Life in Canada

The case for painting Harper as an anti-democrat stems from dozens of actions, catalogued below. They can be roughly divided into three categories: Treatment of the parliamentary process; degree of information control; intimidation of opponents.

TREATMENT OF PARLIAMENTARY PROCESS

* Prorogations of Parliament:

Other governments have prorogued Parliament many times. But Harper’s prorogations were seen as more crassly motivated for political gain than others. His second prorogation, 16 months ago, brought thousands of demonstrators to the streets to decry his disregard for the democratic way.

* Contempt of Parliament:

The demonstrations did not serve to elevate the prime minister’s respect for Parliament. He refused a House of Commons request to turn over documents on the Afghan detainees’ affair until forced to do so by the Speaker, who ruled he was in breach of parliamentary privilege. More recently, he refused to submit to a parliamentary request, this time on the costing of his programs. The unprecedented contempt of Parliament rulings followed.

* Scorn for parliamentary committees:

Parliamentary committees play a central role in the system as a check on executive power. The Conservatives issued their committee heads a 200-page handbook on how to disrupt these committees, going so far as to say they should flee the premises if the going got tough. The prime minister also reneged on a promise to allow committees to select their own chairs. In another decision decried as anti-democratic, he issued an order dictating that staffers to cabinet ministers do not have to testify before committees.

* Challenging constitutional precepts:

During the coalition crisis of 2008, Harper rejected the principle that says a government continues in office so long as it enjoys the confidence of the House of Commons. To the disbelief of those with a basic grasp of how the system works, he announced that opposition leader Stéphane Dion “does not have the right to take power without an election.”

* Lapdogs as watchdogs:

Jean Chrétien drew much criticism, but also much help for his cause, as a result of his installing a toothless ethics commissioner. The Harper Conservatives have upped the anti-democratic ante, putting in place watchdogs — an ethics commissioner, lobbying commissioner, and others — who are more like lapdogs.

The foremost example was integrity commissioner Christiane Ouimet, who was pilloried in an inquiry by the auditor general. During her term of office, 227 whistleblowing allegations were brought before Ouimet. None was found to be of enough merit to require redress.

The Prime Minister’s Office saw to it that she left her post quietly last fall with a $500,000 exit payment replete with a gag order.

* The Patronage Machine:

To reduce checks on power it helps to have partisans in the right places. Harper initially surprised everyone with a good proposal to reduce the age-old practice of patronage. It was the creation of an independent public appointments commission. But after his first choice of chairman for the body was turned down by opposition parties, he abandoned, in an apparent fit of pique, the whole commission idea.

Since that time he has become, like other PMs before, a patronage dispenser of no hesitation.

One of the latest examples was the appointment of Tom Pentefountas as deputy chair of the CRTC. His only apparent qualification was his friendship with the PM’s director of communications. Mr. Harper also had good intentions on Senate reform but it, too, has remained a patronage pit. One of his first moves as PM, having long lashed out at the unelected body, was to elevate a senator, Michael Fortier, to his cabinet.

* Abuse of Process
Another less noticed infringement of the democratic way came with the 2010 behemoth budget bill — 894 pages and 2,208 clauses. It contained many important measures, such as major changes to environmental assessment regulations, that had no business being in a budget bill. Previous governments hadn’t gone in for this type of budget-making, which is common in the United States. The opposition had reason to allege abuse of process.

INFORMATION CONTROL

* The vetting system:

In an extraordinary move, judged by critics to be more befitting a one-party state, Harper ordered all government communications to be vetted by his office or the neighbouring Privy Council Office. Even the most harmless announcements (Parks Canada’s release on the mating season of the black bear, for example) required approval from the top.

In most instances, forms known as Message Event Proposals had to make their way through a bureaucratic labyrinth of checks for approval.

Never had Ottawa seen anything approaching this degree of control. In one of many examples a bureaucrat, Mark Tushingham from Environment Canada, was barred from giving a talk about his book on climate change — even though it was a work of fiction. The muzzling policy of the government extended to the military brass. It led to a split between the prime minister and Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier.

* Public service brought to heel:

In asserting his individual will in the nation’s capital, it is of central importance for the chief executive to have a compliant bureaucracy. Under Harper, who suspected the bureaucracy had a built-in Liberal bias, the public service was stripped of much of its policy development functions and reduced to the role of implementers.

The giant bureaucracy and diplomatic corps chafed under the new system. Their expertise had been valued by previous governments. In the Harper democracy, it was shut up, don’t put up.

As for independent agencies, the level of distrust was much the same. As part of her distant past, Nuclear Safety Commission head Linda Keen was seen to have Liberal affiliations. It was among the reasons she was unceremoniously dismissed.

* Access to information:
The government impeded the access to information system, one of the more important tools of democracy, to such an extent that the government’s information commissioner wondered whether the system would survive. Prohibitive measures included the elimination of giant data base called CAIRS, delaying responses to access requests, imposing prohibitive fees on requests, and putting pressure on bureaucrats to keep sensitive information hidden. In addition, the redacting or blacking out of documents that were released reached outlandish proportions. In one instance, the government blacked out portions of an already published biography of Barack Obama.

* Supression of research:

Research, empirical evidence, erudition might normally be considered as central to the healthy functioning of democracies. The Conservatives challenged, sometimes openly, the notion.

At the Justice Department they freely admitted they weren’t interested in what empirical research told them about some of their anti-crime measures. At Environment Canada, public input on climate change policy was dramatically reduced.

In other instances, the government chose to camouflage evidence that ran counter to its intentions. A report of the Commissioner of Firearms saying police made good use of the gun registry was deliberately hidden beyond its statutory deadline, until after a vote on a private member’s bill on the gun registry.

The most controversial measure involving suppression of research was the Harper move against the long-form census. In his democracy, critics alleged, knowledge was being devalued. The less the people knew, the easier it was to deceive them.
* Document tampering:

It was the Bev Oda controversy involving the changing of a document on the question of aid to the church group Kairos that captured attention. But in Harperland, document tampering was by no means an isolated occurrence.

During the election campaign it has been revealed that Conservative operatives twisted the words of Auditor General Sheila Fraser in order to try to deceive the public. They made it sound like she was crediting them with prudent spending when, in fact, what she actually wrote applauded the Liberals.

As part of their vetting system, the Conservatives tried to institute a policy, until Fraser rebelled, whereby even her releases would be monitored by central command. The re-ordering of documents extended to the Harper economic-recovery program. The Conservatives got caught putting their own party logos on stimulus funding cheques, which were paid out of public purse. They were forced to cease the practice.
* Media curbs:

Though having stated that information is the lifeblood of democracy, the prime minister went to unusual lengths to deter media access. He never held open season press conferences, wouldn’t inform the media of the timing of cabinet meetings, as was traditionally done, limited their access to the bureaucracy, and had his war room operatives, using false names, write online posts attacking journalists. In one uncelebrated incident in Charlottetown in 2007, the Conservatives sent in the police to remove reporters from a hotel lobby where they were trying to cover a party caucus meeting.

INTIMIDATION OF OPPONENTS .. he will pay for this one....

* Afghan detainees:

As a reflection of the governing morality, the detainees’ file is one the Conservatives would hardly wish to showcase.

They attempted to tar the reputation of diplomat Richard Colvin, who contradicted their position. On the same file, they tried to deny Parliament its historic right to documents. On the same file, Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor got caught misleading the House, had to apologize, and later resigned. On the same file, the Conservatives terminated the work of Peter Tinsley, the Military Police Complaints Commissioner, whose inquiry was getting close to the bone. Tinsley’s commission was denied documents for reasons of national security — even though all his commission members had national security clearance. Lastly, it was this same file which played a large role in the prime minister’s decision to again prorogue Parliament.
* My way or the highway:

The prime minister had once criticized Paul Martin’s Liberals, saying that when a government starts eliminating dissent, it loses its moral right to govern. In a variety of punitive ways, Harper moved against NGOs, independent agencies, watchdog groups, and tribunals who showed signs of differing with his intent.

In some cases he fired their directors or stacked their boards with partisans. In others, he sued them or cut their funding. The targets of such tactics included the Rights and Democracy group, Elections Canada, Veterans’ Ombudsman Pat Stogran, Budget Officer Kevin Page and many more. His party’s smear tactics — sometimes resembling those of right-wing Republicans — included labelling the Liberal party anti-Israel, calling Dalton McGuinty the small man of Confederation, trying to link Liberal MP Navdeep Bains to terrorism, and calling for reprisals against academics such as the University Ottawa’s Michael Behiels for questioning their policies.

* Personal attack ads:

Beginning when Stéphane Dion was elected Liberal leader, the Harper Conservatives became the most frequent deployer of personal attack ads — many of them blatantly dishonest — of any government. Before the Conservatives’ arrival, such ads were seldom, if ever, used in pre-writ periods. They made them a common practice.
* A democratic party?

Though he came from the Reform Party, Harper, as his mentor Preston Manning once said, never showed much interest in power sharing. His Conservative Party has become a reflection of his command and control style. Tom Flanagan, Harper’s former strategic guru, helped the leader evolve the Tories into what Flanagan calls a garrison party. It basically exists, he said, to go to war against opponents, raise money, and bow at the leader’s feet.

Helena Guergis, the excommunicated MP, is one of the latest to find out what one’s rights within the party amount to. Under Mr. Harper, the rank and file have had little say in policy formation. At the riding level, no dissonance with central command is tolerated. Last year, when constituents in Rob Anders’ Calgary riding tried to organize to contest his renomination, party operatives descended like a commando unit, seized control of the riding executive, and crushed the bid.
* Legal Threats:

The Conservatives ran from accountability by running to the courts. No government has resorted to legal threats and challenges to intimidate opponents as much as this one.

In the so called Cadman-gate affair, wherein the Conservatives were accused of trying to bribe independent MP Chuck Cadman for his vote, the party resorted to suing the Liberals. They went after Tom Zytaruk, who wrote a book on the affair, alleging Mr. Zytaruk’s tape of an interview with Harper was altered.

The party sued Elections Canada in connection with the in-and-out affair and it is using legal channels to try to block information gathered by the Military Police Complaints Commission on the Afghan detainees’ affair.

In other cases, the Conservatives chose to circumvent their own laws. In the interest of making democracy fairer, Harper brought in a welcome measure — a fixed-date election law. PMs no longer had the advantage of setting election dates at their own choosing. But in 2008 Harper ignored his own law and went to the Governor General to call an election.

The government’s perspective in democratic/legal rights area was illustrated when Harper went so far as to appeal a Canadian Federal Court decision asking the United States to repatriate the Canadian Omar Khadr from Guantanamo. Harper was reluctant to speak out against the judicial travesties at Gitmo. The Conservatives shut down the Court Challenges Program, which provided funding for Canadians to defend their Charter rights. They fought hard to deport Iraqi war resisters and they went to extremes to crush protests at the G-20 summit.

Lorraine Weinrib, a professor of law and political science, says Harper is intent to construct his own constitutional framework. His actions, she said, align with “an all-powerful executive that makes its own rules on a play-by-play basis.” Those actions “reveal an understanding of democratic engagement that barely tolerates the dispersal of power.”

If a healthy democracy requires some degree of balance of power between the executive branch, the legislative branch and other power sources, there is little such balance today. The Harper effect has been to enfeeble the other constituent parts. The state of democracy now is such that the civil service is subjugated, the committee system weakened, watchdogs anemic, independent agencies intimidated, information less available, the prime minister’s own party in servitude, political parties soon — if Harper gets his way — to be stripped of public funding.

Consultant Keith Beardsley who worked in the Harper PMO, said the initial plan in 2006, when the party was new to power and insecure, was to put the hammer down — exert maximum control — for about the first six months. The six months came and went, he said, but the hammer was never lifted.

Critics fear it never will be, that we may just be seeing the beginning, that Harper will see an election victory as vindication for authoritarian methods and that more will follow.

The remarkable thing, as professor Russell notes, in looking at the way this prime minister has overpowered the system, is that he has done it all with only a minority government. Even prime ministers with big majorities have never been able — if indeed it was ever their intent — to bring the system to heel to the extent of the minority man.


I fee for you Canada..do the right thing..THINK

China's census shows its population grew to 1.34 billion people by 2010, with a sharp rise in those over 60.

Nearly half of all Chinese now live in cities and people over the age of 60 now account for 13.3% of the population, up nearly 3% since 2000.

But the figures reveal that China's population is growing more slowly than in the past.That could affect the economy, as the number of potential workers, especially from rural areas, could shrink.

The proportion of mainland Chinese people aged 14 or younger was 16.6%, down by 6.29 percentage points from the last census in 2000.

The number aged 60 or older grew to 13.26%, up 2.93 percentage points.

When China carried out its first census in 1953 it had a population of 594 million, less than half the current figure. This census, the first in 10 years, comes after a decade of rapid economic growth that has led to significant social change.The census figures announced by the Chinese government were not particularly surprising - they show trends that were identified long ago.

But they do reveal some of the challenges and problems the government will have to tackle over the coming decades.

Chinese society is ageing. That means more pensioners, who will have to be looked after by fewer workers. China's family planning policies that limit many families to just one child is partly the cause.

There are now nearly twice as many migrant workers as 10 years ago, when the last census was taken. These are farmers who travel to the country's booming towns and cities to find work. But in their new homes they have only limited access to services, such as healthcare and education for their children.

Officials have also revealed that there are now nearly six boys born to every five girls. Traditionally, Chinese families have preferred boys. But this will lead to problems for some when they grow up and try to find a wife.

The results revealed that almost half of all Chinese - 49.7% of the population - now live in cities, up from about 36% 10 years ago. Many have been drawn to jobs in China's factories and coastal industrial zones.

The census for the first time counted migrant workers where they were living, rather than where they were registered. It found that more than 220 million Chinese had worked away from home for over six months in 2010, almost double the previous figure. The stories they bring back with them eh..

The government's controls on family size, including its one-child policy for most urban families, have reduced annual population growth to below 1% percent. The rate is projected to turn negative in coming decades.

As it currently stands, most urban couples are limited to one child and rural families to two. The average household now numbers 3.1 people, down from 3.44 a decade ago.

Some demographers have said that the limits on family size may now threaten China's economic future, with fewer people left to pay and care for an older population, as well as to work in the factories that have transformed the country into the world's second largest economy.

"The data from this census show that our country faces some tensions and challenges regarding population, the economy and social development," said Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics.

"First, the ageing trend is accelerating, and second the size of the mobile population is constantly expanding."

He said China would have to "actively respond to the new challenges in demographic development".

But state-run Xinhua news agency said President Hu Jintao told top party lawmakers on Tuesday that China's family planning policy would remain unchanged and the low birth-rate be maintained.

Itemized

Stephen Harper’s one-man show The Attack On Democracy.

For anyone rich reading this article and without a conscience, who cheats will cut corners (taxes etc) and is selfish this text may hurt you. It’s a must-read on the record thus far, particularly by colleagues, friends and family members who might not much like Harper, but like the other options far less.

One can only imagine where he might it next with sufficient popular support.

Can we still call this a parliamentary democracy? Or is it something more akin to a democracy of one?

More and more, Stephen Harper’s critics are asking the question. There is a widespread view among political scientists and constitutional scholars that the prime minister, with his l’etat c’est moi methods, has brought Canadian democracy to new lows.

Canadians themselves may be starting to feel that way. Pollster Angus Reid found this week that 62 per cent of Canadians surveyed described our democracy as being in a state of crisis. For the first time in many elections, democracy is a foremost issue.

When Harper was not even two years into his stewardship, a study published in the International Political Science Review measured the degree of centralization of power in all parliamentary countries. Canada, the study concluded, was the worst.

Much of our undemocratic condition was a result of the power hoarding of prime ministers who came before Harper, says Peter Russell, the University of Toronto professor emeritus who has studied prime ministerial power since the 1950s. But if our democratic health was bad then, Russell says, it’s now worse — much worse — after Harper’s five years in power.

“Harper is on a course towards a very authoritarian populist government appealing over the heads of Parliament to the people with an enormous public-relations machine. The appeal is to the less educated and less sophisticated parts of society.” What is being fashioned, says Russell, is a presidential prime ministership without a powerful legislative branch to keep it in check.

Lori Turnbull, who teaches political science at Dalhousie University, says the system with its loosely defined separation of powers relies on a prime minister acting in good faith. Mr. Harper can hardly be said to have done so, she said. In reference to abuses of power by the Conservative government, she said that “if you put together a list of what he’s done, it’s scary.” (See list below.)

Conservatives say the portrayal of Harper as an autocrat are politically motivated — this though many of the same professors and journalists (this writer included) charting the plight of democracy today were highly critical of ethical corruption during the Chrétien years.

During his time in office, Harper has been charged with denying Parliament its historic right to documents, shutting down the House, intimidating independent agencies, muzzling the bureaucracy, suppressing research, curbing the access to information system, and other transgressions.

In the election campaign, people have been barred from Conservative rallies, strict limits have been placed on questions form journalists, Tory candidates have been instructed to stay away from all-candidates debates in their ridings. Liberals and New Democrats say the controversy over the coalition issue is another example of Harper not being able to tolerate the rules of democracy.

Democracy became an election issue after the prime minister was defeated on a confidence motion over contempt of Parliament. Though the Speaker of the Commons ruled there were legitimate grounds for the charges, Harper dismissed them as parliamentary squabbling.

“Who does he think he is? The king, here?” asked Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. During the televised debates he told Harper, “You are a man who will shut down anything you cannot control. I suspect some readers I am (ALlright Jack people)of this article will wholeheartedly agree.”

When Harper campaigned during the 2006 election, he made promises of a new era of openness and transparency to contrast a Liberal Party plagued by the sponsorship scandal. He brought in accountability legislation, which was applauded by such oversight groups as Democracy Watch for containing many impressive reforms. But a great number of the reforms, the watchdog group found, never saw the light of day.

At the same time the Conservatives were making their accountability promises in the 2006 campaign, they were running a surreptitious money-shuffling operation that became known as the in-and-out affair. It allowed the party to spend more on its campaign advertising than Elections Canada permitted. Earlier this year, party operatives involved in the scheme, including former campaign manager Doug Finley, were charged with offences under election finance laws.

The case for painting Harper as an anti-democrat stems from dozens of actions, catalogued below. They can be roughly divided into three categories: Treatment of the parliamentary process; degree of information control; intimidation of opponents.

TREATMENT OF PARLIAMENTARY PROCESS

* Prorogations of Parliament:

Other governments have prorogued Parliament many times. But Harper’s prorogations were seen as more crassly motivated for political gain than others. His second prorogation, 16 months ago, brought thousands of demonstrators to the streets to decry his disregard for the democratic way.

* Contempt of Parliament:

The demonstrations did not serve to elevate the prime minister’s respect for Parliament. He refused a House of Commons request to turn over documents on the Afghan detainees’ affair until forced to do so by the Speaker, who ruled he was in breach of parliamentary privilege. More recently, he refused to submit to a parliamentary request, this time on the costing of his programs. The unprecedented contempt of Parliament rulings followed.

* Scorn for parliamentary committees:

Parliamentary committees play a central role in the system as a check on executive power. The Conservatives issued their committee heads a 200-page handbook on how to disrupt these committees, going so far as to say they should flee the premises if the going got tough. The prime minister also reneged on a promise to allow committees to select their own chairs. In another decision decried as anti-democratic, he issued an order dictating that staffers to cabinet ministers do not have to testify before committees.

* Challenging constitutional precepts:

During the coalition crisis of 2008, Harper rejected the principle that says a government continues in office so long as it enjoys the confidence of the House of Commons. To the disbelief of those with a basic grasp of how the system works, he announced that opposition leader Stéphane Dion “does not have the right to take power without an election.”

* Lapdogs as watchdogs:

Jean Chrétien drew much criticism, but also much help for his cause, as a result of his installing a toothless ethics commissioner. The Harper Conservatives have upped the anti-democratic ante, putting in place watchdogs — an ethics commissioner, lobbying commissioner, and others — who are more like lapdogs.

The foremost example was integrity commissioner Christiane Ouimet, who was pilloried in an inquiry by the auditor general. During her term of office, 227 whistleblowing allegations were brought before Ouimet. None was found to be of enough merit to require redress.

The Prime Minister’s Office saw to it that she left her post quietly last fall with a $500,000 exit payment replete with a gag order.

* The Patronage Machine:

To reduce checks on power it helps to have partisans in the right places. Harper initially surprised everyone with a good proposal to reduce the age-old practice of patronage. It was the creation of an independent public appointments commission. But after his first choice of chairman for the body was turned down by opposition parties, he abandoned, in an apparent fit of pique, the whole commission idea.

Since that time he has become, like other PMs before, a patronage dispenser of no hesitation.

One of the latest examples was the appointment of Tom Pentefountas as deputy chair of the CRTC. His only apparent qualification was his friendship with the PM’s director of communications. Mr. Harper also had good intentions on Senate reform but it, too, has remained a patronage pit. One of his first moves as PM, having long lashed out at the unelected body, was to elevate a senator, Michael Fortier, to his cabinet.

* Abuse of Process
Another less noticed infringement of the democratic way came with the 2010 behemoth budget bill — 894 pages and 2,208 clauses. It contained many important measures, such as major changes to environmental assessment regulations, that had no business being in a budget bill. Previous governments hadn’t gone in for this type of budget-making, which is common in the United States. The opposition had reason to allege abuse of process.

INFORMATION CONTROL

* The vetting system:

In an extraordinary move, judged by critics to be more befitting a one-party state, Harper ordered all government communications to be vetted by his office or the neighbouring Privy Council Office. Even the most harmless announcements (Parks Canada’s release on the mating season of the black bear, for example) required approval from the top.

In most instances, forms known as Message Event Proposals had to make their way through a bureaucratic labyrinth of checks for approval.

Never had Ottawa seen anything approaching this degree of control. In one of many examples a bureaucrat, Mark Tushingham from Environment Canada, was barred from giving a talk about his book on climate change — even though it was a work of fiction. The muzzling policy of the government extended to the military brass. It led to a split between the prime minister and Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier.
* Public service brought to heel:

In asserting his individual will in the nation’s capital, it is of central importance for the chief executive to have a compliant bureaucracy. Under Harper, who suspected the bureaucracy had a built-in Liberal bias, the public service was stripped of much of its policy development functions and reduced to the role of implementers.

The giant bureaucracy and diplomatic corps chafed under the new system. Their expertise had been valued by previous governments. In the Harper democracy, it was shut up, don’t put up.

As for independent agencies, the level of distrust was much the same. As part of her distant past, Nuclear Safety Commission head Linda Keen was seen to have Liberal affiliations. It was among the reasons she was unceremoniously dismissed.

* Access to information:
The government impeded the access to information system, one of the more important tools of democracy, to such an extent that the government’s information commissioner wondered whether the system would survive. Prohibitive measures included the elimination of giant data base called CAIRS, delaying responses to access requests, imposing prohibitive fees on requests, and putting pressure on bureaucrats to keep sensitive information hidden. In addition, the redacting or blacking out of documents that were released reached outlandish proportions. In one instance, the government blacked out portions of an already published biography of Barack Obama.

* Supression of research:

Research, empirical evidence, erudition might normally be considered as central to the healthy functioning of democracies. The Conservatives challenged, sometimes openly, the notion.

At the Justice Department they freely admitted they weren’t interested in what empirical research told them about some of their anti-crime measures. At Environment Canada, public input on climate change policy was dramatically reduced.

In other instances, the government chose to camouflage evidence that ran counter to its intentions. A report of the Commissioner of Firearms saying police made good use of the gun registry was deliberately hidden beyond its statutory deadline, until after a vote on a private member’s bill on the gun registry.

The most controversial measure involving suppression of research was the Harper move against the long-form census. In his democracy, critics alleged, knowledge was being devalued. The less the people knew, the easier it was to deceive them.

* Document tampering:

It was the Bev Oda controversy involving the changing of a document on the question of aid to the church group Kairos that captured attention. But in Harperland, document tampering was by no means an isolated occurrence.

During the election campaign it has been revealed that Conservative operatives twisted the words of Auditor General Sheila Fraser in order to try to deceive the public. They made it sound like she was crediting them with prudent spending when, in fact, what she actually wrote applauded the Liberals.

As part of their vetting system, the Conservatives tried to institute a policy, until Fraser rebelled, whereby even her releases would be monitored by central command. The re-ordering of documents extended to the Harper economic-recovery program. The Conservatives got caught putting their own party logos on stimulus funding cheques, which were paid out of public purse. They were forced to cease the practice.

* Media curbs:

Though having stated that information is the lifeblood of democracy, the prime minister went to unusual lengths to deter media access. He never held open season press conferences, wouldn’t inform the media of the timing of cabinet meetings, as was traditionally done, limited their access to the bureaucracy, and had his war room operatives, using false names, write online posts attacking journalists. In one uncelebrated incident in Charlottetown in 2007, the Conservatives sent in the police to remove reporters from a hotel lobby where they were trying to cover a party caucus meeting.

INTIMIDATION OF OPPONENTS

* Afghan detainees:

As a reflection of the governing morality, the detainees’ file is one the Conservatives would hardly wish to showcase.

They attempted to tar the reputation of diplomat Richard Colvin, who contradicted their position. On the same file, they tried to deny Parliament its historic right to documents. On the same file, Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor got caught misleading the House, had to apologize, and later resigned. On the same file, the Conservatives terminated the work of Peter Tinsley, the Military Police Complaints Commissioner, whose inquiry was getting close to the bone. Tinsley’s commission was denied documents for reasons of national security — even though all his commission members had national security clearance. Lastly, it was this same file which played a large role in the prime minister’s decision to again prorogue Parliament.
* My way or the highway:

The prime minister had once criticized Paul Martin’s Liberals, saying that when a government starts eliminating dissent, it loses its moral right to govern. In a variety of punitive ways, Harper moved against NGOs, independent agencies, watchdog groups, and tribunals who showed signs of differing with his intent.

In some cases he fired their directors or stacked their boards with partisans. In others, he sued them or cut their funding. The targets of such tactics included the Rights and Democracy group, Elections Canada, Veterans’ Ombudsman Pat Stogran, Budget Officer Kevin Page and many more. His party’s smear tactics — sometimes resembling those of right-wing Republicans — included labelling the Liberal party anti-Israel, calling Dalton McGuinty the small man of Confederation, trying to link Liberal MP Navdeep Bains to terrorism, and calling for reprisals against academics such as the University Ottawa’s Michael Behiels for questioning their policies.


* Personal attack ads:

Beginning when Stéphane Dion was elected Liberal leader, the Harper Conservatives became the most frequent deployer of personal attack ads — many of them blatantly dishonest — of any government. Before the Conservatives’ arrival, such ads were seldom, if ever, used in pre-writ periods. They made them a common practice.
* A democratic party?

Though he came from the Reform Party, Harper, as his mentor Preston Manning once said, never showed much interest in power sharing. His Conservative Party has become a reflection of his command and control style. Tom Flanagan, Harper’s former strategic guru, helped the leader evolve the Tories into what Flanagan calls a garrison party. It basically exists, he said, to go to war against opponents, raise money, and bow at the leader’s feet.

Helena Guergis, the excommunicated MP, is one of the latest to find out what one’s rights within the party amount to. Under Mr. Harper, the rank and file have had little say in policy formation. At the riding level, no dissonance with central command is tolerated. Last year, when constituents in Rob Anders’ Calgary riding tried to organize to contest his renomination, party operatives descended like a commando unit, seized control of the riding executive, and crushed the bid.

* Legal Threats:

The Conservatives ran from accountability by running to the courts. No government has resorted to legal threats and challenges to intimidate opponents as much as this one.

In the so called Cadman-gate affair, wherein the Conservatives were accused of trying to bribe independent MP Chuck Cadman for his vote, the party resorted to suing the Liberals. They went after Tom Zytaruk, who wrote a book on the affair, alleging Mr. Zytaruk’s tape of an interview with Harper was altered.

The party sued Elections Canada in connection with the in-and-out affair and it is using legal channels to try to block information gathered by the Military Police Complaints Commission on the Afghan detainees’ affair.

In other cases, the Conservatives chose to circumvent their own laws. In the interest of making democracy fairer, Harper brought in a welcome measure — a fixed-date election law. PMs no longer had the advantage of setting election dates at their own choosing. But in 2008 Harper ignored his own law and went to the Governor General to call an election.

The government’s perspective in democratic/legal rights area was illustrated when Harper went so far as to appeal a Canadian Federal Court decision asking the United States to repatriate the Canadian Omar Khadr from Guantanamo. Harper was reluctant to speak out against the judicial travesties at Gitmo. The Conservatives shut down the Court Challenges Program, which provided funding for Canadians to defend their Charter rights. They fought hard to deport Iraqi war resisters and they went to extremes to crush protests at the G-20 summit.

The story of increased concentration of power in the prime minister’s office is one, as charted by Donald Savoie and other specialists, that has been ongoing for decades. But the experts are hard pressed to find another prime minister as obsessed with control as the current one.

Chrétien was driven, at times, to authoritarian measures because of his longstanding bitter feud with Quebec separatists. Even notorious Chrétien never personally tried to control Ottawa like Harper.

Lorraine Weinrib, a professor of law and political science, says Harper is intent to construct his own constitutional framework. His actions, she said, align with “an all-powerful executive that makes its own rules on a play-by-play basis.” Those actions “reveal an understanding of democratic engagement that barely tolerates the dispersal of power.”

If a healthy democracy requires some degree of balance of power between the executive branch, the legislative branch and other power sources, there is little such balance today. The Harper effect has been to enfeeble the other constituent parts. The state of democracy now is such that the civil service is subjugated, the committee system weakened, watchdogs anemic, independent agencies intimidated, information less available, the prime minister’s own party in servitude, political parties soon — if Harper gets his way — to be stripped of public funding.

Consultant Keith Beardsley who worked in the Harper PMO, said the initial plan in 2006, when the party was new to power and insecure, was to put the hammer down — exert maximum control — for about the first six months. The six months came and went, he said, but the hammer was never lifted.

Critics fear it never will be, that we may just be seeing the beginning, that Harper will see an election victory as vindication for authoritarian methods and that more will follow. Lambs to the slaughter.

The remarkable thing, as professor Russell notes, in looking at the way this prime minister has overpowered the system, is that he has done it all with only a minority government. Even prime ministers with big majorities have never been able — if indeed it was ever their intent — to bring the system to heel to the extent of the minority man.

I wish this fine land of Canada all the luck in the word for they will surely need it in a few days.

Teachers say that parents cannot "abandon responsibility" for their children's behaviour at school.

The NASUWT teachers' union says a lack of parental support is a major problem behind pupils' lack of discipline.

A survey from the union also claims that pupils turn up at school with iPods and phones, but without basic equipment such as pens.

Schools minister Nick Gibb said the government was boosting teachers' powers to tackle bad behaviour.

Lack of support

The teachers' union, meeting for its annual conference in Glasgow, has published the results of a survey of more than 8,000 members and found many teachers feel let down by the lack of support from parents over behaviour.

More than two in three teachers identified a lack of back-up from parents as the most common underlying factor for pupils misbehaving.

NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said parents' responsibility does not 'end at the school gate'

"Teachers are not receiving the support they need from parents," said NASUWT leader, Chris Keates.

"Parents can't simply abandon their responsibilities at the school gate.

"Teachers are not receiving the support they need from parents, school leaders or government to assist them in maintaining high standards of pupil behaviour."

More than half of teachers in the survey also complained that too many parents were failing to send their children to school with the right equipment.

"Too many pupils arrive at school with mobile phones, iPods and MP3 players when teachers just wish they would bring a pen," said Ms Keates.

Mobile phones and electronic gadgets were also identified as a cause of distraction and disruption in the classroom.

Teachers in the survey identified other causes of poor pupil behaviour, including a lack of support from their own senior management in schools.
'Blight' on system

The negative influences of television and media were also blamed by teachers.

The union's conference will debate a resolution about poor behaviour, warning that indiscipline "continues to blight our educational system".

Last month teachers at Darwen Vale High School in Lancashire went on strike over pupil behaviour, claiming they were not given support by senior staff when they confronted pupils.

Addressing the conference, Schools Minister Nick Gibb said that, on behaviour, the pendulum had "swung too far towards pupils in recent years" and government measures on discipline aimed to reverse the trend.

Teachers' powers to search pupils for items such as mobile phones have been strengthened.

"In turn we expect head teachers to back and support teachers in the decisions they take on a day-to-day basis in the isolation of the classroom to ensure that pupils can learn in a safe and ordered environment," Mr Gibb said.

"And let's not forget the role parents have to play in ensuring their children are well-behaved at school and that they too support the school when teachers take action."

The government also wants to preserve anonymity for teachers faced with allegations of misconduct.

It is changing the law to make it an offence for a newspaper or media outlet to publish the names of any teacher faced by accusations of a criminal nature, Mr Gibb said.

"It is also vital that pupils, parents and head teachers all fully understand their responsibilities and realise that there will be extremely serious consequences if a false allegation is made," he said.

Mr Gibb also defended the schools budget, after shadow education secretary Andy Burnham criticised the government in a speech on Saturday, saying schools faced falling budgets.

The schools minister said the coalition government had faced "difficult choices" as it inherited a budget deficit "that was costing £120 million in interest each and every day - enough to build 10 new primary schools, every single day".

He said he was "proud" of the school budget settlement, under which per pupil spending has been maintained in cash terms to 2014-5, as other public services faced cuts.

Mr Burnham had said this means school spending will still fall by 1.1% in real terms over the next four years.

Apple iPhones and 3G iPads are secretly recording and storing details of all their owners' movements, researchers claim.

Location data is kept in a hidden, unencrypted file according to security experts Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden.

With the right software, it can be used to map exactly where a person has been.

Apple has yet to comment on the revelation, however there is no suggestion that it has been uploading or using the information.

The findings, first reported by the Guardian newspaper, will come as a surprise to most iPhone users, as their devices do not give any visual indication that such data is being recorded.

However, although the practice is not explicitly flagged-up, it appears to be covered in the company's terms of use.

"We may collect information such as occupation, language, zip code, area code, unique device identifier, location, and the time zone where an Apple product is used so that we can better understand customer behaviour and improve our products, services, and advertising"
Clearly intentional

Writing on the technology website O'Reilly Radar, Mr Allan and Mr Warden said they did not know why iPhones and iPads were collecting location information but it was "clearly intentional".

The men claim that the facility to record users' positions was added with the iOS4 software update, released in June 2010.

The data is also transferred to the owner's computer and stored in a file there each time the two devices are connected to carry-out a backup or synchronisation.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security firm Sophos, told BBC News that it was unlikely Apple planned to use the information for commercial purposes.

"I think there are some legitimate privacy concerns and people will probably look for a way of obscuring that data," he said.

"But it is an object lesson about reading the terms and conditions," he added.

Big brother is getting closer...to the young

Mr. Harper .. your attention please:

Let's put the seniors in jail, and the criminals in a nursing home.

This way the seniors would have access to showers, hobbies,
and walks, they'd receive unlimited free prescriptions, dental
and medical treatment , wheel chairs etc. and they'd receive money
instead of paying it out.
They would have constant video monitoring, so they could be
helped instantly ,if they fell, or needed assistance.
Bedding would be washed twice a week, and all clothing would be
ironed and returned to them.
A guard would check on them every minutes, and bring their meals
and snacks to their cell. They would have family visits in a suite
built for that purpose.
They would have access to a library, weight room, spiritual
counseling, pool, and education.

Simple clothing , shoes, slippers, P.J.'s and legal aid would be free,
on request. Private, secure rooms for all, with an exercise outdoor
yard ,with gardens.

Each senior could have a P.C. a T.V. radio, and daily phone calls.
There would be a board of directors , to hear complaints, and the guards
would have a code of conduct, that would be strictly adhered to.

The "criminals" would get cold food, be left all alone, and unsupervised.
lights off at 8pm, and showers once a week.
Live in a tiny room , and pay $5000.00 per month and have no hope
of ever getting out.
Justice for all.


Found on the web

OTTAWA—The government’s plan to extend the Canadian Forces mission in Afghanistan deserves a public debate.

Any new training mission, first proposed by the Liberals then adopted by the Conservatives, poses many dangers to Canadian soldiers:

* All military operations carry inherent risks of accidents and “friendly-fire”;
* Recruitment and training centres have repeatedly been targeted for attacks by insurgents;
* Canadian soldiers may be expected to provide security perimeters around their bases, exposing them to attack;
* Training will likely require operations in the field, “outside the wire,” where a training mission could quickly turn into actual combat with insurgents;
* And most alarmingly, insurgents have already infiltrated the ranks of recruits for the Afghan National Army, and have turned their guns on foreign military trainers inside training facilities.

Despite Prime Minister Harper’s stated intention of ensuring a “safer” mission for the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan, numerous Canadian soldiers will likely be killed or permanently injured, and the mission will ultimately not be successful.

“Although they won’t admit it, most Western governments have already given up on the country,”. “The training mission is clearly an exit strategy that will cost more Canadians their lives.”
Now sadly the election has pre-empted a proper public discussion of the mission. “Canadians need to be made aware of the risks of this mission,”

Harper is so lucky?

Investigation by the European Commission
What would a similar organization find in Canada
The consumer products giants Unilever and Procter & Gamble (P&G) have been fined 315m euros (£280m, $456m) for fixing washing powder prices in eight European countries.

It follows a three-year investigation by the European Commission following a tip-off by the German company, Henkel.

Unilever sells Omo and Surf, P&G makes Tide, and Henkel sells Persil in certain European countries.

The fines were discounted by 10% after the two admitted running a cartel.

Unilever was fined 104m euros and P&G was fined 211.2m euros.

Henkel was not fined in return for providing the tip-off.

The Commission called the investigation "Purity".

The EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in a statement: "By acknowledging their participation in the cartel, the companies enabled the Commission to swiftly conclude its investigation."

The cartel operated in Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands between 2002 to 2005, the regulator said.

P&G, the world's largest consumer products group, owns the Tide, Gain and Era brands of washing powder while the Anglo-Dutch group Unilever makes detergent products under the brand names Omo and Surf.

Henkel owns the Persil brand in most of Europe, while Unilever owns it in Britain, Ireland and France.

The EU watchdog raided the three companies in June 2008 on suspicion of price fixing, and also sought information from the US-based household products firm Sara Lee.

Unilever has already set aside an undisclosed sum to cover any fine.

What would a similar organization find in Canada..the first 10,000 suggestion relating to cartel price fixing get a prize

Reality Check on Canadian Health Care

I hear so many people defending our current health care system based on the political promises of Medicare and not the realities facing Canadian patients. Medicare is government!

Here’s my quick reality check:

Equal access based on need – The fact that some citizens are exempt from the Canada Health Act and therefore able to bypass health care queues makes equal access based on need a moot claim. Also, if your medical condition or required treatment doesn’t fall into one of the government’s current priority areas, then it seems your needs don’t matter as much.

Medicare covers everything – People still believe that our public health care system will cover all of their medical needs. Medicare coverage largely depends on where you live, your medical condition and what treatment options are available through your provincial government health insurance plan. If you want cutting-edge treatment options you may need to leave your province or the country. I would love to see figures showing how many of our aged peoples say above 70 and out first Nations peoples who qualify for anything at all..they are deemed useless and are seen as non-contributors to the Canadian financial system.

Few Canadians go bankrupt due to medical bills – Many Canadian patients are forced to use cash savings, take a second mortgage on their house or borrow money to help finance medical care or receive treatment options not available under Medicare. We just don’t hear about it in the news.

Private health care will take doctors away from the public system – Many of our best and brightest doctors have already left the public system. A majority of them leave the country because they need to have the tools and time to hone their skills and become leaders in their respective fields. Our public health care system and its funding woes place limits on the number of OR hours, surgeries, access to updated technology and equipment and recognition of individual performance. More private health care options may encourage our doctors to stay here or better yet, encourage those abroad to come back home.

Private health care only benefits those who can afford it – How is the situation of a poor patient made any better by prohibiting all patients from using their own money to pay for private health care?

Profit should have no place in health care – The whole notion that profit has no place in health care is ridiculous and ranks right up there with our health care is free. It takes years and millions of dollars to research and develop new medical devices, technologies and pharmaceuticals. Without the opportunity to make a profit from these discoveries there is little incentive to continue making them. The pursuit of profit helps to drive innovation and excellence in health care. Limiting this pursuit in Canada has resulted in the dysfunctional health care system we have today.

Canadians have free health care – Why do people still believe we have free health care? We don’t. We pay the government taxes and they decide what type of health care our money will buy for us.

Is this what you want..?