Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Ron Paul Ad - Three of a Kind
Canadian Federation of Students should not be taken seriously
But Roxanne Dubois, national chair of the Canadian Federation of Students, said the move is troubling. The youth unemployment rate of 14.5 per cent is nearly twice that of the general population, said Ms. Dubois. At the same time, she said, students are facing high tuition fees and, in many cases, large debts.“This is not a time to cut back resources to unemployed youth,” Ms. Dubois said. “It is actually a time to invest resources and make sure that, not only are we creating new job opportunities for young Canadians, but we are also providing the services they need to know what those jobs are and to have access to them.”
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
An bizarre column in Toronto Star on the Wildrose Alliance
Getting drunk drivers out of their cars and off the road is usually considered a good thing. But for Alberta’s right-wing Wildrose party, the province’s tough new drinking and driving laws are as loathsome as the Liberals’ gun registry.
The Alberta and B.C. governments may indeed be overstepping their bounds by giving police so much power. Still, I am wondering why Wildrose is so outraged about giving the police so much power when it comes to drinking and driving and yet they hasn’t uttered a word against the Harper government’s Bill C-30.If C-30 becomes law, police will be granted extraordinary powers to monitor personal communications on the Internet. A lot more people use the Internet than drink and drive.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Newmarket Councillor John Taylor likes expensive housing for his constituents
Checking in with Gary Johnson
Randy Hillier on the Drummond Report
| Drummond Chases Inefficient Pot of Government Gold |
(QUEEN’S PARK) Randy Hillier, MPP for Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, expressed significant concern today that the Drummond Commission’s findings failed to identify a path to future prosperity in Ontario. While Drummond’s report made 362 recommendations to find efficiencies and savings within the Ontario bureaucracy, not one will restore Ontario back as Canada’s economic engine nor shed our ‘have not’ status. “There are almost 600,000 unemployed people in this province and yet not one recommendation Don Drummond made will put people back to work in this province,” said Hillier. “Drummond refused to acknowledge the giant elephant in this province, the size and cost of government; instead he made recommendations based on the twisted fantasy that for the first time in history, government bureaucracy will and can become efficient.” Hillier agrees there is significant cause for concern given Ontario’s current financial debacle. Based on the projections in the Drummond Commission report, if Ontario maintains the status quo the debt will rise to over $400 billion by 2017/18. Hillier noted though that even if every one of the recommendations is adopted the provincial debt will still hit $300 billion within that same timeframe. “We needn’t be patting Don Drummond on the back for his recommendations to achieve a balanced budget over the next six years. Even with his advice our debt will grow by another 40 percent and taxpayers are all but guaranteed to see endless new user fees” said Hillier. “He was given a mandate to propose recommendations that would ensure that once the budget was balanced, Ontario’s fiscal environment would be sustainable, and I don’t see that in his report.” “Long term economic stability can not be realized by simply finding efficiencies in an inherently inefficient bureaucracy,” said Hillier. “We must identify and eliminate altogether the parts of government that impede economic growth, that prevent businesses from investing in Ontario and prevent individuals from getting a well-paying private sector job.” “Dalton and Don are telling us that Ontario will remain an economic basket case,” concluded Hillier. |
The Drummond Report and health care hypocrisy
The system should be centred on the patient, not on the institutions and practitioners in the health care system