Anti-Oil Sands Activists - Grassroots Environmentalists Or Paid Lobbyists?

According to this article by Ezra Levant - the answer is the latter:

It’s pretty tough to like Saudi sheiks, Iranian ayatollahs and Russian former KGB agents. Which is why you don’t usually see those folks attacking the oilsands in public. Prince Al-Waleed’s comments were a rare Saudi public criticism of the West. Normally, they leave that sort of thing to their allies — professional environmental lobbyists.

There are about 100 professional anti-oilsands activists in Canada, who do nothing but attack Canada’s oil industry. Typically they pose as grassroots environmentalists. But the facts are different.

Most environmental activists are actually paid professionals. And most work for foreign lobbyists.

Greenpeace, for example, is a $200-million multinational corporation based in Europe. If they don’t raise a million bucks a day in fundraising, they’d have to shut down.
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It may not be funded directly by Saudi Arabia — we have no evidence of that.

But every time a Canadian oil company is slowed down or our pipeline projects are delayed, it is another day the OPEC near-monopoly continues.

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And by the way - nobody says that oil sands developer just don't care about the environment. In fact - one of the reasons those 1.7 trillion barrels can't be recovered - is because doing so would be too environmentally damaging. But try explaining that to the tree-hugging zealots out there, especially those whose major source of funding turns out to be the OPEC money.

Outraged Leftists Want CBSC To Censor Sun News

This time, instead of the "human rights" commissions, they use the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.

Canadian Broadcast Standards Council national chairman Ron Cohen says his organization has received more than 4,100 complaints about a June 1 interview between host Krista Erickson and Quebec-born dancer Margie Gillis.

The council typically receives about 2,000 complaints in an entire year.

“It’s the most individual complaints we’ve received about a single incident,” said Cohen in a telephone interview from Ottawa on Tuesday, noting that the number is only surpassed if petitions are included.

In fact, the council issued a release Tuesday asking Canadians to stop sending in complaints because the volume of letters already exceeds the council’s resources.

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H/t Blazing Cat Fur

They base their complaint on clause 5 - that "news shall be represented with accuracy and without bias... that news broadcasts are not editorial". But this wasn't a news broadcast, this was an interview. Here, both the interviewer and the guest are entitled to their own opinions. If it's ok for Terry Milewski to grill Harper with tough questions, there's nothing wrong about Krista Erickson demanding Margie Gillis to explain what exactly did she mean by saying "we were I thought a compassionate society, I don't think that way anymore" - in the year when the very same society gave her and her foundation over $100,000 in grants. (Somehow I believe that Gillis' remark was not about the ultimate sacrifice made by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, but about the government of the time planning to slightly reduce arts funding.)

And another thing - $1.2M over 13 years (or - slightly less than $100,000 a year,) that's barely noticeable in a $250B federal budget. But at the same time - this is not such a large amount that it couldn't be raised without government help. If all that Gillis mentioned about compassion, about the "sacrifice of the arts community", about "giving a great deal for the common good" was even remotely true, she and her organization wouldn't have any problem raising $100,000 through charity drives, bake sales and other fundraising events.

Persecuted For Self-Defense

Do we even have the right to defend ourselves against criminals? Judging from how the police and the prosecutor put the criminals' interests and safety first, that right exists on paper only. Here's a video interview of a person who was hauled out of his house (in front of his family) and slapped with criminal charges for merely helping his neighbor to protect his property from trespasses. Those trespassers apparently were let off without charges.

And unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident. This perversion of justice takes place way too often:

The resolution of this case, while welcome, in many ways merely continues the criminals-first attitude our justice system has adopted over the past four decades of experimental, social-engineering liberalism. For instance, police first decided to charge Mr. Singleton based solely on a complaint by the burglar, 20-year-old Luc Roy. They laid charges against him before they had even interviewed him and taken down his side of the story. In other words, they acted solely on the say-so of a confessed break-and-enter artists against a citizen with no previous criminal complaints against him. Indeed, last summer when police decided to charge Mr. Singleton, they called him down to the local RCMP detachment and gave him the impression they had recovered some of the goods stolen from his home. Only after he was at the station did they book him.

This is completely at odds with the origins of our criminal justice system and our form of consent policing. Both were originally designed to protect society and the citizen from criminals, not to confuse the two and put citizens on the defensive for guarding their homes, property and loved ones.

In a similar vein, there are the cases of Toronto green grocer David Chen, who was arrested for subduing a shoplifter at his store in downtown TO, and Ian Thomson, a Port Colborne, Ont. man who was charged with dangerous use of a firearm after he fired warning shots into the air to chase away three men who were attempting to firebomb his remote home last summer as part of an ongoing neighbourhood dispute. Mr. Chen, thankfully, was acquitted last October. But Mr. Thomson still faces a trial on charges of unsafe storage of the licensed pistol and revolver he used to defend himself.

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Following the outcry over David Chen's case, the Conservatives introduced bill C-60 that would strengthen law-abiding citizens' right to defend their property and their businesses. Introduced just days before the confidence vote, it had no chance back then. Hopefully things work out better now when the Conservatives finally have a majority.

CBC Monopoly On Canada Day

Canada Day (previously known as Dominion Day) belongs to all Canadians. Yet not all Canadian TV stations are allowed to broadcast Canada Day noon show on Parliament Hill. In fact, there's only one TV station that has exclusive rights to broadcast the celebrations on TV. That station is... that's right - it's the CBC.

And if you think that they won their monopoly in an open bidding process - check out this video. Ezra Levant reveals every detail of what turns out to be a secretive rigged friend-to-friend deal between the CBC and their best friend, who happens to be the Minister of Canadian Heritage, James Moore.

Here's more about James Moore. It turns out the CBC is so excited about how well they've trained him, that one of their executives even twitted a mock appeal to the government, asking if "they can keep him". I guess, it's time for us, the taxpayers, to express our outrage to the Prime Minister, demanding that this CBC lapdog be moved to the backbenches.

The IPCC Loses Its Last Credibility

Lorne Gunter explains why in his National Post article:

By the end of March 2010 it had been shown that at least 16 claims of impending climate doom in the IPCC’s vaunted 2007 report had been based on work done by environmental activists, most of which had not received independent reviews before being swallowed whole by the UN climate body. For instance, the IPCC’s insistence that up to 40% of the Amazon rain forest was under imminent threat came from a World Wildlife Fund-International Union for the Conservation of Nature joint report written by a scientist-consultant and a freelance environmental journalist.
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Canadian researcher Steve McIntyre discovered earlier this week that the IPCC’s recent report on alternative energy — which asserted that it was possible to convert the world to 80% green energy by 2050 if politicians would simply tax conventional sources and spend billions on alternative sources — was lifted largely from Greenpeace reports.
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Imagine the reaction, for instance, if a government had produced a fossil-fuel friendly report based on work by an oil sands engineer, without revealing the source, and had paid the same engineer to write its own summary of his initial work.

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It may surprise the IPCC bureaucrats, but basing your reports solely on the works of like-minded activists is not really what peer-review process means:

t’s the perfect propaganda circle. Advocates find themselves in government offices, or on panels appointed by politicians disposed towards the hyper-alarmism of global warming. On the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) boards and panels, like seeks out like. And when the IPCC issues one of its state-of-the-global-warming-world reports, legions of environmentalists, and their maddeningly sympathetic and uninquisitive friends in most of the press, shout out the latest dire warnings as if they were coming from the very mouth of Disinterested Science itself.

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Meanwhile, the world's first carbon billionaire (Al Gore) claims that the media... isn't friendly enough to the "global warming" cause.

This would be the same media that uncritically fawned over his 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth -- which was over-hyped climate porn -- turning it into one of the most successful "documentaries" of all time and winning Gore the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and an Academy Award.

And yet, wails Gore, the media aren't framing the climate debate correctly as a "struggle for the soul of America" between "Science and Reason" in one corner and "Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues" in the other.

Gore's attitude, typical of the totalitarian streak in the liberal left, is there's one "correct" position -- his -- and everyone else is a fraud, charlatan or in the pay of the oil industry.

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It's sure encouraging that these climate crooks start to lose credibility. What's surprising is - how come they had all that credibility in the first place?

Free Speech Won. Geert Wilders Acquitted

After numerous attempts to have him convicted, the court had to drop the charges. And this time the decision is final:

Geert Wilders is Dutch, not Canadian. And his acquittal this week on hate-speech charges was decided by a court in The Netherlands, not Canada. Nevertheless, his case deserves close scrutiny in our own country, because it points the way toward the correct balance between free speech and multiculturalism in all nations.

Mr. Wilders is perhaps the best-known third-party political leader in the world. That’s not only because his populist Freedom Party holds the balance of power in the Netherlands’ minority government, but because he has been full-throated in his denunciation of the threat to liberal values posed by unassimilated Muslim immigrants – a problem that most other Western politicians have dared not tackle.

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Mark Steyn looks into the ruling itself and finds some of the wording troubling. Those truth-bashers don't like conceding defeat:

The court ruled that some of Wilders’ statements were insulting, shocking and on the edge of legal acceptibility, but that they were made in the broad context of a political and social debate on the multi-cultural society.

“On the edge of legal acceptability,” eh? As for the latter part — “the broad context of a political and social debate” — the genius “jurists” are effectively conceding what I said when this racket got going — that the Dutch state was attempting to criminalize the political platform of a popular opposition party. That’s the sort of thing free societies should leave to Mubarak & Co, and even then, you can only get away with it for a while before people draw the obvious conclusion.

Nevertheless, as in all these cases, the process is the punishment.

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So is the process itself - a punishment? Does Geert's ordeal strengthen or weaken the cause of free speech? Geert Wilders answers those questions in his interview with Ezra Levant:

And, as we celebrate Geert Wilders' triumph over PC thugs, let's not forget about another free speech heroine - Ann Coulter. Check out what she has to say about her experience of challenging the environment that is the most hostile to free speech. I'm talking about colleges and universities.

Bill C-7 And Its Vision For Senate Reform

Unlike so many previous attempts, we have just one Senate reform bill this time. Bill C-7 (hopefully this number brings good luck for the Senate reform cause,) addresses both the Senate term limits and the method, by which Senate nominees should be chosen.

So, first and foremost, the bill proposes non-renewable 9-year term for Senators. Sitting Senators, appointed before 2008 election, will be exempt and for those appointed by Harper, the 9 year term will commence from the day the bill comes into force, not from the actual appointment. This, along with the provision which allows a Senator whose term was interrupted to be considered for reappointment for the remainder of his term, should address whatever concerns the sitting Senators may have about being forced into early retirement.

After all, considering that it may take at least a year or two for the bill to pass - the earliest end of term retirement won't take place before late 2021 or 2022. And, with the mandatory retirement age of 75 remaining in force regardless of the term limits, 67 sitting Senators (2 out of 3, including about half of those appointed by Harper) are scheduled to retire on or before that date anyway. In fact, by that date, there will be only 15 Senators left to whom the term limit won't apply. The last of them to retire is Pierrette Ringuette - on December 31, 2030, allowing the transition to a fixed-term Senate to take place even faster than it took to fully phase in the mandatory retirement age.

Then, to address the concern that with the 9 year term in place, a 2-term Prime Minister gets the right to reappoint almost the entire Upper Chamber, the bill mandates that should a province choose to hold Senate nominee elections - those elections should be binding, restricting the choice of whoever are the Governor General and the Prime Minister at the time, to the list of those elected.

When outlining the framework for Senate election, the bill basically copies the Alberta model: Elections are administered by the provincial electoral commission and the nominees are elected by block voting, using the provincial political party affiliations. Using the Alberta model also addresses the issue of casual vacancies - with the list of Senate nominees prepared for up to 6 years in advance, ahead-of-schedule vacancies could be filled with no need for a by-election. The province may need to advance the vote to replenish the list of Senate nominees, but even then they should have enough time to hold it in conjunction with the next scheduled election, rather than holding a special election on a separate date.

The problem however is that not only the bill proposes the Alberta model - it actually dictates it to the smallest details. Probably the only thing the bill doesn't regulate is the campaign funding. That is left for the provinces. As for the rest - the bill sets the number of signatures, required for nomination (100 signatures in a province, be that Ontario or PEI,) the duration of the nomination period, the time frame in which a candidate could announce his decision to withdraw and even the voting method - to the slightest details.

Section 22 mandates that if only one nominee is being elected - it should be the one who wins the plurality and if several candidates are elected - then it should be that number of candidates with the most votes. That not only rules out the Single Transferable Vote, let alone other forms of proportional representation, but also disallows other options, such as electing each nominee on a separate ballot.

Section 35(1)(a) goes even further, mandating that the returning officer must instruct voters to mark an X next to the candidate's name... As if the provinces didn't know how to hold an election. Here in New Brunswick we use block voting to elect city councilors, but instead of marking an X we fill in the ovals on the machine-readable ballots. By going that far in setting instructions, bill C7 effectively prevents the use of vote tabulation machines, let alone preferential voting.

That is not only obsolete (after all, the provinces know how to conduct a vote and compile a list of democratically elected nominees) but is certain to strengthen the position of those who claim that changing the method of appointing Senators infringes with the provinces' rights. Bill C-7 gives them all the arguments they need - it's all there. This excessive regulation thus can greatly increase the opposition to the reform, which in turn will leave nothing but the NDP proposal: to declare Senate an obsolete body and to abolish it altogether.

So, while the vision for the Senate reform, outlined in bill C-7 makes great sense, the bill itself still has to be worked on to remove all those intrusive provisions, allow for proportional representation and preferential voting and let the provinces decide for themselves how many signatures a candidate would need for nomination.

Student's Pro-Life Speech Subjected To Intimidated Censorship

Yet another episode in the "old enough to have an abortion, but not mature enough to face it" saga. As always, when pro-aborts see that they're losing the debate, they're trying to prevent the speaker from getting the message out. And, unlike the student union thugs that could only heckle the speaker, their grown-up colleagues had other means available to them:

Nevertheless, upon arriving at the host school for the speech competition, Yolanda and her daughter found the gymnasium nearly empty, where Yolanda says usually the entire school, as well as competitors and parents, would attend. A handful of competitors, parents, and the judges were present for Calise’s speech, but only after her speech, as well as few others, did both younger and older students come.

Yolanda says that Calise’s speech was singled out and boycotted by other schools, with students and their parents being forewarned about its content.
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Yolanda told LSN, however, that at least one parent that she knows of received a warning letter about the abortion speech, while no mention was made of other controversial and even gory topics.

“We weren’t informed that one speech was going to be about dolphin slaughter, or that another was about how great Lady Gaga is. This seemed unfair,” she said. “Maybe people can be offered the chance to hear it for themselves and decide if it is offensive or not.”

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Here's the video of the speech. See for yourself, if it had to be singled out like that:

So what is so controversial about the speech? If anything, it shows that pro-life arguments are so simple that even a 10 year-old can understand them. But the school officials have their own priorities. They'd rather hear a speech about some TV slut than have their pro-abortion dogmas challenged.

And yes, it's obviously the time to separate school and state. I couldn't agree more. And the article itself couldn't be any more timely.

Shock Study: Euthanasia And Organ Harvesting

Embryonic stem-cell research first and then comes the next logical step:

LEUVEN, Belgium, June 16, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A disturbing study conducted by Belgian doctors and reported on in the medical journal Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathology involved killing patients via euthanasia in a room next to the hospital’s operating theater, and then wheeling them next door and harvesting their organs immediately after being pronounced dead. The study found that lungs from those who die by euthanasia are more suitable for transplant surgery than lungs taken from accident victims.
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The report stated euthanized donors accounted for 23.5% of all cardiac death lung donors in Belgium.

Dr. Peter Saunders of Care Not Killing, a UK-based alliance of disability and human rights organizations, healthcare and palliative care groups, and faith-based organizations opposed to euthanasia, said he was shocked by the casual indifference of the report.

“I was amazed at how nonchalantly the issue was dealt with as if killing patients and then harvesting their organs was the most natural thing in the world,” he was quoted to say by The Telegraph.

“The matter of fact way the retrieval process is described in the paper is particularly chilling and shows the degree of collaboration that is necessary between the euthanasia team and the transplant surgeons – prep them for theatre next to the operating room, then kill them and wheel them in for organ retrieval. All in a day’s work in Brave New Belgium.

“Given that half of all euthanasia cases in Belgium are involuntary it must be only a matter of time before the organs are taken from patients who are euthanised without their consent.”

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It all begins with contempt for human life. If a preborn baby can be regarded as a mere "blob of tissue", why not a terminally ill?

How About Declaring Canada A Mission Territory?

From Life Site News:

“Sixty-five years ago, the archbishop of Paris surprised the Church with his pastoral letter ‘France: Mission Country?’ As the years have gone by, that question has become an affirmation. And it is valid not only for France. All of the West is mission territory today,” said Archbishop Carmelo Juan Giaquinta in a recent homily published by the Argentinean Catholic news agency AICIA.

“Argentina is also today a mission country. A country, where from night to morning, and without almost anyone joking about it, unions between homosexuals are being equated to marriage according to nature, given by God to men and women, cannot call itself Christian,” said Giaquinta.

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How about declaring Canada a mission territory? Considering that Canada was one of the first nations to scrap the true definition of marriage, considering that our officially Catholic schools have plummeted to the point that faithful students actually have to make a stand against their own teachers, it's about time our missionaries concentrate all their efforts to evangelize our fellow countrymen here in Canada.

What Do You Think Of The CBC?

Not that they really want to know (they always think they know best) but apparently they need user feedback for their license renewal hearing:

OTTAWA - Is the CBC relevant? Does it meet the needs of Canadians? What kind of programming should the CBC provide, and what should it do differently?

If you've got a gripe or something good to say, now's your chance.

And it's a rare chance at that for Canadians to stand up for, or sound off against the public broadcaster that receives $1.1 billion from taxpayers every year.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the country's broadcast regulator, launched an online consultation Friday until July 18 ahead of the public broadcaster's licence renewal hearing in September.

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So here's a chance to remind them of how they treat the pro-life, pro-family, common sense Conservative public; of their arrogance and sense of politically correct entitlement; of their constant understating of the March for Life turnaround and of their direct involvement in political campaigns - not as mere journalists, but as the driving force of the "media party"...

They claim that they make positive contribution to the Canadian economy. Is that really so? Check out this video and see for yourself.

So let's use the opportunity, and let the national broadcast regulator know what we think of the taxpayer-funded media powerhouse.

Videos: Pro-Life To The Core

A few videos from the March for Life 2011 Youth video contest.

The runner-up:

And the winner:

And here's an interview with the author, Peter Hayden:

“Most mainstream news networks will not put pro-life videos on their stations, so we must use the internet, where these videos and news items become viewable by everyone. It is getting easier to spread the pro-life message to the world.”

Hayden said he attended this year’s march with 70 other students from his high school from his small town of Barry’s Bay, Ontario. For his involvement in the pro-life movement he credits his father Mark, who “spent time in jail for picketing outside an abortion mill many years ago.”
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“Out of the almost 12 million babies born since 1970 in Canada, almost 3 million have been killed by abortion. Everyone under the age of 40 is in a way a survivor of a holocaust, an abortion holocaust that must come to an end.”

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They're young. They are pro-life. And they are determined to make a difference.

The pro-aborts can rant as much as they wish, but their time is coming to an end and their cause is on the way out.

NB Pro-Aborts Keep Pressuring For Public Funds

With the court case not being speedy enough for them, they chose yet another back door way - using the "human rights" commission. Now, their case will be heard by the Labour and Employment Board:

New Brunswick pays only for abortions performed in hospitals, and women require referrals from two doctors stating the procedure is "medically necessary."

An unnamed doctor filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission, asserting that the policy is discriminatory and prevents her from providing her patients complete care.

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Providing what kind of care? Is this the kind of "complete care" she is talking about?

“The doctor brought the ultrasound in and hooked it up so that he could see the baby. On the ultrasound screen, I could see the heartbeat… The doctor went in with forceps and grabbed the baby’s legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby’s body and the arms — everything but the head. The doctor kept the head right inside the uterus.

The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he thinks he is going to fall.
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The woman wanted to see her baby, so they cleaned up the baby and put it in a blanket and handed it to her. She cried the whole time. She kept saying, “I am so sorry, please forgive me.” I was crying, too. I couldn’t take it. That baby boy had the most perfect, angelic face I think I have ever seen in my life…

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Yes, "doctor" Mengele Morgentaler will take good care of you and your baby. (After all, mass extermination of people in the gas chambers was also referred to as "subjecting to special treatment".)

And I'd recommend everyone to go ahead and keep reading the article. Especially to all those who wonder "what business do (we) have telling what can or cannot go in or come out of some other woman's or girl's body". Maybe they'll finally realize that a baby in the womb has a body too. And that he wants to live just as much as anyone else.

Carleton University Claims Carleton Lifeline's Lawsuit Is Frivolous

From Carleton Lifeline e-mail release:

OTTAWA,ON. In the case of Lobo et. al. v. Carleton University et. al, Carleton University has brought for a Motion to Strike Carleton Lifeline's Statement of Claim. The lawsuit followed closely on the heels of Carleton University having Ottawa City Police arrest its students for trespass when they tried to set up a pro-life display last October.

“This is an important case for freedom of expression on campus.” said Albertos Polizogopoulos, legal counsel for Lifeline." Recently there has occurred many other cases where university students have had their voices silenced."


In February 2011, Ruth Lobo and Nicholas McLeod, two members of Carleton Lifeline, the pro life club at Carleton University, commenced an action against Carleton University following the University's attempt to censor them.

In April, Carleton University responded to Lifeline’s Statement of Claim with a Motion to Strike it on the grounds that it discloses no reasonable cause of action, is scandalous, frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of the court process.

Carleton Lifeline disagrees and will continue to defend their right to freedom of expression vigorously.

If the University is successful in their Motion, Carleton Lifeline’s Statement of Claim will be struck, thereby ending this lawsuit.

The Motion to Strike will be heard in court on June 16, 2011 at 10:00 am. The hearing will be held at 161 Elgin Street it Ottawa, Ontario and is open to the public.

For more information please contact Carleton Lifeline's legal counsel, Albertos Polizogopoulos: 613-241-2701
Mr. Polizogopoulos will also be available for comment after the hearing.

So, freedom of speech on campus, at a university to which one has paid tens of thousands of dollars in tuition - is a "frivolous" right? Not to mention the freedom from arbitrary arrests and the right to a fair trial. Let's see what the court of law has to say about it.

Deporting For Dollars

How much does it cost to remove an illegal migrant from Canada? According to this Sun News Network video, the typical cost is $1,500; although in cases when an escort and other special procedures are required to ensure that the individual has actually left Canada, the average cost is an order of magnitude higher - about $15,000 with some exceptional cases costing as much as $125,000.

The video discusses different methods to reduce these costs by limiting the number of appeals that are available to bogus refugee claimants and illegal migrants. But there's one thing that wasn't mentioned: The Safe Third Country provision. The idea is simple: if a refugee claimant doesn't come to Canada directly from his home country, but makes a stop someplace else where it's safe enough for him to seek asylum - he should do that right there. It's just common sense, isn't it?

The safe third country provision has been on the books for decades. It just wasn't active, as none of the governments of the time bothered to come up with the list of those safe countries. Only in 2002 the government finally decided to act and signed a Safe Third Country agreement with the US. Migrants in both countries, wishing to seek asylum, were required to do so in whichever country they arrive first. The special interest advocates of all stripes were furious, but the agreement did go through, taking effect in the spring of 2003 and the number of "asylum shoppers" - those choosing to claim refugee in Canada, because of higher acceptance rate and more generous social assistance, did go down.

So it's about time the government takes the next logical step and signs a similar Safe Third Country agreement with the EU states. That will cut the number of asylum shoppers even further, (as any of them who has a stop-over in Europe would have to apply there,) not to mention that it will solve the visa dispute that we have with the EU over over a couple of Eastern European states. It's a win-win solution, so it should be the first step.

And then the government could deal with the immigration system which too is in dear need of repair. In the video, the representative from the Ministry of Immigration argued that the cost of bringing in legal immigrants is "pretty reasonable". That cost should be zero. The existing selection system which assesses prospective immigrants based on a vague and out-of-date job market information should be replaced with the Australian system, where recognition of immigrants' credentials is an integral part of the process. And if Australia requires immigrants whose dependents don't have the minimum language skills to pay for their ESL classes - I see no reason why Canada shouldn't follow suit.

Senator David Tkachuk On DePape's Publicity Stunt

Addressing his fellow Senators, he might have been preaching to the choir, but that doesn't make his words any less of the truth:

We were all surprised by what she did. Being a familiar face, it struck few of us as odd when she made her way from her place into the middle of the chamber. Many of us thought she was there to assist someone, not to protest. She walked back and forth with her STOP Harper sign until the Sergeant-at-Arms from the House acted to remove her.

This was clear contempt for the Parliament she had sworn to serve, taking place as it did in the middle of one of the most democratic acts in the world -- a post election address from the Queen's representative, who was flanked by a newly elected Prime Minister and the Leader of the Government in the Senate. Onlookers were MPs lead by a speaker who won a seat in this great institution at the age of 25, only a few years older than the protesting page.
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There are those who have characterized what she did as heroic.

No. Heroic are the men and women, many of them her age or younger, who serve in Afghanistan, defending the principles and practices of democracy that resulted, most recently, in the election we just had.

What she did was not heroic. She was surrounded not by enemies but by people she could trust not to harm her. People unlike her, who believe in and adhere to a code of civil behaviour.

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Meanwhile the ill-famous super-brat wants to take her protest further and asks for more cash:

"...It is a country of people burning with desire for change. If I was able to do what I did, I know that there are thousands of others capable of equal, or far more courageous, acts …..” Blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, “I have been inspired most of all by Asmaa Mahfouz, the 26-year-old woman who issued a video calling for Egyptians to join her in Tahrir Square. People did, and they together made the Egyptian revolution. Her words will always stay with me: “As long as you say there is no hope, then there will be no hope, but if you go and take a stand, then there will be hope.” Yes love, you’re just like her.

The nonsense ends with – oh yes – a call for cash. “Brigette DePape is a recent graduate of the University of Ottawa. She has started a fund to support peaceful direct action and civil disobedience against the Harper agenda..."
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In other words, after university, public-funded theatre, and the page programme, she still wants other people to pay for her self-indulgence. Forget the hungry, the homeless, and the helpless – Briggy needs your money! Now!

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Now there she may face a serious problem. The public that praises her action as "heroic" prefers snatching cash from someone else's pockets, rather than parting with their own money.

What's Worse - Graphic Pictures Or Abortions For Middle-Schoolers Without Parental Consent?

A question that better be considered by all those who believe that showing graphic pictures of aborted babies is (somehow) inappropriate.

TORONTO, Ontario, June 9, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A twelve-year-old in Ontario cannot go on a school field trip without parental permission, or drink alcohol without a parent present. They won’t be able to drive, buy cigarettes, or vote for years. But they can get an abortion all on their own, without their parents ever knowing.

Private abortion facilities across Ontario advertise with pride that they will perform abortions on girls under 16 without informing their parents.
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“I’m only 14 can I still have an abortion at your clinic?” their FAQ asks. “Yes, we do not discriminate by age and we do NOT require consent for our clients who are under the age of 18.”

“Furthermore, we do not tell your parents any information even if they call our facility inquiring about your whereabouts.”

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And yet, not just the Genocide Awareness Project posters, but even the Watch Me Grow brochure, that merely shows what an unborn baby looks like at certain stages of gestation, is deemed "inappropriate" for school children. Pro-aborts and their accomplices in the school bureaucracy push abortion to middle-schoolers under the guise of "choice", and yet they do everything in their power to prevent young people from finding out what exactly is being chosen.

Unions In Canada - And Their Political Activism

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers don't want to deliver mail. They'd rather engage in extreme left-wing political activism - at their members' expense. Check out this video report by Brian Lilly. Yes, we all know what side the unions are on, but when all those odious organizations that the unions openly side with are being named, it becomes obvious that the situation is far worse than we think.

And the solution lays in reforming the labor code. It may sound surprising, but arm-twisting people into being union members is not so widespread a practice as most of us think it is. In fact, Canada appears to be the only developed country where no opt-out provisions exists, where someone who doesn't wish to become (or remain) a union member must forfeit the job opportunity and seek employment in a company that hasn't yet been overtaken by one of those all-pervasive "locals".

Hopefully, now, we can finally look forward for the things to change. And in the end, the union's extreme left political activism may fire back at them. The more radical anti-West, anti-Middle class, anti-Christian groups the unions side with, the more people will eventually welcome the bill that would lessen unions' grip on their members.

Attack On The Conservative Party Website - More Than "Just A Prank"

Apart from posting a fake news release about Stephen Harper, the hackers have apparently got a hold of some personal information of the Conservative party donors. Some of which they've already made public.

The group that claimed responsibility for Tuesday's hack of the Conservative Party of Canada's website claims it also gained access to the party's list of donors.

It posted a what it said is a partial list of donors online on Wednesday, including names and e-mail addresses, in hopes of contradicting the party's claims its databases were not accessed in the original hack.

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Could it be that the hackers just didn't realize that they were breaching people's privacy? That they just couldn't foresee the consequences that their "prank" would bring to those people whose private information they made available for everyone to see? And could it be just a coincidence that this attack on the Conservative website and on the Conservative party donors took place just days after that publicity stunt pulled by a disloyal Senate page during the Throne Speech?

It looks like some on the radical left just can't cope with the fact that Stephen Harper has won, that he has won a majority, that they have no legal, democratic means to unseat the Conservative government before the next election - which won't happen until October 19, 2015... And they certainly don't have the patience to wait that long.

Unable and unwilling to achieve their goals using grassroots democracy, they act like a bunch of crybabies that are upset because things don't go their way. Disrupting the opening of the Parliament ceremony to get attention to their precious hurt feelings. Daydreaming about the Prime Minister they can't stand suddenly dying. Vandalizing a website that expresses ideas which they can't challenge in an open debate. And cowardly exposing people they disagree with if not to identity theft then to a flood of junk e-mails...

A bunch of spoiled privileged cowards - that's how Ezra Levant called them. The recent news which reveals that this cyber attack wasn't a mere prank, but a targeted attack which involved a serious violation of innocent people's privacy, only shows how right Ezra was.

Quebec Officials Harass Homeschoolers

They haven't yet legislated a complete ban on homeschooling, (the one that Germany has had since the nazi days and that is still being used to persecute parents that pursue independent education for their children,) but they already have the infrastructure to do just that.

Home-schooling is legal in Quebec and the rest of Canada. But as the number of home-schoolers skyrockets across North America, some school boards in Quebec are responding by siccing youth protection on home-schooling families, usually without any evidence of safety problems at home, Gauthier said. “That’s the worst fear for a parent. It’s traumatizing — it’s an invasion,” she said. “The parent is seen as the enemy who is mistrusted. They can’t imagine we could do something good.”

Carole Cardinal agrees. She is a home-schooling mom in the Quebec City area and the province’s rep of the Home School Legal Defense Association of Canada. She said many school boards in Quebec are misusing youth protection against home-schoolers, and that has contributed to the province’s reputation as one of the most inhospitable places in Canada toward the movement. Cardinal, herself a former elementary and secondary schoolteacher, said she helps 10 home-schooling families each year on average to fend off youth protection complaints from school boards. That’s up from just three or four cases annually up until four years ago. “It’s pretty nerve-racking for families. We feel we’re losing our freedoms,” she said.

...Quebec requires home-schoolers to get instruction "that is equivalent to what is offered in Quebec schools," said Esther Chouinard, spokeswoman for the Quebec Education Department, in an email.

The province also gives school boards broad powers to grant or deny permission to parents to home-school, as well as to scrutinize their progress.

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That's the province where the courts believe they have the power to order parents to send their children (that are below the mandatory school age) into a state-run daycare (from which the government has recently baned all reference to religion). The government's objective is obvious: they want to raise another generation of loyal, nanny-state-dependent subjects. Will the parents realize what's going on and show some resistance?

Happy Tax Freedom Day

157 days out of 365 - that's how long it takes to settle all the tax bills. In other words - we work for an hour, we get paid for 34 minutes.

The Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based think-tank, declared Monday, June 6, as the day the average Canadian would have fulfilled all tax obligations to various levels of government.

That's under a fictional scenario in which all the money you initially make in the year goes directly toward paying your taxes.

Under that scenario, every dollar you make after Tax Freedom Day for the rest of the year would be yours, all yours.
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"That said, the average family is still paying 43 per cent of its income to one level of government or another. Despite the trend, it's still a substantial amount of money that works out to almost $40,000 for the average family."
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The Fraser Institute calculates that raising taxes to match current government spending at all levels, and run balanced budgets, would push Tax Freedom Day back a full 16 days to June 22.

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Now, when the new budget is out, we still have to wait 2.5 years (until spring of 2014) just for the budget to be balanced - and only then we can look forward for some real tax cuts. (Not those token $75 mail-in rebates for arts and gym.)

Meanwhile the only winner is Quebec, that will actually get the $2.2B "compensation" for... not even harmonizing its tax with the GST, but merely applying the QST on a broader base... 20 years ago. What was non-negotiable just 10 weeks ago, became a campaign promise soon thereafter. Ironically, the same budget that phases out per-vote subsidies for political parties delivers a four orders of magnitude higher "per lost vote" subsidy for a province that has just lost its effective veto power on the government.

So we better not look forward for the Tax Freedom Day to move to May (let alone - to early May, as it was before Trudeaupea) anytime soon.

Media Research Center Challenges YouTube Censorship

If your YouTube account has just been suspended - you have an alternative:

Many Conservatives have long felt that YouTube has two sets of rules, one for conservative videos and one for everyone else. Videos that are critical of liberals or present a conservative point of view are often mysteriously removed from YouTube.This is frustrating for everyone, but especially for conservative websites that rely on videos to get their message across.

This includes Media Research Center websites like NewsBusters.org and CNSNews.com, but also dozens of other conservative sites. Conservative activist and best selling author, Andrew Breitbart, recently decided to dumpYouTube and start posting videos for his popular websites on MRCTV.org.

We’ve organized the videos on MRCTV.org into several “channels”, including:

NewsBusters – top videos from the MRC’s highly acclaimed blog
Liberals Behaving Badly – the name says it all!
CNSNews.com – they ask the questions the liberal media won’t!
The Hollywood Channel – when celebrities open their mouths, you never know what will come out!
NewsBusted – our twice-weekly opportunity to laugh at liberals

.... and many more!

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They also have a channel called National Right to Work, which is run by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by abuses of compulsory unionism. Now that's the kind of information that's quite hard to find even on the net, let alone - in the mainstream media.

Breaking: Prisoner Of Conscience Linda Gibbons Freed From Jail

After keeping Linda behind bars for almost 2.5 years, after trying to impose restrictions that would require Linda to stop her pro-life witnessing, the prosecution gave up and Linda was released without any conditions.

TORONTO, Ontario, June 3, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After a grueling twenty-eight months of uninterrupted imprisonment for witnessing prayerfully outside a Toronto abortion facility, pro-life prisoner of conscience Linda Gibbons was freed Friday.

The great-grandmother had been in prison since January 2009 when she was arrested outside the downtown “Scott Clinic,” which is protected by a 1994 court injunction banning pro-life activity within a specified zone.

She has remained behind bars because she steadfastly refuses to accept a bail condition that requires her to stay away from the abortion facilities.

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Unfortunately, Linda is not off the hook yet. She still has to attend court next January. And, nobody can promise that Linda won't be arrested again for the very same reason, for a mere peaceful prayer outside abortion facilities. As long as the ill-famous 1994 injunction remains in force, Linda Gibbons, Mary Wagner and all other committed pro-lifers will live under a constant threat of persecution.

Geert Wilders Final Remarks To The Court

He could have been acquitted long ago as the prosecution was ready to drop the charges. But the Kafkaesque trial was resumed by the order of the Amsterdam court.

Freedom and truth. I pay the price every day. Day and night I have to be protected against people who want to kill me. I am not complaining about it; it has been my own decision to speak. However, those who threaten me and other critics of Islam are not being tried here today. I am being tried. And about that I do complain.

I consider this trial to be a political trial. The values of D66 [a Dutch leftist liberal party] and NRC Handelsblad [a Dutch leftist liberal party] will never be brought before a judge in this country. One of the complainants clearly indicated that his intentions are political. Even questions I have asked in parliament and cooperation with the SGP are being brought as allegations against me by Mr Rabbae of GroenLinks [the leftist Dutch Green Party]. Those on the Left like to tamper with the separation of powers. When they cannot win politically because the Dutch people have discerned their sinister agenda, they try to win through the courts.
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My right to a fair trial has been violated. The order of the Amsterdam Court to prosecute me was not just a decision but a condemning verdict by judges who condemned me even before the actual trial had begun. Mister President, members of the Court, you must now decide whether freedom still has a home in the Netherlands

Franz Kafka said: “one sees the sun slowly set, yet one is surprised when it suddenly becomes dark.”

Mister President, members of the Court, do not let the lights go out in the Netherlands.

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Will the judges have the courage to exercise common sense and choose freedom?

Let A Conservative Majority Mean A Conservative Majority

A simple message for the Conservative MPs as the Parliament reconvenes tomorrow:

But the Conservatives cannot govern within the status quo. It is time for Stephen Harper to enunciate a positive conservatism that will resonate with a majority of Canadians. The CPC has often tip toed through the tulips of fiscal land, over social policy, throughout the last five years, all the time spending like Pierre Trudeau never dreamed of. Merely defining themselves as something other than the Liberal Party and something very different than the NDP. But what are they?

Are they committed to a vision of Canada that joyfully embraces smaller government, lower taxes, individual freedom and responsibility? Do they really believe that happiness is delivered by individual initiative and within the family unit and not from the state? Ronald Reagan was able to articulate a positive conservatism for Americans that was based on social, fiscal and military policy. Stephen Harper is probably the most purely ideological conservative leader that Canada has ever had. I am not suggesting that he has any hidden agenda; I know that he has not. I am not suggesting that he is prepared to push through a program and ignore the political cost; I know that that is not the case. But the prime minister is right on a lot issues, and, thank God, he is from Alberta, where conservatism has always been an asset and not a liability.

But he is wrong to think that he cannot build a conservative majority by not allowing debate and opening discussion on contentious issues like protection of the unborn, immigration and human rights policy. He did not win this election because he avoided social conservative issues; he won this election in spite of occasionally insulting social conservatives, who voted for him anyway; we know that Jack Layton is a much more dangerous alternative.

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Here a few proposals for the Conservative government by "acting as if Prime Minister" Caldwell. So far we know that the government will actually be implementing term limits for Senators. That's a good start, but what about the rest? After all, we voted for a Conservative government, not for a Liberal-lite one.