This and That – Distractions and Obfuscations

The ongoing Elections act cluster fk has successfully distracted from the latest omnibus budget from the Harper Regime, hardy a word has been seen about the 350 page “Harper Government Creating Jobs & Growth While Returning to Balanced Budgets With Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1.”. Yep, we are back to that H*&^%$# Government thing again to describe our Canada Government as run by the Harper Oligarchy and hardly a word about all the hidden things about food safety, rail safety, the appointment of judges and altering military ranks, and other stuff which has nothing to do with budgeting and should be (but wont be) dealt with separately.

With the S**t hitting the fan on the new rules and lack of oversight for the longstanding use of temporary foreign workers and the regimes insistence that Canadians don’t want the lower paying jobs whilst 1000s of families struggle to find ANY job to feed their families they have discontinued their use of Kijiji Ads to estimate the number of jobs available. Perhaps they should reinstate some funding for Stats Can and actually get some real figures. The government has said it is needed to fill a growing labour shortage, but experts, including the C.D. Howe Institute and numerous economists, have said the quality of Canada’s labour market data is so poor that it is impossible to know for sure whether there is a serious labour shortage. This may be a reflection of the jobs listed on the Government site which are not a real indication of anything, if you are looking for a job it is far more probable that it will be listed on a private site than the government site. That even their newly created job search engine is all but useless does not help, one cannot even search within a certain radius of your residence but land up looking at jobs 150miles away (but still within you “region” but not showing any closer but in another “region”). Of course they have now ruled that such workers cannot be used for low paying restaurant jobs but little is said about more meaningful and better paid jobs being filled by said part time residents from overseas.

The Ontario budget recently tabled is turning into another story of brinkmanship with the opposition partys in election mode = maybe, perhaps, if we can win! With the NDP and The Cons saying NO the Libs have now pulled the plug and we go to an election which almost certainly will result in another minority government (which is not at all bad) but they will ALL continue to put their own agenda and thirst for power BEFORE the ever struggling electorate. As with the federal scene we may well soon have a hard choice to make between the 'trying to make it work' the 'not sure about anything' the 'everything any one else does is bad' and the 'don’t stand a chance in hell' parties! Ah politics at its finest eh! Working together for the benefit of the electorate is the last thing on their mind, thats not news that’s reality! Let the over the top rhetoric and personal attacks begin......


Hardly unexpected, in the end, the clock ran out. A committee tasked with combing through the government’s 244-page overhaul of its election law altogether cut off its debate, no further through the bill than Page 47.
The government had set a May 1 deadline for the committee’s work, but it hadn’t finished with the divisive Fair Elections Act. And so the Conservative-dominated committee sped through the rest, with only voting and no debate. The government’s 45 amendments were passed and more than 200 from the opposition – all but a few minor ones – were rejected.
So for the second time debate on what well be the most important piece of legislation in decades and one that goes to the very root of our democracy was cut off. Not only that but at a point where only 47 of the 244 page bill was even looked at! What kind of democratic debate is that?
That ALL of the government amendments (mostly forced upon them by public and senate pressure) were debated and passed but few, if any, of the oppositions changes speaks loudly to the Harper Regimes disdain for due process and firm control over its flock of sheep. We could hope for a better result from the senate but given that their 'pre-study' recommendations have been taken up I don’t hold out much hope. As always the legislation will be jammed through despite unanimous opposition from all but the most diehard brainwashed Harper followers.



Oh Canada, wherefore art thou?



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