Tag Archives: Ontario

News

Conservatives lead Liberals by 19 points in latest 2011 election poll

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Map of Canada
Map of Canada

Canada’s opposition parties decided not to support Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party, so Canada will hold a federal election in early May 2011. But should the opposition parties have called an election? Not according to the latest poll.

From the liberal Ottawa Citizen.

Excerpt:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives begin an election campaign this weekend far ahead of their political rivals in public favour and would be poised to win a “comfortable” majority if Canadians cast their votes now, a new poll has found.

The national survey, conducted exclusively for Postmedia News and Global National, reveals that voter support is declining for the opposition Liberals who have put forward a non-confidence motion that will lead to the defeat of the Conservative government in the House of Commons Friday afternoon.

The March 22-23 poll by Ipsos Reid found that public support remains solid for the Tories despite recent opposition attempts to draw attention to such controversies as the government’s treatment of Parliament and revelations that an ex-senior aide to Harper lobbied a department to get funds for his fiance, a former escort.

The Conservatives are now supported by 43 per cent of decided voters — up by three points from two weeks ago.

Just as important, the Tories now have a widening 19-point lead over the Liberals led by Michael Ignatieff.

[…]”The Tories are starting this election campaign in a better place than they have started the last three campaigns,” Ipsos Reid president Darrell Bricker said in an interview Thursday. “With 43 per cent, they’re probably quite comfortably in majority territory.”At dissolution of Parliament, the Tories will have 143 seats. They need to win just 12 more — to reach the 155-seat mark — to get a majority government.Bricker said the problem for the Liberals is that their efforts to discredit the Tories on ethics are going nowhere. 

[…]According to the poll, the Tories have opened up a commanding lead in vote-rich Ontario. In that key battleground, the Conservatives stand at 46 per cent, compared to 30 per cent for the Liberals, 16 per cent for the NDP and eight per cent for the Greens.

In Quebec, the Tories appear poised to easily hang on to their seats. While the Bloc would receive 41 per cent of the vote, the Conservatives (25 per cent) have moved into second position, followed by the Liberals (18 per cent), the NDP (13 per cent) and the Greens (three per cent).

In another key battleground — British Columbia — the Conservatives (50 per cent) hold a solid lead over the Liberals (22 per cent), with the NDP (20 per cent) not far behind. The Greens (seven per cent) trail.

[…]In Alberta, the Tories stand at 54 per cent support, while the Liberals have 23 per cent, the NDP have 17 per cent and the Green party has five per cent.In Saskatchewan/Manitoba, the Tories are ahead at 66 per cent, while the Liberals have 18 per cent and NDP has 13 per cent.

In the Atlantic region, the Tories are at 41 per cent, followed by the Liberals at 28 per cent, the NDP at 20 per cent, and the Greens at 11 per cent.

Just to refresh you, the Liberals are the socialist party, and the NDP are the communist party, and the Bloc is the French communist party. The conservatives are strong on defense and fiscal issues, and they do have some good social conservatives like Maurice Vellacott and Rob Anders. The Conservatives do understand the need for strong families, low unemployment rates and low taxes as a support for social conservatism, but there is not much they can do about that while they are still a minority party. That could all change with this election, and you might see some common sense reforms to strengthen marriage (reform divorce laws and custody laws), and have some restrictions on abortion, like the kind that the state Republican parties pass.

For example, you might finally see moderate reforms like parental consent or born alive infant protection or a bill to make coerced abortion a prosecutable offense or more ultrasounds in hospitals or tax deductions for adoptions. This would be in addition to all the wonderful military and economic laws they could pass if they were a majority: a helicopter carrier, new guided-missile frigates, new safe nuclear reactors, lower minimum wage rates to raise the employment rate, free trade deals (e.g. – with Singapore, India, South Korea, Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic nations), employer payroll tax cuts to encourage hiring of more employees, vouchers for school choice so parents could choose schools, lower corporate tax rates to encourage businesses to move to Canada, a national right-to-work law so workers wouldn’t have to join a union, dismantle the long gun registry to encourage self-defense of homes and property, abolish all Human Rights Commissions and Human Rights Tribunals, privatize CBC, Canada Post and other Crown corporations to make them more balanced politically and more responsive to consumers, double the child tax credit for married couples to encourage married couples to have children, and put in income splitting for married couples to allow mothers to stay home for a couple of years with new kids, etc. At least they could ask the Canadian people what they want and try to put in common sense reforms that support working families.

The election is set for May 2011. I cannot believe that the Conservatives are more popular in Saskatchewan than in Alberta. Alberta used to be the conservative headquarters of Canada, with Calgary at the center. Now I am not so sure what to think.

News

Human Rights Tribunal finds Catholic school board guilty of discrimination

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From Life Site News. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has ordered a Catholic school board to compensate three members of a prominent UFO cult after finding the board guilty of religious discrimination.

Daniel, Michel, and Sylvie Chabot, members of the Raelian cult, were hired in November 2006 by the Conseil Scolaire Catholique Franco-Nord to offer ‘emotional pedagogy’ training sessions for teachers.  They delivered such sessions through what they call the Academy of Pleasurology and Emotional Intelligence (APEI).

The Catholic board chose to end the contract in January 2007 after discovering their membership in the cult, which claims that humans were planted on Earth by benevolent extraterrestrials.

On December 15th, Tribunal vice president Michelle Flaherty ruled that the board had discriminated against the three siblings on the basis of their beliefs.  The parties had agreed to mediation, but asked the Tribunal to determine if the human rights code was violated.  The decision does not reveal how much the board must pay in penalty.

Here’s a quick bio of the Tribunal vice president:

Michelle Flaherty has extensive experience in administrative, labour, human rights and employment law and has represented both employers and employees. From 1999 until 2000, Ms. Flaherty articled as a Law Clerk to Madame Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé of the Supreme Court of Canada. She also taught for a number of years at the University of Ottawa in the areas of equality, human rights and labour law. Her community involvement includes volunteering for several organizations in the Ottawa area. Ms. Flaherty is a graduate of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa.

i thought that the Catholic employer should have been more careful. But then it struck me – even asking if the person is an orthodox Catholic could be considered discrimination and land you in a Human Rights Tribunal. After all, campus clubs have been banned in Canada for requiring that executive members sign a statement of faith. So I guess the practice of religion is now illegal in Canada.

I found an interesting article assessing Canada’s three famous feminist Supreme Court justices, who are notorious for judicial activism to favor a left-wing agenda. Think of them as 3 clones of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg.

News

Is Barack Obama responsible for rising gas prices?

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Here’s an article that takes a look at the effects of his energy policies. (H/T Ari)

Excerpt:

With gasoline currently above $3 per gallon nationwide and economists expecting that price to rise even further in 2011, America should be getting serious about producing more of its own resources. But instead of focusing on how to bring more relief to American motorists, President Obama has imposed massive new regulations, restrictions, and even threatened higher taxes on American energy, all of which negatively impact domestic production.

What follows is a list of the five most egregious actions on the part of the Obama administration that have contributed to higher gasoline prices and greater dependence on foreign dictators for our energy…

Here’s the one I thought was the most interesting:

Cancelling existing permits: Immediately after taking office in 2009, President Obama’s handpicked Secretary of the Department of Interior, Ken Salazar, canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah. The fact that this was one of the administration’s first regulatory decisions meant that American energy companies were immediately concerned about their ability to produce oil and gas in the future, injecting a level of uncertainty into the market that moves the country away from job creation and economic recovery. One year later, the administration canceled 61 more leases, this time in Montana, as part of President Obama’s war on global warming.

And here’s the conclusion:

Why has President Obama led the charge to restrict American energy? The answer is elusive, and it’s anyone’s guess what his administration will do (if anything) to fight for lower gasoline prices. But if past statements from him and his administration are any indication, the U.S. could be stuck (absent major legislative and regulatory changes) with prohibitively high gasoline prices: Then-Senator Obama said on the campaign trail in 2008 that he doesn’t object to high oil prices as long as they come about gradually, and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu once famously said he hoped the U.S. would “boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” where prices are currently about $7 per gallon.

Yes, it’s true. People on the left are willing to enact policies that cost consumers more money, reduce the number of jobs for Americans, outsource energy production to other countries, and even pay our enemies to produce energy in ways that are more damaging to the environment than our ways of producing energy. This is the Democrat way. They don’t care about you having cheaper energy prices, they don’t care about creating jobs for Americans, and they don’t care about reducing pollution. If you want to see where this is going, just look at the policies of the socialist Dalton McGuinty in Ontario, Canada.

Why do they do this? Well, people on the secular left are often stuck believing in doomsday predictions about overpopulation and resource exhaustion that were discredited years ago. Having rejected God’s sovereignty over the universe as part of their embrace of moral relativism and rejection of ultimate accountability, they look to big government to reduce the uncertainties and fears of a mindless, random universe.

If no one is in charge, then anything could happen, they think – and they are frightened. Thus, they look to government to coerce people to behave predictably, and also to reduce the total number of people (abortion, DDT bans, purges of dissenters, etc.). And of course fussing about imaginary bogeymen like global warming gives them an inflated sense of self-righteousness and justifies their nanny-state micro-managing of ignorant taxpaying businesses and workers.

These are not good people. These are not competent people.