My opinion

Tragic loss to Science

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Save the Experimental Lakes Area petition | Ontario Chapter.

Please go to this website, download a petition and send it to join your voice to the many others from many countries who feel this priceless resource must not be lost.

It is difficult to understand why this project, after 50 years of productive scientific experimentation was chosen by the federal government to be closed. I don’t believe it was a financial decision, but rather one to discourage voices from the environmental community who deliver unpalatable facts to the politicians.

The lakes, the land, are irreplaceable and only ours for a short time. We don’t own them, we are charged with caring for them. We need the information the scientists bring from the ELA in order to do that.

The decision to stop funding is narrow-minded and damaging and should be reversed.

Jun Lin

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Vigil announced for Jun Lin as family talks about devastating loss – 680News.

The family remembers the victims, Jun Lin and the others who have fallen to serial killers and rapists. What about the rest of us? The headlines, most of them, trumpet the name of the killer, not his victim. It’s the Magnotta case, not the Jun Lin case, the Russell Williams, not Jessica Lloyd. The names of the victims, their stories are a temporary aspect of the news, not the news.

This time, I want to remember Jun Lin, a son and a brother, whose joyful face suggested the hope with which he came from China to study here. I’ll try to forget his killer, under either of his names, and the revolting pictures of himself he plastered over the internet.

Jun Lin and his family deserve our memories.

The Harper Government and Statscan

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Ottawa set to announce major overhaul of EI | CTV News.

At the end of this story from the Canadian Press is the following:

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley’s department has stopped sending Statistics Canada key and current information about how much federal money is flowing to each of the provinces for EI claimants.ndrew Jackson, the Canadian Labour Congress’s chief economist says the loss of data will make it much more difficult to analyse the impacts of changes to the EI rules.

So they are changing the rules, but don’t bother them with the facts about the consequences of their actions. If there were ever the hallmark of the ideologue, this has got to be it. This government has the same approach to science– the Conservatives have fixed ideas, based on some political theory, and not rigorous scientific investigation, and are making decisions in that fashion. I wonder how they would react to a physician who made decisions about treatment based on a belief, not investigative studies. Their decisions, based only on belief, may alter our country beyond recognition. Who voted for that?

Gutting the endangered species act

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May 11, 2012 Scott Prevails with Private Member’s Bill | Laurie Scott MPP.

Yet again, the Tories show their true stripes. The Bill to amend the endangered species act draws on the same old arguments, although this time its the “bobolink in a farmer’s hay-field”, not a spotted owl in a stand of forest, but the premise is still the same: economy trumps environment.

“We are moving forward with important legislation that will bring a more balanced approach to species protection, without penalizing farmers, forestry companies, recreational outdoor enthusiasts and countless other individuals and organizations who have been negatively impacted by the disastrous implementation of the current legislation by MNR,” said Scott, who is the PC Critic for Natural Resource.

Buried in there, with the farmers and the outdoor enthusiasts is the term “forestry companies” ie: large corporations which want to exploit the land without due consideration for its ecology.

Every day, it seems, we are told that a piece of legislation, whether to ease the rules around land use, or decrease the environmental studies needed, or decrease the protection of endangered species  is needed to counteract  job losses, losses created by the decline of manufacturing and failure to expand the knowledge economy outside of the major cities, and the egregious actions of banking around the world, not the poor bobolink.

I note that Ms. Scott represents my riding, her power base is in the more agricultural areas of the riding, and her background is nursing, not one of the environmental sciences. I wonder whose science she is depending on to assist her  in her role as opposition critic for Natural Resources.

The Harper government is gutting the social fabric of this country. A Tory government in Ontario would be disastrous, if this bill is evidence of its intent.

Who’s in charge here?

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Tory ministers crash budget hearing, leaving little time for questions – The Globe and Mail.

The Harper government appears to think that this is very clever political behaviour. Can’t you just hear them chortling in the men’s room over the way they’re going to put one over on the committee?

But this is not adult political behaviour. The Parliament in my view has a responsibility as a whole to consider well legislation that is before it and it is the duty of the Ministers of the Crown to answer questions about legislation. The more the Harper government plays these games, the more they look like they have something to hide.

The Omnibus bill is too large, and too vague to be passed as responsible legislation. There are far too many non-budget items included and they are too ill-defined.

Today, for example they floated some idea of paying EI recipients to move to where the jobs are. This was in response to the suggestion that a person should take any job, picking tobacco for example, even if the person’s training was teaching or nursing or engineering or graphic design. What nonsense is this? It reminds me of the Chinese sending their best and brightest to be reeducated in the countryside, with a subsequent loss of knowledge and skills that took two generations to recover. This country is supposed to be about progress and opportunity, and an insurance plan is supposed to provide insurance, not a bludgeon to take away people’s right of movement.

Did we decide as a people, sometime when I wasn’t paying attention, that the only thing that matters is the bottom line, that there is no room for compassion, or art, or history or a social safety net? I don’t think we did.

I’m tired of the posturing and the lies and the games. I want  transparent, responsible and good government.
Didn’t the Harper Tories campaign on something like that?

Another sensible programme gone

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Prison rehab program axed due to budget cuts – Canada – CBC News.

The CBC reports this morning that the government has cancelled the rehabilitation programme that has operated successfully in prisons, helping prisoners fight addiction and return as better and safer citizens to the outside world.

This government has curious pseudo-logic — put more people in prisons so you have to build more prisons, and make sure the prisoners continue to be addicted so they will reoffend when they hit the streets, and justify the increase in prisons.

Humane civilizations treat those who fall within their care, the elderly, the poor, the disabled, the sick, and yes the prisoners, many of whom fall into the last two groups as well, with compassion. It does the country no good whatsoever to return the untreated addicted to the streets.

The more bizarre the actions of this government, and that’s without considering Peter McKay, the better Thomas Mulcair looks.

Sunday

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The myth of Tory economic performance – The Globe and Mail.

Check out Lawrence Martin’s assessment of the Harper record. The out-of-control cuts and spending left us with a deficit where there had been a surplus. Martin puts it all together in this fine article. Politics is ever the same. The politicians “spin”, trying to convince us that up is down, black is white and guys who denied the economic downturn in ’08 are somehow our saviours in ’12.

Writing: I’m working on book three in my Dangerous Journey’s series. Anne is in Bermuda this time, fending off a police detective who thinks that Anne is a killer, and a killer who thinks she’s a nuisance that needs to be eliminated. I hope to be finished by the end of March, so watch for it next fall. Title, as always, pending.

Reading; I finished The Hare with the Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal. De Waal writes the biography of his family’s collection of netsuke and through it a memoir of his family of Russian Jewish bankers and their sad fate at the hands of Austrian Nazis. A fascinating and moving story, and a very good read.

Harper and Seniors

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Opposition accuses Harper of putting prisons before seniors – The Globe and Mail.

First I must admit, I am a senior. Have been for seven months. Before that I worked as a physician for forty years. I paid taxes on every penny. Taxes that paid for schools, roads, hospitals, hydro dams, and lately politicians’ gold-plated pensions. Also wars, expansions of prisons. and incentives to large corporations.

Yes, I and the others of my age paid for it all. When Harper was elected, another pair of seniors, Chretien and Martin, handed over a surplus. We, the elders paid for that too, enduring those years of restraints. Harper squandered it.

And now we have a government that has decided that those of us who paid for all that will be too big a drain on the economy, too big to carry on with the 540.12 each month, that is the total OAS that seniors receive. What is the total amount that the MP’s present and past receive?

Perhaps we could forgo the expansion of our prison system, and the required prison sentences that are forcing it. The crime rate is falling after all.

Mr. Harper knows that we’re coming, the seniors. I think he should remember that we all vote.

Fairness

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John Ralston Saul, in his book, A Fair Country, talks about Canada as an aboriginal country, with one of its principle values, fairness. When I read it I remembered my father-in-law, who arrived here as a refugee from Slovakia in 1950, telling me about hearing children say to one another that something wasn’t fair. That was what was different about Canada, he said, even children knew things had to be fair.

In today’s Globe and Mail, Michael Ignatieff discusses the current economic disaster, and notes that things now are not fair. There are too many people who are excluded from Ralston Saul’s “big tent”. What follows is one of the final paragraphs:

A politics of fairness is also a politics of growth. Fair societies are more dynamic and more innovative. In fair societies, people don’t think the game is rigged before it begins. Success goes by what you know, not who you know. And people don’t waste emotions and energy on resentment and anger. They are too busy thinking up the next big thing.

He thinks that only by ensuring that everyone gets a fair chance can we overcome the current situation.

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas

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My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

Jack Layton

Merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year. Let’s change the world this year.