What's new on the Canadian political scene

Well it has been a while since my last blog post and their sure is a lot to talk about. First thing to talk about is the "Gun Registry". A Conservative M.P. Candice Hoeppner had put forward a bill to scrap the gun registry program back in May of 2009 Bill C-391 and after all this time they finally had the vote. The bill was struck down (thank goodness), however what is important to talk about is the way the Conservative government conducted themselves here. The reason the vote took so long is because Steven Harper continues to obstruct and officiously gum up the whole political process, he has prorogued Parliament on two separate occasions were all legislation not yet passed in then dead on the table and has to be re-introduced. He and his Conservative M.P.'s also purposely obstruct and delay these committees tasked with debating these bills. They lie to Canadians and say that the program is a huge amount of money wasted every year, however the fact is that the initial set up of the program was a massive mismanaged cost overran fiasco but the actual cost of running it now is very minimal and very cost effective. I think one of the most striking fact of this escapade is that all of the top R.C.M.P. brass said they found the registry to be a useful tool that many officers use daily and that it saved lives. Also the head of the police chiefs for every municipality were strongly opposed to scrapping the registry and that the city police use it daily as well. The whole time the Harper government stood by decision and kept smearing the people who opposed their point of view. One last notable thing about this debacle of events for the Harper Government is that after loosing the vote he came out of the chambers and in front of all the television cameras stated that his government would not rest until the gun registry is repealed, makes you think what else would they never rest for if they didn't get their way.
Another item to talk about is that over the summer the Harper government descided to do away with the mandatory long form census that Canadains fill out periodically for Statistics Canada. Whats important about this is that other countris have tried this but have always gone back to the mandatory form, yet this govenment refuses to listen to facts and does whatever they feel like. I personally think they don't want Statistics Canada to disagree with some of their wild claims, for example the Conservatives have alwways said they were the tough on crime party and that things here in Canada are really bad (fear mongering) and when the opposition parties pointer out that in reality crime in canada has been on the decline for the last ten or so years, the statement from the Conservatives (Stockwell Day) was that they weree talking about unreported crime and that unreported crime was at epidemic propotions. My question and many other journalist is, if its unreported how do they know a crime actually was committed? This seems to be just another major step away from a free and democratic Canada.
The last but not least item to blog about is that Canada has for the first time since its inception, lost a bid to have a seat at the United Nations Security Council. Many people say that it is because Canada is losing it reputation on the world stage. Canada used to be a peaceful nuetral country that would mediate and negotiate between other countries, now we are an extention of the George Bushes shoot them up blow them up bring it on policies, tough on crime tough on terrorist and we'll kick their asses. However the world now knows that George Bushes Republicans fooled its people and the rest of the world by constantly keeping us fearful and worried that life as we know it was hanging by a string and all we had to do is be good little sheep and listen to our leader, who was starting wars in the name of war on terror but was actually a greed driven plan to secure oil reserves. Now that President Obama has ended that stupid war in Iraq and put the real enphasis on Afgahanistan where the real terrorist are (there and India), people are now learning about the many and huge lies told to us to scare us into letting the politicians do what ever they want in the name of "a true leader". I'm glad Canada lost its bid for the seat on the Security Council because maybe this will be a huge wake up call for all Canadians as to what is taking place in Ottawa with regards to our foriegn polocies. Maybe Canada will get rid of this right wing parisan Conservatives and start correcting and reversing the descission made such as; YES Canada DOES cares about climate change and we WILL honour our commitments made even if they were made by a different political party, and YES we do care about Africa and WILL honour our commitments made, and YES family planning is an essential part of helping mother and children health around the world and we don't need to make this about religion. Right now our foriegn policy seems to be about ridding the world of Muslims and making everyone devoted Catholics, everyone should have the right to practice whatever religion they wish as long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else. Maybe just maybe this is the wakeup call Canadians need to get back on track and start having that world vission we once had and not just doing things for big oil companies from Alberta. Anyways tthats my rant for today and that was just three of the main issues within the last couple of weeks.

BP Oil Spill Finally Over

Well it has been around three months of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico and British Petroleum (B.P.) has finally been able to cap the well head and cement the shaft. After eighty seven days and 4.9 million barrels of crude oil, they now have it permanently sealed. This oil spill turned out to be the largest marine oil spill for the whole history of the petroleum industry. The clean up efforts will probably continue for years to come, however reports show that the rate at which the ocean is absorbing the oil and breaking it down are high or fast. Here is a link to B.P's latest commercial http://bp.concerts.com/gom/beaches2_60natl_080410.htm Here is another commercial http://bp.concerts.com/gom/cleanup2_60_final_030810.htm B.P. seems dedicated to doing the right thing and clean this mess up and compensate fairly the people effected by the disaster. My hope is that humanity learns from this situation and that more is done to protect our environment, more precautions need to be taken and more restrictions need to be enforced, especially in Eco sensitive areas such as the Arctic. Many countries have looked at imposing moratoriums (stopping all drilling until thorough investigations are done) and the United States still has their moratorium in effect. Canada has chosen not to hold a moratorium, instead the Conservative government held a brief two day parliamentary committee hearings in which they felt comfortable with the oil companies emergency plans. Canada continues to drill the deepest off shore oil rig in history, Canadians can only hope nothing goes wrong, as Canada already has a terrible reputation because of our Tar Sands on going environmental damage. Again Canadians need to elect a government that will force these oil companies to spend the extra money and clean up the oil extraction methods, anyways one can only hope.

The Gulf Coast Oil Spill

Well it has been a while since my last post on this blog and as I treat this blog as a journal of world events and the happenings of events within Canada, it is more than due for a new post. To start things off B.P. (British Petroleum) has had a off shore drilling platform go catastrophic in the southern United States Gulf Coast. The drilling platform had a blow back and the blow back prevention valve failed to divert the pressure to a burn off pipe, thus sending all that oil and gas to the platform where it exploded and killed I believe eight workers. After a couple of days the coast guard got the fire out and had rescued anyone they possibly could. They later realized that since the fire was out that all the oil and gas that was burning was now spewing into the ocean at an enormous rate, you could see this oil slick from space it was so big. It has been over five weeks of this huge environmental disaster and has still not been resolved, the oil has been washing up on shore devastating the marshlands and bird sanctuaries and breading shores of the sea turtles. President Obama has put together a presidential committee to find out what happened and he did suspend all new off shore drilling until we find out more about this tragedy, he has also lifted the current maximum liability that a company could be responsible for in this type of disaster from seventy million to what ever it takes to clean it up, and he got the company to publicly agree to pay what ever it takes to fix the problem and clean it up. Unfortunately the religious right wing Republican/Conservatives are making political hay out of this by saying that the president hasn't done enough and that he is too cosy with the oil companies. What's weird about this political hay is that during the last election the Republicans/Conservatives were chanting "DRILL BABY DRILL" as a reason to vote for them. Most people know that it was the Bush's Republicans that looked after the oil companies, gave them ultimate power without any regulations to drill where ever and when ever they wanted, heck the Bushes even started a war for oil companies. The whole time this has been going on down in the states our own Conservative government has come out saying that the oil companies have said this could never happen here and just two weeks ago started drilling the deepest oil well ever drilled right off the coast of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Everyone knows the oil companies don't have the required technologies but they drill anyways and our government does nothing to secure the safety of our shores. There are safer ways to drill for oil and there is a lot of oil on land right here in Canada, however the oil companies would have to invest more money to clean up the on land oil extractions such as the "TAR SANDS". Rather than making the Tar Sands a cleaner viable oil source, the oil companies take a less expensive "DEEP WATER" drilling approach. This is why I have any interest in politics we need a government who works for the people and not the big oil companies and big businesses throughout the world. We need a government who will protect our planet not destroy it and who will build more rail transit and hydro electric power, and solar and wind power. I thought the Liberals with Stephen Dion would be able to do that, however I now see that the Republicans/Conservatives have more power and money to influence our media and our perception of what is actually being done. All I can hope is that one day people will wake up and see how big business mixed with greedy politicians are rapping and pillaging planet all the while we as citizens continue to vote them into power. Anyways I hope that B.P. will finally get control of this spill and prevent this from ever happening again.

What's Up for March

Well as we draw a conclusion for the month of March, many things have happened during the month. Probably the most important thing to happen recently was that the United States finally has a health care plan. Barrack Obama got his legislation through the Senate and although they are one of the very last developed countries to get it they finally do have a health care plan that will cover the entire population, similar to Canada they have made it mandatory under the law to have insurance and the government will cover those who cannot afford it. The one thing that I and many others find interesting is that the Republicans/Conservatives have obstructed and tried to prevent this all the way and now that it has succeeded they look foolish for not having any input or contribution to the law of the land. Sarah Pallin has even started a crusade to have president Obama ousted from office, the "Tea Party" movement. I was watching Larry King live the other night and he was interviewing some of the people in this movement and they were accussing president Obama of being a terrorist and crap like that, just makes them all look like a bunch of hillbillies. I was listening to David Fromm (former speech writer for George W Bush) and he was saying the best thing that could happen for the Democrats is for Sarah Pallin to continue to campaign against the government and for the Republicans. I think what gets me most about the Republican/Conservatives is that they are mostly made up of right wing religious people and how can a person of faith not want to help his or her fellow citizen with basic health care, all because they don't want to pay for it, what a bunch of hypocrites. Anyways it's good to see our neighbors to the south finally joining the twenty first century, I knew Barrack Obama would be able to get that country straightened out after the damage the Republican have done over the last eight years. I just hope the Conservatives don't stay in power long enough to screw Canada up the same way Bush screwed up the States.

Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

Well time for another blog post, finding any spare time these days has been difficult however things seemed to have gotten back to normal, for now anyways.
Vancouver 2010, I think these games have surpassed the rush of excitement that the Calgary 1988 winter games had, the media is reporting that the excitement world wide is similar if not better then the Sidney summer games of 2000. The Vancouver games definitely started off a little rough with the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili the luger from Georgia, I’m glad they had a moment of silence during the opening ceremonies for him. Then there was the issue of the warm winter we’ve had here in B.C., caused by a stronger then normal El Nino, they had to truck in snow from Manning park a few hours away. Regardless of the difficulties Vancouver has done a fabulous job of hosting these games and in the eyes of the rest of the world they have been spectacular winter games. Canada has pulled off a record for the most gold winning performances for a hosting country, which is great considering that prior to these games Canada had not achieved a gold metal while hosting the games. Other things that made these games so good was the way Canada included the native community, in almost every aspect of the games the level of native involvement is impressive. In the opening ceremonies the way they mixed in the traditional dancing and banging of the drums and all the various native symbolisms was great. One thing I was totally impressed with is the way the metals were designed each metal is a piece of a larger picture and each athlete who wins a metal gets a scarf with that picture so they can see where there metal fits in to that picture. Some of the metals are from a picture of a four-sided box symbolizing treasure and the native art on the box is of the Orca whale symbolizing power. Other metals were of a picture of the Raven symbolizing strength and the native artwork contained handles throughout representing sharing and helping, all in all very cool. Well of to watch the gold metal game between Canada and the United States (expected to be the most watched television program watched by the entire world in history) and then the closing ceremonies.

Haiti

It has been two weeks since the terrible earthquake that occurred in Haiti, and I am absolutely impressed by people's generosities and involvement. To date Canadians have given almost twenty million dollars to relief organizations and the government will be matching that figure bringing the total to over forty million dollars by Canadians alone, that's great! There have been fundraising telethons in both Canada and the United States involving just about everybody who is Rich and famous and how much total money collected by all the countries has to be staggering. The opportunity for Haiti to rebuild a more solid and stable community definitely exist now with the comforts and securities of modern buildings and an infrastructure that meets the demands of our changing world. In my opinion that's good because Port Au Prince used to be one of the worlds most violent cities, and definitely needed change, its just unfortunate that it had to happen this way. I hope we can see a speedy recovery to a desperate nation and one that will be lasting.

Time for some New Year "Goals"

Well my first blog of the New Year was a reflection of the year past, this post I intend to express my best intentions for the New Year that we are beginning. Following the tradition from my previous post I will make a list of items that are particularly important to me to pursue for the New Year.

1. I intend to continue that ever-elusive pursuit of physical fitness. I have already purchased the new stationary bicycle, with all the bells and whistles and now begins the time to adhere to the exercise regiment. My thought on this endeavour and how it pertains to my political blog is as follows; if everyone were to take seriously the goal of becoming absolutely as fit as they could be, I believe the results of that would have a tremendous benefit to our health care dollars spent. People need to take a more proactive approach to their own physical well-being, they to work as a partner with their physicians rather than just a quaint relationship that involves visits and prescriptions. Anyways the amount of health care dollars being spent is definitely high on my list because I believe if enough people take the correct approach to this issue it could have the same results as if everyone combined takes little steps to improve our environment.
2. This leads into my next item on the list of things to strive for in the New Year. I would like to continue to improve my personal environmental footprint by limiting my need for fossil fuels, through more improvements to the house and just an over-all conscience effort to use less and save more. This again leads into my next item on the list.
3. I would like to focus more outside of my immediate control when it comes to the topic of sustainability and environmental conservation. Some of the ways I intend to achieve this goal is to do more within my community by posting water saving tips at our poster board at the community centre and going to more strata council meetings to insist this item remains a priority as a community. Another way I intend to have more of an influence outside of my immediate circle is to get more involved and more vocal at work when I see a continuously gross waste of materials and energy. This not only benefits my employer by reducing costs it also acts as advertising as the other employees will have to act in a more conscientious manor when dealing with consumption, maybe the odd person will take those same measures home and apply them there.
4. Next goal is to have an increased level of involvement when it comes to an on-line presence on the social networking sites. I have recently joined a "Face Book" group called "Save our Rivers Society" and they have meetings and discussion that I could have a greater involvement with. I am also a member of the "Make Poverty History" campaign, this is the group made famous by the lead singer Bono of U2, and I can get more active in that as well. Then there is that new "Face Book" group "Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament", in one week the membership went to 100,000 people who joined and today just a week and half after it started, the membership will be over 150,000 people. The good thing about this group is that it has become a meeting place where people can stay informed about up and coming events and they can also share their thoughts and ideas for the betterment of our great country "Canada".
5. Education is my next goal, I intend to continue to progress in my pursuit of knowledge and keep my brain as active as possible. An important aspect of my life, which requires a constant and never ending improvement, is technology. With the way technology makes advances daily, I believe this will always be a priority with most people who want to keep up with the various aspects of technology. Specifically the different social net work sites require that I stay informed in order to fully utilize them as constructive tools. Another specific aspect of technology I want to learn more about is the various ways of my smart phone works and the numerous activities it can perform especially the capability to interface with my computer. One more evident aspect I would like to improve my education of is, writing and the correct use of grammar and sentence structure. The best way for me to do this is to continue reading and continue writing comments and posting to my blogs. "I may not be the most intelligent person I know, however that does not prevent me from striving for that intelligence."(Me)
6. Another goal I think I need to make an effort to improve is reading, I intend to get more involved with a book club or a suggested reading list, there are many to choose from and I'm sure that I could probably pick a different club or list every month if I wanted to.
7. Continue to increase the number of posts to my blogs and to stay active with my comments on other blog sites, this is quite self-explanatory and was on my last year list of goals as well.
8. Be more charitable A) with my time and B) with my money. Again self-explanatory, I think the world would be a much better place if everyone donated a bit of time to volunteer his or her time to a charitable organization, and as for money I always feel I can do more then I presently do.
9. I also want to strive to be more patient with other people and make a more conscious effort to see things from the other persons point of view.
10. The last goal is to take the time to pursue my interest and hobbies more often and share in those hobbies with family and friends more often.

Well that is a list of New Year aspirations I hope to achieve this up and coming year, it will be interesting to re-visit these goals at the end of the year to see just how well I did with them.

Happy New Year

Well the "New Year" is here, I love this day! The "New Year" makes you give pause for the year that was and more importantly makes you think about what is to come in the year ahead. So 2009 and what a year that was I think I'll make a top ten list of things that happened in the last year that I found particularly important.

1. Steven Harper prorogues parliament again with no valid reason. many people think the only reason he is doing this is so that he can avoid a court order to release documents regarding the Afghanistan detainees. Others think that he is trying to avoid criticism from opposition while the world is watching us at the "Vancouver Olympics" what ever, it's just wrong period.
2. The Copenhagen Climate Conference of 2009 came and went without a binding legal agreement. Barrack Obama did have a last minute think tank session in which all the major countries were involved, however Canada was not invited (what a shame). Barrack Obama was able to get the U.S.A., China, India, Great Britain, Germany, and all the other major countries present, that this is the most serious issue facing humanity to date and needs to be discussed in further meetings A.S.A.P. (a step in the right direction).
3. Canada won the "Fossil of the Year" award in Copenhagen, many thought Canada was the most disruptive country there and they were said to have been obstructive at every turn. I know that all the M.P.'s from Canada were trumpeting the same message months before the Copenhagen Conference, Steven Harper at the G-8 meeting, Jim Flaherty at the finance ministers meeting, and any other news interview or sound bite, "that Canada did not believe anything productive or meaningful would be achieved at Copenhagen. Steven Harper operates the same way every time, when he is about to do something extremely bad he feeds it to the media in small sound bites properly prepared in advance.
4. Quebec passes legislation that requires automobile manufacturers to provide vehicles that have a better fuel consumption then the automobile being produced today, these specifications are the same as the state of California has legislated. What a shame that the federal government hasn't done anything to this effect in the last four years they have been in power.
5. The province of British Columbia legislates a provincial "Carbon Tax" and starts a major campaign to spend these new tax dollars improving bicycles paths and train transportation throughout the province. They have also launched a public awareness campaign to help assist people about the various ways they can do their part to help the environment, again what a shame the federal government can't or won't do anything like this.
6. The B.C. Salmon Stock collapse that took place this fall finally got a little attention from the federal government, on November 5th, 2009 Steven Harper announced that he would launch a "Judicial Inquiry" into the disappearance of over nine million Sockeye Salmon in B.C. waters. Maybe there is still hope for our environment yet, however with the whole prorogation and all I wonder if the inquiry will still go ahead. The bottom line seems to be that fish farms make huge political donations so the politician help keep them in business. We should be employing people to restock our oceans with fish, not enabling the industries that are suspect for the collapse.
7. On a municipal level, I and many other citizen of Kelowna were thoroughly disgusted by the actions of our city council in the recent months. The council contracted an artist to come up with a new logo for the city, and when he does sell the artwork for a mere eleven thousand dollars, we find out that the logo is almost identical to a company from the United States. After a barrage of complaints from the public, the mayor has the audacity to say on camera that, "they would not be holding a plebiscite on the matter because the council would be ignoring the results, as the public elected them to make these type of decisions". The total cost to tax payers to change all the signs and equipment for this new logo was seventy thousand dollars, and almost everyone agrees that the old logo described Kelowna extremely well and the new one has no resemblance to what the region offers.
8. Again on a municipal level, the council decided to make an H.O.V. lane out of the new right hand lane on Hwy. 97 (the main artery through town), this is not a freeway and in fact has a traffic light every block. People are finding it impossible to access all the shopping along this roadway and finding it hard to merge and exit the Hwy. What gets me the most is that Kelowna has no pedestrian over passes and people are constantly getting hit by vehicles on this roadway, this new H.O.V. lane only makes things worse. Again council wanted no input from the public they said they had made their decision, they rule as if they have no intention of being re-elected and by the sound of things, they won't be re-elected.
9. On a more positive note, the government of Canada continues to show true leadership in the development of national parks and conservation areas with the announcement that "Lancaster Sound" at the eastern part of the North West Passage would get five million dollars to develop a marine conservation area. Also in June of this year the government announces the expansion of the Nahanni National Park Reserve, to increase it six times it's original size making it the third largest Nation Park in Canada, almost the size of Vancouver Island.
10. Again on a positive note, Neptune Canada was completed and is up and on line, the largest underwater exploratory Lab in the world. This project started in 2006 with the university of Victoria launching the Venus program and now that has developed into the Neptune Project. This lab stretches over the entire Pacific tectonic plate (at its narrowest point), just off the coast of Vancouver Island and is accessible to anyone who logs on, very very cool!

Anyways that's my top ten thing of 2009 and because this turned out to be quite a large post I'll have to list some of my goals and inspirations for the year to come on another blog post. Again, happy new year.