Tag Archives: Liberals

News

Ezra Levant on the new Sun News television network

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Ezra Levant
Ezra Levant

Learn about the new Sun News television network and Ezra Levant’s new show “The Source”. Sun News launching in Canada on April 18, and it should provide some much needed diversity to the close-minded, economically ignorant climate of big government spending that dominates the news media up north.

Excerpt:

Do you want to get the Sun News Network on your TV? Then you’d better ask for it. Because we go live in less than two weeks. April 18th is the launch. And you don’t want to miss a minute of it, I can promise you that.

And maybe pick up the phone and add the power of your voice to your efforts.

If we were the CBC or CTV, you wouldn’t have to ask for the channel. It would be forced on you. In fact, under Canadian broadcasting law, every cable provider must carry CBC and CTV, and every single cable subscriber (that would be you) is forced to pay for it, whether you watch it or not.

These two companies have had a combined 30-plus years of this mandatory indoctrination — and taxation. As if the CBC’s billion dollars a year wasn’t enough, they ding you for 54 cents a month on your cable bill, whether you ever watch them.

It’s the David Suzuki tax. The Peter Mansbridge tax. It’s the Alberta-bashing tax. The gun registry tax. It’s a tax to pay for your own indoctrination.

We’re the Sun — a privately owned company. We don’t have the power of taxation. Which is fine. We’ll win our viewers the old fashioned way — by broadcasting interesting things that people want to watch.

That’s what’s so remarkable about the CBC-CTV duopoly. Despite all the subsidies and mandatory broadcasts, Canadians so often choose to get their news elsewhere — including a news station headquartered in the Deep South of the United States, called CNN. They’re headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the cradle of the Confederacy.

It’s a pretty damning indictment of Canadian TV news that a TV station in the heart of Dixie manages to draw more eyeballs than local offerings. Imagine if the biggest-selling newspaper in Canada were USA Today. How lame would Canadian newspapers have to be to allow that to happen?

One day, the CBC and CTV will have to compete on an equal footing with Sun News Network. One day the CBC won’t get the Sun’s entire annual TV budget — $20 million — in a single week. Seriously, do the math: with a billion dollars a year, the CBC burns through the Sun’s yearly expenses every seven days.

That’s a state broadcaster for you. And that’s why they have big government built right into their DNA: without big government and high taxes, they’d have to get real jobs.

[…]That’s my real beef with Canadian TV news today. Not that it’s liberal, which it generally is. But that it has such a dreary consensus. On everything from gun control to Omar Khadr to global warming, CTV and CBC are like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. There is the official, “acceptable” view that gets on the air, and everything and everyone else can go pound sand.

In this video, Ezra Levant explains his new show, and the vision of Sun News.

My understanding of Canadian news media from my Canadian friends is that all the mainstream media news channels ever talk about is how much taxpayer money to spend on various whiny special interest groups. They just talk and talk about stimulus spending, “equalization payments”, welfare, subsidies for green energy companies and so on. The political debates are big whining sessions where the progressive political parties complain that the other progressive parties aren’t spending enough money on the poor fill-in-the-blank group. The majority of the people vote for left-wing parties like the Liberals and the New Democrats and the Bloc Quebecois, because the majority of the people get an economically ignorant view preached to them by the news media. They have been taught by the media to choose policies based on 1) their feelings, 2) greed for their neighbor’s money and 3) international opinion, especially the UN. They can’t think for themselves, and they are accustomed to depending on government to give them handouts.

Sun News will compete against the ultra-liberal networks like CTV and government-owned CBC. Unlike CBC and CTV, the Sun News network will feature center and center-right perspectives on the news, and will cover issues that the mainstream news networks cannot touch. (Yes, in Canada every province has anti-free-speech censorship panels that go after pastors and Christian business owners who offend left-wing groups with their inconvenient free speech). There really isn’t any free speech in Canada, the whole country is run like a liberal university campus with speech codes, where the governing leftists collect taxpayer money that is then used to silence dissenting voices, like those of Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. They really need some different points of view so that they can be more open-minded and tolerant. They just get offended too easily because they only know one way of thinking about the issues and they find disagreement offensive.

News

Should pro-life social conservatives vote for Stephen Harper?

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Unborn baby scheming about tax cuts for married couples
Unborn baby scheming about tax cuts for married couples

Don’t listen to me, listen to Dave Warren.

Excerpt:

Our tax code has everything to do with our societal propensity to demographic extinction.

It helps destroy families in two major ways (and many minor ones for which we won’t have space). It forces the mother of small children to work for a second (heavily taxed) family income. Then, offers her the alternative of becoming a “welfare mom” -effectively a ward of the state, but with the bill sent these days to anything that looks like an ex-husband.

Fatherless households, with or without angry mothers, are in turn the source of so many of the children we do have: the ones who have survived the abortion mills. Those, of a certain age, acquainted with the modern schoolyard, will have noticed the general tendency toward juvenile delinquency. Though, overall crime rates balance out, thanks to the diminishing number of juveniles, as a proportion of our aging population.

The tax code isn’t, of course, the only cause contributing to this demographic, social, and moral disaster. The “culture of death” is also communicated through mass media and entertainment industries, and catered to by every sort of commercial advertising.

Yet the tax code is the principal originating cause. Over many decades, it has facilitated the Nanny State, by treating citizens as income-earning atoms. The capitalists feed upon conditions in the resulting market, wherein everyone is an atomized consumer, living narcissistically for the day.

It is against this very real background that the Harper government has proposed the one thing that looks like a serious policy proposal in the current general election campaign. It is to change the tax code to reduce the penalty on one-income families. I’ll leave the technical description of this “income splitting” to the tax experts and policy wonks.

Naturally, the feminists, and all other “progressive” people, are outraged by a scheme that would reduce this penalty. A woman’s place is in the workforce, according to the received progressive view; which holds that men and women must be treated as interchangeable; which makes children, by extension, discardable lifestyle options. (See rude reference to abortion mills, above.) That is why the last Pope called it the “culture of death.”

By contrast, the “culture of life,” to which humans are called by nature -often in the face of social engineering -envisions a world in which mothers and children play an important, and often the commanding part.

Just look at this chart from the Heritage Foundation:

Marriage and Poverty
Marriage and Poverty

Job creation reduces abortion. Intact families reduce abortion. A father in the home reduces abortion. Tax credits for children reduces abortion.

There is more than one way to be pro-life, especially in Canada where the majority of the people are not pro-life. Abortion is the consequence of the gender-feminist revolution that destroyed marriage and the family and replaced parents with public schools that push sex education, even onto very young children. The way to turn the tide back to the pro-life position is to first build consensus for pro-life laws by creating the conditions where every unborn child can be welcomed into the world by a loving married couple. There are financial incentives in Stephen Harper’s Family Tax Cut plan that will encourage people to get married and stay married. Harper is a social conservative and social conservatives should vote for Harper. He does the best he can by putting pro-life financial incentives in place.

You can read more about Stephen Harper’s 5-point Here for Canada policy plan and the Conservative plan to promote religious liberty abroad.

News, Videos

Stephen Harper wins English-language election debate

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Stephen Harper shakes hands with petulant children
Stephen Harper shakes hands with petulant children

From left-wing Global TV, a university professor scores the first English-language debate in the Canadian Federal election.

Excerpt:

How well did the four leaders present their points?

Dr. Royce Koop: Harper is very effective at getting his message across. He is very clear, disciplined, and it’s tough to knock him off his game. Ignatieff is not communicating as well as I thought he would. He’s clearly new to this debate format.

Who were the clear aggressors and/or defenders throughout the debate?

Dr. Royce Koop: As can be expected, the three opposition leaders are the aggressors and Harper is the defender. However, Duceppe has distinguished himself as an aggressor. His opening comment was a strong, sharp attack of Harper. However, Harper is effectively defending himself in this debate. His strength is being disciplined, and he’s keeping his cool very well.

Who preformed best?

Dr. Royce Koop: Harper behaved like the PM-in-waiting. These debate formats actually favour the incumbent PM. Everyone is attacking them, and so they are able to rise above it all and act prime-ministerial. This is how Chretien survived the debates in 1997 and 2000, by riding above all the attacks, and Harper is doing so very effectively tonight.

What was your impression of the Harper-Ignatieff face-off? Who won that tete-a-tete?

Dr. Royce Koop: I think that Harper won that exchange, but it was a close call. Ignatieff has to be able to knock Harper off his game, and he hasn’t been able to do so effectively. He came close at the conclusion of the first exchange between them, but Harper came out on top.

A left-wing report from the Markdale Standard.

Excerpt:

Harper projected calm competence and self-assurance from the outset. He carried that through, almost without interruption, to his closing statement two hours later.

There was one moment when Ignatieff had an opening. That was in the prolonged section on democracy. Ignatieff was pressing hard. He scored some good hits on Stephen Harper, branding him a control freak who disrespects democratic institutions and, by extension, Canadians. It was a compelling segment and for a few moments it seemed like Ignatieff might turn the tide.

It didn’t happen. The debate moved on to other topics and ended, advantage Harper, on health care. Here Harper was very strong, looking pragmatic and sensible as the others sought in vain to breach his defence.

Harper’s debating skills, designed for TV, outmatched all three of the other contestants. Most tellingly, he looked constantly at the camera when answering questions, not at his opponents. He was the only one to do so consistently, though NDP leader Jack Layton also used this technique towards the end.

But Harper was rock-solid with it, constantly gazing into the camera, speaking directly Canadians in reassuring tones. With his body language he projected calm confidence. He kept his gestures small and controlled and within the circumference of his body – an effective technique on television.

[…]Tomorrow, look for Harper’s numbers in English Canada to rise sharply, into the low 40s. This will come as bitter brew to Liberal supporters across Canada, but it’s the simple reality: A Conservative majority is back on the table.

How did Harper win the debate? By using evidence.

Excerpt:

Canada’s good economic standing relative to its G8 counterparts, and the country’s relatively quick emergence from recession, can, in part, be credited to encouraging investment in the corporate sector, Mr. Harper said.

While in power, the Stephen Harper Conservatives have cut the corporate tax rate from 22.5% to 16.5%, with a further reduction to 15% scheduled for 2012.

To then foist a sudden reversal in policy on corporate Canada would send the wrong message to investors, Mr. Harper said on Tuesday. He quoted Jack Mintz, a public policy expert at the University of Calgary, as saying that the additional taxes proposed by the Liberals would cost the Canadian economy 200,000 jobs and $40-billion in business investment over the long run.

“Every credible economic analyst, every major business group in this country, says that if you raise taxes, you will hurt growth, hurt jobs and hurt revenue,” Mr. Harper said.

He must be the only politician I know who actually EXPLAINS why corporate tax-hikes are a bad idea. The government needs to cut taxes to attract corporations to move to their country, and to encourage their people to start or grow businesses. That’s where jobs COME FROM. And when people are working, because they have lots of jobs to choose from, they are happier and they pay more in taxes than if they were unemployed. And when people are employed, the government spends less on unemployment and other welfare programs. Notice that our corporate tax rate down here is 36%. More than double the Canadian corporate tax rate. Compared to the Canadians, we spend way too much, and we create far fewer jobs.

If the left-wing newspapers are calling it a victory for Harper, then it was a landslide victory for Harper. I am talking William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens landslide victory. I can hardly wait to see the poll numbers from up north tomorrow. The latest pre-debate poll has Harper leading the socialist Liberal party by 12 points. (H/T Jeanie)

UPDATE: Post-debate poll shows that Harper won the debate.

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