On the BC HST: Is That The Best You Can Do?

Roslyn Kunin is director of the British Columbia office of the Canada West Foundation.

She wrote a piece in today’s Vancouver Sun defending the HST, now that recent reports indicate 20 ridings have already succeeded in collecting enough signatures to repeal the HST, and the rest of them are gaining hard.

I have never seen such a pile of ridiculousness in my life.

The arguments come down to, “It will make us more productive by simplifying technology.  And that will make us better than the Americans.  Did you know they are more productive than we are?  And they’re getting better.”

The article could have been entitled, “The HST will make us Better Than Americans”.  Of course, that premise would have been laughed out of the newsroom – but that’s what the piece says.

If your central premise is that streamlining the tax collection process will make BC more competitive, you’d better back it up with facts.  Last time I checked, I don’t see companies that produce tills and other money-processing equipment charging companies less simply because the system has to do one less percentage calculation.

But more obviously, I don’t believe a single State in the USA has an HST.  Mainly because there is no Federal Sales Tax in the USA – although many cities and counties charge special sales taxes on certain goods and services.  So, basically this article, which the Vancouver Sun’s website advertises as one of the most read articles today, negates itself.  It says that we need the HST to be more competitive because America is more competitive than us… but the USA doesn’t have an HST.  They are kicking our butts productively because they work harder.  It has nothing to do with harmonized taxes.

Canada (and BC) needs to get off the pot (and the Pot) and work harder.  Not whine to the government about taxes being too complicated… never mind my 9 year old can calculate them in his head.

Not a dhimmi

Comedy Central may have bowed the knee, but Chris Muir is not going gently into that good night.

Waiter: And for you, prophet?

Mo: A BLT, another Spaten and a high chair for my wife.

Ba-dum.

H/T

Dhimmitude

Piss Mohammed. Shyte Fatima. A teddy bear being born from the penis of Mohammed. These you will never see as long as Islam is exalted above freedom.

Anderson Cooper: In South Park… they show Buddha snorting cocaine. You don’t see death threats or warnings from Buddhists.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: And you don’t see death threats from Jews when Moses is depicted in an unbecoming position. And you don’t see threats from Christians when Jesus Christ… is put in a satire position. [...]
The South Park episode of last weekend was not just funny and it wasn’t just witty, it addressed an essential piece in the times that we are living: There is one group of people, one religion [Islam, -ed.], that is claiming to be above criticism.

Indeed, and with death threats to boot for those who dare disagree.

Free people have a clear choice: Be free or bow the knee to Islam. There is no middle ground.

Comedy Central, like many artists before it, has bowed the knee. They have chosen dhimmitude over freedom and, in doing so, stand condemned.

European Union subsidizing vacations

Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry is an idiot.

Breaking: Politician Learns That Restricting Freedom Results in Less Freedom!

I feel for Lisa MacLeod (no relation… obviously).  I really do.  She wants to be able to do what she thinks is best for her child.  All parents should have such a desire – I certainly do.  So, yeah, it sucks that when the government runs a one-size-fits-all, do-what-we-tell-you sort of educational system it means that you have to do what they tell you or bear a significant cost for doing what you think is right.

Parents will not be given the chance to keep their kindergarten-aged children in half-day learning once a new full-day program moves into their school, the province said Monday.

Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod says she discovered the policy wrinkle when she asked to keep her daughter, Victoria, 5, in half-day senior kindergarten next year. Her school is one of about 600 provincewide — only 44 locally — being turned into full-day programs this September.

The provincial Liberal government has pledged to transition all schools into full-day learning centres over the next five years.

MacLeod, 35, says she and her husband prefer to keep their daughter in a half-day program.

She was told by school officials that was not an option. She could either accept full-day learning or transfer Victoria to another school.

But do not fear!  The Education Minister is here to offer a helpful suggestion:

Education Minister Leona Dombrowsky added another option Monday, telling MacLeod she could keep her daughter home altogether.

“Parents continue to have the right to choose if they want to have their children enrolled in a kindergarten program in the province of Ontario,” she said when asked about the policy during question period. “In fact, the law in Ontario is that until a child is six years of age, they are not required to be enrolled in school.”

Exactly.  If you don’t like the government’s decisions you can always bugger off and do your own thing… of course you’ll still be legally obligated to support government schools.

So, yes, Ms. MacLeod, it is really too bad that you have been handcuffed by the state.  Perhaps if you know any provincial legislators you can ask them to take up the cause of school choice.  It’d be a benefit to a lot parents.

(By the way, there is quite a robust debate going on in the states about school choice – not by politicians, but scholars, academics and think tanks – hopefully, this situation might bring a little bit of debate to Ontario.)

Happy 4/20, Everyone!

It is my good fortune to have an office that overlooks Parliament Hill. Today, it was my pleasure to watch as, throughout the afternoon, smokers filled the lawn and blazed away at 4:20 – a wonderful, non-violent protest of the reprehensible War on Drugs. I swear, I could see a bit of a haze above the crowd. It filled my heart, even if it didn’t fill my lungs.

Governments’ war on marijuana is one of the dumbest initiatives North Americans have ever undertaken in recent memory.  It ruins lives and it robs lives – lives of citizens, police and pets.  So toke away, my pot-fueled brethren, and here’s to a day when this silly criminalization of weed will be no more.

For a little background on the origins of 4:20, go here.

For a quick three reasons why pot should be legalized, go here.

For some Marley, go here.

Shook me all night long

Iran’s Ayatollah Kazem Sedighitold, taking AC/DC’s iconic Back in Black album literally… 30 years later.

‘Cause the walls start shaking

The earth was quaking

My mind was aching

And we were making it, and you

Shook me all night long

Update April 26: Boobquake. Gotta love Western women.

“Trudeaupian legerdemain”

Mark Steyn at his best. Brilliant.

Mr. Siddiqui was not impressed by the arguments mounted against the head-to-toe body bag—for example, the notion that it is a “symbol of oppression”:

“Let’s assume that [the niqab] is,” [Haroon Siddiqui] wrote. “Whose business is it to end the practice—that of the state?”

That’s pretty cute coming from a guy who, during this magazine’s long battle with Canada’s “human rights” commissions, argued at length that it was most certainly the business of the state to end the practice of Maclean’s carrying Islamophobic Steyn columns. If the state can regulate what you write and say and think and even (as in the lesbian heckler case at the British Columbia Tribunal) what you quip, it can most certainly regulate what you wear. In Canada, it would be quicker to list what isn’t the business of the state. “The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation,” said Pierre Trudeau, unless, of course, you’re tucked up with a nice mug of cocoa reading an Islamophobic edition of Maclean’s. It was a classic bit of Trudeaupian legerdemain: if you’re allowed to roger anything that moves, or doesn’t, according to taste, you won’t notice all the other parts of your life the state has a place in. In Canada, it’s the state’s business when you get your hip operation, not yours: if the state has jurisdiction over your hip, why shouldn’t it also have jurisdiction over which garments the hip can be sheathed in? In Canada, a resident alien is not permitted to own a bookstore, on grounds of cultural protection. If “cultural protection” can prohibit a homosexual from San Francisco opening up a gay bookstore in Vancouver, why can’t it also extend to a Muslim woman’s dress?

And Quebec is Canada without even the residual restraints of the Britannic inheritance. In the interests of la collectivité, the province regulates not only the public usage of language but the very size of lettering in which your words can be displayed. If the state has power to set a maximum font on the ladies’ room door, why can’t it also set a limit on the yards of cloth you have to hoist up once you get in there?

Emphasized portions mine. Do read it all.

Limiting a woman’s right to know

An update for Canada’s immigration guide:

Welcome to Canada!

Women: Here it is acceptable to kill an unborn child because it will crimp your social life, but unacceptable to kill an unborn female child because you prefer to have a male child.

Men: Shut up already! You have no say in the matter.

Both: Regardless of your cultural preferences or religious beliefs, you must pay for abortions through your taxes.

Update April 13: Kelly McParland puts bluntly what I left to inference.

If you believe a fetus is not a human life, the fetus becomes no different from any other unwanted appendage on a woman’s body. There is no moral difference to removing it than there is to removing an unwanted mole, or an unsightly wart. It’s just a bunch of flesh, with no human soul or spirit to it, so what’s the difference?

Why, then, would abortion proponents object to women having abortions because they don’t like the sex of the fetus? If a fetus is not human, a woman has the right to abort it for whatever reason she chooses: because she doesn’t feel like going through the process; because it might interfere with her career plans; because she doesn’t like children in general; or because she loves Starbucks and someone told her she’d have to give up caffeine during the pregnancy. What, no latte? [...]

If a fetus isn’t human, its sex becomes irrelevant. You can’t have it both ways.

The Mounties are Getting Machine Guns!

What could be wrong with this:

RCMP officers who guard Parliament Hill are being equipped with submachine guns to give them more stopping power should a gunman attack the heart of Canada’s government.

I can’t imagine any reasonable justification for giving police officers – in an urban centre – automatic weapons.  Canada is not under attack; there is no imminent threat to Parliament Hill.

The militarization of domestic police forces is a troubling, dangerous trend.  This new development does not bode well for our society.  Hopefully, they’ll use these with a little more care than they do tasers.

Of course, maybe they just felt inferior compared to the local Ottawa police, who recently wasted $341 000 on a freakin’ tank.