Conservative dissent (and hypocrisy) on Copyright

Via Saskboy, a interesting guest blog on Small Dead Animals. Looks like lance is hopefully one of many Tories now reconsidering their support for the freedom-hating Conservatives (as NDP candidate Dana Larsen notes, the NDP is definitely the most libertarian of Canada's major parties).

This is good to see. Hopefully, some of those voters will consider looking at the NDP in their ridings, who will no doubt be the party that pushes back hardest on this horrible legislation.

And this all reminded me of a little display of Conservative hypocrisy on this issue I observed this weekend. On the bus back from Kingston, there was a guy in front of me a couple of rows which a black Macbook. I was checking out its beautiful design when I noticed that his background was a picture of Harper and his white male caucus. So I'm assuming this guy is a Conservative staffer of some sort, because who else has a Conservative background for their Mac?

So I can resist, I have to trail my eyes lower to see what programs he has in the Dock at the bottom of the screen. And what do I find, icons for Limewire and Transmission (a Mac bittorrent client)!?!

I suppose I could've asked the guy, but I wonder if he is happy with Prentice trying to turn him into a criminal? Because I doubt he has those programs for sharing materials he owns the copyright for.

"“Why vote for the Liberal party when the Liberal party won't stand up and vote for you?”

It's not often I agree with Peter Van Loan, but I think this quote should be in the mind of all progressive voters when they're getting ready to cast their votes in the next election.

Despite staking his political reputation on the environment, Liberal leader Stephane Dion ordered his party to stay away from the House tonight on a vote on a opposition motion of non-confidence in the Harper government on their inaction on reducing greenhouse gases.

Thankfully, voters concerned about the environment have another party in parliament who are willing to take action on climate change.

Source: Globe and Mail.

Still entitled to their entitlements ... 26 months later

I just couldn't resist blogging about this one - the latest Liberal opposition motion, a clearly desperate attempt to distract voters from the Dion-Harper coalition. And it's not just this Dipper saying that, Canada's foremost blogger-from-France Paul Wells agrees.

After a budget amendment that decried the Tory government's "NDP-like lack of fiscal prudence" (which of course ignores the evidence from the Finance department that shows that NDP goverments in Canada have had the BEST record of fiscal surpluses of any party), now the Liberals are bringing forward a motion that "condemn[s] the irresponsible and self-serving actions on Nov. 25, 2005, by the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois which led to the installation of a government that is hostile to the rights and needs of vulnerable Canadians."

I've got to agree with the unnamed NDP strategist, this motion is laughable!

Funny, I could've sworn it was CANADIAN VOTERS that put the Harper government in office.

Have the adults left the Official Opposition offices? Do they really think that this sort of whining does anything to bring the Liberals closer to power? Methinks it was precisely this sort of sense of entitlement that led voters to want to turf the Martin government out of office in the first place.

As this blogger notes, "don't expect that the average Canadian is still seething over that last election... they aren't. They've moved on. So should [Liberals]."

And Stephane if you keep this kind of whining up, you'll never get to see the inside of 24 Sussex. The smart Liberal bloggers realize this as well.

Should we working for democracy this morning, but saw something in my morning perusal of Macleans online (which is really great, btw), I saw this story about the NDPs budget demands and my blood started to boil a little bit.

Good to see Jack getting out and setting parameters for NDP support for the budget. And I guess it's smart politics to make a solid pitch to win Saskatchewan seats, after all they are eminently winnable. But calling for the exclusion of resource revenues from the equalization is bad policy and not in line with NDP values.

Why? Because this would royally screw my beloved home province and is not in the spirit of the constitution.

Subsection 36 (2) of the Constitution states that "Parliament and the government of Canada are committed to the principle of making Equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation."

I fail to see how excluding oil and gas revenues, which as Canada inevitably becomes an energy superpower will definitely become and bigger component of provincial budgets, from the equalization formula helps equalize provincial services.

In the interests of fairness, the NDP should be calling for nothing less than a 10-province standard that includes all provincial revenues. Anything else, in an era of rising energy prices, is unfair. If the goal of equalization is to allow provinces to provide equal services at comparable taxation levels, then you can't exclude the huge pile of petro-dollars in their coffers from the calculation. To do so will prevent provinces with no oil or gas, like poor little PEI, from having the same fiscal capacity as other provinces.

The biggest irony is that PEI might have the most forward looking energy and environmental policies of any provincial government. Despite an ongoing fiscal crunch, PEI has made investment in wind power a priority and are set to be leaders in this industry, that I thought Jack Layton supported.

The NDP is no more likely to win seats in PEI than they are in the Saguenay or Missisauga or Calgary, but that doesn't mean they should not get behind a fair equalization system that works for all Canadians.