It has been an ugly week for democracy in Alberta. The ramming of Bill 22 through every reading within three days by the United Conservative Party was an act of legislative arrogance that would have made Alison Redford blush.
On issues such as abortion, Jason Kenney was quite clear that neither he nor the UCP would open the issue up. His exact words are below:
“A United Conservative government will not address this issue, will not engage in this debate, will not initiate legislation.” ~Kenney
Well, here we are eight months later watching a UCP dominated mittee discussing a bill modeled to impact abortion access which was put forth as a private members bill by a UCP member.
Conscience rights for medical providers are already protected within the Charter and by medical professional associations. There has been no indication of problems in the medical munity with this issue. The Alberta Medical Association has e out in opposition to this bill. The bottom line is that this is a redundant piece of legislation which potentially opens the door for new ways to hinder the provision of medical services.
The United Conservative Party can regain at least a glimmer of credibility when it es to democratic process if we see a true free vote among the members on this bill.
In saying free vote, I mean each and every elected member taking a stand one way or another on this bill. No sudden stomach ailments making members scoot out of the chamber at voting time. No scheduling conflicting events at voting time. I am saying show up and have it recorded where you stand on this issue. I will consider any member who doesn’t vote on Bill 207 as being in support of re-opening the abortion debate within Alberta.
A few UCP MLAs have already e out in opposition to this bill. I appreciate that and look forward to seeing more e out.
There is little to celebrate in this legislative session when it es to democracy. One thing we can potentially look to as a democratic victory will be to see the party in power allowing a true free vote in the legislature on this bill.
The standing mittee responsible just voted 8-2 in favor of killing Bill 207.
Now let’s see the collected MLAs vote freely in the legislature to definitively kill this odious bill.
I turned on the radio while at work today just in time to hear a repugnant rant from a woman who was cheered on by an audience as she derided Canadian hockey culture as being a nest of bullying white boys.
I had to look it up and listen again as I really couldn’t believe that a Canadian audience would let somebody spout out such a rant of vile pap without booing them off the stage.
It is a gross irony that this fortable urban living white woman is deriding a Canadian institution which has actually been a binding factor for all races, genders and walks of life in munities across Canada for generations.
I live in Priddis Alberta. While rural, it is a bedroom munity of Calgary. We also bound on the Tsuu T’ina native reserve. We have a pretty diverse local population.
We have two things which are munity hubs which pull people together. Our munity hall (over 100 years old), and our outdoor hockey rink.
Just this year we have had dozens of local volunteers working their asses off to renovate and get our little rink ready for the winter. It has been great to go out at night to see a whole bunch of people working together on a project like that.
They are just finishing the player boxes and should be flooding the rink for the season soon.
The rink will be packed with families for the entire winter.
Most of our munity lives on acreages. We don’t often meet and get to know our neighbors. Winters are long and cold and people tend to shut in. The hockey rink brings people out of their homes and brings them together.
I love looking out from my pub (across the road from the rink) to see the kids scrambling around chasing a puck while their families cheer them on. Contrary to what that myopic dolt Jessica Allen implied, these groups are far from simply being white boys. The number of girls on the ice is starting to rival the boys and there are children of a number of races out there playing. This is how kids and parents from different cultures get to know each other. This is how they bond. This is how we do learn that at the very base of things, we are all the same. This somehow offends the senses of Jessica Allen.
Allen says that folks should take their kids on a vacation rather than play hockey? A two week trip rather than an entire season of healthy petitive exercise and bonding within the munity?
Kids sit around playing too damn many video games as it is. It is astounding that some vacuous stooge such as Allen could claim that getting out and playing hockey is a bad thing (to the applause of gathered Stepford Wives).
The scene I have described here is repeated in thousands of rinks across Canada. These are social hubs which build and bind munities. If we want to reduce racism and gender issues, we need to be encouraging more munity sports like this, not deriding them as that fool Allen did.
Not all munities meet and bond while sipping $12 lattes in downtown Toronto Ms. Allen. You would be well served to get out and learn that. And to the women who gleefully cheered Allen’s bigoted rant, you should be ashamed of yourself.
We need to celebrate traditions which bring people together if we want to see munity unity in Canada. Intolerant twits like Jess Allen only drive us apart.
The best way Jason Kenney could shut down the Alberta independence movement would be to hold a separation referendum within a year. Once Albertans vote over 75 percent in favor of remaining within confederation, it would take at least a decade before an independence movement could gain steam again.
Support for separation is hot right now and it isn’t cooling quickly. No matter how eager one is to go however, one has to step back and have a look at just how strong that support is.
A recent poll showed that 33 percent of Albertans think that “my province would be better off if it separated from Canada”. That is not saying that the province should separate or that they would support the separation. They just feel that the province would be better off. This is not the sort of support which will get over 50 percent of the province to vote to separate.
I have run in two different elections under an independence banner. I knocked on countless doors and the trend was clear. Albertans are always pissed off with Ottawa but very few are ready to actually pull the trigger on secession even if it looks like a better deal. One of the main things aside from sentimentality which keeps people from pursuing secession is the utter lack of a solid, coherent plan as to what would happen. They asked many questions to which I didn’t have answers then and I still don’t have them now.
Right now the independence movement is essentially a loose collection of groups holding rallies and shouting buzzwords but not building any sort of solid organization or plan. They are demanding a referendum yet can’t tell people what the West would look like after a “yes” vote. This will fizzle over time if a solid and rational foundation isn’t built.
Many questions are repeated over and over again. Some have ready answers and some don’t yet. Until those answers are developed nobody will be going anywhere.
I am going to list the most mon ones.
WHICH BINATION OF PROVINCES WILL GO?
Is it an Alberta independence movement or a Western independence movement? Will it include Maniboba and Saskatchewan? What about the territories?
Some people have proposed taking part of British Columbia but leaving the Southwest portion out.
How could that be organized?
If we are going further into partition, what if Edmonton clearly votes to stay while the rest of the province votes to go? Could Edmonton bee a small Canadian territory within an independent Alberta?
I am not asking these things simply to be difficult. I think they can be answered but it won’t be easy and these are things that people have and will ask before considering separation.
WHAT ABOUT FIRST NATIONS?
This is a dicey area. There were treaties signed with the Crown. I am assuming an independent West will be a republic. Will those treaties be then considered void? Will they be honored within a new nation?
This is one area where I can see the most justification for an outside nation to intervene whether Canada or otherwise is if there is real or perceived abuse of First Nations.
Unrest from people residing within reserves will need to be addressed as well.
WHAT SORT OF POLITICAL SYSTEM WILL BE ADOPTED?
I mentioned a republic but that is still pretty broad. Will it be bicameral? Westminster Parliamentary based? Unitary? Decentralized?
At the very least some sort of draft constitution needs to be created.
WHAT SORT OF CURRENCY WILL BE USED?
Will Canadian dollars be retained? American dollars used? Shekels? Will any country be willing to facilitate that?
Perhaps an Alberta dollar? Bitcoin?
Creating a new currency and integrating it with the world markets won’t be easy.
WHAT ABOUT ASSETS WITHIN AND OUTSIDE OF ALBERTA?
Many Albertans own property and assets outside of the province. Many Canadians own property within Alberta. Many panies are integrated with assets throughout the country. How will that be addressed?
This sort of thing could take decades to sort out if there isn’t a detailed transition plan.
MILITARY?
Will there be a military? Will it be a large one? Small? Will it take part in NATO? UN?
What about current military assets within and outside of Alberta?
What about military personal stationed within and outside of Alberta?
IS THERE A PLAN TO JOIN THE UNITED STATES?
Would the USA want us? Would we want to join?
RCMP?
Would existing officers be able to join a new force?
IMMIGRATION?
How open will the borders be? Will we wele a large number of immigrants? A few? None? Will Canadian immigrants be prioritized over others?
ACCESS TO TIDEWATER?
There are still many more questions out there but I think I have made my point. I may as well end this list on a big and constantly pressing one.
Alberta and most of the independence proposals mean being landlocked. That in and of itself is not necessarily bad but it is a challenge. Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg are among the richest nations on earth yet they are landlocked. Some of the poorest nations are landlocked too.
The point is valid that we are having our product blocked from port access right now so there is little to lose in being independent.
Some folks keep pointing to the UN policies on landlocked nations. These are often the same people who say that the UN is an invalid organization though so which is it going to be?
The international conventions on access to tidewater don’t explicitly cover pipelines and they still require negotiation. There are nations that have blocked other nations from tidewater for decades as well. If they want to ignore orders from the UN there really isn’t much stopping them from doing so.
A rational plan has to be developed and published on this or it will be one of the biggest question marks killing a potential independence vote win.
Many are willing to attend the rallies and make the noise for independence. That is the fun part.
The reality is though that if Western independence is ever to happen, it will only e about with years of hard work and planning. Meetings, fights over policies, negotiation and late nights along with some really tedious conventions are required. That is not the fun part but it is the essential part.
My advice for those impatiently calling for a referendum on secession is to cool their jets for a bit here. Look at what needs to be done first if you are serious about this.
Secession if it ever is going to happen is going to be years away yet. In the meantime lets start building the foundation for it. Bring home our pension assets. Take control of immigration. Form our own police force. Build new relationships with First Nations independent from Ottawa. Always stand up to the federal government and develop provincial alternatives to every service that they provide when possible.
Along with pursuing all of the “Alberta Agenda” sort of policies above, plan, meet, think and answer those questions. If you don’t you will never get a “yes” vote no matter how badly you want it.
At 1 AM last Monday a gang of thieves broke into my pub.
They were there for seven minutes. Got away with perhaps $1,600 worth of cash and liquor but did around $4,000 in damage. The morons stole Redbull and Sourpuss while leaving the scotches behind. We are not talking about polished criminals here.
They smashed out all of my cameras and stole every bit of electronics that could be found within the place including the box which held the video data (we of course have cloud storage now).
They tied a tow rope around my ATM and tried to yank it out of the place with a truck. They failed. They then fled when the floodlights came on. Video from my neighbor’s camera caught them leaving in their truck. It was three men and a woman.
Undeterred by their experience at my pub, these losers then traveled to Bragg Creek where they attempted to break in to the Powderhorn Saloon. They failed to get in but damaged the back door and camera of course as can be seen below.
After the Powderhorn attempt, the thieves went to Rockies Tavern and Grill in the same mall. They did manage to gain entry and as with my pub, they did massive damage along with stealing a small amount of cash and liquor.
As if all of these bold efforts were not enough, these thieves returned two nights later and did it again!
They attempted to gain entry into the Powderhorn Saloon through the front window this time. They smashed glass but didn’t get in.
They then went to Rockies Tavern and Grill again and managed to steal a few more things along with doing more damage.
Having destroyed the security systems the night prior, they knew they would not be noticed.
They skipped my pub on the second round. Likely due to their initial close call.
In rural Alberta for households and businesses this kind of story is getting all too mon. Criminals emboldened by a weak justice system and an overloaded police system are increasingly robbing citizens blind and people are getting more than a little fed up.
The gang who hit the pubs last week were typical. They are desperate (likely addicts), stupid and dangerous in their stupidity and desperation. If and when a business owner or homeowner confronts these guys, it is going to be an ugly scene for somebody.
To their credit, the local RCMP are taking this very seriously and they are working hard to catch this bunch. They know how dangerous this is being. They have a lot of square miles to cover however and limited resources. Meanwhile a home is broken into almost daily in the MD of Foothills. Thieves are hitting rural properties day and night out here.
There is only so much we can do. We have security systems but with an average police response time of 40 minutes, they are of limited value.
We secure our items. We put up bars and gates. When thieves use winches on stolen trucks to tear things down though, these deterrents bee useless.
I have listened to urban folks at times saying “Its just stuff. Let it go!”.
Its not just “stuff”. These are items that we worked and paid for. These are the tools of our trades. These are items with sentimental value. We can’t and won’t just “let it go”.
Insurance panies are beginning to refuse coverage to some rural residents because they have been hit too many times by thieves. As a business owner, I have to either pay a fortune in premiums or carry a very large deductible in order to remain in business while being insured.
We can’t just let our property continue to be stolen.
The state can’t protect us and our items and we are going to protect ourselves no matter how many times we are told not to so lets start modelling policy to reflect that reality.
Rural crime is a plex and growing issue. Contributing factors include the addiction epidemic, aboriginal issues, modern means of fencing stolen goods and the removal of the ability for citizens to defend themselves and their property.
All of those issues need to be addressed if we want to see a reduction in rural crime.
The Kenney government is taking rural crime seriously. I was impressed when I went to see Miranda Rosin and Doug Schweitzer speak in our area. Schweitzer understands that as an urban dweller that he needs to learn what we are dealing with and he is making the effort. The questionnaire given to us hits the right buttons as well where there is room for improvement.
All of the above measures will help. It will take time before these kind of measures make an impact on the crime rates.
The addition of thousands of new addiction treatment beds was wele as well.
Castle laws would help. Whether they exist formally you can rest assured that such laws exist in our minds and moral codes out here so we may as well enshrine them.
Crime is an issue everywhere but in rural areas the risk is more acute.
We feel vulnerable and victimized. We are running out of options. We would rather not confront criminals but we know that unless we do so, the criminals will have our way with us.
My pub is only one minute from my home. If the alarm goes off again you can bet that I will respond in person. I am not a trained law enforcement type so my measure of force may not be well judged. I will put the safety of my person and protection of my property ahead of the safety of criminals and it may end very poorly for somebody.
Rest assured that rural residents and business owners are thinking the same way.
We need to act on this rural crime issue and we need to do so fast.
Tensions are high out here and unless some changes happen soon, we are going to see tragedy occur. It is not a matter of if somebody gets killed. It will be a matter of when.
The support for the Canadian health care system is almost cult like.
I grew up being taught that Canada has the best health care system on the planet. This mantra was repeated by teachers, politicians, union heads and news organizations.
Canada’s State Broadcaster even named Tommy Douglas as our greatest Canadian in 2004 after a short game show style reality series.
The problem is that its all bullshit.
When it es to health outes Canada is not at the top. When it es to value for health care dollars, Canada is not at the top. If we are not at or even near the top by those two measures, we have no damn place claiming that we are at the top.
By the way, I don’t give a shit about the American system. I won’t play into that hysteric narrative which limits discussion on health care to two systems.
There are dozens of systems out there with universal coverage for citizens and many of them spend less than we do while seeing better outes than we do. To be frank, we are being idiots for refusing to look to other systems to see how we can improve ours.
People are literally dying on waiting lists while we run record deficits at all levels of government. Something has to change.
So what is keeping us from pursuing health care reform? Why is ideology more important than outes when it es to health care in Canada?
Our leadership needs to find the courage and will to address the biggest elephant in the room when it es to health care reform. That elephant is unions.
Unions don’t give a rats ass about patients, taxpayers or health outes despite what they may claim. Unions exist for the benefit of their membership and the growth of the union. Nothing more.
Canada’s bloated and inefficient health system status quo benefits public service and health care unions greatly. When we have turned our system into a religion where the only actions a government is allowed to do is toss more money into it while refusing to pursue accountability, we have created a union paradise.
Health care spending has been exploding over the past few decades while waiting lists grow. This pattern is simply unsustainable.
We need challenge the Canada health act. We need to examine practices and seek efficiencies and we need to get the spending under control.
The unions will go haywire when we try any of those necessary measures. A parasite is never more tenacious than when it is being removed.
Jason Kenney is well aware of how tough this battle will be. That is why while he campaigned on fiscal austerity, he still mitted to maintaining health spending. That won’t work for long. Health care is simply too big a spending item while our debt continues to grow.
We need to expose and pick at what the unions don’t like to talk about. Aside from the terrible inefficiency of the system, we are paying most of those within it too damn much.
While Alberta has languished in a prolonged recession with citizens taking pay cuts or being laid off, health care workers in Alberta remained the highest paid in the nation for the most part.
The differential is striking. If we could just bring pensation for health care workers to the national average we could save hundreds of millions if not billions.
I am not talking about draconian wage cuts here. I am talking about simply bringing our workers in line with the rest of the country.
Doctors are no exception either. $900 million per year could be saved by bringing their pensation in line.
We can’t simply jump into the system with an axe and start cutting wages for nurses and doctors. There are contracts in play and we don’t want to be losing too many workers at once.
It is long past time that we recognized that we are paying too much for health care labor though and began talking about how to bring that in line. The conversation has to begin.
A good showdown with the labor unions will help us all in the long run. They are keeping us from innovating and they are simply costing us too much. We can’t let this organized labor tail keep wagging our health care dog any longer. It is simply too important.
We need to break the two myths which the unions are desperately trying to maintain. The myth that our health care system is perfect and the myth that our health care system is sacred. With those myths broken we will finally be able to seek out the health care changes and innovations which other nations enjoy.
There aren’t many issues which can unify left minded and right minded people but corporate welfare is one of them.
All three levels of government participate in corporate welfare and it is an economically destructive practice in all cases .
Businesses, particularly small ones in Alberta have been having a tough go of things for years now. Taxes and expenses rise while sales remain flaccid.
To add insult to injury for beleaguered small businesses, the governments who tax and regulate the crap out of them are taking their money and handing it out to other businesses.
We are literally bleeding our successful and hardworking entrepreneurs in order to give welfare to connected business people who apparently can’t manage to run a business without being subsidized. It is ridiculous and harms our whole business environment.
Governments get drawn into corporate welfare for a number of reasons. They toss money at unviable industries based on ideology at times, based on cronyism, in order to buy short term labor peace and in order to buy the electoral love of some regions. None of these reasons justify robbing the successful to pay off the undeserving.
We are entering a period of austerity. Government spending will be cut provincially soon. Federally and municipally the cuts are inevitable as overspending continues.
One of the easiest ways to cut government spending is to cut their corporate handouts but we will need to speak up and tell government to cut it out! If we remain silent, they will continue to rob us.
Ottawa pisses untold billions into Quebec panies such as Bombardier, Calgary taxes businesses right out of the city while handing $100 million to “Calgary Economic Development” so they may hand out grants to cronies and Alberta is continuing the welfare game with handouts such as the recent $10 million given to McRock Capital.
This has to stop!
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is sending an open letter to the Province of Alberta on behalf of businesses calling for an end to corporate welfare. We have thousands of businesses in Alberta working hard to pay taxes only to have those funds handed out to others. They need to speak up if they want to stop being milked like this.
It really must be humiliating to be a law enforcement officer these days. You feel a calling, you take the training and then find yourself relegated to a role in life as a speeding ticket writer and traffic control officer for illegal protesters while innocent muters lose hours of their lives due to traffic blockages.
This morning in Edmonton, nine or so extremists held hands across a major bridge in a protest and snarled muters for hours.
It would have taken a few police officers a matter of minutes to move these idiots off the bridge and charge them. Instead, police acted like the personal security service for the protesters and protected them from infuriated, taxpaying muters.
These giggling assholes won today. They held up thousands of people for hours with impunity. Rest assured they will do it again.
What if an ambulance couldn’t get through? What if there was a medical emergency in the backed up traffic? How many people lost hours of work? Did any people potentially lose their jobs? Not every employer is sympathetic with excuses for being late.
These blockades are not a minor thing. They are illegal and we need to enforce the damned law.
Its not surprising to see these protests escalating as our cowardly authorities refuse to enforce the law.
Hell, even after putting first responders in danger in Vancouver as they dangled from a bridge and forced a high level rescue at costs of untold thousands of dollars, Greenpeace extremists never even got a slap on the wrist.
Seriously, what the hell is the point of the law and the point of the people tasked with enforcing it if they can’t even deal with a problem this cut and dry and simple?
Perhaps they should just stick to speeding tickets and doughnut eating and let the public clear the roadways themselves. It would be more effective.
I can’t wait to see the next blockage and rest assured it is ing soon.
Its hardly news that the CBC is a biased network. They have been left leaning to say the least for decades and that is undeniable from anybody who sits to the right of munism.
Media bias in general is hardly new. Private networks and papers have their leanings and they always have. I have no issue with this. People can vote with their subscriptions and advertising dollars.
Taxpayers have no choices. We have to fund the CBC whether we view and listen to them or not. With no accountability to the viewership, the CBC has been getting more and more biased while their entertainment productions are being terrible.
The CBC shilling for the Trudeau government in this election has been nothing less than reprehensible and shameless.
There is little doubt that the biggest blow to the Trudeau campaign has been the exposure of his repeated propensity to dress himself in racist blackface costumes. Since this scandal the CBC has been working tirelessly to try and change the channel and create a conservative scandal. They dredged up Scheer’s responses to questions from 10 years ago. They dug into conservative candidates statements and backgrounds.
The CBC shed what tiny bit of credibility they had when they tracked down and harassed the man who shared the yearbook photos of Trudeau.
“Refused to elaborate”?
Who the hell do you think you are?
Adamson spoke to the press awhile ago, said he felt that Canadians had a right to know and that he had nothing further to say. What the hell elaboration is required? What do you expect?
What the CBC is doing is trying to imply that Mr, Adamson had some nefarious hidden agenda or that he is tied with an organization of some sort. It is sleazy crap journalism and I am ashamed that my tax dollars fund this.
These asshole “journalists” are trying to shoot the messenger in hopes of saving Trudeau’s hide and it’s disgusting.
Why do we need the CBC in this day and age?
Satellite TV and radio now provide coverage to every munity in the nation. We have the internet and access to hundreds of news sources at our fingertips. Why does the government need to remain in the media game?
Conventional media is suffering from an increasing deficit of money and credibility as modern technology has flooded the world with information (and misinformation) in an unprecedented way.
The CBC is feeding public distrust of the media in general with their gross bias and they are stealing hundreds of millions of advertising dollars from the rest of Canada’s media outlets as they can undercut other networks due to their getting over $1 billion tax dollars per year.
We can do better things with those tax dollars and other networks can do better things with those advertising dollars.
Its past time to shut down the CBC and sell its assets. Let the private market adjust to the changing world of information and put those scarce tax dollars into services such as health and education where they belong.
Its bad enough that our blackface wearing Prime Minister is a national embarrassment. Lets not have our obsolete State Broadcaster as one as well.
Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives have taken the approach of pretending that Bernier and his People’s Party of Canada doesn’t exist. They avoid referring to them or debating them. They are hoping that the party will simply sail into the sunset without making any measurable impact on the election. Is this a wise strategy though?
While many try to paint Bernier as an extremist, he doesn’t present as one when speaking and the proposals he makes are supported by a large segment of Canadians. It must be remembered that not long ago Bernier lost the leadership race of the Conservative Party of Canada by only a hair’s breadth. He clearly resonates with many within conservative circles.
I ran Twitter a poll as something of an experiment as a response to the somewhat Liberal leaning oute of the popular Twitter personality of “Crackmacs”. I contended that the outes of Twitter polls only reflected the following of the person posting the poll as opposed to people at large. I cut and paste the same wording of his poll and posted it, including hashtags.
Some folks carry more politically diverse followers than others. Clearly I am not one of them. I knew that I would have a strongly Conservative leaning poll oute but even I was surprised with how much this was the case.
With nearly 5000 voters we found over 90% choosing Conservative.
Years of my abrasive style of tweeting and my political leaning has developed a pretty strong pool of Twitter followers. Again though, these results only tell tales about my social media following and are useless when pared to the electorate at large.
One may note the 300 ments on the poll. Of those, there were well over a hundred people manually responding that they will vote for the PPC but didn’t have the option in the poll that I had presented.
This prompted me to post a new poll with just 24 hours to vote and to only give the CPC and the PPC as options.
In drilling down with the assumption of the voting pool being predominantly conservative to begin with, we can get some numbers where more can be read in to the results.
With over 3000 votes in 24 hours this is a pretty healthy sampling of a conservative pool. Again though due to the type of following I have gathered, the libertarian leaning would be stronger and the red tory types would be weaker. PPC support in that case would be a bit over represented as well.
I think there are enough numbers in there to make some broad conclusions though.
Support for Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada within conservative circles is too strong to continue to ignore. Those kind of numbers cut clearly into spoiler territory in many ridings in Canada and it would be foolhardy to ignore them.
Rather than continuing to pretend that Max doesn’t exist, I think it is time that Scheer and pany started to consider what Bernier is doing to draw people to him.
Conservatives are tired of being shut down on contentious issues. Political correctness has gagged too many players on too many issues which are important to Canadians. Bernier is taking those issues on directly while Scheer takes the standard mushy, nonmittal middle approach. We have had 4 years of mushyness with Trudeau. Its time to see somebody taking the reins and putting themselves out there. So far Bernier is the only one willing to do so.
Immigration is not a sacred subject and the extreme position is actually an open borders one. Nobody reasonable wants to halt all immigration but most people want to see an immigration system with reasonable controls. Equalization is a real issue to many in the West. Supply management and the ever increasingly expensive and biased CBC are subjects worthy of getting on.
Hell in 2016 Scheer said he would axe the CBC news division, now he is saying he would scrutinize their work to ensure more Canadian content. e on! Take a stand somewhere!
If the CPC wants to stop the bleeding of precious votes to the PPC they will need to start talking the right language and talking it soon. If they continue to look like a somewhat more conservative version of the Liberals they will lose those votes for good.
Should the CPC suddenly embrace all of the PPC policies and platform? Of course not. Bernier is only polling at a few percent across the country.
Bernier is also taking a big bit out of the traditional conservative base though and the Conservative Party of Canada can’t afford to keep pretending that he isn’t there.
I first heard about the lawsuit against Eddie Maurice a couple nights ago in my pub. Some folks ing back from a fundraiser had been speaking to Eddie and popped by to tell me about it. I was astounded and disgusted that this serial criminal who had gotten himself shot while trying to rob the Maurice family late one night had the gall to try and sue Eddie for damages. Apparently he feels that he lost ine due to his injury. How many less places did he break into due to it?
Eddie was dragged before the courts six times over the course of months before the stubborn Crown Prosecutor finally dropped the charges. At every hearing hundreds of Albertans rallied outside of the Okotoks courthouse in support of the Maurice family. While the prosecutors will never admit it, they had to bow to public pressure. Convicting this man for protecting the baby who was alone in his house was simply not going to happen.
This put the family through incredible stress and strain while this action dragged on. They finally thought it was over. I remember how much more relaxed Eddie was when he came out of that courthouse for (what we thought was) the final time. They could get back on with their lives.
While repugnant, it wasn’t all that shocking I guess to think of a junkie trying to screw a few dollars out of somebody with a lawsuit. There are always scumbag lawyers encouraging such actions.
What the hell is wrong with those fools in Alberta Justice? Did they not think that the Maurice family had suffered enough?
Perhaps they still saw Eddie as the one that got away. “How dare he defend his baby and not do time!”
Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer rightly dropped this idiotic government lawsuit the moment he heard of it. Good on him.
Dropping the suit is not enough however.
I am going to guess that this lawsuit was the brainchild of a Notley appointee. Who else but a raving NDP hack would conceive of something so stupid as having the government sue a victim of crime?
The Kenney government has a lot of housecleaning to do since winning their majority mandate and clearly the justice department is in dear need of it.
Whether it was a Notley appointee or not, the fool who came up with this lawsuit should be fired post-haste along with any other idiots who supported them. Rural crime is a powder keg issue as it is and dragging rural victims of crime before the courts won’t help.
If you are worried about folks taking the “shoot, shovel, shut up” approach to home defense I can assure you that stopping government lawsuits against innocent homeowners is a good start towards reducing that.
Eddie still faces the lawsuit initiated by the moron who tried to rob him. I wonder if the criminal who is suing Eddie was inspired or encouraged to sue Eddie by the government and it’s lawsuit? Crackheads are not typically known for taking initiative on anything so I would not be too surprised here.
I am glad that Doug Schweitzer acted so quickly to quell this idiocy. I hope he moves just as quickly to flush out the dolts who initiated it.
