Category: Other

Weak attack by Dion on immigration

Yesterday, Stephane Dion, the embattled leader of the Liberal Party of Canada tried to attack the Prime Minister on a 20 year old position he wrote as a member of the Reform Party.

From CTV:

Using a 20-year-old Reform Party document authored by Stephen Harper, the Liberals tried to paint the prime minister as anti-immigrant Tuesday.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion quoted the document in the House of Commons, which said immigration should not “radically or suddenly alter the ethnic makeup of Canada.”

“(This) may look like an attempt to deliver promises made by the Reform party 20 years ago,” Dion said, saying the old report was the inspiration for the Conservative’s new immigration bill.

Well, now. Does anyone disagree? Logically, if Dion disagrees with Harper’s position, he would agree with the inverse:

immigration should “radically or suddenly alter the ethnic makeup of Canada.”

If we’re going to dig into the past to find old quotes from MPs, there are a few Liberal ones.

In 1992, Tom Wappel suggested refugees be held in closed military bases. (Toronto Star, November 16, 2002).

“We should just choose the best. The present system is not fair. Fairness means we don’t put the queue jumpers ahead; criminal refugees are deported quickly. We try not to burden our schools with English as a second language.” — Garth Turner (Edmonton Journal, May 19, 1993)

“The fact is our immigration minister has been allowing terrorists and criminals to enter Canada through our porous and faulty immigration laws.” — Keith Martin (Hansard, October 18, 2001)

“On the issue of criminality, individuals who have committed crimes in this country should be sent back to their country of origin.” — Keith Martin (Hansard, February 27th, 2001)

[Denis] Coderre said that immigrants and refugees who would “crachent sur mon drapeau [spit on my flag]” by supporting Quebec separation, should be deported. (National Post, January 16, 2002)

Canada needs to look at its immigration policies, she added. “Do we have people coming in illegally, who are running drugs?” — Hedy Fry (The Province, January 22, 2008)

Toronto MP John McKay, a Martin supporter and chairman of the Ontario caucus, has said he finds it bizarre that ”children and non-citizens” are able to determine who becomes the next prime minister. Mr. McKay attended Saturday’s meeting and voted in favour of the extra restrictions. (National Post, February 11, 2002)

If Dion thinks he’s found a smoking gun in a 20 year old quote by Harper, I’ll call his bet to the same inconsequential degree with some old Liberal quotes.

Earth Hour

Earth Hour was ‘celebrated’ worldwide on Saturday in order to raise “awareness” of climate change and our wasteful consumption of energy. I was made aware of this event by the huge (approx) 50 ft full colour banner hanging from Ottawa city hall, the countless full colour flyers taped to lamp posts downtown, the wall to wall TV network coverage that has been burning up the microwaves, the buckets of black ink used to print clever ‘lights out’ themes on the front pages of newspapers produced from dead trees. Ironically, one Earth Hour promoter suggested sitting in the dark and burning candles instead of having the lights on. Alas, burning wax is a much less efficient method of producing light, and a process that produces more CO2, than using fluorescent (or even incandescent bulbs) that have been produced as a result of industrial progress, and market-based innovation. Indeed, the net result of industrialization was to create more efficient processes for achieving the same or better end results for less energy cost and less energy waste.

I live in downtown Ottawa. Besides a few lights off at Parliament Hill, there was no noticeable change in the electrical demand of our nation’s capital. I wasn’t up to too much of any consequence between 8 and 9pm last night so I decided to take a bit of an Earth Hour tour of the city from the comfort of a heated and fossil-fuel powered vehicle.

First stop was the Public Service Alliance of Canada building at 233 Gilmour st. This building is the Ottawa/federal hub for left-wing / labour / socialist causes as NDP associations and organizations close to the NDP have frequent use of board rooms and meeting spaces there. Here it is in its Earth Hour illuminated glory:

Not only were the lights on that illuminate the building on the ground floor and span half of the block flooding the grounds up until the sidewalk, a good number of offices were also lit up. These folks keep union hours (nobody’s working at 8pm on Saturday night).

Next stop was the CBC on Queen st. It was a big night for CBC after all. Hockey Night in Canada is a Canadian institution and the CBC wasn’t about to go dark for the occasion even though a lot of airtime was dedicated to raising ‘awareness’ for the event.

CBC Ottawa also did not go dark for Earth Hour. The building itself is within walking distance of where I work and live (it’s also across from Hy’s) so I have noted that CBC has frequently (if not every single night) kept the lights on during the night when nobody’s working. Their empty cubicle farm located at street level is always lit up at any hour of the night when I walk by on the sidewalk. Sadly, Earth Hour was no exception.

I also high-tailed it up to Rockcliffe for a quick drive past Stornoway and 24 Sussex. The Liberal leader’s official residence on Acacia ave was dark save for a small outside light and 24 Sussex had the lights on at the RCMP guard houses near the gate, a room light, and a few other lights on (generally for security one assumes).

How does one measure the success of Earth Hour? Are there any more people today that are ‘aware’ of climate change that weren’t yesterday? These sorts of “global” events have been held in the past. Live Aid and Live8 were meant to raise “awareness” of African poverty. Unfortunately, Africa is still poor and we’re just as aware of this. Live Earth was a global concert to raise awareness of global warming, but the concert itself had a considerable carbon footprint as celebrities and rock stars flew in on their private jets and arrived by chauffeured limo to tell us to install low flow shower heads and use less toilet paper.

These sorts of events are designed to make people feel good and think that they’re part of a global solution to a collective problem. However, it seems that no concrete action is achieved by raising awareness on issues of which people are already well aware.

Full Comment

I started this blog in January of 2004 and it’s been a hobby that I’ve enjoyed immensely. The original purpose of putting permanence to my daily thoughts on Canadian politics was to support my somewhat ambitious bid to become the Conservative candidate in Kingston and the Islands. This blog served as a campaign tool to reach out to Conservative party members in that riding in order to do as any other hopeful politician would do: build a name, get out the vote.

In an unfortunate sense, the blog medium and its scope was national rather than local. I was writing about federal politics, the Conservative leadership race and my candidacy for nomination. I was using an axe where I needed a scalpel. As an early adopter of Canadian partisan blogging, I would say that the same effect would not occur today; one can effectively define a local niche while enunciating on federal politics because the vacuum of the new medium that existed has been effectively filled.

Yet, in perhaps its more critical sense, I see political blogging now as I did then. Blogging is an important outlet by which we, as stakeholders in our democracy, can discuss ideas of importance to us as a country, as members of various communities and as individuals. As someone with great admiration and support for the original Reform and Alliance movements, I can confidently say that our democracy is strengthened by the expression of a broad spectrum of ideas that come from individuals with diverse experiences. Blogging lowers the threshold of access to the forums of free expression in a true marketplace of ideas.

What used to be an effective tool of scoundrels who wished to twist this open system unfairly to their own view was to say that the views of others were unCanadian. This strikes personally and directly upon one’s sense of loyalties because if we are to consider what is paramount in our list of allegiances, most of us would consider family and country among the top two (some reasonable people would include God within their short list as well). At the root of family allegiance is consanguinity, but that to God and country is rooted in values. Most religionists and nationalists derive their loyalty from creed; while a familial bond can exist within both, it is the values of religion and state from which most people find their respective loyalty.

So therefore, we can look to first principles and determine that it is values that is fundamental to any attachment to a collective called Canada.

But yet, this collective is one of divergent values.

Some Canadians believe that Canada ought to fund universal, fully public access to healthcare while some believe that a private, free-to-choose, market-based system is better for themselves and Canada. Neither of these views is unCanadian.

There are Canadians that believe that Canada ought to fight for the security and reconstruction of Afghanistan while others say that Canada should not involve itself with the affairs of the Afghan people. Neither of these views is unCanadian.

Those that argue that private healthcare is “American-style” or that leaving Afghanistan is unCanadian are using our loyalties as leverage to support their views but they are being dishonest to our principle value which is open discussion and freely held positions on difficult issues.

I would argue that instead it is the prohibition of ideological diversity that is solely unCanadian, for the suppression of thought and the ability to express it within the context of the dynamic Canadian debate, is to remove the underlying value that is common among those which form the diversity of this country’s discussions. If we cannot freely consider all points in debate how does this fare for the legitimacy of our conclusions?

Most people would conclude that some positions are indefensible. While also inherently incongruent, the suppression of speech by a state defined by democratic debate is such a position. Despite this, I support the right of those that would wish to convince me otherwise, yet with their words rather than the state.