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.

Prorougation Again!

Well here we are at the end of yet another year and our beloved Conservative government has gone to the Governor General (Michaelle Jean) to ask her again to prorogue parliament. The last time Steven Harper did this was to avoid a confidence vote which would have ushered in a coalition government between the Liberals and the N.D.P. This coalition did with have the approval of the block Quebecois and the promise of letting them govern for eighteen months before they would consider voting against the coalition. During the time off while parliament was prorogued the Conservatives launched a massive ad campaign to denounce this coup d'etat as a over throw of our government. The reality however, was that this was totally legal and in fact Steven Harper was engineering a coalition of his own back when Paul Martin and the Liberals were in power. Unfortunately the media and pretty much all the journalist neglected to discuss that very much all they seem to do is side with Steven Harper and repeat or trumpet his message that those dam Liberals were trying to steal power away from him. Steven Harper seemed to think that because he won the election with 37% of the vote, that Canadians wanted him to be the leader. This advertising campaign went on for weeks and every poll and every news cast seem to re-affirm this belief, every talking head or political analysis repeated what Harper was saying. By the time parliament did re-convene, Canadians were led to believe that this was bad for the country(roughly 60%against to 40%for) and the Liberals under (Micheal Ignatieff) scrapped the whole coalition idea. Also Ignatieff scraped it because now that parliament was prorogued the only way to go forward would be a non confidence vote in the spring budget, which would lead to yet another election. In my opinion the Liberals had neither the money nor the confidence that Canadians knew enough about their new leader Michael Ignatieff, so rather than going into an election the Liberals insisted that the Conservatives include in that budget spending provisions (The Canada Action Plan) that would help Canada get out of this world financial crisis and set up a series of reporting periods that must be met to show how the infrastructure spending is doing. Ya what the media and journalist seem to report little about is that this whole coalition was caused by Harper releasing a budget that included no plans to combat the global financial crisis, instead he attacked a couple of social programs and revoked the public funding for political parties. What the media focused on was the party funding and little was said about the fifty billion plus dollars needed to help our economy get back on its feet.
So now another Prorogation of parliament and already the media is parroting the P.M.O.'s message that this is a just a routine occurrence in parliamentary process, however that is a lie. Prorogation is used to end the session after everything needed to be done is done or closed to being done, and on special occasions where the Prime Minister believes that it is a necessity. Prorogation is not to avoid confidence votes, like the last time, or to avoid court orders from committees, like the one from the Afghanistan committee that requires the government to release the documents from the detainee issue dating back to 2006 until now (not backed out). This government is so slippery, I believe they will probably get away with this and our media will play an important role in its execution. No wonder Canadians are more and more less interested in Canadian politics, the crap that goes on is depressing. However, now more than ever Canadians need to stop listening to the bias media and investigate more for themselves, get to the bottom of every truth, do not let journalist get away with regurgitating the politicains pollished talking points or their carefully constructed message. I read a good blog on this today by Red Torry ( I tried to get the whole link thing happening but, not), anyways the post is a clip of a journalist holdiong the Rebublicans to account for the lies they have been spewing for the last week regarding President Obama, its a very good post.

Merry Christmas

Well Christmas day is here at last and what a wonderful Christmas it has been, good family fun, good food, even the dog seems to be having more fun than usual. The only thing that could be better is to have the entire family here and not spread out in multiple cities, oh well, thank god for technology. You know I really enjoy the love people share at this time of year and the efforts people go to in order to contact friends and family, I only wonder why do we make these efforts only once a year and not more often. It seems at though the various charities do the bulk of their campaigning at Christmas time, do people need these charities less at other times of the year? To me I wish we could have the same generous attitude at Easter, Canada Day, Labour Day, or Thanksgiving Day, heck maybe we could be more generous on every full moon of every month, I guess that's going a little far. One thing for sure is, that it is nice that during this time of the year when it is generally colder outside that our charities can provide blankets and warm clothes, warms meals and some times a shelter to sleep in for the people who have no homes and can't afford a good meal. It's nice that we have people who organize giving gifts for that time of the year when families that don't have a lot to spend on gifts for the children, who for the most part don't place a lot of importance on toys ( it's seems like they know when there isn't enough money), but they sure do enjoy the gifts when they receive them. It's nice that when a family that does get over burdened with expense, that they at least know they can go to a food bank and have food in the fridge for this time of year. I am so fortunate to have had the opportunity to live a life outside of poverty and each year at this time I really become thankful of the life I have (more so then normally). However, each year I say to myself that I should do more to get involved with more charities and ya sure I donate a little money here and there, but the closest I've ever gotten to actually getting fiscally involved with doing something concrete, well a couple of years ago I read that book "Giving" by Bill Clinton ( a great read), I need to do more this coming year for helping out in my community and get more involved period! I guess I have found a new short, medium, and long range goal for the new year. Anyways Merry Christmas and hopefully everyone has a splendid time.

Post Copenhagen

Well the Copenhagen Climate Conference ended on the weekend with nothing more than a Treaty that hopes to deal with the problem in the near future, and sets money aside for developing countries to combat climate change. I think the conference was a failure because the Copenhagen Conference was the fifteenth so far and way back at conference number seven in 2005, they had a legally binding contract called the Kyoto Accord one hundred and eighty seven countries or states agreed to lower green house gasses by 5.2% of 1990 levels. Sure the Kyoto Accord did not have hard targets for big emitters such as the United States, China, or India, and a few other developed nations, but in my opinion and the opinion of many others, Kyoto was the starting point at which countries could adjust targets and ratify objectives. None of that happened, now four years later, people were looking for a new accord, one that included everyone and one that made targets extremely soft. On a positive side they did agree to set aside money for poor developing countries to build new environment friendly technologies (ie: wind turbines and solar panels). The one thing that really upsets me about this meeting is that Canada played a obstructive role and made no attempts to continue to lead in this forum. Our government was on record months before saying that they didn't think anything would be achieved from the Copenhagen Conference, what an utter disappointment. Countries around the world now view Canada as a country who doesn't believe in global warming and as a country who has no intention of doing anything about it. I have now changed my profile picture from a Canadian flag to a picture of Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) peeing on a picture of the world and a sign that says "I am Canadian" Again what a disappointment!

What a Wonderful World, Let's Keep It That Way

Well it's been a while since my last post on this political blog, I believe it's because of feeling so helpless and insignificant when it comes to having any say or input into what happens here in Canada with our politicians. I have made several comments on many other blogs but have written nothing here on Frankly Canadian's blog, so time to get back to it and make another go of it. Last week and next week is the United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen Summit, and yesterday alone the city had over ten thousand protesters who want our leaders to stop talking and farting around and start taking immediate action. There is a group (Avaaz) who send out weekly e-mails and organize protest throughout the world and they have over three thousand candle light vigils set up for Saturday night as well. I started thinking how easy it is to feel insignificant and how important it is that people around the world don't feel helpless. I also started to realize that their are people around the world who believe they can and will make a difference to create positive change in our world. Throughout history the people have come to a boiling point and began to take charge and instigate the changes necessary, the results of these changes have given us a society we can all be proud of. When I look at how President Obama was elected and how he himself symbolizes the whole idea of "The Audacity Of Hope", I realize the people truly do have the ultimate power. When I see that no matter how big the corporations get and how much they influence our media (newspapers, radio, television, and now news feeds on popular web sites), and when I see how much these same big corporations influence our political process and the politicians themselves, I realize throughout history the people do have the ultimate power. I am a witness to how things change when people begin to rebel, they organize and protest, they make movies and write books, they do what ever they can to instigate change. I have began to realize no matter how helpless and insignificant I feel, that I too can have a part (even if a small part) in the change taking place. I can blog or comment on a blog, I can write the newspapers in the opinions columns, I can take part in some of the events taking place, even if all I do is talk about what needs to be done, I still have a part in instigating change. I do believe we live in a wonderful world and we need to insure that it continues to remain a wonderful world.