I am fascinated by this news story from Toronto.

A group representing dozens of lawn care companies trying to bring charges against Ontario’s environment minister and senior bureaucrats over the province’s controversial pesticide ban is now calling for charges against 23 activists.

Group spokesman Jeffrey Lowes of MREP Communications said Wednesday that information has been laid for criminal charges against 23 individuals….

…The activists worked with the Ontario government to ban pesticides using alleged false and misleading information to undermine the industry, Lowes said.

The documents filed on Tuesday allege the activists knowingly presented false and misleading information about the health and environmental risks associated with pesticide products, knowingly misled the public, lawn care industry and government officials, and impeded access to Health Canada approved pesticide products through fraudulent means.

Hmmm.  I wonder if this has been happening in Calgary too?  I’ve written on this subject previously (here and here) – and while Calgary’s city council avoided such a ban (here), there are still forces at work trying to change that.

Quebec is taking it’s own crazy socialist path by imposing restrictions on car makers and dealers with so little warning that it is impossible for them to meet the deadline.  The result will be that car sales in Quebec will necessarily drop off, residents of Quebec will buy cars in Ontario, New Brunswick or the USA and import them too Quebec.

Is Charest going to prohibit the registration of cars purchased outside Quebec in the name of green?  Really?

Yet another Quebec government comes up with an idea that will drive people and business out of the province.

Terence Corcoran, in another of his excellent descriptions of the flaws of government bureaucracy, explains better than I can why the eHealth fiasco in Ontario is doomed to fail (as such things have failed elsewhere).  But the best part is this quote from Arnie Aberman:

It is unlikely that the government will succeed in developing one big EMR project — a better approach is to develop standards for communication between software and then let the market produce many different EMR products. After all, that is the way the financial industry succeeded in automating banking.

I have another idea.  Why don’t we let the banks manage the health care spend?  We need to make the money follow the patient – what better way than to give each consumer a credit card that is only good for health care.  When they get services, they present the card and the hospital or doctor bills to that account (which goes to the state insurer).  That way we can track exactly where the money is going.  And the banks will only charge us 1-2% for the service.   Seems better than trying to build a single monolithic network of a system.

Greyhound has announced that it is going to curtail it’s service in Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario because it can’t make money on those routes.  Federal Transport Minister John Baird is playing politics when he said:

This is clearly an attempt to shakedown Canadian taxpayers for tens of millions of dollars a year from this Texas-based multinational

Yes, Greyhound is saying they need government concessions if they were to continue operations.  Such concessions include relaxed regulations and some “money”, perhaps $15 Million.  But they didn’t start the shakedown.

Greyhound lays it out quite clearly in their press release:

… We have repeatedly asked the federal and provincial governments to change the existing legislative and regulatory regimes that govern inter-city bus operations…

… All of the provinces in which Greyhound operates exercise some form of regulatory oversight over scheduled intercity bus operations. Bus operators are being forced to financially support unprofitable route services to small-town Canada through an intricate web of cross-subsidies from their profitable passenger routes, from bus parcel operations and from ancillary profit sources.

So government already shook down Greyhound, forcing them to serve unprofitable routes without providing any subsidy to do so.  The governments essentially thought they could demand that Greyhound should serve the “public welfare” and lose money doing it.   This is completely ridiculous.  Greyhound is a business that can (and should) choose to invest it’s capital in places it can make money.  And if serves small towns in Northern Manitoba don’t make money, they shouldn’t have to go there.  If government wants to pay Greyhound to serve those routes, let the people of Manitoba vote for it.  But don’t badmouth the “greedy American capitalists” as one commentor at a national newspaper’s site did…

Dr. David Swann, the leader of the Alberta Liberals, is once again up in arms about the Alberta government’s plans for health care.  He complains that the government should:

The Premier must reverse the physician hiring freeze immediately and take rapid steps to increase the capacity of the health care system: more beds, more health care professionals, more public health officers with the skills to combat infrequent but potentially serious disasters such as pandemics.

He further, today, stated:

Swann took in a media briefing Liepert gave to reporters in Calgary Tuesday afternoon, and says Liepert’s first priority is cost cutting.  The Liberal leader says the goal of the stelmach government is to move health care towards a privatized system.
“This is health reform by stealth. This committee is a cover for making the changes he already has in mind or if he doesn’t he has a direction that he’s heading and he’s not telling Albertans.”  Swann says it’s almost impossible for the committee in two months to come up with major legislative reforms that are going to make an improvement in patient access and cost effectiveness of the system.

Of course, the only proposals he seems to have are to pour more money into the system!  When the province is forecast to run a deficit of $6.7 Billion, where does he propose we get the money to hire more doctors, nurses, and expand hospitals?  He complains about cost overruns in the new South Calgary hospital, but doesn’t explain how they could have been avoided or how he would reduce these costs…  Worst of all, he plans to take the worst aspect of the current system (bulk payment to hospitals without accountability for what treating a patient actually costs) and applying it to doctors by taking them off fee for service and putting them on salaries that are independent of their patient load.

The worst part is that which is unsaid – the provincial government doesn’t have the money to pour more into health care, and “efficiencies” are not there to find billions of dollars a year in savings.  Dr. Swann wants to raise our taxes and then waste it on enlarging an already broken health care system.

Dr. Swann is wrong on health care for Albertans.  Of course, Ed Stelmach and Ron Liepert aren’t much better because they’re only solution is more rationing.

The real solution to our health care crises is to put health care back into the hands of the people – let us choose in a free market.

Kevin Libin makes a very good connection in today’s commentary in the Post.   I previously discussed the mess that Canada’s Children’s Aid Societies are in, and Mr. Libin shows the horrible mess in Alberta where a provincial court judge has sentenced a director of child services for contempt for failing to return a child to the parents for FIVE months after so ordered by the court…

And yet this doesn’t shake the government right to the Premier’s office.  Because the Progressive Conservative party has ruled this province since 1971 (before I was born) and to date there is no realistic alternative.  The Liberals and NDP will never gain power with the far-left mindset they have, which restricts them to a few potential ridings, mostly in Edmonton and a few other urban areas.   And the Wild Rose Alliance is still leaderless and is an unknown quantity.  Perhaps the upcoming byelection in Calgary Glenmore will give a warning shot to the government – but I fear not.  The WRA is probably the best choice to run the province, but they may split the vote with the PCs, giving the seat to the Liberals – their candidate was a close second the last two times…

And it’s also funny that the Liberals and NDP aren’t running with the child services issue – why?   Maybe because they like these unaccountable organizations trying to “engineer” society?

There has been much talk of late (again) about the potential for high-speed rail, à la France’s TGV or Spain’s Avé, being built between Calgary and Edmonton, or from Windsor to Quebec.

In my opinion, neither of these makes a lot of sense, and doesn’t seem to me to be a good use of public money – since it doesn’t look at all like any private corporation is interested in such a mega-project.

My first problem with these dreams is that even if you could get 5000 people to take a train between Calgary and Edmonton every day, that might take 3000 cars off of Hwy 2.   Assuming most people drive during daylight, that is only about 200-250 cars per hour, or 2 cars per minute each way.  That doesn’t sound like much of a reduction based on my experience on that roadway and isn’t going to reduce the need to add lanes to Highway 2 in the near future.

Second, if the project costs a few billion dollars to construct, the ticket prices are going to have to be relatively high to recoup the investment and cover operating costs.  I don’t have all the numbers, but from what I’ve read and heard on the radio it seems to me that rail prices will be comparable to airline ticket prices – too high to get people out of their cars – so it will mostly steal customer from the airlines.

Finally – the public purse isn’t exactly overflowing with excess cash.  And if we want to spend public money on transportation that might actually reduce automobile traffic, I would think that improving public transit with more light rail / subway lines in Calgary, Edmonton and other cities across Canada would be far more beneficial than high-speed rail.

The only reason for politicians to support high-speed rail is that it sounds more exciting.  But that is not a good reason to waste my money.

This past week, the members of the Tsuu T’ina Nation voted 60% to reject a plan put forward by the City of Calgary and Province of Alberta to trade land on the eastern edge of the reserve for other lands to be named later.  The City wanted this land to build the southwest leg of the ring road around the city.

I can understand the Tsuu T’ina rejecting this, because of the concept of lands to be named later is pretty dodgy when you are dealing with politicians.  Additionally, most of the land adjacent to the reserve is either privately held or part of provincial parks and natural areas – so where exactly was the province going to get these lands?

Of course, I also think that the Tsuu T’ina were unwise to reject this plan. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Libin has written an excellent exposé of the Children’s Aid Societies (and their other named kin) across Canada, and he has gotten a significant amount of feedback supporting his findings.

The problem is that unaccountable “social workers” have been given supra-legal powers to enter homes and “apprehend” children based on entirely subjective criteria.  If people’s children are to be taken away, this should require a court-order (from a real judge) – and be based on objective criteria – such as clear evidence of physical or sexual abuse, malnutrition, or other measurable things.  A statement from a three year old that “Mommy and Daddy fight” would never fly as evidence in a real courtroom, and no one could be convicted of assault because someone has a bruised knee.

Additionally, if and when children do need to be removed from an unsafe environment, they must be placed into a demontrably safe one – and it needs to be above and beyond normal safety.  Children should have their own rooms, beds, good food, clothing, schooling and counselling.  They should not go hungry, or die in the care of so-called foster parents who are really only in this for the cheque they get from the government.

Like the HRCs, the Children’s Aid Societies and Family Services organizations need to be reined in lest they destroy our civilization.

Ezra Levant apparently made a good speech in Ottawa last week.   I went to University at the same time as Ezra and I recall he was a bit of a wingnut back then.  He’s improved a lot over the years – age has been good to his temperment.

He makes, yet again, a very good point about the undemocratic activities of the Human Rights Commissions, and how the law that created them gives them ridiculous power over free speech in this country.

On this day, I would like to call out everyone to contact your MP and provincial representatives to demand the repeal of the sections of the “Human Rights” legislation that permits this activity.