US Plan for Invasion of Canada

Plans from the 1930s, via No Left Turns.

Pettigrew Mistaken for a Male Prostitute

Most of the time Pierre Pettigrew is mistaken for being Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. During this federal election campaign, one might think he’d also get mistaken for an MP who’s desperately trying to hang on to his seat.

The National Post (subscription required) reports that Frederick Estelle, 24, attacked Pettigrew on a Montreal subway station platform:

Mr. Estelle, a professional painter, has no criminal record. He has undergone treatment for depression, the court heard.

He is accused of robbery and assault in the attack on Mr. Pettigrew in St. Laurent on Wednesday.

Mr. Pettigrew was talking on his cellphone inside the subway station when a man became belligerent, shouting at the Minister that he had no business there and that it was “his” territory.

Jamie Christoff, a spokesman in Mr. Pettigrew’s office, declined to comment at length on the attack.

“The incident itself had nothing to do with his role as Minister of Foreign Affairs,” Mr. Christoff said. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Swinging and the New Marriage Regime

In the wake of same-sex marriage opening up a new regime of marriage, the Supreme Court decided it’s ok to run swingers clubs.

Overlooked in the kerfuffle is that the club’s patrons, Michel Delbecchi and his wife Chantal have welcomed a 3rd woman into their household (and here). No word yet whether they’ll litigate for polygamy to be declared constitutional (that’s consensual polygamy, not the kind practised by some LDS fringe sects).

Kicking Coca-Cola in the Nose

Coca-Cola has been under fire in the last few months over alleged labour abuses in India, Colombia and Turkey. A campaign is mounting against Coke that includes disinformation and propaganda. The actively enlightened in universities across North America are piling in to join in a boycott (here, here, and here), including Canadian campuses. It seems that every lefty in the civilised world is mobilising against the soft-drink giant.

Coke’s situation in Mexico is somewhat different. There, Coke is having old fashion competitive problems in the market. Mexico is one of the largest Coca-Cola consumers in the world. In spite of their nationalist gravitas, Mexicans have an uncanny loyalty to Coca-Cola. A friend of mine who works in the advertising industry in Mexico City, one of the largest ad markets in the world, once told me that Pepsi commercials in Mexico are always winning awards of all kinds. The ads are catchy and well-crafted, and everyone loves them, but people sign praises to the Pepsi commercials while they are enjoying a Coke. Pepsi has not been able significantly to pierce through to the consumer and make a difference in sales with their ads.

But Coke’s secure place in the Mexican market is being rocked. Coke is taking a little bit of a beating in the Mexican market by an unheard of, small newcomer. A Peruvian bottler selling Big Cola has been slowly eroding at the market share of the big bottlers in Mexico, including Pepsi, and are forcing them to lower their prices and make smaller profits. Sales of Coke and Pepsi are down; Big Cola sales are up. The big guys are now taking notice.

In an age of globalising competitiveness, where the assumption is always that the giant will have the upper hand, this story offers the opposing view. It shows that a sound pricing strategy, low budget production and distribution, and a decent product can break into a foreign market and make more than a dent. The little Peruvians are scaring the big Americans –which in the age of anti-Americanism also makes the story attractive to the Naomi Kleins of the planet. Most remarkable is the fact that Big Cola has had virtually no advertisement. Their marketing strategy is wrapped into their pricing.

This is and it is not David and Goliath story. Big Cola is not about to crush Coke, which holds more than two thirds of the Mexican pop market. But as Big Cola’s sales rise beyond eighteen percent this year, even though most of the Big Cola expansion has been at the detriment of Coke, they may put Pepsi’s share at peril in Coke’s counter-attack. Coke is unlikely to win its political battle against the world’s Borg. But the market battle in Mexico will be interesting to watch in the near future.

CP Peddling Fear

CP publishes a story on December 26 about the “alarm” regarding Harper’s remark about homosexual marriage made the day that the writ was dropped. A month later, it is being reported almost as it happened today. Its angle is the reaction by some urban homosexuals in Canada who are admittedly “paranoid,” and who seem not to understand the parliamentary system. One of them, for example, misguidedly claims that Harper has not been elected yet (as though voters elect prime ministers in the Westminster system).

In addition, also by their own admission:

“There are more important issues in Canada, and it’s a real shame that it had to be raised.”

The CP report written by one Greg Bonnell. From it one would think that there are no other issues in the campaign (There aren’t for homosexuals with long-term plans to marry, perhaps).

It would be impossible to know from Bonnell’s report that Stephen Harper later promised to hold a free vote in the House if he were to form a government [governments are formed in Canada, not elected], and that he pledged not to use the notwithstanding clause when it came to homosexual marriage. Simply put, the purpose of Bonnell’s report is not to inform about recent developments on the homosexual marriage question since the beginning of the campaign but to advance a single point of view by painting paranoid and fearful groups reacting to a supposed scary leader. Only by conveniently cutting to the long-past first day of the campaign and ignoring everything in between could Bonnell achieve that. While it is just a little better than digging speeches from four years ago without taking changes into consideration, it is still dishonest.

CP’s complicity in the smearing is obvious in the title of the piece: “Gay community reacts with alarm, vows to fight Harper on same-sex marriage.” Since the piece is published on December 26, a couple days short of a month from Harper’s initial statement, CP and Bonnell are acting retardedly or dishonestly –or both.

One does not have to be a media critic to realise that there is no balance in Bonnell’s story: no attempt at portraying the Conservative position at all. That would be journalism, not to mention the balanced kind. Bonnell and CP seem to be willing mouth pieces for a third party in the election, trying to peddle fear. The conclusion of Bonnell’s piece is clear: using the supposedly frightened subjects of his piece, he’s promoting Liberal and NDP voting.

See here for more on the media’s coverage of the election.

Crossposted from Civitatensis.ca

Anne McLellan Also Delivers Poinsettias

Poinsettias, the mesoamerican plant that has traditionally become a symbol for Xmas is now also a symbol of vote-buying in Edmonton. An NP’s piece on Anne McLellan this morning has her going from one senior’s place to another in her riding delivering Poinsettias.

Ms. McLellan admits [that] the seniors have come to expect the poinsettias. They must have them.

“If they don’t, they complain,” says the Deputy PM.

If you are senior citizen outside of McLellan’s riding, however, do not expect flowers or anything else from the Minister. It’s election time: Her caring for seniors is limited to riding boundaries.

Like much else, Liberal governments in Canada create expectations based on the most innocuous things, and then deliver. Delivery of “goodies” becomes somehow synonymous with good government while at the other end of the country the Liberals built expectations about delivering brown paper bags filled with money stolen from the same people who expect and receive the Poinsettias with a smile.

Anne McLellan has delivered. She delivered the Gun Registry to Albertans, which has wasted billions in public funds, while the murder rate in Edmonton has increased this year triggered by rival gangs. She did nothing for seniors while in the Health portfolio other than withholding federal money from Alberta when the provincial government passed its Bill 11 in an attempt to deal with the long waiting lines for basic care. McLellan delivered a vote for homosexual marriage even though she had promised to do the opposite. She has done precious little as the person in charge of state security to the point that the US government has been issuing arrest warrants for terrorists operating in Canada in the absence of Canadian government action. Oh, and she also delivers Poinsettias.

Crossposted from Civitatensis.ca

Unexpected Praise from Spector

In his G&M column (behind subscriber’s wall), Norman Spector, former Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, directs high praise toward Stephen Harper’s federalist strategy:

Where Mr. Mulroney was often intellectually disengaged (his great strengths were in interpersonal relations and as a negotiator), Mr. Harper is a serious thinker who suffers from a schmoozing deficit. And, where Mr. Mulroney’s analysis seldom strayed beyond partisan considerations, Mr. Harper has clearly been doing some hard thinking about the nature of Canada.

Crossposted from Civitatensis.ca

A Liberal Ruffian

I have been gone for less than a day and I come back to the news that a Liberal blog in Ontario, written by a top Paul Martin advisor, Mike Klander, compared a female NDP candidate of Asian extraction to a dog. No, seriously! I am not making this up. So much for the prediction that things were going to get ugly in the second half of the campaign, eh! Somebody forgot to pass the word on to Klander.

The NDP candidate, Olivia Chow, happens to be married to Jack Layton, the leader of the NDP. If that is an attitude representative of Liberal brass, no wonder the Liberals think that the country would come apart without the protection of the Charter of Rights.

Chow is NDP candidate in Trinity Spadina, running against Liberal incumbent Tony Ianno. The Liberal Blog writer is also member of the Liberal riding association for Ianno.

Klander’s blog has been taken down, but records of the postings and screen shots do survive. What a ruffian.

h/t: Wells via Darcey

Update: Ianno defeated Chow in the 2004 election by a margin of 1.5% Klander may have just elected Chow. Olivia should send him a advance thank- you note.

Upperdate: Stephen Taylor has got more here.

Up-upperdate: Canoe has now picked the story.

Crossposted from Civitatensis.ca

Liberal “Made in Alberta” plan: The Talk Does Not Match the Walk

The Liberal Party of Canada is making an effort to woe Alberta voters. The so-called Made in Alberta approach is a radical departure during an election from the typical attacks on Alberta by Liberal cabinet members and prime ministers.

Highlights from the Liberal’s Alberta agenda include: a new transport infrastructure through $590 million Pan-Western Pacific Gateway Strategy to enhance Alberta’s access to overseas markets; working with the agricultural sector to open markets to exporters; promote sustainable agricultural land and water supplies and support farmers in bringing value-added products to market; and pledging to support alternative energy sources such as wind power and clean coal.

(More on the Made in Alberta plan here, here, and here [pdf]).

All this may sound fine. But where were the Liberals to help Albertans in bringing “products to market” when the BSE crisis ravaged through Alberta ranches for more than two years? Instead of negotiating with the Japanese, Canadian officials insulted them; instead of dealing with the United States diplomatically, Liberals were calling the American Head of State all kinds of names. If Liberals have added in this field of the economy, one would not call it value. The claim that Liberals will “open markets to exporters” from Alberta in the agricultural sector flies in the face of the Wheat Board. Alberta farmers have been arrested for opening markets for their products. Kyoto and Liberal conservation laws continue to threaten the pillars of our provincial economy; Liberals continue to appoint Supreme Court Justices who are disconnected with Alberta’s life. And the list goes on.

In fairness, Liberals have not seriously attempted to win Alberta votes for several elections so the appearance of an attempt would seem like good news. During the 2000 election, Jean Chretien, the Liberal prime minister, never even bothered to stop in Calgary for the whole of the campaign. But it’s hard to treat the current vacuous promises with any degree of enthusiasm when one observes the record rather than the discourse. Paul Martin promised to reduce sentiments of Western Alienation (whatever that means) if he became Liberal leader, and now claims that he has done the job by naming Ralph Goodale and Anne McLellan to cabinet.

Is it possible that Paul Martin is that lost? Alberta’s distance from the central government was never as great as when most senior ministers like Joe Clark and Don Mazankowski, and other senior westerners like Pat Carney, sat around the federal cabinet table. Even then, the lucrative CF-18 maintenance contract for the Canadian Airforce went to Bombardier of Quebec instead of Bristol Aerospace from Winnipeg in spite of Bristol’s technically superior bid. Ralph Goodale and Anne McLellan are no recipe for balancing the Central Canada vortex any more than Joe Clark was.

Witness Anne McLellan’s views on Homosexual Marriage:

I fundamentally believe that it is not necessary to change the definition of marriage in order to accommodate the equality issue around same-sex partners.

And yet, McLellan voted in favour of homosexual marriage. Her views once represented Alberta’s but she was ultimately forced to conform to central Canada-oriented Liberal policy for the sake of keeping her job. David Kilgour was less fortunate. He was forced to resign from the Liberal cabinet and caucus over the same question, but he kept his views and his self-respect. Is that how Liberal representation in Paul Martin’s cabinet treats Alberta? Clearly, electing Liberals to Parliament can be no guarantee that Alberta’s voice will not be forced to submit.

Given the discord between the discourse and the record, all that remains in McLellan’s Made in Alberta plan is a ploy to keep Anne McLellan in office. Albertans will not fall for that. So soon, when Liberals see that the strategy is not working, they will turn their attention to Alberta once again in the same way that they have done before. They will attack our values, our wealth, our provincial and federal representatives, and our way of life.

Crossposted from Civitatensis.ca

Boxing Day Shoot-out Downtown TO

Shots rang out in a downtown Toronto crowded with Boxing Day shoppers today, wounding five people and killing another person,

reports The Star

This is without a doubt a terrible thing, but given the present election campaign, it is likely to take on significant political colour. Since hand guns are already banned, Liberals will likely react by promising to ban boxing day, shopping, shopping malls, or all of the above. Considering that most gangs responsible for this kind of violence come from ethnic communities whose vote Liberals want desperately, it’s easier to ban all kinds of things than to do something concrete about the human associations that produce this sort of violent attack.

Crossposted from Civitatensis.ca

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