolutely no obligation to help those less fortunate, no matter what the situation. He sells this philosophy to the gullible poor and middle class by claiming all you have to do is listen to him and you will automatically join the elites and you too can join him pissing on the poor.
As a person, Kevin is arrogant, conceited, ideological, smug. He is prone to dichotomous thinking. He is completely convinced his eccentric right-wing ideas are right and everyone else is wrong. I imagine he had a mother who spoiled him rotten and endlessly praised him even for defecating. He demands everything his way. In contrast, politics in the art of constructing compromises.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Canadian Hypocrites
We Canadians react in horror at Mexican drug cartels executing children. Oddly we don’t bat at eye at our own troops killing thousands of times more children in Afghanistan and Iraq.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Canadian Nazis
We Canadians are doing the exact same thing in Afghanistan, naming waging aggressive (first strike) war that we hanged the Nazis for at the end of WWII (World War II).
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Canadian Official Bigotry
Starting in 1885, Canada banned aboriginal people from performing religious ceremonies and dances. This included sweat lodges (saunas). This was not repealed until the 1950s. Could you imagine removing any other groups religious and cultural rights that brazenly? Gay people were not permitted to congregate or dance in the 1960s.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source
Canadian Values
Bigotry is not a Canadian value. If you want to be a bigot, please find some other more compatible country to do it in.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Cannabis in Canada
I think what is motivating the federal liberal government is the following:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- A desire to redirect the profits from small illegal dealers and small legal dealers to a monopoly run by big business Liberal Party supporters.
- Tax revenue similar to that from alcohol and tobacco. The public tends to complain less about sin taxes.
- To project the image the Liberals are more young and with it than their competition.
Canonisation at Death
When people die, suddenly they turn into saints. A case is point is Peter Lougheed who is being lauded as a great Canadian. He spent his life championing the interests of Alberta at the expense of the rest of Canada.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Carbon Taxes
The Conservatives were such twits when it comes to carbon taxes. Let’s hope the Liberals do better. Unfortunately, they have not promised much.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- The Conservatives complained that carbon taxes raise revenue, a heavy burden on the taxpayer. But the government can choose to reduce other taxes to make the taxes revenue neutral if they so please.
- The Conservatives complained that carbon taxes raise prices of dirty fuels. But that is what they are supposed to do. Carbon taxes are intended to encourage people to switch to cleaner fuels.
- The Conservatives complained carbon taxes reduce consumption of dirty fuels. The companies that make dirty fuels won’t like it. That is what the taxes are for. We are doing this to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming. We have to do that even if it makes some people uncomfortable. You might say that survival is not mandatory, but that is only a Conservative view. Reducing greenhouse gases is not an optional frill. According to environment Canada, global warming’s destructive effect is second only to global thermonuclear war. Global warming sounds benign, but it is anything but. Science traditionally understates: black hole, big bang, the KT event, Little Boy, Tungusta Event…
- Conservatives pretended their hearts bled for those who could afford to switch away from dirty fuels or install better insulation. Well, use some of the revenue from the carbon tax to help out such people.
- Conservatives claimed a carbon tax would paralyse the Canadian economy. However, Sweden implemented a carbon tax back in the 1990s. Their emissions fell and their GDP (Gross Domestic Product) rose contrary to the predictions of the big oil lobby. There are other benefits to clean energy besides reducing CO₂ emissions.
Cause of Poverty
One in 5 children in BC lives in poverty. Why? Rich people would rather have additional luxuries than share to provide necessities. One in 2 children in single parent families in BC lives in poverty.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source
Chinese Gangsters
The Chinese are anti-democracy. They broke into the NRC (National Research Council) and stole Canadian state secrets. They torture people. They hold people without trial. Their Sinotec company ignored Canadian labour and safety laws. They are international thugs. Why on earth is Canada getting into bed with them and giving them a get out of jail free card to ignore Canadian law for 31 years?
~ Roedy
Choosing Immigrants
I think it is unwise of Canada to invite refugees from countries Canada has bombed. They will have a long-lived grudge against Canada.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Christian Bias
The CBC reported Gerald Stanley had been charged with the murder of Colten Boushie when Boushie pulled into Stanley’s farm to get help with a flat tire. They suggested Stanley could not be guilty because he was a Christian who ran a bible camp. This makes no sense. Statistically, Christian parts of North America have higher rates of murder, rape, robbery, divorce, unwed pregnancy and domestic violence. If anything, his Christianity should be considered indicative of his guilt. Christians believe all it takes is a religious ceremony to undo the effects of any crime, so naturally they are more prone to commit them.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Christy Clark
Christy Clark, the premier of BC, has put all the province’s eggs in the LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) basket. This is foolish. LNG is a sunset industry as are fossil fuels in general. We will stop using them long before the fuel is gone because of runaway climate change.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Christy Clark, Planetary Traitor
Christy Clark, the Liberal premier of BC has been pretending to be concerned about green house gas emissions. However, she promoted the Lelu natural gas pipeline and fracking project. It will produce more greenhouse gases than the entire greenhouse target for BC. All other carbon emission i.e. heat, thermal electric generation, cars, manufacturing, all other oil and gas pipelines etc. would have to come to a complete stop to meet the target.
She never did care about greenhouse gas emissions. Even though she has completely used up her quota, she is promoting even more pipelines, all the time claiming to be environmentally aware. She is completely willing to sacrifice the province, because when the consequences of her decisions come home to roost, she will no longer be in office.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source
Church Betrayal
The indigenous people of Canada perhaps are not familiar with Charlie Brown, Lucy van Pelt and the football. The churches have betrayed indigenous people over and over and over. It is foolish to trust them. They continue to con indigenous people with false promises and threats of what will happen after death in return for handing over a large share of their meager incomes. The churches are still resisting attempts to stop paedophile priests. Joining a church is sacrificing your children.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Climate Change Action
Science has told us, if we don’t leave 80% of fossil fuels in the ground, we will push the earth up above 2.0°C (3.6°F). This is well above the 1.5°C (2.7°F) tolerable limit. Rachel Notley ( NDP premier of Alberta) and Justin Trudeau (Liberal Prime Minister of Canada) refuse to accept this. They want to keep mining fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) as usual and building pipelines as if there no tomorrow. Of course, there will be no tomorrow if we let them procrastinate for short term political/financial reasons. They refuse to acknowledge the more we procrastinate, the more painful and expensive the remedy will get. They are behaving like Christians, where public policy is based totally on wishful thinking.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Climate Change Bamboozlement
We have a serious problem. Nearly all the politicians, in particular Trudeau, Notley and Clark are trying to bamboozle the public into thinking they can have their cake and eat it too, that you can simultaneously increase fossil fuel sales and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You have to choose one or the other. The laws of chemistry say when more fossil fuels are burned a precise amount of CO₂ is released. The only exception is carbon sequestration which is absurdly expensive.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Compensation Irrationality
We do two irrational things in relations with indigenous people:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Blame people living today for what dead people did to dead indigenous people.
- Pretend the harms done to dead indigenous people were endured by indigenous people living today, and demanding compensation from living people who had nothing to do with the harm.
Complacent Canadians
Canadians are complacent because the hot water has flowed, the food has flowed, the gasoline has flowed and the heat has flowed without interruption ever since the 1930s before most of us were born. We simply can’t conceive of something like global warming seriously interfering with our comfort.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Conservative Leader
On 2017-05-27, the conservative leadership convention elected Andrew Scheer as leader of the Conservative party. They used preferential voting. He lost every ballot until the last. He is young, fat and prissy. What policies can we expect?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- climate change denial.
- reduced spending and regulation on protecting the environment.
- trickle down economics to benefit the wealthy.
- reduced health care.
- preferential treatment for Christians.
- promotion of racism and bigotry.
- harassment of homosexuals.
- denial of euthanasia.
- denial of abortion.
Conservative Policy
Jason Kenney explained that the Conservative policy is to extract, sell and burn the entire tar sands and convert it to greenhouse gases. The rate at which this is done will be determined purely by market forces. This will be done in an environmentally responsible way. What is wrong with this picture? There is no possible way to create that much greenhouse gas in a way that is not extremely damaging to the planet. The amount of gas produced is determined by chemistry, not how carefully you extract the bitumen. Reducing spills helps the environment but has no effect whatsoever on reducing the total greenhouse gases produced from burning the bitumen.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Conservative Weasel
Deepak Obrai is an environmental pig running for the leader of the Conservative Party. He talks about how Canada puts only a fraction of the greenhouse gases into the world, therefore we need do nothing useful. Yet on a per capita basis we Canadians are about as bad as they get. Per capita emissions are what count. Everyone on earth has to do their bit no matter where they live. That we Canadians are collected politically into a fairly small country means nothing to nature. Nature does not see the borders. It just sees the emissions.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Consider Justin Trudeau
Justin Trudeau (1971-12-25 age:46), is young but he has the environmental understanding of a gentleman of Charles Koch’s generation. Even though the energy sector is only 3% of Canada’ economy, Trudeau believes it is the most important sector that will be forever the most important in the Canadian economy. He wants more pipelines, more oil, more resource extraction, more greenhouse gas emissions. He believes the purpose of life is to grow the economy (and as a side effect destroy the environment that sustains us.)
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Controlling Marijuana
There are Canadians who like controlling others. They think they have the right to stop others from smoking marijuana. They propose laws to restrict marijuana and to insist people be 24 years old before they can smoke it. They are under a delusion that by enacting laws they can control whether people smoke or do not smoke marijuana. All they can do is control whether people smoke clean or street marijuana (possibly contaminated).
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Crooked Housing Subsidies
Only the richest British Columbians can afford a house. Premier Christy Clark collects taxes from those that cannot afford house to help those that can. This is outrageous. Further, since there is no new affordable housing, all the subsidy does is drive house prices higher. The people who benefit are the super-rich home owners who have already benefited from the explosion in house prices.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Cross Purposes
Justin Trudeau’s climate change policies make no sense. Having a carbon tax while simultaneously promoting natural gas pipelines is like installing sprinklers in your house, then dousing everything in kerosene. Make up your mind. Do you want to reduce carbon emissions or not?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Cross-border Shopping
If you are considering a cross-border shopping trip to the USA, consider the following:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Your odds of being shot by a lunatic, criminal, drunk or by the police in the USA are much much higher in the USA than in Canada. I have been shot at there dozens of times. In 1995 I decided never to return.
- If the border people find so much as a seed of marijuana (or anything that looks like marijuana) in your car, perhaps dropped there a year ago by a hitchhiker, perhaps even by your pet bird, they will impound your car and fine you $10,000 and give you a criminal record.
- If you need to exchange goods or have a warranty problem, you will have to wait until your next trip to deal with it.
- You are helping the big American retailers put the Canadian ones out of business, which puts your neighbours out of a job.
Crying Wolf
Here in BC we have something called an Amber Alert. It a top priority manhunt with sirens on the radio and lighted highway message signs. However, they is invariably used when a divorced father does not return his children at the time promised to his ex. This a custody dispute, not national emergency. The police are crying wolf. The public will tune them out.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Cultural Appropriation
Copyrights allow individuals to claim exclusive rights to designs they created for 50 years. There are people trying to extend this idea. Groups of people who had nothing to do with creating designs, without doing any paperwork, can claim exclusive right to designs created by people long ago. Copyrights expire. Cultural appropriation is like a never-registered never-expiring loosey-goosey copyright. I think the idea itself is wrong. People claiming cultural appropriation rights did no work at all to create the designs. By now the works should be in the public domain.
Until somebody sues, you can’t check if a given design is considered protected. That is no way to run a legal system.
As for not being permitted to write about any culture but your own — nonsense. Anthropologists, historians and novelists have been writing about other cultures since day one. They have fish-out-of-water insights on the culture the natives do not. Natives take a jingoistic pride in their culture, and tend to refuse to examine its flaws. This is like Hitler demanding exclusive right to write about the German people. It is censorship, trying to force a narrow point of view on everyone.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Cultural Appropriation
I oppose the notion of cultural appropriation for many reasons:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- We already have copyrights and patents to deal with ownership of artistic works.
- It is only applied for indigenous Canadians. Imagine if the Irish insisted only people of Irish extraction could draw leprechauns or shamrocks. Imagine if only the Scottish were allowed to play the bagpipes. Imagine if only eastern Europeans could play polkas. Imagine if only the French could paint in the impressionist style.
- It is too vague. There are no laws. There is no way of telling if a given image is legit other than my using it and waiting for a ton of bricks to fall on you.
- Often traditional designs are in dispute. Those demanding exclusive control of them had no part in their creation.
- A better way to handle it is to grant exclusive rights to label art as produced by Canadian aboriginals/Inuits.
- The souvenir industry depends on selling cheap knockoffs made in China. Authentic art is way too expensive for children’s souvenirs.
Dancing Illegal In Canada
In Canada the government suppressed the first nations people by making it illegal for them to dance their traditional dances. It sounds absurd that the government would interfere that way, but back then Christians attempted to stop everyone from dancing and impose their sour view of life on everyone.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Day Care Subsidy
Overpopulation is the main cause of the world’s woes, such as environmental collapse, global warming, hunger, disease, war, extinctions, energy shortages, pollution and lack of housing. The main cause of overpopulation is couples who have more than two children. Most Canadian governments take money from responsible childless people to subsidise day care for overbreeders. We should not be encouraging irresponsible harmful behaviour.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Daycare Subsidy
I am opposed to the broad brush government daycare subsidy. Why?
- You should subsidise day care only for people who truly need the subsidy:
- Couples where both work, who own a house to raise their two kids are quite a bit more wealthy that average. It does not make sense for people with much lower income than theirs to be subsidising their relatively luxurious lifestyle.
- Traditional families, particularly indigenous families, where one or more parents stays home, or where there is an extended family to help care for the kids don’t need subsidised daycare. They need a bit of daycare to spell mom off, but they don’t need it five days a week, all day.
- The daycare subsidy is a very expensive government program. It is a regressive measure. It means the poor subsidise the rich.
- The broad subsidy is Justin Trudeau’s bone to throw to the rich to buy votes.
- Our planet is overpopulated. We should in no way encourage procreation.
The people who should be getting a subsidy are single working parents, or parents below the poverty line where both parents work. Most of the rest of the people who are getting the subsidy do not need it. The universal subsidy is a bit of legerdemain, giving people their own money and pretending it is a free benefit.
BC Premier Christy Clark went so far as to say the entire federal contribution to daycare should go entirely to indigenous people, who need general support, but usually not daycare.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Dealing with Welshers
Canada keeps betting the farm with deals with countries who have a history of ignoring their agreements — namely China and the USA.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Deliberate Smallpox Infection
I learned at an anthropology lecture that in the 1860s here in BC Canada, the British distributed blankets infected with slabs of skin stripped from natives who had just recently died of small pox to every native in the province. Men were assigned to make sure every single native touched what looked like a snakeskin. Within 10 days, 98% of the population were dead. The British who had used these primitive but effective biological weapons went to claim the lands of the people they had killed even before they were dead.
Many people dismiss as totally out of hand that anyone would deliberately spread HIV (Human Immuno-deficiency Virus) in Africa, as I accuse Ronald Reagan. They forget there is plenty of precedent.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Die in Office
The only way for a Canadian Prime Minister to avoid being vilified, betrayed and turned on by his party is to die in office.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Dirty Tricks
The Canadian oil industry, through the Manning Centre, a conservative think tank, funded a seminar where Conservative party campaign officials learned how to use Republican Party techniques to suppress the vote with fraudulent robocalls.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Don Meredith
For the first time in history, senators voters to expel a senator: Don Meredith. His crime, having consensual sex with a 16-year-old girl. I think this is ridiculous:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- It was only a few years ago Canada had an age of consent of 14. Prudish Christian Stephen Harper cranked it up to 18 to impose his religious superstitions on the country. Where that limit should be is an arbitrary matter of fashion.
- Sex has nothing to do with senatorial duties. In contrast, other senators got away with accepting bribes, corruption, stealing and padding expense accounts for millions of dollars without penalty.
Drug Addicts
I am very unsympathetic to drug addicts. The way I see it, they knowingly attempt suicide by a kind of Russian roulette. If they want to kill themselves, who are we to interfere? All programs to rehabilitate them have a very low success rate and are extremely expensive. I think we should take the money we are spending on rehab and spend it on prevention. Make sure kids starting as toddlers fully understand the consequences of the various types of drug use with the most accurate information available. Let kids see women morph from sexy teens to a toothless old hags over a year of meth use. Death is too abstract, so you must focus or more meaningful consequences. Take a lead from the successful anti-smoking programs.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Drunk Driving
Drunk drivers kill three people a day in Canada. The grief for the families is just as profound as if they had been mowed down with machine guns, but the law treats this as a relatively minor crime. In Roman times, crimes committed while drunk were punished doubly severely because there were two crimes committed: letting oneself get blotto to the extent they were not in control and the crime itself.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Drunk Driving
If someone drives drunk an kills someone and someone else drives drunk and does not kill someone, they both did the exact same thing wrong. The first also had an accident. There was no criminal intent to that. Therefore the criminal penalty for driving drunk should be the same as for driving drunk and killing someone.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Economic Policy
Canada’s economic policy during the petrodepression is to do nothing and wait for demand for fossil fuels to return. This is a foolish policy because once high prices return, demand will again drop off as everyone starts reducing fossil fuel consumption to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We should be taking this time to switch to clean energy.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Egg Basket
The feds and the provincial BC and Alberta governments succumbed to oil fever and put all their financial eggs in one basket. Then surprise, the bottom dropped out of oil prices. All of them deserve a spanking for gambling everything so recklessly on oil/natural gas.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Eggs In the Carbon Basket
It is unwise for British Columbia (or any other place) to put all its economic eggs in the carbon basket, namely coal, oil, bitumen and natural gas. Why? The whole market will collapse rather suddenly and we will be stuck paying for the infrastructure. We should have alternative supports for our economy in place. Why will it collapse suddenly?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- The cost of solar power is dropping steadily. Solar power has the advantage of requiring no fuel and having very little environmental impact. When the cost drops to a certain point, the world will see the writing on the wall and will stop investing in carbon-based fuels.
- The serious harmful effects of climate change are getting harder and harder to ignore. The public will be forced to stop wishful thinking that climate change is nothing to worry about or explaining it as some fantastic secret conspiracy that every scientist in the world, even those working for oil companies, is in on. Even public opinions on scientific matters are subject to herd think. There will be a relatively sudden and massive shift in opinion and the public will demand something be done to stop CO₂ emissions.
- The price of carbon based fuels will rise as we mine the easy carbon and have to go after the more expensive and impure carbon. The cost of measures such as carbon sequestration will push the price higher still. Carbon will have a harder and harder time competing with various green technologies, especially when the public realise how the CO₂ they emit is killing the earth.
Elected Senate
There is no point in electing a senate in Canada. No one would bother to vote because nothing the senate does matters. It is simply a tool for the PM to reward those who made pancakes over the years at campaign rallies or subtly manipulated the media with an cushy $132K per anum pension and even more cushy expense account.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Electoral Reform
Politicians always break their promises on electoral reform. When they are in opposition, they want a fairer system, solely because they think it will help their odds. Once they get into government, they don’t want it changed, because the existing system was what swept them into office. This is what happened with when the Justin Trudeau Liberals reneged on their promise for electoral reform.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Endangered Languages
Most Canadians are more concerned about a language going extinct, e.g. an aboriginal language, or a language spoken by immigrants than they are about whole species going extinct. I feel disgusted by this attitude.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Endlessly Guarding
Canada’s anthem mostly consists of repeating the phrase We stand on guard for thee. This paranoia about being attacked is old fashioned. I would hope we would sing about the wonderful things we do for our planet.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Equal Time
The program director of the CBC does not order equal time for homeopathy every time they have a show on medicine. He does not order equal time for astrology every time Quirks and Quarks has an astronomer on. He does not insist on inviting the creator of hottest Ponzi scheme to peddle his scam every time a they do a show on the market. Thankfully, he no longer invites a creationist to debunk evolution every time the latest findings in biology are explained. He does not invite NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association) for balance for every priest abusing a child story. But has no compunction about allocating ever-larger blocks of time to the world oldest con men — the clergy — to lie about whatever they please.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
EU trade Deal
In 2016-10, Canada concluded a trade deal with the EU. The Wollonians (a province of Belgium) blocked it until the last minute. Then everybody danced about to celebrate. They were thinking only of the economic benefits. They closed their minds to the effects on climate change. The agreement will increase transatlantic trade. Transporting goods back and forth will significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions. We have to start learning to grow and manufacture locally to reduce transportation emissions. Trade deals take us in the wrong direction.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Fast Ferries
One story that gets spun over and over in that the NDP did something terribly wrong to BC Ferries in the 1990s. Here is what actually happened:
The NDP commissioned fast ferries. The engineers erred, not taking into account how many floating logs there would be. Logs kept clogging the intakes.
The new Liberal government then sold the ferries for scrap mainly to make the NDP look bad. They could have used the ferries at reduced speed. They could have sold them for use somewhere the waters are log-free. They could have refitted them. They could have engineered something to deflect logs. They could have engineered some sort of log radar. The could have penalised logging companies for rogue logs. The Liberals wasted millions of dollars building completely new ferries from scratch.
In any case, this was not an NDP blunder, but an engineering blunder. The NDP had nothing whatsoever to do with the design of the water intakes on the ferries that were the source of the problem. If anyone did something deliberately stupid/malicious/wasteful it was the Liberals.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Fast Ferry Fiasco
The previous NDP government decided to go with the latest technology ferries that would drastically cut crossing time. However, the engineers failed to account for the large numbers of floating logs on the route, a side effect of the logging industry. On the trial runs, the logs would jam the water intakes on the ferries. Eventually, they decided the only way to handle this would be to run the ferries at reduced speed, negating the point of the advanced technology. The opposition Liberals heaped derision and won the next election. Instead of using the ferries, they sold them at pennies on the dollar for scrap metal and ordered new conventional ones built in Germany. I am still annoyed at the Liberals for wasting so much government money just to make the NDP look bad.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Fentanyl-laced Marijuana
Christie Clark issued a false news report that marijuana in BC was contaminated with fentanyl. Police and hospital groups called her on the lie. She excused her lie saying fentanyl in theory could be in marijuana, and she lied to avoid taking even the tiniest risk. It could also be in sugar, corn flakes or rum. There are enough real dangers without concocting hypothetical ones. When people put their energy into avoiding imaginary dangers, they tend to pay less attention to real ones. Clark was crying wolf. That erodes the credibility of the health authorities.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
First Nations Prosperity
Something does not make sense. Land claims have awarded over 50% of the territory in Canada to natives. Yet natives are only 4% of the population. They should be the richest people in Canada. Yet their children suffer third world level poverty. What is going on?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
First Nations Vote
Traitors to the First Nations have told them then have almost no power, so they should make a statement by not voting. That gives them zero power. It also ensures politicians will ignore them. People who do not vote do not matter. It also blackens the reputation of First Nations people as too lazy to vote.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
First Past The Post
Canada has an old-fashion first-past-the-post voting system. It tends to favour the front runner. Even if the front runner gets only a little over 1/3 of the popular vote, the system tends to give him all the seats. Even if a splinter party gets 20% of the popular vote, they will still get no seats at all. It is a sort of winner take all that swells the head of the government into thinking it has a mandate for all its unpopular policies.
Politics is mainly controlled by vote splitting. If there are two left wing parties and one right wing party, the right wing party will win a majority. If there are two right wing parties and one left wing party, the left wing party will win a majority. Things change only when parties collapse or merge or new parties form. They can also change when the lead party commits suicide with scandals.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
First Past The Post
Canada’s party system and first-past-the-post electoral system means we Canadians elect a dictator for at least four years whose policies are acceptable to only about 10% of the population.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
First Past The Post
In Canada, the first-past-the-post electoral system exaggerates the degree of support that the Liberal and Conservatives parties enjoy. Both parties are owned by the corporations and the corporations strongly support the status quo. People who would prefer policies of the other parties are frustrated at not having their numbers reflected in seats in parliament. The corporations go so far as to keep the other parties out of public debates, hoping to convince the public they are not legitimate choices.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Fluoride
Sodium Fluoride is a rat poison. Paranoid people become highly alarmed when they learn it is added to the water to harden tooth enamel, even though it is added in minuscule quantities. In a similar way, copper is added to vitamin pills, even though it is a poison in large quantities. There are many things that are good for you in small quantities and harmful in large quantities, e.g. lithium and selenium. However, the paranoid are not mollified.
Even though they have no evidence, these paranoid people sometimes have enough political power to block water fluoridation. The result is children have more cavities.
What kind of compromise is possible?
Put the fluoride in milk or fruit drinks. Then people can take it or leave it.
There are some other advantages of this change:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- We can precisely control the dose.
- We will be able to get higher doses than were available in the one-size-fits-all water dose.
- We don’t contaminate water used for chemistry or industry with fluoride.
- We don’t flush fluoride into the environment.
- We don’t contaminate the water for other purposes such as raising tropical fish.
- Natural selection helps weed out the crazies by increasing dental infections.
Forced Christianity
The Canadian government kidnapped 7-year-old indigenous children, put them in residential schools, cut off contact with their parents, and forced them to adopt Christianity. This was clearly unconstitutional. The horror is the indoctrination was so severe, that even when these grown children understood what was done to them, still clung to Christianity. I hope that indigenous groups unite encourage these abused children and their descendants to reject Christianity.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Foreign Worker Program
Who benefits from the foreign workers’ program?
- The foreign workers get paid better than they would back home.
- Employers. They get docile workers willing to work for well below the going rate. They can dismiss the workers at any time without cause and there will be no outcry. Some companies even make Mandarin a job requirement as an excuse to exclude Canadian workers.
- The Conservative Party. The corporations reward them with contributions for allowing them to hire foreign workers.
Who is harmed by the foreign worker program?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Domestic workers who remain unemployed. Those who are employed have to work for less because of competition from foreign workers.
- The foreign workers are not likely to be as well trained. They are not likely to fully understand English instruction. This means the products they produce will likely be of lower quality.
Foreign Worker Scam
The reason foreign worker visas are abused is that employers are allowed pay considerably below what they would pay a Canadian worker. As soon as they have to pay equally, then we will get only foreign workers with special skills. The current system rips off both the foreign worker and the domestic worker he displaces. It is all for the benefit of the corporation doing the hiring.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Fortunate
I felt so fortunate to live in Canada when the radio news announced there was a pothole on one of the local bridges.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Fossil Fuel Disaster
The Canadian bitumen gold rush is not only an environmental disaster, it is nuts from a financial point of view as well Why?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- The USA is reducing its consumption of crude and bitumen, moving to fracking its own reserves.
- The world is gradually waking up to how much damage Canada is doing with its bitumen and coal exports creating greenhouse gases. They are eventually going to stop buying and pressuring us to stop selling. We will be stuck with all this incredibly expensive infrastructure.
Fossil Fuel Promotion
All across Canada the federal and provincial governments are promoting new fossil fuel projects such as oil drilling, fracking, liquid natural gas plants, pipelines… Have people never heard of the imminent catastrophe of climate change? Pretending to ignore it does not make it go away. Even one pipeline puts out more greenhouse gas than our entire greenhouse gas target. What we are doing is planning to overshoot the target we promised to the other nations of earth by hundreds of times. At least we should be honest we are planning to deliberately sabotage the world for short term financial gain.
Eventually, we will smarten up and be forced to moth ball these projects to stop their greenhouse gas emissions and because the rest of the world has gone green we will no longer have customers. This is hardly good economics.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Fossil Fuel Reduction
Premier Christy Clark treats climate change as an optional extra to deal with once everything else is funded. That is simply wrong. Climate change is #1. If we don’t get on top of it, we all die. No other issue is that pressing.
Premier Clark always talks about oil and bitumen spills, using deceptive language making it sound as if spills are no problem. The Deepwater Horizon spill using state of the art technology could only recover 5% of the oil. For a bitumen spill state of the art technology can only recover 0% because bitumen sinks. She wants to increase tanker traffic by an order of magnitude, but insists there will be no increase in collisions. Everyone knows collisions increase when you squeeze ten times as many cars on the road, ditto for tankers.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Free Money
BC politicians employ a new free money dodge prior to each election. They give people, usually the rich, a small cash grant of their own tax money and congratulate themselves on their generosity.
Another tactic is to announce that taxes are being microscopically lowered, then substantially raise the regressive MSP (Medical Services Plan) fees and congratulate themselves on their financial wizardry.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Freedom of Speech Fragile
During the Great Depression, people were jailed just for saying that the capitalist system was not working and we should try a communist one. So freedom of speech really meant freedom to agree with the ruling Conservative party.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Gnats and Camels
When you ride the Skytrain in Vancouver, a vending machine gives you a timestamped receipt you are supposed to keep to show later if challenged. Adrian Dix, the leader of the opposition, could not present a sufficiently recent receipt when he was challenged. Christy Clark, the premier, bragged she had been balancing the budget and was on track to making the province debt-free when in actuality she had increased the debt at all-time record levels. Guess which story dominated the air waves. The public can understand a Sky Train ticket, but they roll their eyes at multi-billions of dollars.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source
Growth Slowdown
The one piece of good news of the slow economic growth in Canada is every scientist will tell you endless growth is not sustainable. You can’t keep squeezing more and more out of earth indefinitely, no matter what technology you invent. The sooner we learn to live with zero growth the better. Zero growth just means we stop beating the environment ever harder. For some reason no economists understand this.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Harjit Sajjan
Every time Canada’s Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan opens his mouth, I am more horrified. I want him removed from office. Why? He is a career soldier. He believes the duty of soldiers is to fight someone. He has believed from a young age that fighting people is an honourable pastime. He said that Latvia is a good fit. He want to fight someone, just for the adventure, and is seeking a suitable opportunity. We need a defence minister who tries to avoid conflict, not one who engages in it for something to do.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Heavy Lifting = Killing
The Conservatives and Liberals refer to the slaughter in Afghanistan as heavy lifting as if it were some work we were doing on behalf of the people of Afghanistan. We are killing their men, women and children. We are stealing the lithium used for advanced batteries. We have imposed the crookedest drug lord on the planet, Hamid Karzai on them so we can profit by the trillion dollar a year heroin trade. Heavy lifting, my ass!
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Help Yourself
You may have noticed how quotations pop up at random all over my website, aimed at waking people up to what Canadian politicians are up to. You are welcome to use any or all of the quotations in my quotation collection in a similar way on your own website. To get your point across these days, you have to shrink it to a sound bite.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Hitler the Clown
During the 1930s people saw Hitler as a plump, pompous buffoon with a Jones for all things military. My parents told of watching movie shorts of his speeches in German. The audience howled with laughter. Remind you of anyone?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Homelessness Easy to Solve
There are only about 0.5% of the population homeless in Canada, about 1 in 200. Families manage to support an extra 2 or 3 people, with some strain. So it would be no strain at all for 200 people to band together to support one homeless person at the poverty line. So the reason we don’t end homelessness is not economic. We don’t want to end it. We want the homeless to suffer because we imagine they are so lazy they don’t deserve life. We want them to suffer so badly, that we are willing to pay more for the homeless-tormenting status quo which costs considerably more than providing housing. We persist in this spiteful belief even when we notice that the number of homeless people almost exactly matches the shortfall in affordable housing needed to house everyone. It is like a game of musical chairs.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Hosedown Suffices
Let’s say that from some ghastly accident you were covered in inches of cattle feces and that you had been forced to eat food contaminated with cattle dung. How long would you spend cleaning yourself before you felt sufficiently clean to cook or let your lover lick you? How thorough would you be? The slaughter houses of Canada and the meat inspectors consider a quick hosedown with cold water completely sufficient. Obviously, the root cause of the meat recalls is the filthy conditions of feed lots.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
House Buying Subsidy
There are a number of reasons why Christy Clark’s (Liberal Premier of BC) no-interest loans to buy houses are not a good idea:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Where does the money to issue the loan subsidies come from? From the taxpayer generally. The lowest income people subsidise the fat cats who can afford houses.
- There are not enough houses to go around. So that boon from Ms. Clark will be used to bid up house prices. Who benefits? The wealthy house sellers.
- If Ms. Clark were not trying to buy votes from the wealthy, she would use that money to subsidise more house construction, primarily for people of lower economic levels.
- Taxing people then giving it right back to them is the most blatant form of vote buying.
Housing Shortages
Canada has a problem a shortage of affordable housing. The problem started when the federal government got out of the low-cost housing business. Politicians keep suggesting schemes to solve the problem by granting money to homebuyers. This is wrong headed for two reasons:
- Putting money into the pool just drives up prices.
- The money for the grants comes from people poorer than the people receiving them.
To solve the problem you need more affordable housing near where people work. There are several ways to do that:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Move the work to areas with plenty of low-cost housing.
- Encourage higher density: apartments, townhouses, duplexes, multi-family homes.
- Government builds affordable housing or arranges taxes to encourage others to do it.
- Penalties for wasting housing/land, e.g. vacant homes or two people living in a home designed for ten.
How To Pay For MSP
You have to pay for MSP either by income tax or fees. You still pay the same dollars. The advantage of paying by income tax:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- You save the overhead of collecting fees.
- It is one less bill to pay each month.
- It is progressive. The richer you are, the more you pay.
- One less bureaucracy to fight with.
- Doctors and hospitals don’t have to think about whether MSP payments are up to date.
Hunting
So long as wildlife and fish populations are dwindling I think we should ban all hunting including sport hunting and aboriginal subsistence hunting.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Hunting Rights
We harbour a romantic notion that just because an aboriginal person’s great grandfather hunted without limit, that the great grandson should too. Consider that everyone’s great grandfather also had unlimited hunting rights. All he had to do was show up on Canada’s shores. But much has changed. Many of the animals and fish are on the brink of extinction. There are far more people than ever before. It is simply not practical for anyone to hunt without limit. We all have to abide by science-based quotas to protect the animals.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Huntingdon’s
People with children with Huntingdon’s are demanding extra government money, even though symptoms do not show up until later in life. I don’t think we should give them money. Why?
- Huntingdon’s kids take no more care than other kids.
- The parents deliberately infected their kids. They knew they were carriers and selfishly had kids anyway. They should have adopted or even better gone without kids.
I would be in favour of mandatory sterilisation of carriers or mandatory screening of embryos. It is unforgivable to inflict Huntingdon’s on a child.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Ideologues
I am so frustrated with members of the Conservative Party when they rally against the legalisation of marijuana. They have utterly no interest in the real life experience of other jurisdictions that have already done it. They argue based purely on ideology and fevered imagination.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Idle No More
The Idle No More movement should take a page from the gay lib movement. They need to make clear, precise demands, not just vaguely complain about the current state of affairs. Further, making petty, ego-driven, irrelevant demands such as insisting the figurehead governor general attend a meeting, just weakens their case.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
If it Happened To Us
If the Russians invaded Canada, killing millions of people in the process and took our natural resources, made our country export $1 trillion in illegal drugs each year, built a pipeline from north to south across the entire country without paying anyone a penny of compensation, installed a drug lord as the puppet government and then a Russian soldier came to you door and said in broken English We are here to help you. what would you think? Why then do Canadians and Americans invading Afghanistan expect a different reaction?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Ignoramus
In Canada, the fastest way to label yourself an ignoramus is to say Kwee’-bec instead of Kay-bec’ for Quebec.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Ignoring Climate Change
In the 2013-05-14 provincial election in BC, candidates avoided ever talking about climate change, even though it is the biggest threat to the economy and health. They did, however, debate fossil fuel, megaprojects whose viability depended on the world continuing to ignore climate change. Why?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Climate change is a downer and politicians always like to project an optimistic image no matter what the projected future.
- Big Oil has convinced many non-scientific people (mostly Christians) that climate change is controversial. A politician does not want to give unscrupulous opposition the ammunition to tar him as a flake.
- Dealing with climate change means making big changes in the way we live. People are like small children. They simply refuse to give up any goody they are used to, no matter the reason why they must. Politicians do not want to be the one to deliver the bad news.
Illegitimate Military
When the Canadian military attacked Afghanistan, unprovoked, it lost all honour and legitimacy. We sank to the level of the Nazis who invaded countries simply because they wanted their resources. In his autobiography, My Years as Prime Minister Prime Minister Jean Chrétien explained that the only reason we did so was because George W. Bush twisted Chrétien ’s arm, saying that by capitulating, Bush would let Canada off the hook for the coming invasion of Iraq. Chrétien did not divulge just what the threat was, but the result of capitulation to the bully was the selling of Canada’s soul. I hate living in a country as degenerate as Nazi Germany or the United States.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Immigration Criteria
There are so many refugees and immigrants wanting to come to Canada, we need some sort of criteria to choose which ones to let in. Increased population brings all sorts of problems, including degraded environment, the need for more housing, schools, hospitals… yet there are reduced resources to support the extra people. Immigration acts much like an increased birth rate. How can you reduce the damage?
I suggest adding family size to the list of criteria for immigrants.
Family Size Notes 10+ These families have a cultural or religious tradition of keeping the wife perpetually pregnant. Canada has the duty of educating these immigrant children and giving them health care. When they become adults they will likely continue the tradition of large families, putting even more pressure on the environment. This unrestrained breeding also has the effect of rapidly changing the cultural balance of the country which leads to social unrest. These families are hard to house, since Canadian housing is designed for much smaller families. Two adults plus two kids These are environmentally responsible people, assuming they do not have even more children. sterilised singles or couples (vasectomy or tubal ligation) with no kids These families bring two workers. Canada has no obligation to educate or care for any kids. They put minimal impact on the environment. They contribute without any obligation to care for their kids. These would be prime immigrants. Obviously, there are many other factors to consider as well.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Impasse
In BC Canada, in the summer of 2014, veteran mediator Vince Ready declared an impasse in the labour dispute between the BC Teachers and the BC Government. The dispute has dragged on and on. Oddly, the primary issue is not money, but class sizes and the requirement teachers handle mentally and physically disabled students in their classrooms without help. For such a protracted dispute, one or more parties must have a vested interest in stretching the dispute out.
The government has come up with a scheme of paying parents during the strike $40 a day per child of free money from the pockets of taxpayers who do not have children. I suspect they hope this income distribution scheme will be politically popular. By stalling, the government will eventually have an excuse to legislate the teachers back to work 100% on the government’s terms. Why would they negotiate?
The BC Liberals are ideologically similar to the Tea Party. They are opposed to governments offering services including health care and education. They could well be trying to destroy the public school system and drive students to private schools owned by Liberal supporters.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Importance of the CBC
When I was living on a cabin on Quadra Island, CBC radio was my constant companion. When I was snowed in for days at a time, it was my contact with the outside world. The CBC was by far my most important government service. City dwellers can’t possibly appreciate its importance under such circumstances.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Indigenous Bias
3% of Canadian women are indigenous. 38% of incarcerated Canadian women are indigenous.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Indigenous Education
Originally, the federal government ran indigenous residential schools. The schools were a disaster.
The federal government replaced them with conventional schools, but funded them at only 50% of the budget for the education of white children. These too were a disaster.
Then the feds decided to give the money to band councils. The councils starved the schools and kept the money for themselves. There was little oversight to stop them.
Now, on 2016-12-16, the feds plan to give the money to indigenous school boards, again presumably without oversight. What are the odds this will work?
Provincial governments have been doing a great job of education for over 100 years. They decide the funding and locally-elected school boards handle the details. Why not let the provincial governments handle indigenous education? They know what they are doing.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Indigenous Languages
I have often wanted to learn an indigenous language, simply to understand how different a language could be from English and how its grammar worked. I don’t however, recommend this for indigenous people. They would be far better to put that effort into learning English and how pronounce English with the Canadian equivalent of a received accent. More than anything, that investment will help them get a good job. Only after they have done that should they tackle a historic language.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Indigenous Religions
People who frequently criticise Christianity or Islam usually pass over indigenous religions. This is because:
- Indigenous people rarely try to impose their religious beliefs on others.
- Indigenous religions are respectful of the environment.
- There is not much information about them easily available.
There are a few things about them I do not like:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- They are based on woo and myth the same as any other religion.
- They encourage people to waste time with prayer, ceremonies, drumming… that give the illusion of doing something useful.
- They treat tobacco as a sacrament rather than a poison.
- They bully teen boys to become shamans.
- They use them as a way to reverse discriminate against not-aboriginals.
Insurgents
The CBC, for propaganda purposes, repeatedly refers to the Taliban in Afghanistan as insurgents. This is incorrect. I have written them many times about the error. Insurgents are people like the Tamil Tigers rebelling against an established government. The Taliban were the established government before the Canada and the USA invaded and set up the Karzai puppet government. This is analogous to what Hitler did in France in WWII. Thus the proper name for the Taliban is the resistance. A cowardly news organisation could simply use the neutral term Taliban to avoid confronting the propaganda czars.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Irrational Indigenous People
The European settlers treated the indigenous people very badly. Most of us are only dimly aware of a few of the atrocities:
- The drove the natives off their land into small enclaves of marginal land.
- The killed off the game and fish the indigenous people used for food.
- They poisoned their rivers.
- They gave the natives blankets laced with smallpox.
- They made the potlatch and other ceremonies illegal.
- They slaughtered entire villages.
- They kidnapped their children and put them in residential schools, where their native languages were beaten out of them. They could not see their parents. They were sexually and physically abused.
- They were not allowed to vote.
The people who perpetrated these crimes are nearly all dead. The indigenous people are so outraged at the assaults, they refuse to acknowledge this. They keep kicking the current generation of Canadians in the teeth. This generation had nothing to do with it. They are almost as outraged. Blaming young Canadians is as silly as blaming young Germans for the crimes of Hitler.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Job Creation by Firing
Does anyone else think it odd that government job creation programs invariably include firing government workers, the only jobs the governments directly control?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Justin Trudeau and Climate Change
Justin Trudeau is a nitwit. He admits that dealing with climate change is mandatory, but not today. Climate change will be even harder to deal with tomorrow because we will have dug ourselves in even deeper. Greenhouse gas emissions are cumulative. Every tonne we emit today will be haunting us for another 1000 years. What does he think is going to happen that will make climate change easier to deal with if he procrastinates?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Justin Trudeau, the great phony
Trudeau has exposed himself as a great disappointment, phony and liar. He talks about pipelines and fossil fuel development as a necessary part of his plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is no way on earth you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions with more fossil fuel burning or more pipelines to transport fossil fuels to be burned in China. If you burn more, you have more emissions. If you burn less, you have fewer emissions. You can’t possibly burn more and have fewer emissions. It would violate the laws of chemistry.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Kinder Morgan Dispute
The dispute between BC and Alberta over the Kinder Morgan Bitumen Pipeline cannot be resolved while Albertans Rachel Notley and Jason Kenney keep pretending to be dense and claim this is a trade war. The dispute has nothing to do with trade. It is about Rachel Notley plotting to destroy the environment along BC’s coastline as a side effect of marketing her tar sands oil. Why should BC sacrifice its world-famous coastline? Why should it sacrifice the associated tourism? Why should it sacrifice the recreation uses? Why should BC be stuck with the costs of cleanups? Alberta gets all the goodies and BC gets all the downside. It is simply unfair to ask BC to sacrifice so much for Alberta.
Tar sands oil is the dirtiest oil possible when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Alberta should not be selling it at all. They are harming the entire planet. Tar sands oil is the costliest oil to produce both in terms of money and energy. It is so uneconomical, it only pays to produce it when oil prices are over $50 a barrel. It cannot compete with $25 a barrel American shale oil.
If Alberta were acting ethically, they would find technology to ensure there would be no pipeline and tanker spills and any spills could be efficiently cleaned up. Instead they have impugned BC’s motives, blocked BC wine exports and threatened to cut off oil. They dishonestly refuse to acknowledge there is any environmental problem at all.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Kudos For Jean Chrétien
Prime Minister Chrétien resisted Bush’s arm twisting to get Canada to join in the illegal Iraq war. However, he caved on the pressure to join the Afghan war. Later, he ratted on Bush in his autobiography My Years as Prime Minister. This is still a better integrity record than other Canadian prime ministers and world leaders.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Land Claims
When the white people came to Canada, they gradually took over all the land. Then the courts made them give about 50% of it back. As of 2011, the First Nations people accounted for only 4.3% of the population.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Learning Cree
There is a fad in Canada now for indigenous people to learn the original local dialect of their pre-colonial language. Learning a few words of Cree is a fun way to you connect with ancestors and relatives, but learning Cree as your only language will not:
- Let you communicate with very many people, not even other indigenous people in other parts of Canada.
- Learn though books.
- Use the Internet.
- Help you get a job.
Be careful about romanticising learning Cree so that you encourage people to teach their kids Cree without English.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Learning English
I was greatly distressed hearing some young Cree speak English. The grammar was so bad, none of them would ever get a desk job. I wondered what the problem was:
- is that the way everyone speaks that way in the community. Students copy that rather than English-class English.
- is there a problem with poor quality English instruction?
- is there a problem motivating students to learn to speak English properly?
- is it that speaking correctly has a stigma — speaking white/talking posh?
Perhaps what we need are Cree role models speaking English correctly on DVDs (Digital Video Discs).
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Liar Hiebert
Conservative MP (Member of Parliament) Russ Hiebert moved a private members’ bill that passed 2012-12-13. It requires unions, but not other similar organisations, to report very detailed information about their activities and expenditures, including who and when they lobbied. This is clearly a measure designed to harass unions. But in an interview on the CBC As It Happens, Mr. Hiebert claimed he did it to benefit the unions, to increase public confidence in them. No unions asked for this and no businesses did either. His bill was the brainchild of anti-union think tanks. His lying is doubly galling because it insults my intelligence.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source
Liar McKay
Defence Minister Peter McKay knowingly lied that the bill for the Libya mission was under $50 million when it was actually over $800 million. The good news is this means he is at least aware Canadians are not keen on extravagant military spending. He excused his lie claiming it was a political truth. I wonder if this creative use of language will be considered parliamentary language, The honourable member from Calgary Southwest is stating a political truth when he claims there is no possibility of a bitumen spill from the pipeline..
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source.
Liar Peter Kent
I am so ashamed of my fellow Canadians. How stupid can they be to be spooked by a professional liar, Peter Kent, Canada’s Environment Minister and shill for big oil, claiming that any attempt to deal with greenhouse gases means starving and freezing to death while ignoring 99% of the world’s scientists warning them of the real dangers of a runaway greenhouse effect.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Low Oil Prices
I have to laugh at Canadians in general wringing their hands at low oil prices and praying for them to rise. They forget that nearly all Canadians are oil consumers, not oil producers.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Lying About Climate Change
Politicians, such as Justin Trudeau, Christy Clark and Rachel Notley have all tried to bamboozle the public into thinking you can simultaneously increase fossil fuel sales and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The laws of chemistry say you always increase greenhouse gases if you increase the burning of fossil fuels. There is no way to simultaneously increase fossil fuel burning and lower greenhouse gas emissions save by very expensive carbon sequestration used only in Saskatchewan on an experimental basis.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Mandatory HIV Disclosure
Canadians are debating whether they should put people in jail who fail to disclose their HIV status to their sexual partners. I argue this is unfair, discriminatory and counter productive.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- At least be consistent. If you are going to prosecute for not revealing status, you should jail parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Also prosecute people who travel on busses with airborne diseases, or anyone else who actions endanger the health of others. Why just single out HIV ?
- Revealing HIV status can be dangerous. Ignorant people will attack you when you reveal your HIV+ status even if you have done nothing whatsoever to endanger them. They are afraid of water you poured, dishes you washed, getting a hug, getting a massage… They are even afraid to be in the same room. It is a bit much to make laws demanding people endanger themselves. Insisting on revealing will convince people not to get tested, bad news all round. We need some serious education to reduce the danger of revealing.
- The crazy thing is straight people have unprotected sex all the time, thinking they are immune. Young females are the fastest growing group getting infected. They figure if they have not got it so far, they must be safe. However, it is one strike and you are out. Having unprotected sex with strangers is the problem, not having protected sex with someone with HIV.
- People test negative and think they are safe. It can take 6 months for infection to show up on a test.
The best ways to prevent HIV are:
- safe sex
- limiting your partners
- taking Truvada prophylaxis.
The worst ways are:
- trusting your partner to warn you. The most dangerous people don’t know they are HIV+. They have the highest viral loads since they are not taking retrovirals. If you rely on your partners to warn you, almost certainly, you will have HIV+ within a year if you are sexually active.
- The ironic problem with a disclosure law, is it creates a false sense of security. People foolishly depend even more on disclosure, even though it almost completely ineffective.
- If you have been tested HIV+, there is a good chance you will be taking an antiretroviral cocktail. If all goes well, this will reduce your viral load to undetectable levels. In other words, it is quite unlikely you will pass on HIV. On the other hand, an untested person who is HIV+, will not be taking antiretrovirals. They will have a high viral load, and especially with the wild infectious strain. They are very likely to pass HIV.
- The practical assumption in the gay world is, if anyone has unprotected sex, they are already HIV+ or plan to soon be. Each person is responsible for his own health and safe sex practices. Relying on strangers is fool-hardy.
- I went to an HIV support group. I was the only one there in favour of disclosure. Keep that in mind if you are relying on strangers to warn you.
- Everything I have said applies primarily to one-time casual encounters. For marriages, and long term relationships, I think partners are under much greater obligation to disclose.
- In summary, punishing HIV+ people for failure to disclose has almost nothing to do with reducing the transmission of HIV. It is all about religious homophobia. It is a fig-leaf excuse to persecute homosexuals.
Marijuana
Canada is preparing to legalise marijuana. Prune-faced busybodies are screaming that this will cause brain damage and every other imaginable social ill. Even if they were correct, it does not matter. We do not have a choice between people smoking marijuana and abstaining. The choice is between people smoking contaminated street marijuana of unknown potency, and smoking pure marijuana of known and regulated potency.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Marijuana Deadline
Prime Minister Trudeau wants to legalise marijuana by 2018-07-01. All manner of people are claiming this is far too soon. They claim even the most picayune details of the legislation must be ready on day 1. I think we should work out the fine details based on some practical experience with legal marijuana, not purely on the speculation of nervous nellies. What these people are doing really is trying to endlessly delay the legalisation because they oppose legalisation.
Everyone forgets there are costs to the delay — young people needlessly incarcerated and given criminal records, wasted police effort that could be spent on serious crimes and exposure to contaminated marijuana and marijuana of wildly varying and unknown potency.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Marijuana Economy
The Canadian marijuana industry is worth each year in exports. That is larger than wheat or fishing. 50% of the economy of Grand Forks a lumber town in BC, is generated by marijuana. Since it is illegal, it pays no taxes. Obviously the dealers would like to keep it that way, prices high and no taxes.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Martha Hall Findlay
Martha Hall Findlay (oil lobbyist and MP in the federal Liberal party) is like an alien. All that matters to her is money. She pretends not to notice her intended destruction of the most beautiful harbour in the world. It is not her harbour, so she does not give a damn. She ignores that she is foiling the rest of the world’s intent to lower greenhouse gas. She wants to go full bore increasing it. That his behaviour is lethal does not register on her. She is as dense as Donald Trump. She is bedazzled to gagahood by oil profits. Anyone who puts profit ahead of survival of the planet needs to seek counseling.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Martha Hall Findlay
Martha Hall Findlay is an oil lobbyist and MP in the federal Liberal party. She pooh poohs the danger of there ever being an oil tanker spill on the grounds they are not common now. I don’t think Martha Hall Findlay has ever shopped at a mall during the Christmas rush. You can avoid collisions in August without trouble, but when you pack the shoppers in, collisions are inevitable. The same is true of tankers. Just because we are not having weekly collisions now, does not mean we will be free of them after we pack in six times as many tankers, and even more in future and climate change brings us even more extreme weather.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Massive Mistreatment of First Nations
I had no idea how jaw-dropping unfair we Canadians have been to the indigenous people. The indigenous people started with all the land and ended up with only a tiny fraction of it, but the conniving that made that happen is just a tiny part of abuse of power. What really revolts me is not the villainous bigotry of a few Canadians but the institutional bigotry of the majority, reflected in the grossly unfair Indian Act. Here are some of the amendments made to it over the years:
- 1881: Amended to make officers of the Indian Department, including Indian Agents, legal justices of the peace, able to enforce regulations. The following year they were granted the same legal power as magistrates. Further, amended to prohibit the sale of agricultural produce by Indians in Prairie Provinces without an appropriate permit from an Indian agent. This prohibition was, as of 2008, still included in the Indian Act, though it was not enforced.
- 1885: Amended to prohibit religious ceremonies (such as potlatches) and dances (such as Tamanawas dances).
- 1894: Amended to remove band control of non-natives living on reserve. This power now vested exclusively in the hands of the Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs.
- 1895: Amended to outlaw all dances, ceremonies and festivals that involved the wounding of animals or humans, or the giving away of money or goods. [no birthday parties]
- 1905: Amended to allow aboriginal people to be removed from reserves near towns with more than 8,000 residents.
- 1906: Amended to allow only 50% of the sale price of reserve lands to be given to band members, following the surrender of that land.
- 1911: Amended to allow municipalities and companies to expropriate portions of reserves, without surrender, for roads, railways and other public works. Further, amended to allow a judge to move an entire reserve away from a municipality if it was deemed expedient. These amendments were also known as the Oliver Act.
- 1914: Amended to require western Indians to seek official permission before appearing in aboriginal costume in any dance, show, exhibition, stampede or pageant.
- 1918: Amended to allow the Superintendent-General to lease out uncultivated reserve lands to non-aboriginals if the new lease-holder used it for farming or pasture.
- 1920: Amended to allow the Department of Indian Affairs to ban hereditary rule of bands. Further, amended to allow for the involuntary enfranchisement (and loss of treaty rights) of any status Indian considered unfit by the Department of Indian Affairs, without the possession of land previously required for those living off reserve. Repealed two years later, but reintroduced in a modified form in 1933.
- 1927: Amended to prevent anyone (aboriginal or otherwise) from soliciting funds for Indian legal claims without a special license from the Superintendent-General. This effectively prevented any First Nation from pursuing aboriginal land claims. Not only were indigenous people effectively not permitted to hire lawyers, they were not permitted to go to law school to represent themselves.
- 1930: Amended to prevent a pool hall owner from allowing entrance to an Indian who by inordinate frequenting of a pool room either on or off an Indian reserve misspends or wastes his time or means to the detriment of himself, his family or household. The owner could face a fine or a one-month jail term.
- 1936: Amended to allow Indian agents to direct band council meetings and to cast a deciding vote in the event of a tie.
- 1951: Amended to henceforth allow the sale and slaughter of livestock without an Indian Agent permit. Status women are allowed to vote in band elections. Attempts to pursue land claims and the use of religious ceremonies (such as potlatches) are no longer prohibited by law. Further, amended for the compulsory disenfranchisement of First Nations women who married non-status men (including Métis, Inuit and non-status Indians, as well as non-aboriginal men), thus causing them to lose their status and denying Indian status to any children from the marriage.
- 2000: Amended to allow band members living off reserves to vote in band elections and referendums.
And that does not touch on the way children were torn from their parents, sent to residential schools, beaten for speaking their home languages and sexually abused as part of a mad scheme to force assimilation, to make the aboriginals indistinguishable from the European settlers.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Mentally Ill Criminals
There are those who want to keep someone who commits a serious crime while mentally ill forever incarcerated. That makes as much sense as keeping someone in hospital long after they are cured. On the other hand, we need hard statistics on how well we can predict reoffending, not just glib assurances.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Michael Sona
Conservative Michael Sona was convicted of voter fraud for 9 months for sending robocalls to misdirect Liberal voters to phony polling stations. Such a crime required perhaps half a dozen people to co-operate. Sona refused to rat on his fellow conspirators and none of the them were prosecuted, even though it is fairly obvious who they must have been. Had Greenpeace misdirected Conservative voters, I am pretty sure everyone responsible would have been prosecuted.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Military Exploitation of the Underaged
The Canadian military is recruiting 12 to 18 year olds for the cadet infantry. Usually we protect the underaged from exploitation by sadistic perverts, but the army is an exception. People in the military pretend they have absolved themselves of all responsibility for their actions. They claim that they kill, not because they get a kick out of killing or making others suffer, but because someone told them too. A likely story. The term infantry is apt for this childish deception.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Minority Government
Political parties hate minority governments, but historically the periods of the best governance were in times of minority governments. When a party gains a majority, it becomes arrogant and governs solely to please its extreme base. When a party rules by minority it is much more likely to govern considering the interests of all Canadians.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) inquiry
I heard Matilda Wilson on The Current on the CBC who complained bitterly that not all murdered women families had been able to tell their stories at the MMIW inquiry.
Telling these stories with extended ceremony is a way of honouring the dead and processing the loss. It is therapy for the families. However, it does nothing to prevent more deaths. In fact, it impedes the primary intent of the inquiry.
I suggest there be a second inquiry whose primary task is therapeutic and ceremonial, and remove this story-telling from the primary inquiry. The primary inquiry should be limited to people whose testimony is intended to prevent future deaths. The inquiry has made no progress because it has been bogged down with a secondary function.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
MMIWG (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls) Inquiry
The requested changes to the MMIWG inquiry are a backward step. The requested family orientation is mis-using the inquiry’s time. Expressing grief, extolling victims, ceremony and music are for healing. They have nothing to do with preventing more murders. The inquiry should focus on testimony from people who have something professional and specific to say about how to stop murders. Families with nothing to say about preventing murders are blocking progress. To use the inquiry for personal healing is both self indulgent and selfish.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
MMIWG Inquiry
The MMIWG Inquiry is trying to perform three tasks. It thus can’t do any of them properly.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- The families want theatre. They want to publicly grieve their lost ones with plenty of tears and ceremony.
- Some believe the public is still in denial that there are murders and want the gory details shockingly shoved in the public’s face.
- The practical folk want to figure out what measures would put and end to the murders and to get them enacted. They want to hear only from professionals who know what to do.
Mortgage Subsidy
The government happily subsidises home mortgages. Who benefits? The top 20% in income. Who pays for it? The bottom 80% in income. Who gets absolutely nothing — the homeless. What a scam!
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Motivation For Terrorism
When a terrorist plot was announced to set off three pressure cooker bombs outside the BC Legislature on 2013-07-01, I heard dozens of people on the radio express astonishment saying things like: Why would anyone want to hurt Canadians? Everyone loves Canada. All these people forgot that Canada was at war with Afghanistan for over a decade, killed tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and handed over Afghan citizens for torture.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Murder of Colten Boushie
Gerald Stanley was acquitted for shooting and killing Colten Boushie. Boushie had driven into Stanley’s farm seeking help with a flat tire. Stanley explained that he thought Boushie might rob him. The penalty for robbing is a few years in jail, not execution. Therefore Stanley had absolutely no right to use the death penalty to protect his property especially when Boushie had done nothing but drive up. Stanley changed his story and said he was protecting his family form Boushie attacking them. For all Stanley knew, Boushie could have been delivering political fliers, taking the census or selling cord wood. He did not do anything threatening. This all occurred in a very racist part of Saskatchewan. Boushie was indigenous. When Stanley’s lawyers saw the self-defence excuse would not fly, they floated a new defence, that the killing was accidental, i.e. he pointed the gun at Boushie’s head, put his finger on the trigger and pulled it, accidentally. The all-white jury acquitted Stanley because they saw in Stanley a fellow racist.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Murdered Women Commission
The practical purpose of the MMIW Commission is to figure out what to do to stop the murders of Canadian indigenous women. Unfortunately, the families of murdered women insist on using the commission to publicly grieve and honour their dead loved ones. They get up to a microphone and cry and express their pain. This is not a good idea. Why?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- These emotional displays provide no information of use in preventing future murders. They just stall the commission and prevent it from getting on with its purpose. Each family has as much time as they want, typically ¼ of a day.
- Dredging up the past and intensifying the emotions with a large audience is psychologically disruptive. It brings on PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) or even suicide.
- If you are going to do emotional public testimonies, they should be done separately so that they do not impede the commission.
- The testimony has nothing to do with preventing murder. It is about being the centre of attention. It is to bestow honour on the deceased and enhance her reputation. It is like a large public funeral the deceased never got. It is about getting the government to show respect. It is about catharsis. This irrelevancy should not be injected into a commission interfering with it stopping murders.
Murders Of Native Women
I don’t think focusing on catching murderers after the fact is going to work. Solving crimes need witnesses. I think we need a multipronged approach:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- subsidised night taxi for women at risk. Might be done by police.
- School courses for girls on avoiding trouble.
- School courses for boys to explain rape in not a game (counter Dalhousie University attitudes).
- Cellphones for girls to summon emergency help with the press of a button. Just for emergencies for girls who cannot afford full cellphones.
- DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) registry of likely victims and perps (people arrested for minor sex crimes
- Computer registry for sex workers to record who they went off with (licence number). Database tracks dangerous customers. See hooker database student project.
- Go back to the wild west idea of brothels, where women had safety in numbers and bodyguards.
Music on CBC Radio
Much of the pop music on CBC radio sounds like a five-year-old noodling into an autotune. The rest is much worse. It should not even count as music. It just repetitive deliberately annoying sounds. Then there is Tribe Red in a category by itself — the worst band in the known universe, strangely adored by the CBC.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Muslim Immigrants
There is sometimes a conflict for Muslim immigrants between Canadian law and Muslim religious law. We have to make it crystal clear that secular law trumps religious law, and if that is not acceptable, they should seek a different host country.
Immigrants should have to sign a declaration, in their native language, accompanied by the pounding of drums to accentuate its importance, that says something like this:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)I understand that Canada is a pluralistic country and as such, secular law trumps religious law. I agree not to do any of the following things:
- threaten or do violence against apostates.
- threaten or do violence against atheists or other non-believers.
- threaten or do violence against those who insult Islam.
- threaten or do violence against those who portray the prophet Mohammed.
- perform female circumcision.
I understand, that breaking that promise can lead to legal penalties and/or being expelled from Canada along with my family.
My Country Kills Kids
I am a Canadian. My country sends soldiers to Afghanistan to kill people who offer no threat to Canada. It bothers me deeply that they kill so many children for the crassest reasons like stealing lithium, heroin profits, a free pipeline route for Unocal or caving to bullying from the USA. Whenever a Canadian soldier kills a child they either claim it was self-defence because the child might have been carrying a grenade, or collateral damage, because they killed the child with remote control warfare where they could not see their victims. The one consolation I have is knowing that the lives of butterflies are still worthwhile, no matter how short they are.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Native Languages
A current fad among first nations people is to learn the languages in use in North America before first contact. I don’t think this is a wise thing to do. Why?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- They are isolating. White people and native people from other parts of Canada cannot understand them. They are like a secret club where other people are unwelcome.
- They encourage petty local loyalties. First nations people need to be unified across Canada.
- They are not useful in study or work. There is almost nothing written available in these languages. That same effort could be put into something with more benefit.
Naïve Albertans
Albertans say to BC, We are sacrificing our environment so that we can have money. You should too — not so you can have money, but so we can. We deserve it. That should be obvious to you.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
NDP Frustration
It must be frustrating being a member of the NDP opposition in BC. No matter how badly the Liberal government mismanages the economy, the Liberals have convinced the voters the NDP would have done worse.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
No Guns
If you had a party in Canada and told your guests no guns they would look at you as oddly as if you had said Please leave your octopus at home. No one would ever think to do such a thing.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
No More Hunter Gathering
At the time of the invasion of the Europeans, the land, rivers and seas of Canada were able to support about 200,000 first nations people hunting and fishing. Since that time, the population has grown 550% to 1.1 million. First Nations people harbour the romantic notion that if the Canadian federal government would just get off their backs, they could support themselves with hunting and fishing in the traditional way. Even if Canada shut down all commercial fishing, banned all white people from hunting or fishing and told the native peoples they could hunt and fish as much as they pleased, the land and seas could still only support a population of 200,000. Actually, the number it could support is even less than that because at the time of the arrival of the Europeans the first nations people were not surviving solely from hunting and fishing. They got most of their calories from agriculture. There is no possible way hunting and fishing could support today’s first nations population. White people are responsible for many first nations ills, but this is not one of them.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Not So Universal Coverage
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- There are about 1,000,000 residents of Canada not covered by universal health care, mostly people waiting to became citizens.
- When a baby is born in Canada, no matter who its parents are, the baby becomes a Canadian citizen, but its medical care coverage only kicks it at its first breath. There is no pre-natal care.
- If a non-covered person contracted Ebola, we would not refuse treatment. The same should apply at least to contracting any contagious disease and their vaccinations.
- In France and Britain, anyone can walk in to a government health clinic and receive free treatment.
Nothing But More Of the Same
Imagine you were Rob Nicholson, former minister of Justice for Canada. Your boss told you to reduce crime and simultaneously reduce costs. What would you do? You might have a look at what other countries were doing, searching for proven workable ideas. However, Rob Nicholson is a Conservative, so that approach is unthinkable. The only solution he will consider is more of the same Conservative ideology, damn whether it works, or even makes things worse. Partly he has a serious case of NIH (Not Invented Here) imagining Canada is a special case and that experiences anywhere else are necessarily irrelevant because Canadians are superior to those other people. However, Nicholson is not quite as irrational as he first sounds. The Conservative party is massively funded by the prison industry, who in turn demand contracts to build new prisons and new laws to populate those prisons.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Obese Conservatives
Most of the Conservative Members of Parliament and cabinet are grossly obese. They are an embarrassment as representatives of our country.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Obsolete Statues
Americans are debating whether to pull down statues of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. We in Canada have a similar controversy. Our first prime minister, Sir John A. MacDonald created segregated schools for indigenous people. These schools beat the children to make them stop using their native languages and learn English. They would not let them have contact with their parents. They sexually abused the kids. Some are demanding Sir John be removed from school names, statues, building names etc.
Pretty well everyone was extremely racist at the time. Sir John also did some notable things, like building the trans Canada Railway and orating while roaring drunk.
My thinking is removing a statue is not removing from history. They are still in the history books. We are merely removing honour. When we take down a statue, it just means our generation no longer wants to honour them. We have to look at their sum total of deeds.
We also have to avoid judging by modern standards. Jesus gave rules how to beat your slaves. In those days it never occurred to anyone slavery was evil. It is unfair to judge Jesus for not being able to look forward two millennia, unless of course, you assume he was divine.
Robert E. Lee is primarily dishonourable for being a terrorist. He attacked the legitimate government of the USA. He killed more civilians than bin Laden. It never made sense to honour a terrorist, no matter what you thought about slavery. Putting a statue up to Lee is as idiotic as putting one up for bin Laden. All the public Robert E. Lee statues should all come down.
If dishonoured names of all anti-feminists, anti-environmentalists and all homophobes, there would be nobody left.
On the other paw, removing statues brings violent emotions to the boil. It would be a shame for people to die over a chunk of bronze.
I don’t think statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson should come down. They held slaves a century before it occurred to anyone it was wrong. The bible clearly commanded it. Strange as it sounds, they believed they were acting for the benefit of the slaves. Both these men did many great things to compensate. It is not as though we are celebrating them for slave owning.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Official Racism
It is official Canadian government policy to spend 30% less educating each aboriginal student than each white student.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Oil Basket
The only thing that surprises me more than Christy Clark’s stupidity is that she was able to convince the majority of British Columbians to follow her suicidal Pied Piper plan to put all of British Columbia’s financial eggs in one basket, namely natural gas. It is only a very temporary solution. She refuses to invest even a penny in long term green energy. Instead of reducing greenhouse gas, she is drastically increasing emissions. She has betrayed her province to the gas companies.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Olympic Frill
The Olympic Games are a frill. They should be privately financed, perhaps largely by the TV advertisers. It is improper to spend public money one them when there are so many much more pressing expenditures.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
One Note Christy Clark
Christy Clark has been a one-issue premier of BC. Her only concern is to serve the sunset fossil fuel industry. She wants to use the full resources of the government to help them drill for oil, frack, build pipelines, ship bitumen and provide them with cheap electric power. Presumably, this loving attention is to reward them for their campaign contributions.
She lies brazenly to the public on their behalf, e.g.
- That these projects will produce abundant jobs. (They provide jobs for foreign workers for a short period during construction, but then almost nothing. These projects are highly automated.)
- That there is no danger of spills because they will have a state of the art recovery system. (She fails to mention that only 5% of an oil spill at best can be recovered and 0% of a bitumen spill.)
- That mining and burning all these fossil fuels will have a beneficial effect on CO₂ emissions.
- That British Columbians will become fabulously wealthy as a result of letting foreign oil companies have their way. (If anyone gets rich, it will be the foreign corporations.)
- That there are no negative environmental effects of fossil fuel mining.
- That there is a bright future guaranteed market for fossil fuels for at least 60 years to come. (Because of climate change, it is suicidal to continue burning fossil fuels. The market will collapse as soon as denier lies are exposed by reality.)
Clark has avoided spending on people and has shoveled our cash out to the fossil fuel industry. Listen to her talk. She sounds like someone at a casino gambling with the family rent convinced she is just about to win big with fossil fuels. She has already been caught in massive overselling the instant financial benefits, but it has not slowed her manic enthusiasm.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Overpopulation
Canada will be spoiled if the population continues to grow so that the land cannot support the population. Canadians are controlling their population. Most of the population growth is immigration. Unfortunately, most of these newcomers come from cultures where large families are considered desirable. If we could persuade immigrants to limit family size to two children, then we could afford to take in twice as many families.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Party vs MP
How you do balance the rights of the party to impose consensus vs the rights of individual members to vote their conscience?~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- If an MP changes parties, they should face a by-election. They have no right to pretend to represent the interests of one party then hand the vote to another. That is fraud.
- If a party has a plank on an issue, then that is what the voters selected. MPs should be constrained to vote for that plank, even if the leadership reneges.
- If a party has no plank on an issue, then at the very least, MPs should be permitted to debate all sides of the issue. The party then has the right to add a plank on that issue and force party discipline.
Passing The Bucks
In Canada, the federal government keeps passing expenses onto the provincial governments. They it brags about then savings, then it blows them on frills like pageants, fireworks and military toys without practical purpose. In turn, the provincial governments fob expenses off on the municipal governments and brag of their fiscal wizardry. They forget that the taxpayer has only one pocket. All the money for all three levels of government comes from him. They should be allocating expenses in the most efficient way, not in a way just to make themselves look good.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Peer Pressure
When Canadian soldiers are asked at war crimes tribunal Why did you slaughter men, women and children in Afghanistan? They will reply I dunno. Everybody else was doing it.. This will sound even lamer than the Nazis with their I was just following orders.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Pipeline Danger
There are two facts the pipelines companies and BC Premier Christy Clark have swept under the rug:
- The best possible recovery after an oil spill is only 5%.
- A bitumen spill cannot be recovered at all because it quickly sinks.
They both talk about state of the art recovery, without letting on how lame that is.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Pipelines
On 2016-11-29, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced approval for two of three major fossil fuel pipelines. Just one pipeline saturates our entire greenhouse gas target. Trudeau is lying pants-on-fire that we can build two pipelines and still fit in all our other emissions from cars and power plants and remain on target. To beat climate change, we must reduce greenhouse gases to zero not increase them.
These pipelines vastly increase the burning of fossil fuels. He talks like a drug dealer, fireworks seller, or arms dealer washing his hands of the effects of the products he sells. In Trudeau’s view, because the Chinese do the actual burning, we have no responsibility whatsoever for the greenhouse gases produced. No matter who burns them, it hurts everyone.
The Kinder Morgan pipeline will increase tanker traffic five-fold through the already saturated Vancouver harbour guaranteeing tanker collisions.
Trudeau made a purely political decision — the one that would lose him the fewest votes. He paid no attention to the fact that increasing greenhouse gases is suicidal. His is the most pathological form of short-term wishful thinking. The role of the prime minister is to do what is best for the country, not mollify the largest number of ignorant people.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Planetary Traitor: Andrew Weaver
You would think Andrew Weaver of the BC Green Party is the ultimate good guy. He is a climate scientist who contributed to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). But he has been cosying up to the BC Liberal Party, the party with the worst environmental record in Canada. Evidence:
- Weaver said he would think about it when asked if he would join the Liberal cabinet.
- Liberals have offered space for Green party lawn signs. The intent was for the Greens will lure away votes with the promise of a super strong environmental platform from the NDP allowing a Liberal win.
- The Liberal party funded a full page newspaper ad to promote the Greens.
- Weaver has spent all his stump time bashing the NDP even though they have a very similar environmental platform, and ignored the unbelievable environmental sins of the Liberals.
He behaved as a decoy to dishonestly steal votes for the Liberals. This betrays the environmental cause, because the Liberals when they get back in power will continue their anti-environmental policies. Why is he doing this? Presumably because the Liberals bought him off. Why else would he betray his life’s work? He is betraying his entire party and his entire planet.
On 2017-05-29 the Greens announced they had been negotiating both with the Liberals and the NDP, and had signed a 4-year deal with the NDP to vote with the NDP in any bill that could be a considered a test of power.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Police Incompetence
When I listen to the details of police incompetence in the Robert Picton inquiry, I conclude that any serial killer with an IQ (Intelligence Quotient) above 50 need have no worries about being caught. The only other plausible conclusion is that the police colluded.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Political BS
Finance Minister Bill Morneau claims he wants to develop fossil fuels in a way that in responsibly compatible with greenhouse gas reduction. This is blithering nonsense. Any development of more fossil fuels will increase greenhouse gases. The the only way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to sell less fossil fuels. When you burn fossil fuels you get CO₂. It is basic chemistry. There is no changing it.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Population Explosion
In the past ten years, the indigenous population of Canada has exploded to four times what it was. This is not a good thing, why?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Indigenous people are among the poorest people and among the largest families. These children are going without.
- These large families live on welfare. This is an unfair drain on the non-aboriginal population.
- Earth as a whole is badly overpopulated. Nobody should be breeding that fast.
- Indigenous people want to have access to salmon and herds of caribou and other animals. With four times as many people, there are nowhere near enough animals to go around.
Preferential Voting
The Conservatives used preferential voting for their leadership race. Each delegate voted giving his order of preference. A computer then eliminated the least popular candidate in each round, without revolting or allowing losing candidates to redirect their votes. This made for a gradual and exciting reveal of the winner. All through the rounds, Maxim Bernier was in the lead, but in the last round, Andrew Scheer won. The scheme picks the candidate the most delegates can stomach. It is roughly equivalent to a run-off election between the two leading candidates.
I think it would be good for the federal elections too to select MPs. Computers handle the extra complexity. It would spark interest in the horse race.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Premier Christie Clark, Thief
The BC Liberals have been bombarding me with hundreds of ads on YouTube. The ads are clearly intended to persuade me to vote Liberal. Yet I (as taxpayer) fund the barrage. This should be illegal. Lock her up! and make the Liberal party retroactively pay for the ads. Government ads should never laud the governing party, just give detailed information about accessing government services, and never in the election period.
I can’t recall even a single ad funded by the Liberal party. I don’t care what the campaign ad financing laws are, this is ordinary theft. Please somebody, prosecute her or at least threaten to, to slow her down.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Preparing Immigrants
When immigrants come to Canada, it can be a traumatic experience. The winters are far colder than they could have imagined. The law is completely different. Religion does not dominate. Canadian food is inedible. We need to help prepare them. I suggest asking all immigrants to sign a waiver that they understand how different Canada is. It might contain items like this:
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- In Canada, religious law is optional. Secular law is mandatory. It is also quite different from what you are used to. This means, for example, that Shari’a or other religious law has no force.
- Female circumcision is illegal. If you do it, you can face legal penalties including deportation.
- You may not kill or harm apostates. If you do it, you can face legal penalties including deportation.
- You may not beat your wife or children. If you do it, you can face legal penalties including deportation.
- Unless you settle in an enclave of people from your own country, do not assume the ingredients you are used to for cooking will be available.
- If you move to Canada in the winter, you must have acquired suitable clothing before you even step off the plane. Think of it as like preparing for a trip to the moon. (It’s not quite that bad.)
Prevalence of Homelessness
Greater Victoria has a population of 330,088. In it there are 2,000 homeless people.
In other words, there is one homeless person per 165 people. Looking after that one person is far from an onerous financial burden.
Liberal MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) Jeff Bray pointed out that solving homelessness saves money. You have fewer police and hospital costs and businesses get more tourist business.
The objection is not financial, but ideological. Many people see the homeless not as unfortunate losers in the money game, but as deadbeats who should be encouraged to die of exposure.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Preventing Terrorist Attacks
In his autobiography, My Years as Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien told us the only reason Canada attacked Afghanistan was because Bush twisted Chrétien ’s arm. The deal was Canada could opt out of the coming Iraq war if we attacked Afghanistan.
That attack was not only illegal (an aggressive first strike), we committed all manner of atrocities. We should expect to pay for what we did. If we don’t like people fighting back, we should not attack them.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Private Schools
Quite often the intent of home schooling or private schooling is to ensure the child hears nothing but the dogma of one particular church. This is not for the child’s benefit. Children need to be exposed to all the different types of people on our planet to succeed in life. Private school sometimes is intended to keep the child ignorant. The government should not be subsidising this backward practice.
Such schools encourage students to believe they are better than others, to socialise only with fellow believers, that women are inferior, sometimes that terrorism is justified and that gay people should be killed or treated as second class citizens. They teach junk science such as creationism. Raising a generation of ignorant, narrow-minded bigots is hardly something the government should be subsidising. Ideally such schools would be closed, not just denied subsidies.
Of course, private school has other uses:
- more individual attention.
- ability to deal with physically or mentally disabled children.
- enrichment for gifted students.
- prestige and social connections.
- reduced travel.
Those are legit, and should be partially subsidised as is done now.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Pro-American Redford
Alison Redford, Premier of Alberta, wants to sell her country out to the Americans. She is so wildly pro-American, she affects a Texan accent.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Pro-Israel Lobby
The Canada-Israel Committee is the lobby group that provides the most free trips to Canadian MPs. The MPs justify taking the trips on the grounds it helps them understand the middle-east situation. What is actually does is help them better understand the Israeli point of view, which they already understand far better than they understand the Palestinian point of view. Twelve of the trips were simple bribes, trips to giant birthday party.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Procurement Policy
The Canadian military likes to buy large numbers of the same model of plane and then stick with them for 50 years. The problem with this approach is the strike force is most of the time 45+ years out of date. Would in not make sense to buy a smaller number of up-to-date planes every decade and gradually phase out the older ones. Surely for many missions, older planes are just fine.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Protecting Canada From Invasion
Andrew Coyne, editor of Maclean’s Magazine,says that the endless Afghan occupation is justified to prevent Afghanistan from attacking Canada. By that logic, he would justify invading Mexico to prevent drug lords there from exporting drugs to Canada. This is nonsense. Afghanistan did not attack on 2001-09-11. Bush alleges bin Laden and a group of Saudis did it, (though it seems to me the evidence points to it being mostly an inside job). By Canada’s UN (United Nations) Charter treaty, (which trumps even Canada’s constitution) paranoia is not justification. Everyone involved has committed a capital war crime. I wonder how much Coyne was paid to say that crap. Who paid him is obvious. Only a very few people have benefited from the war.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Rachel Notley
Rachel Notley is the NDP premier of Alberta. However, her policies are almost indistinguishable from those of Conservative Stephen Harper. It was dishonest of her to run for the NDP then turn on the environment.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Rachel Notley
Rachel Notley is the premier of Alberta and a pipeline evangelist. She is a quasi-climate change denier, and further she believes tanker spills and pipeline spills are impossible or at least that it is rational to ignore these downsides of pipelines. At an anti-carbon tax rally, protesters screamed at her Lock her up. This was mindless aping of subhuman, ignorant Trump supporters.
However, Notley is guilty of attempted mass murder. In a rational society she would be impeached and incarcerated. Every gram of CO₂ we release makes climate change even worse. Instead of doing her part to get the emissions to 0, she is cranking the emissions up to many times the current target with new pipelines all the while lying that she is on target for reductions. The eventual effect of this is to make earth uninhabitable. She refuses to acknowledge her murderous intent because all she can think about is money from big oil and votes from the ignorant.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Rachel Notley
Rachel Notley is the premier of Alberta. She is fond of saying that pipelines are part of her plan to reduce greenhouse gases. Pipelines might be part of Alberta’s future, but they cannot contribute to greenhouse gas reduction. By their very nature, they transport the fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Rachel Notley’s Lethal Lies
Rachel Notley, as the NDP Premier of Alberta, is an unlikely planetary traitor.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- She successfully championed a pipeline to triple the volume of bitumen shipped by tanker through Vancouver’s harbour. If you have ever visited Vancouver, you will discover the harbour is quite small. It is already clogged. That is why so much cargo goes through Seattle, bypassing Vancouver. She breezily claimed BC would be compensated for any spills. But bitumen sinks. There is no way to clean up a bitumen spill, so there is no way to compensate for the costs of cleaning one up. The number of tankers carrying various fossil fuels will increase five fold. Collisions are guaranteed.
- She is similarly dismissive of spills of crude oil from the various new pipelines she rammed through. Consider the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. No expense was spared to contain it. Equipment was commandeered from all over the planet. Yet they managed to recover only 5% of the oil. That is what Notley deceptively means by state of the art cleanup.
- One pipeline creates enough greenhouse gas to saturate our entire greenhouse gas target, leaving no room for cars, heating or electric power generation. Notley has claimed she will meet the Alberta targets even with two new pipelines churning away for decades and she wants even more! She is lying through her teeth that she can meet them as is Justin Trudeau. Politicians love to make green house gas targets, take a public bow, then ignore them. Politicians like Notley and Trudeau make their decisions based on garnering votes from the ignorant. The catch is, reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero is not optional if we want earth to remain habitable. To Notley and Trudeau, money and votes are far more important that the continued survival of our planet. They are environmental pigs. They are environmental traitors. They are supposed to lead the country on the wisest path, not mollify the most ignorant, greedy, selfish citizens.
- Notley and the Albertans are totally greed driven. They have no concern for anyone else. They want all the money from the pipelines and for BC to absorb all the destruction of its harbour. They did not even offer a token share of the wealth. Albertans are as greedy as a Poland China pig, preferring a slightly fatter wallet even if it means killing off the rest of the planet with runaway climate change.
- An Albertan mob threatened Ms. Notley demanding she cancel the planned carbon tax. These people are so stupid they are effectively demanding she execute them.
- Albertans are pathologically selfish. They want to destroy Vancouver’s harbour so that can have a few bucks. That makes them ecological vandals. Insisting on increasing greenhouse gases to higher levels that any time in history while pretending to reduce them makes them pants-on-fire liars and mass murderers. Strange as it sounds, Albertans are a far bigger threat to the planet that Hitler ever was. Hitler killed off mere millions. Albertans have their sights set on killing off 7 billion. How strongly I despise them is unprintable.
RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) Uniforms
In Canada, members of the federal police are permitted to modify the standard uniform. For example, Sikhs wear red or brown turbans. Muslim women wear a headscarf. I think this is wrong. The workplace is not appropriate for prosletysing your religion. The modified uniform acts as official endorsement and promotion of just a small set of religions. That violates the separation of church and state.
Further, what if the Catholic officers decided to wear some special symbol such as the ChiRo. The official position of the Catholic church is that all gay people should be executed vigilante style. How can such an officer interact smoothly with a gay Canadian?
Another problem is you may find Sikhs demanding to interact only with officers identified with a red turban.
As the number of variants explodes, the public will become confused who is an RCMP officer and who is not.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Real Soon Now
People who vote Conservative either are in the privileged class, or more often, they imagine real soon now they will be. As such, they believe the government should take from the underprivileged classes to give to them. They deserve it because they are better than everyone else, especially non-white, non-heterosexual, non-male, non-employed, non-English speaking sorts of people.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Reasonable Precautions
Let’s say you met a woman who gave her baby a loaded handgun to play with. When you chided her for putting her child in danger she said Handguns should be designed so that babies can play with them safely. I would say Yes, but… in the meantime… This is how I feel about aboriginal women who hitchhike with strangers, or go off with strange johns on the street without anyone knowing who they are. Yes, it should be safe, but it isn’t. Don’t be foolhardy. We need to arrange for minibus transportation so young women will not have to hitchhike. We need to arrange brothels for prostitutes so that johns have to show ID, and there are people to come to their aid in trouble.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source
Refugees
Back in 2006 we Canadians welcomed three times as many refugees as we do today in 2016.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Refusing Homework
You are required by law to send your kids to school. You cannot pull your kid out of reading class because your religion says girls should be pregnant and barefoot and illiterate. Homework is part of school. It is mandatory. Let us stop coddling these eccentric parents who want to spoil their kids by refusing to let them do homework. They are cheating their kids of the part of education where they do the most learning. They are cheating them of learning the skills most useful outside the school environment.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Relative Threat
Count how many people are killed each year in Canada by:
- drunk drivers
- traffic accidents
- drive by shooters
- getting lost while hiking/skiing
- diabetes
- drowning
- terrorists
Relative to the number of deaths, we are over-reacting to the threat of terrorists, spending disproportionately far too much and sacrificing nearly all our historical civil liberties allegedly just what the terrorists are trying to destroy. You far more likely to drown in your bathtub than be killed by terrorists. We are acting like an old lady standing on a chair screaming in terror at a mouse and throwing our life savings at it.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Threat Inflation
Renaming
Port Alberni, BC, City Councilor Chris Alemany wants to rename Neill street and A.W. Neill Elementary school because A.W. Neill was an Indian agent, the mayor of Port Alberni and an island MP from 1921 to 1945. During his time in office, he was a strong supporter of Japanese internment. He was also unusually bigoted toward indigenous people. City council turned Alemany down.
Alemany’s request seems reasonable. We should not honour those whom most people today consider bigoted.
However, there is a catch. Consider how many American Presidents kept slaves. Consider that nearly everyone prior to 1970 was a bigot toward gays, the Chinese, black, east Indian and indigenous people. Erasing these bigots from history will not erase the effects of their deeds. It will also make people lower their guard against modern bigots.
There is also the practical matter of the cost of renaming almost every street and school named after a historic person.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Replacement for First Past the Post
Here is my idea for an electoral system Canada should adopt which combines AV (Anti-Virus) and Proportional.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Alternative Vote. Vote for one candidate for your riding. The difference is you can optionally rank the candidates. When computers count the votes, they progressively eliminate the biggest loser until a candidate with a majority emerges.
- Proportional Representation. Also vote for one party. Let us say there are 30 seats reserved for party votes for the whole country. Each party receives seats in proportion to the national vote. The party decides after the election who will fill their seat allotment. They could be anyone, usually losing candidates. Only parties that received 5% or more of the popular vote on the last election get on the ballot.
Residential Schools
Perhaps Canada’s biggest shame was taking native children away from their parents and putting them in residential schools in an attempt at cultural genocide. The kids were starved, denied medical care, physically abused and raped. About 7000 kids died.
The schools were run by the Catholic, Anglican and United churches. These churches should be sued for their every penny, shunned and disbanded. The surviving staff should serve jail time. All were complicit.
The Prime Minister most responsible is William Lyon Mackenzie King, though the problem started prior to confederation and was not completely stopped until 1996. We should rename any school or building named after King. Every statue should be destroyed. This will not punish King, but it will let vain politicians know if they pull a similar stunt, their names too will disappear from history.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Reviving Native Languages
The CBC has been promoting the revival of native languages. I think this is a huge effort for almost no benefit.
If you become fluent, it will not help you talk to indigenous people across Canada. It will let you talk to perhaps 20 local people. It is a far more quixotic thing to do than learn Esperanto.
If, instead, you put that effort into speaking correct English, with correct grammar, with full vocabulary, with a standard accent, that will open doors across Canada. It will help you get a good job. It will earn you respect and consideration. People will treat you as intelligent and influential.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Screwing First Nations
In Canada, in Québec, in the 1950s, any lawyer who represented a First Nations person was fined $200.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) The Invisible Nation
Screwing the Inuit
The Canadian Federal Government has royally screwed yet another group besides the First Nations and Japanese — the Inuit. In a mad cold war scheme to assert Arctic sovereignty, in the 1950s, the government tricked Inuit into relocating their families 4.02 megameters (2,500 miles) north to Ellesmere island where it is dark four months of the year and it never gets above freezing. The government lied they were being taken to a land of milk and honey (abundant game). They were given no food or supplies. The government lied that they could return if they did not like it. Most died of starvation, insanity or suicide.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) Martha Of The North
Selecting Refugees
There are about 5 million Syrian refugees seeking asylum and millions more who would be if they could do it safely. Canada took in 25,000 refugees. Even this is a quite a stretch given how tight housing in Canada, especially low cost housing for large families. We are cherry picking the best 1 in 200 applicants.
One of the families we selected had 13 members. I would not have selected them. Why?
- For the same quota, I could have spread the benefit around and welcomed three smaller families. You get richer genetic diversity that way.
- Muslims encourage large families to grow the faith, but having large families is irresponsible. Our planet is grossly overpopulated. Nobody should be having more than two children.
- You want to select people who will assimilate easily. A giant family like this likely has values very different from those common in Canada. When women have a say in reproduction, they don’t treat themselves as baby factories. Further, large families trigger fears immigrants are taking over inspiring bigotry.
- If you select a large family, if one of them has a disease, a mental problem, a learning disability etc, the odds are others in the family will have it too. If you select several small families, you spread the risk. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
- Large families are very difficult to house is Canada. Canadian housing is set up for 0 to 2 children.
What other criteria might you use?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Wealth. The federal government has announced it is making refugees pay for their plane trips to Canada at rates considerably higher than the cost of a commercial flight. The effect of this is to skim the richest refugees for inclusion in Canada. We are helping those in least need of help. I don’t think your average Canadian wants to do that. The advantage is these refugees are least likely to be a drain on Canada’s economy, and are most likely to contribute by starting businesses. They will need the least help to get settled.
- Education. Jobs in Canada are for well-educated people, especially doctors.
- Health, including genetic health. These people will put the smallest burden on the health care system.
- Those that have suffered the most.
- Take those who have the least chance of surviving in Syria.
- Take those with the best English skills including pronunciation. They have shown a commitment to Canada. They will have the least trouble assimilating.
Self Driving Cars
The catch is most of the benefits of self driving cars do not realise until we can get rid of manual drivers. Benefits include:
- cars can travel with inches of clearance. Greater efficient use of roadways.
- cars can travel must faster safely.
- computer controlled access to freeways from on-ramps.
- all drivers become law abiding with associated efficiency.
- cars automatically travel by the most efficient routes. Manual car always go by familiar routes.
- driving becomes accident free.
- braking is gentle because the car knows what in going to happen.
People want to drive manually for emotional reasons. They don’t care if it snarls everyone’s traffic. How do we deal with these selfish folk who want to treat driving as a hobby? We could have toll roads reserved for manual drivers e.g. scenic winding roads near oceans. They would create the illusion of having the entire highway to yourself. We could allow manual driving in the dead of night. We could simply discourage them by making cars that can both be driven manually and automatically quite expensive.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Sex With Justin
The Conservative Party of Canada want to change the law so they can put females in jail who have sex with Justin Bieber.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Shared History
When Canadians visit Europe they can feel deprived because we don’t have a legacy from 400 to 2000 years ago that you can touch in Europe. But this is because most of our ancestors were living in Europe at that time. That history is our shared history.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Silly Criticism
I have to laugh at Christy Clark, leader of the Liberal party in BC. The worst thing she could think of to say about her opponent Adrian Dix is that he revealed the last part of his party’s pipeline policy three weeks before the election. What else are you hiding? she shrilled.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Smallpox
In 1862 the British in what is now British Columbia Canada all but wiped out the native Nuxalk people near what is now Bella Coola. They used three techniques:
- Hanging.
- Lacing new blankets with smallpox and trading them for firs. They had multiple teams doing this simultaneously in multiple villages so the natives had no time to get suspicious.
- Sending out a team of people who had previously been inoculated against small pox (a small dose of live small pox). They would then re-inoculate 2 members of the team. This would give them a mild, but fully infectious, case of smallpox. Those two would circulate throughout the settlement getting within handshaking distance for breath to breath transmission. A week later it would be obvious they had smallpox, so they could not longer circulate. So another pair of the team would be inoculated to continue circulating. The British were protected from serious harm by their previous inoculation. Typically only one native in the village would be left standing.
The Smallpox War in Nuxalk Territory by Tom Swanky.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Smug Nation
Canadians are so smugly convinced of their virtue they refuse to notice their crimes such as first-strike attacks on other nations, handing over people for torture, profligate greenhouse gas emissions and extreme miserliness.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Socialist Pensions
If you ask a Canadian if they want to give up their public health care system or their old age pension, they will glare at you as if you had just suggested sacrificing their first born son. Yet at the same time, all the Conservatives have to do is say the word socialist and Canadians cross themselves to ward off the devil (in the form of the NDP ). It never seems to dawn on them that they are one in the same thing.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Soldier Rapist
Russell Williams, the wing commander at CFB (Cipher Feedback mode) Trenton, in Canada, started by breaking into homes and stealing women’s underwear. He progressed to rape and then to murder. He was a very public figure. Everyone was absolutely shocked to discover what he had done. However, I am not in the least surprised. He took a job with the military killing people including children that had done no harm to him or to Canada. Why should he not do a little unauthorised killing and rape on the side? I can’t believe people are so naïve about what soldiers do. They seem to imagine them as some sort of boy scouts. They are just cautious serial killers.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Soldier ≠ Hero
I know it is all the rage to laud Canadian soldiers, especially dead ones, as if they were heroes, on par with fire fighters or police SWAT teams. But the fact is they are anything but heroes. Afghanistan did not attack Canada (or the USA for that matter). It could not do so even if it tried. Canadian soldiers are thus not defending Canada. What motivates the soldiers is simple — they like killing people, any people and getting away with it. That puts them on the same moral footing with civilian serial killers like Paul Bernardo.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Special Needs Students
If a special needs student disrupts the class or cannot benefit from the curriculum they have no business in a standard class. It is unfair to the other students. It is unfair to the teacher who has to deal with a student with no interest in the curriculum plus create a special curriculum for them. It is unfair to the special needs student. They are not getting an interesting curriculum appropriate to their abilities.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Spending Marijuana Tax Revenue
Christy Clark called for spending all the revenue on additive drugs. I think this is a waste of money. Why? Fentanyl addicts gleefully and knowingly take fatal overdoses because they like the thrill. These people are far beyond help. Rehab is extremely expensive and hardly ever works.
It would make much more sense to work on prevention. Scare the kids silly when they are young enough that you can still get to them.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Sports Betting
Like the senate, I too oppose sports betting. Think what happened with lotteries. When I was 5 my great aunt Hilda received an envelope of illegal Irish Sweepstakes lottery tickets to sell. We had a family gathering to decide how to handle this scandal.
Today the government spends millions of dollars on advertising trying to trick people into buying worthless lottery tickets. It is none of my business if people gamble, but it is when my government gets into the business of trying to swindle people, especially when the victims of the scam are those who can least afford it.
The same would happen with legal sports betting.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Teaching Cree
It is a culturally interesting thing to learn Cree. However, it is not that practically useful. It will let you converse with only a handful of nearby people. It will not help you in other parts of Canada or other parts of the world. It will not help you communicate with government services such as police, fire or hospitals. It is thus a selfish and cruel thing to teach a child only Cree. You must teach either English or French as well. The same applies to any non-mainstream language.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Teaching Indigenous Languages
The emphasis on teaching indigenous languages is a romantic but impractical endeavour. Why?
- It will not help get a job.
- It will not help communicate with the majority of Canadians
- Because there are so many indigenous languages, it will not help communicate with the majority of other aboriginals.
- It fosters a narrow tribal loyalty rather than a loyalty to all Canadian aboriginals or all Canadians.
Learning indigenous languages should be an extra-curricular activity, not something displacing the core curriculum.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Too Many Fish?
Ed Fast, Conservative member from Abbotsford sees Canada’s problem is that we have too many fish and not enough markets for them. He has this backwards. Our problem is failing fish stocks, primarily from overfishing, pollution and interfering will seals culling diseased and deformed fish.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Touchy Creationists
On 2017-11-03 the Governor General, Julie Payette, speaking at a science conference made some comments extolling evolution and disparaging creationism. The head of the Conservative Party, Andrew Sheer, chastised her severely for insulting Canadians who believed in creationism.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- Nobody is required to pretend to believe the tenets of anyone else’s religion, especially one as idiotic as creationism. Christians do not have the right to demand deference from non-believers. That is like forcing others to bow down to false gods.
- Simply disagreeing with someone is not insulting them. If they feel insulted, their skin is far too thin. Their hurt feeling are their own fault.
Toward Equality
Canadian indigenous people announced the road to equality is to learn their original languages and learn their history. I think this is romantic nonsense. If indigenous people learned to speak English without grammatical errors in a Canadian accent, they would have a much better chance of being treated as equals. For example, Wab Kinew learned to do this, and is now leader of the Manitoba NDP. Native languages and history is a frill compared with all the other skills you need to integrate into Canadian life such as science, math, public speaking, writing…
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Trade Agreement
Whether we make money or not on the TPP trade agreement is secondary. Even the most sanguine projections are less than 1% of GDP.
What is much more important is control. Do foreign corporations have veto power over our environmental legislation as they do in NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement)? Will we be forced to sell our water and fossil fuels even if we need them for ourselves? We will be locked into this for many decades. We should not decide one way or the other lightly.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Trashing Electric Cars
John Cummins, leader of the B.C. Conservative Party, said that the $5000 subsidy to persuade people buy electric cars was useless because buyers receive savings later in fuel purchases. The problem is coming up with the hefty down payment. Further, the cars are so expensive, they cannot be justified on fuel cost savings alone. We need to stimulate sales to fund research and development and bring on economies of scale.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Turning Out The Vote
Mindlessly turning or more voters in not a wise idea. You want more informed voters, not more clueless ones who vote on who has the nicest hair or who had the most ads. Clueless voters just dilute the informed vote.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Unfair Deportations
If someone came to Canada at an early age, it is wrong to deport them.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- It is an extra punishment. We should treat people equally.
- They may not know the language or customs of the supposed home country. This is a cruel and unusual punishment.
- It is unfair burden to send these n’ere do wells to the country origin. Those countries had nothing with making them a problem. Canada did that. Third world countries are in no position to handle such deportees. Dumping them on impoverished countries is selfish behaviour on the part of Canada.
- If they are deported, they escape the Canadian criminal justice system.
- If they are suspected terrorists, if they are deported, we can no longer keep and eye on them.
Universal Pharmacare
Canada is the only nation on earth that has universal health care without universal Pharmacare. The reason given is the cost. However, Canadians would save $6 to $9 billion a year with universal Pharmacare because of bulk buy economies and automatic use of generics. All these other countries spend less per capita than Canada on pharmaceuticals. The Conservative party always votes to favour the increased profitability of the pharmaceutical companies, so we can’t very well expect any action from them. The NDP are keen on the idea. The Liberals are luke warm.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70) source
University Costs
Back in the 1960’s, university was effectively free, so long as you kept your grades up. Today, it will take you 25 years to pay off the student loans. Because of increased efficiency with electronics, electronic textbooks and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) I would have expected the costs to drop. What happened? Did the cost of education actually go through the roof or was it just that the government withdrew its subsidies? How much of it was just general inflation?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
The Untalented
Canadians feel obligated to push the untalented onto the stage and keep them there for years. Anything less would be rude and heartless. Examples: Tribe Red, Stompin’ Tom Connors, Come From Away.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Upside of Illegally Invading Afghanistan
There is one advantage to Canada invading Afghanistan. Young psychopaths, child rapists and sadists sign up with the military to slake their lusts without legal repercussions. Of course, the Afghans do their best to exterminate these scum for us. However, this is quite unfair to the Afghans since we armour these killers with the latest technology so that the soldiers have very little chance of being killed outright. The advantage to Canada is we have fewer serial killers and other undesirables to deal with back home.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
USA a Bigger Threat
Canada is far more likely to suffer from the USA bullying it to relinquish its oil and water using military might than it is to be harmed from attacks from Muslim extremists.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Vapourised Conservatives
Imagine what Canada would be like if every person who voted Conservative mysteriously vapourised. We would get on with dealing with climate change. We would clean up our rivers. We refuse to let mines despoil the land and skip town. We would redirect money from the military to projects that helped life. We would make sure native people enjoyed basic standards of health, nutrition, clean water and housing.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Vic Toews Dissembles
Vic Toews, the Federal Minister of Justice, dissembled by saying the Conservatives were not building any new prisons. He claimed the new omnibus bill would not increase the number of prisoners that needed to be housed. The truth is they are building new beds in existing facilities, the equivalent of six new prisons. The Conservatives shovel money to the prison industry that funds them.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Victim Pigs
The Canadian press feature photos of every Canadian fatality in the Afghan war. I have looked at these pictures. In the movies, soldiers are dashing, but most of these casualties remind me of overstuffed pigs or toads. It is as though these unappealing losers unconsciously committed a Russian roulette suicide by volunteering for Afghanistan.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Voting Against Self Interest
I can understand the richest 1% voting for the Christy Clark Liberals. The 1% are mostly greedy bastards without conscience. That is how they got so rich. They don’t want to pay anything toward the upkeep of the province or any other citizens in it. But there have been times when far more than 1% voted for these scandal-of-the-month crooks. Why would so many people vote against their own self interest? Wishful thinking. They imagine real soon now they will be in the 1% themselves.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Voting Schemes
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
First Past The Post
This is the system Canada both federally and provincially uses now. It favours the leading party, exaggerating their proportion of the popular vote with an overwhelming number of seats. It leaves small parties with no seats at all. It creates majority governments. It favours parties whose support is concentrated in small geographical regions.Ranked
Voters rank the candidates in preference order. In practice it behaves like a bake-off between the two leading candidates, with all other candidates eliminated. It penalises a popular candidate hated by many voters. It picks a candidate not necessarily loved by everyone, but at least considered adequate by everyone.Proportional
Small parties get some additional seats based on their share of the popular vote, even if they were not #1 in any riding. The party, rather than the voter chooses the candidates to fill the proportional seats. This means there will be a large number of small parties that will each pursue a narrow goal. It can be hard to form a coalition of such parties to form a government.
Waiting For Health Care
Canadians love to complain about the long wait times for public health care. The essential problem is rising costs.
Half your lifetime budget is spent in the last year of life. This is pretty much a waste. You don’t get better enough to enjoy your life. I think we should not treat people unless they are in severe pain or unless the treatment will let them live an enjoyable life.
The other problem is technology keeps inventing ever more expensive treatments. Pharmaceutical companies rip off the government. We should not employ such treatments unless there is a very good chance of success. It is a waste of money to pursue hail Mary treatments.
Doctors of yore got used to trying every treatment possible, even when there was no hope, because no treatment was that expensive. They have to rethink.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
War Memorial Shooting
On 2014-10-22 Michael Zehaf-Bibeau killed a ceremonial guard at the War Memorial on Parliament Hill in Ottawa Canada. Whenever a crime is committed, the thing that most interests me is the motive. However, the media never mentioned it or speculated on it. To me it was obvious. He was protesting Canada’s illegal invasion of Afghanistan.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
What’s In A Name?
There are a number of names that the original inhabitants of Canada call themselves:
Names for the original inhabitants of Canada name notes Indian The early European visitors thought they had reached India. Natives can call each other Indian, but get huffy if anyone else does. native An accurate non-pejorative name. Some object to it as not politically correct. first nations An inaccurate non-pejorative name. Some object to it as not politically correct. The original inhabitants of Canada were not organised into nation states with distinct borders. indigenous A technical term for the original inhabitants of any country. It would include Inuit. Some object to it as not politically correct. aboriginal A technical term for the original inhabitants of any country. It would include Inuit. Some object to it as not politically correct. squaw Originally a neutral term for an aboriginal woman. Now considered derogatory. Aboriginals in BC demanded a textbook be recalled because it contained a list of historical derogatory terms they should avoid, including squaw. The problem is, no matter what term you use, someone is going to be offended and consider you a racist. I think Canada’s original people need to chill out about what they are called. So long as people avoid the term Indian, they are not trying to be racist.
Black people have a similar problem:
Names for Americans of African ancestry name notes nigger Highly pejorative, though black people may use it to each other in certain contexts. negro Literally means black in French. Logically, it should not be pejorative, however, the word is so associated with the apartheid era, it is considered pejorative. coloured Would apply to any non-white person. The word is so associated with the apartheid era, it is considered pejorative. people of colour A ridiculous, clumsy, ungrammatical term that means the same as coloured, but in theory is supposed to be less pejorative. African American Does not apply to Canadians. Logically includes Egyptians, Libyans and Moroccans. You might think it refers only to first or second generation immigrants from Africa. black Includes light tan people as well. It is unclear if it should include dark-skinned people from India. No matter which term you use, you will offend somebody. Political correctness has run amok. Instead of focusing on racist acts, the politically correct fret over failure to use the latest fashion in terms.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Who Benefits from Environment-Trashing?
Christy Clark, Premier of BC Canada, loves to boast the economic benefits of trashing the environment, but she fails to disclose the benefits accrue mostly to non-resident corporations and workers.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Who Changes Vote?
The people who are most likely to change their political affiliation are those who don’t normally pay attention to politics. The campaigns are thus focused on catching the attention of these fickle people using a simplified message.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Why Trinity Western Should Not Be Accredited
Trinity Western is a bogus university that teaches Christian dogma instead of actual knowledge. It also rejects gay students. They have been trying to get their law school accredited. Various law societies have been trying to block them. Why should they not be accredited?
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
- They teach violation of the law, ignoring the charter of rights and freedoms.
- They teach Christian opinion as if it were fact.
- They want funding as if they were a general school, but choose students on bigoted grounds.
- They teach bigotry.
Wild Rose Dark Side
Albertans who vote for the Wild Rose party are similar to the Germans who voted for the Nazi party in the 1930s. They are giving in to their darker sides, indulging racial hate, homophobia and greed that destroys the earth for the next generation. Danielle Smith, the leader of the party, deals with environmental greenhouse gas issues by lying that they do not exist. She an planetary traitor. In a logical society, she would be tried and sentenced to life in prison. There is no greater crime. It is a more serious form of sabotaging the life support system of a space station.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
Woo
Canadian media, particularly the CBC like to promote woo. By that I mean such things as:
- ghosts
- life after death
- homeopathy
- the belief that vaccinations are extremely dangerous
- Christianity
- Islam
- Native spirituality
- faith healing
- crystal healing
- prayer
There is no evidence there is any truth in any of this, but people wish there were, so they believe it anyway. The problem is, when people rely on woo to cure them of cancer, they die because woo does not work. They refuse to try something that will work. Promoting woo is a passive aggressive form of murder.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
World Class Cleanup
Joe Oliver, Canada’s minister of natural resources, promises a world class oil cleanup scheme. What does world class mean? It mean recovering about 15% of the oil and sticking governments with the bill. A Liberian freighter run by a company that on paper owns only one ship can’t very well be held liable. We need to hold the companies that own the oil liable. After all, they choose the ships.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
You are Not Welcome Here
Hey soldier! Did you expect me to welcome you home from Afghanistan where you went on a spree killing people who were no possible threat to Canada? The only way I would welcome you back is if you arrived in a coffin. You attacked them unprovoked. They did not attack you. That makes you a war criminal guilty of a capital war crime. The only way you can possibly atone is to lose your life and even that does not come close. You have only one life to shed in shame for the many you have taken.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)
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