Tag Archives: Canada

Supreme Court sides with Conservative Party against price-fixing monopoly

Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Story here from the Vancouver Sun. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

The Canadian Wheat Board cannot spend money on advocacy to protect its monopoly, following a Supreme Court of Canada decision Thursday against hearing an appeal from the Winnipeg-based agency, which asserts that it has been silenced by the Conservative government.

Without giving reasons, the high court declined the appeal application to a Federal Court of Appeal ruling that sided with the federal government in its 2006 order from then-agriculture minister Chuck Strahl for the board to refrain from spending its money on lobbying.

[…]The federal Conservatives are seeking to end the board’s monopoly, which is controlled by farmers. The monopoly makes the agency one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat and barley.

The board maintains that the monopoly ensures farmers receive the best prices for their grain, but the federal government, along with some farmers, say that they would be better off in a free market, selling their products on their own.

Conservatives are for a free market and competition, because we believe that it is the best way for consumers to get a low price and high quality. The proper role of government is to ensure that no organization or business enjoys monopoly status due to the government insulating them from competition. The Canadian Wheat Board is just one option, but farmers should have other choices to sell their product.

Capitalism is opposed to monopolies and it is the proper role of government to make sure that no government policy is set up to favor one corporation over any competitor. Let the farmers choose what is best for them. Choice and competition.

College women becoming interested in understanding men

Editorial from Barbara Kay in the National Post.

Excerpt:

Commonsensical Canadians are losing patience with the angry, blame-all-males school of feminism. It’s no accident that the feminist Toronto Women’s Bookstore, for years a bustling cynosure of the cultural zeitgeist, is in danger of closing down. Or that once overflowing women’s studies classes are emptying out, or morphing into “gender studies” to attract more students (a trap, really: Gender studies are also gynocentric, offering a more subtle version of heterosexual male-bashing than women’s studies).

Rob Kenedy, an assistant professor in the sociology department of York University with a specialty in the men’s rights movement, was unique amongst sociologues in teaching a course in the 1990s about men and their particular tribulations and needs. In a telephone interview he recalled his surprise when more young women signed up than men: “Women are far more interested in learning about men and masculinity than men are.”

Because the numbers in universities are so skewed to the distaff — in a current obligatory sociology course, his own tutorial is comprised of 25 women and two men — Kenedy predicts sociology departments will have to open up (positive) masculinity courses to satisfy the burgeoning curiosity of women about what makes men tick.

The best thing that a woman can do is to sit down with a man and interview him about what he is really like. I think that if every woman could talk about men, marriage and parenting like Jennifer Roback Morse can, then women would have to beat men back with foam bats. I’ll be writing a post about how women can get men to like them without using sex appeal later on in the week. I think that interrogating men to find out what they think is especially important for Christian women, who need to know how they are supposed to complement the man they are interested in.

Pakistani Muslim raped two year old daughter of Christian man

Story in the Toronto Sun. (H/T Acts 17 Apologetics)

Excerpt:

A seven-year-old Pakistani girl and her family have been given asylum in Canada after reports the child was raped and left to die when her Christian father refused to convert to Islam.

The identities of Baby Neeha and her family are being protected by immigration officials, said human rights lawyer Chantal Desloges and One Free World International, a church that was instrumental in getting the family here.

[…]Church founder Rev. Majed El Shafie said the family of seven have been hiding from extremists in Pakistan for about three years.

Baby Neeha, at the age of 2 1/2, was raped by the son of her father’s employer and left to die by the roadside, he said. No one was arrested for the crime.

“These horrific events took place because her father, who was Christian, refused to give in to pressure from his Muslim employer to convert to Islam,” El Shafie said.

The family went underground in Pakistan to hide from Muslim extremists who were seeking revenge for their non-conversion, he said.

“The family has lived for years in hiding and in constant fear of being discovered by the employer’s family or Islamic extremists,” El Shafie said. “We are thrilled that she’s finally in Canada.”

Click through to the story in the Toronto Sun to read about how my second favorite Canadian MP, Jason Kenney, is the hero of their story. He is a devout Christian, and a social conservative.