Jean Charest speaks environmental sense and aboriginal respect

While visiting Paris, Jean Charest publicly responded to snobby French criticism of the Hydro-Quebec’s future plans to develop la riviere Romaine. The basis of the criticism is two-fold:

• building a dam will flood the terrain and damage the environment
• the aboriginal population is being bought off and by implication exploited

This French critic also has to demonstrate his economic ignorance and naive socialist bias by making a jab at the Americans:

La compagnie Hydro-Québec est une multinationale caractéristique du grand capitalisme, avec des intérêts à la fois au Québec et aux Etats-Unis. Son projet consiste, à partir de 2009, dans la construction de quatre barrages en vue de la production d’électricité qui sera vendue directement aux Etats-Unis, grand consommateur d’énergie (fossile ou naturelle).

Toc! Toc! M. Clezio?!? La nationalite des consommateurs d’electricite ne fait aucune difference ni a l’environnement ni aux autochtones, voyons-donc.

I think that high-falutin French Nobel Prize winner is just jealous of Quebeckers. I am jealous of Quebeckers. The poorest Quebecker or aboriginal has the opportunity to freely enjoy a huge amount of prestine and uninhabited land that no European will ever see without crossing the ocean. This proposed hydro-electric project is going to make a tiny difference to the environment in the long run. Most importantly, the value of the environmental damage should only be judged by the humans who occupy the land in question. Esoteric hypotheses of how future generations of mankind will be effected are boring irrelevent nonsense that belong in poetry circles.

Jean Charest’s response is very clever and to the point. He basically admits what no environmentalist will admit: humans can not live without making a foot-print on the environment. With respect to the native populations being bought out, Charest says they deserve the respect to make such decisions on their own. If the natives accept money in return for land, that is their right.

I think Jean Charest has just made a great stride for the environmental movement by responding in such basic terms. The first thing that matters in discussing environmental issues is property rights.

If you ask me, the only thing that is wrong with this project is that the Quebec government is buying off the natives with money they do not rightfully own: taxes.

Perhaps Spending like Drunken Sailors isn’t Sound Fiscal Policy

Did the the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada just give fiscal conservatives in the province $852-million reasons not to vote for them next election?.

Fifteen years of surplus budgets had put Alberta in the enviable position of being debt-free. But now, rocked by a double whammy of a recession and falling energy prices, the debts are piling up again.

Correction, the recession and falling energy prices was (and still is) only part of the problem – the real problem with the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta is their out of control spending and complete mismanagement of the provincial energy resources. Dating back to the Peter “every dinky town needs a hospital” Lougheed and right up to Ed “fix what isn’t broke” Stelmach, the PC Party of Alberta just can’t seem to say no to anyone.

With the Alberta Alliance on the cusp of electing a new leader, many provincial conservatives I’ve spoken too are asking themselves – what’s the point of electing the Progressive Conservatives again?

Happy Dominion Day!

From our family to yours, we trust you and yours have a safe and enjoyable July 1.

For the men and women of the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan and other corners of the planet, who wear the flag with pride, we trust you have an excellent day as well. May this day be one marked by peace even in the midst of conflict. God bless you and speed your return to your families today.

And may God bless this glorious nation, Canada! May she be forever strong and increasingly free.

Update 4:51 PM AST: A Vice-President of the Canadian Arab Federation, Omar Shaban, offers his view. (Hat tip to Kate, and an excellent catch by Tarek Fatah.)

F**k Canada Day

All I have to say is there are probably 100 flights per day leaving this country, Mr. Shaban.  Feel free to hop on any one of them at your earliest convenience and never return.  You might live here but you are not one of us.  The sooner you and others like you leave, the better.

Mark Carney, Bank of Canada governor, is talking too much

Actions usually speak louder than words and so, I have to wonder why Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of Canada is even talking.

More and more people have to understand that there is nothing the central bank can do to stimulate the economy in any responsible sense and the evidence of this is becoming more obvious. It seems like the bankers are still struggling with the realization that printing money does not create wealth:

Holt, who remains bearish about the next few years, agrees with Carney about the lacklustre response of the private sector economy to government stimulus. He says although central banks have done all they can to cut interest rates, consumers and businesses are just not borrowing.

Porter concedes that most of the recent good news points to an ailing economy that has entered a period of convalescence. There could be a relapse, he admits, but it is also possible for the patient to make a better recovery than many suspect.

“I’m concerned because part of the puzzle that we need is to see some repair in confidence, and to have one of our policy-makers stepping on the green shoots is not helpful,” he said.

Such poetic analogies (a repair in confidence, a recovering patient) may work well in academia to maintain the attention of wide-eyed gullible students or to provide meaningless sound-bites to a journalist. However, people who actually have to work for a living and for entrepreneurs who risk their own hard-earned money, economics will have to be a lot more concrete.

How an entrepreneur’s confidence arises is anybody’s guess but I think that providing cheap credit below market rates and printing money only stimulate malinvestment throughout the economy. The monetary inflation of central banks produces a phoney signal in the market and prolongs recessions.

That is not to say that there is no good reason to print money, mind you. To understand the reason, picture yourself on the receiving end of a cheap interest loan: you get purchasing power before you have productivity to show for it. Now, imagine yourself receiving that monetary inflation regularly. Not a bad gig, I would say.

A bad market if you do not get the cheap loans, though:

The numbers also say Canadian households have barely begun to bring down their household debts. A corporation that suffers from too much debt can sell a division, or find new equity partners, or merge with a healthier company. (If these fail, there’s always bankruptcy protection.) A government can raises taxes or invent new ones (goods and services tax, anyone?) – or, as a last resort, let the printing press run harder and longer, and allow inflation to work its painful magic.

But an individual debtor has fewer options.

The end result of monetary inflation is that it distorts the economy by perpetually giving cheap credit to the lenders and their elite clients. Since everybody is forced to use the same money, the people at the low end of the income scale end up subsidizing the parasitic lenders through price inflation. It is no wonder that you can not pay your taxes in a foreign currency.

Cision employees and CAW union

I heard a radio advertizement from CAW telling clients of Cision to stop doing business with Cision since their employees have been on strike for more than a month.

You have to wonder: if Cision is able to operate without its employees and still serve clients, the employees are probably a lot more redundant than they realize. Just a guess.

Governments — that means us tax payers, by the way — at various levels are some of the clients of Cision so, I would rather we see cost savings in the future. Cision operates world wide. If the Canadian branches can not keep their costs competitive, the jobs will go elsewhere. These employees who are on strike should tighten up their belts and take concessions.

What the hell does an auto union have to do with Cision employees, anyway???

Tim Hudak Wins Leadership On Third Ballot

Congratulations to Tim, and all the other candidates on a well-fought campaign that helped to bring us beyond the uninspiring years of John Tory’s headship. Hopefully Tim will bring a new energy to the party and be able to bring all of the groups, including libertarians, family activists and red tories back to their rightful place in contributing to the Ontario PC Party’s, and ultimately Ontario’s, future.

Ontario PC 2009 Leadership Convention: B2 Results & Updated Scenario Breakdown

Here are the B2 results, which still has no candidate over 50%:

Hudak: 4128 (39.96%)
Klees: 3299 (31.94%)
Elliott: 2903 (28.10%) [dropped]

TOTAL: 10330

This is where it’ll get interesting folks! While Hudak leads Klees by a steady 8%, that number is presumed to rapidly shrink as the Elliott and Hudak camps fought this campaign as though the other side was the one to defeat. However, with Elliott off the ballot, a lot of her supporters are expected to move to Klees. To win, Hudak will need to get around 35.75% of Elliott’s points while Klees will have have to get around 64.25%. It’s not as easy for Hudak as the numbers suggest, and (again) I bet the Hudak team is really wishing they kept the contest against Elliott a little less polarized right now!

As an aside, 15 points were dropped between B1 and B2 (10345 to 10330); this is curious given the points system the OPC uses for it’s leadership system although there might be a perfectly good explanation for this in the details.

Suspender Update:

As expected, Hudak enjoyed most of the second-choice support from Hillier supporters, gaining just over 600 of the 1013 points avaliable in B2. What is surprising is that Klees and Elliott split the remainder (Klees received an additional 206 points; Elliott, 175). One little known fact in this race is that Hillier and the Landowners supported Klees in the 2004 race, but I guess without the open talk of health care choice from Klees and Elliott’s flat tax proposal, many of the libertarian-oriented Hillier fans were literally split as to what to do after Randy got dropped…

Pink Waffle Update: Courtesy of United & Strong, we now have the riding-by-riding breakdown of who won on B2. I did a quick comparison and here below are the changes for those ridings where the winner has flipped.

A few observations:

1) All three ridings Hillier won on B1 went to Hudak on B2.
2) Scarborough, Mississauga, Ottawa and Simcoe proved very hotly contested, with a lot of horse trading in all of those areas.
3) Elliott picked up three ridings (two Klees, one Hudak) this round, Klees took four (three from Hudak; broke the tie in Davenport) and Hudak 11 (five Klees, and three each from Elliott and Hillier)

Format: (Riding B1 Winner -> B2 Winner)
Carleton-Missippi Mills Hillier -> Hudak
Davenport 3-way tie (Hudak, Elliott, Klees)-> Klees wins
Etobicoke Centre Klees -> Elliott wins
Glengarry-Prescott-Russell Hillier wins -> Hudak wins
Lambton Kent Middlesex Klees wins Hudak wins
Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington Hillier -> Hudak wins
Mississauga Streetsville Hudak -> Klees wins
Mississauga-Brampton South Klees -> Hudak wins
Northumberland-Quinte West Elliott -> Hudak wins
Ottawa Vanier Elliott -> Hudak wins
Ottawa West Nepean Hudak -> Elliott wins
Scarborough Centre Klees -> Hudak wins
Scarborough Guildwood Klees -> Elliott wins
Scarborough Rouge River Klees -> Hudak wins
Simcoe-Grey Hudak -> Klees wins
Simcoe-North Hudak -> Klees wins
St Paul’s Elliott -> Hudak wins
Windsor West Elliott -> Hudak wins

Ontario PC 2009 Leadership Convention: Regional Strenth Breakdown

As part of our continued coverage of the Ontario PC Leadership convention today, here is a breakdown who won what ridings, with special attention to where each candidate had the most strength. Thanks to United & Strong for sharing these results.

Randy Hillier (4th Place)

Randy only won three ridings, all of them in eastern Ontario, all of them rural and including his own Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington.

Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington
Carleton-Missippi Mills
Glengarry-Prescott-Russell

Christine Elliott (3rd Place)

Like Hillier, Christine Elliott also took her home riding of Whitby-Oshawa, and much of the surrounding area with ridings like Ajax Pickering, Oshawa and Pickering-Scarborough East. Moving outside the eastern GTA, Elliott interestingly picked up some rural ridings like Essex, Wellington-Halton Hills and Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry, which probably has a lot to do with the fact that former DraftALeader head Nick Kouvalis has strong ties in those areas. Elliott did well in the 416, taking some of the most desolate ridings (in terms of PC Ontario performance/organization), and was able to pick up a riding in each of Ottawa, Kitchener-Waterloo, Oakville and Kingston, giving her a win in a total of 24 ridings.

Ajax Pickering
Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound
Dufferin-Caledon
Durham
Eglington Lawrence
Essex
Kingston and the Islands
Kitchener Waterloo
Northumberland-Quinte West
Oakville
Oshawa
Ottawa Vanier
Peterborough
Pickering-Scarborough East
St Paul’s
Sault Ste Marie
Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry
Toronto Centre
Toronto Danforth
Wellington-Halton Hills
Whitby-Oshawa
Windsor West
York South Weston
York West

Frank Klees (2nd Place)

Suspicions that the infamous “immigrant letter” from this week might have initiated in the Klees camp is lent credibility by the results here. Klees won in the GTA ridings with high immigrant political pariticpation and population numbers, including most of Peel and York regions (the latter being Klees’ home turf). Observers might find it curious then to see much of Waterloo region, and Lambton Kent Middlesex included here, however Klees also had Charles McVety and the Campaign Life Coalition working pretty heavily for him according to the buzz surrounding the last two months, which would explain those ridings falling under the Klees column. Klees won 33 ridings.

Beaches-East York
Bramalea-Gore-Malton
Brampton Springdale
Brampton West
Cambridge
Don Valley East
Elgin Middlesex London
Etobicoke Centre
Etobicoke Lakeshore
Huron Bruce
Kitchener Centre
Kitchener Conestoga
Lambton Kent Middlesex
Markham-Unionville
Mississauga-Brampton South
Mississauga East Cooksville
Mississauga Erindale
Mississauga South
Newmarket Aurora
Nickel Belt
Oak Ridges-Markham
Parkdale-High Park
Richmond Hill
Scarborough Centre
Scarborough Guildwood
Scarborough Rouge River
Scarborough Southwest
Sudbury
Thornhill
Thunder Bay-Atikokan
Willowdale
York Centre
York Simcoe

Tim Hudak (1st Place)

Hudak did very well in his home turf of southeastern Ontario, taking all of Hamilton, Burlington, and Niagara Region. He also won most of the seats in places like London, Oxford Region, Ottawa, and Guelph. Respectable results in the rural areas of northern Ontario (thanks to Mike Harris, no doubt) and southern Ontario (thanks to the HRC issue), as well as both Toronto proper and the GTA give Hudak a nice, well-spread 46 riding victory threshold going into B2!

Ajax Pickering
Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound
Dufferin-Caledon
Durham
Eglington Lawrence
Essex
Kingston and the Islands
Kitchener Waterloo
Northumberland-Quinte West
Oakville
Oshawa
Ottawa Vanier
Peterborough
Pickering-Scarborough East
St Paul’s
Sault Ste Marie
Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry
Toronto Centre
Toronto Danforth
Wellington-Halton Hills
Whitby-Oshawa
Windsor West
York South Weston
York West
Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington
Carleton-Missippi Mills
Glengarry-Prescott-Russell
Algoma Manitoulin
Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale
Barrie
Brant
Burlington
Chatham Kent Essex
Don Valley West
Etobicoke North
Guelph
Haldimand-Norfolk
Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock
Halton
Hamilton Centre
Hamilton East-Stoney Creek
Hamilton Mountain
Kenora-Rainy River
Leeds-Grenville
London-Fanshawe
London North Centre
London West
Mississauga Streetsville
Nepean Carleton
Niagara Falls
Niagara West Glanbrook
Nipissing
Ottawa Centre
Ottawa-Orleans
Ottawa South
Ottawa West Nepean
Oxford
Parry Sound-Muskoka
Perth-Wellington
Prince Edward-Hastings
Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke
St Catharines
Sarnia-Lambton
Scarborough-Agincourt
Simcoe-Grey
Simcoe-North
Thunder Bay-Superior North
Timiskaming-Cochrane
Timmins-James Bay
Trinity Spadina
Vaughan
Welland
Windsor-Tecumseh

TIE

Likely due to being a small riding, organization-wise, Toronto riding Davenport was split between Hudak, Klees and Elliott!

Ontario PC Leadership 2009: The Scenario Breakdown For B2 and B3

Well it looks like the 2009 leadership race for the Ontario PC Party will be going to three ballots with Randy Hillier’s fourth place finish being too small to put any of the other three candidates over the top. The first ballot (B1) results are:

Hudak: 3511
Klees: 3093
Elliott: 2728
Hillier 1013

TOTAL: 10345

Now, for the second ballot (B2), Hillier’s supporters will have their second choices counted and the last two months indicate that most of those choices will be for Hudak. Under the best scenario for Tim Hudak’s team, all of Hillier’s ballots go to Hudak, which would put us at:

Hudak: 4524 (43.73%)
Klees: 3093 (29.90%)
Elliott: 2728 (26.37%)

This still keeps Hudak just over six percent away from victory, and in reality, some of Hillier’s supporters would rather see Klees or Elliott in the big chair first. While it is possible for Elliott to survive the second ballot, she would need 365 points or 36.03% of Hillier’s points to overtake Klees, presuming the rest of Hillier’s points are allocated to Hudak; in other words, we’re going to a third ballot (B3) between Hudak and Klees.

Under that scenario, the best Hudak could hope for is that he would only need 649 points from Elliott’s supporters, or 23.79% or her B1 points. I bet at this point the Hudak folks are wishing they weren’t so hard on the federal Finance Minister’s wife anymore since that is a reasonable number to overcome, but it is definately in murky territory given the nasty animosity the Hudak and Elliott campaigns had against each other over the past three months. It is also, again, an ideal for the Hudak campaign and they’ll likely require between 25-30% of Elliott’s points to put them over the top.

As much as Hudak’s team is probably a little worried with these numbers currently, Klees’ team should be only cautiously joyful as the best they could hope for on B2 is 4106 points (presuming all of Hillier’s points go to Klees), leaving him with 39.69% at the end of B2. In that scenario, he’d enter B3 requiring 1067 or a modest 39.11% of Elliott’s points from B1, but again, no one is expecting more than a quarter of Hillier’s points to be allocated to Klees at best.

Still, this one ain’t over yet folks, unless you’re Hillier or Elliott!

Breaking: John Tory To Announce Candidacy For Mayor In Weeks

Word was let loose last night during the opening hours of the 2009 Ontario PC Leadership Convention in Markham that failed Ontario PC leader John Tory will be announcing his intention to run for mayor of Toronto in next year’s municipal election. The source, a party operative from Etobicoke attending the Randy Hillier hospitality suite, indicated that all the pieces of Tory’s campaign are in place and that we should be seeing a formal announcement as July rolls in. Tory, who surprised many observers in 2003 when he came close to pulling off a come-from-behind victory against eventual winner and current incumbent David Miller spent most of the six years since that campaign running the Ontario PC Party and fought a ill-received campaign against Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals in 2007. During that time, Tory’s success with the provincial PCs faltered and whispers about him returning to re-contest the municipal race in 2006 or 2010 hovered over the former Rogers CEO. No word yet on whether Liberal operative Warren Kinsella, who has had a weekly series on his blog this week titled “Toronto Needs A Mayor” will return to help Tory’s campaign as he did in 2003. More as it develops.

Update: Welcome Newswatch readers!

Next Page »