Thursday, May 31, 2012
Debate Regarding Western Separatism
There is an interesting argument between someone called "Da Bear" and me on a fascinating forum called Puget Sound Radio. You might want to take part in this discussion which is still going on. Click here to visit Puget Sound Radio and follow this discussion.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
A National Energy Policy?
The National Post, on Saturday the 26th of May, 2012, at the beginning of the Financial Post section, had a large article by Claudia Cattaneo regarding “The Trouble with Resetting Canada’s Energy Spine”. TransCanada Pipeline was looking to raise rates or even switch its namesake pipeline from gas to oil, which may create a huge controversy.
I read the article carefully, and as far as I can see, what it amounts to is offloading the costs of shipping western oil east onto Western Canadian consumers. I quote the article, as follows:
“After years of unsuccessful negotiation, TransCanada presented a restructuring proposal to the NEB (National Energy Board) in the fall it says achieves ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ – but that doesn’t seem to make anyone happy. It’s the reason the proposal has landed before the NEB for a ruling.”
My comment is that the greatest good for the greatest number generally means the greatest good for the people of Ontario and Quebec where this pipeline will end.
Quoting further, the article says:
“Western Canadian gas producers find many of TransCanada’s arguments outrageous and its restructuring proposal a way of transferring Western Canadian wealth to the East.”
This, to my mind, is exactly what has happened all too often in the transfer of wealth from the energy sector to the consumers of Eastern Canada, so they can have cheap gas and oil. It is, in effect, requiring Western Canadians to pay and subsidize the main line to Central Canada. The article goes on to say:
“Western Canadians find it ‘very offensive’ that the regional carrier, NGTL, might subsidize the Mainline, said Nikol Schultz, vice president for pipeline regulation and general counsel at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which will represent producers interests at the hearings.”
The article concludes with the suggestion that probably it would be better for Eastern Canada to pay the world price for oil and gas, relying on the shale gas production from the Eastern United States, rather than having it shipped all the way from Alberta on a “Canada Mainline.” The article in its final paragraph says:
“Whether it’s in the business of shipping oil or gas, producers believe it’s time for TransCanada, as the owner of the mainline to start bearing the risk of its choices, rather than shifting it to others.”
In my opinion, shifting it others (Western Canadian gas consumers) is exactly what the NEB and TransCanada are likeliest to do. In the present political climate, no Western Canadian Prime Minister is ever going to rock this boat when it would cost him the votes of Ontario and Quebec.
Therefore, I find this whole controversy another strong argument why Western Canada should not be trying to ship its gas and oil to the consumers of Eastern Canada, but rather should be shipping it to the port of Prince Rupert, from where it can be sold at the highest possible price to the consumers of Korea, China, Japan, and probably in the future, India and Indonesia.
There is no long term benefit from a pipeline that ships oil and gas from Alberta to the consumers of Quebec so that they can have cheap energy at the expense of Western Canadian consumers or oil and gas producers. Let the revenues from the resources remain in the land where the resources come from and you will see a developing industry, secondary manufacturing, and a reduction in the costs of living and taxation that Western Canada has every right to expect from retaining the ownership, use, and profit from the resources located here for the long term benefit of Western Canadians.
This is something Ottawa can never do for us, and the National Energy Board as they call it will simply do the political thing again, and make the people of the West subservient providers to the consumers of the East in the interests of the political survival of whatever party happens to be in power in Ottawa.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
"Quebec and the Fairy Godmother"
Some time ago, Lisa Corbella, the editorial page editor of the Calgary Herald, published an article entitled “Quebec and the Fairy Godmother.” I quote from it, almost completely, as follows:
Quebec and the Fairy Godmother
Today, let’s have some fun and play Fairy Godmother to Quebec. Let’s grand the province the wish it articulated in Copenhagen. Wave the magic wand and poof, wish granted. Shut down Alberta’s oilsands, except, since it’s Quebec making the wish, we have to call it tarsands, even though it’s not tar they use to run their Bombardier planes, trains and Skidoos.
Ah, at last! The blight on Canada’s reputation shut down. All those dastardly workers from across Canada living in Fort McMurray, Calgary and Edmonton out of jobs, including those waitresses, truck drivers, nurses, teachers, doctors, pilots, engineers etc. They can all go on Employment insurance like Ontario autoworkers and Quebec parts makers!
Closing down Alberta’s oil industry would immediately stop the production of 1.8 million barrels of oil a day. Supply and demand being what it is, oil prices will go up and therefore the cost at the pump will go up, too, increasing the cost of everything else.
…The 530-square-kilometre piece of land currently disturbed by the oilsands (which is smaller than the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. At 570 square kilometres) must be reclaimed by law and will return to Alberta’s 381,000 square kilometres of boreal forest, a huge carbon sink…
Quebec, of course, has clean hydro power, but more than 13,000 square kilometres were drowned for the James Bay hydroelectric project, permanently removing that forest from acting as a carbon sink.
…Quebec hasn’t made a net contribution to the rest of Canada for a very long time. This is not to be critical (after all, Fairy Godmothers never criticize), it’s just a fact. In 2009, Albertans paid $40.46 billion in income, corporate and other taxes to the federal government and received back just $19.35 billion in services and goods from the feds. That means the rest of Canada got $21.1 billion from Albertans or $5,742 for each and every Alberta man, woman and child. In 2007 (the last year national figures are available), Alberta sent a net contribution of $19.49 billion to the ROC or $5,443 per Albertan – more than three times what every Ontarian contributes at $1,757. Quebecers, on the other hand, each received $627 net or a total of $8 billion, money which was designed to help “equalize” social programs across the country.
…The July 2009 Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) report states that between 2008 and 2032, the oilsands will account for 172,000 person-years or employment in Ontario during the construction phase, plus 640,000 for operations over the 25-year period. For Quebec, the oilsands will account for 84,000 person-years of employment during the construction phase, plus 292,000 for operations over the 25-year period.
…The dream of many Quebecers to form their own nation and separate from Canada has died at last. Alas, in Alberta, separatist sentiment has risen dramatically, citizens vote to separate and the oil and gas industry returns.
Albertans start to pocket that almost $6,000 for each person that used to get sent elsewhere and now their kids get free tuition. Fairy Godmother’s work is done. Wish granted. Quebecers must now sign up for foreign worker visas to work in Alberta to send their cheques back home so junior can start saving up to pay for college.
My comments are as follows:
1.) If, in 2009, Alberta surrendered a loss of $21-billion to subsidize the rest of Canada, which in the hands of Quebecers is now being used to subsidize their university education, and if as quite correctly alleged, the oil sands will generate 170,000 person-years of employment in Ontario and 84,000 person-years of employment in Quebec, why should this money and these jobs go to Ontario and Quebec when they could provide for the people in Western Canada who live here?
2.) Why should we continue to subsidize a bankrupt government in Ottawa that annually goes deeper in debt, while a Western Canadian government could be self-supporting with all our government services paid for with reduced taxation?
3.) Why should Western Canadians continue to cater to the Ontario preference for a multicultural society with bilingualism everywhere, while we in Western Canada have to listen to bilingual announcements on WestJet airlines?
4.) Why should Western Canadians in Fort McMurray, Prince Rupert, or anywhere else, be held to ransom by foreign-subsidized “environmental groups” receiving vast sums of donations from American corporate entities while Western Canadian jobs are held to ransom by an Ottawa-based decision making process?
5.) Why shouldn’t Western Canadians have their own country, with their own Parliament, with a regionally-elected Senate, and the rights of referendum, initiative, and recall, which would give all Western Canadians a feeling of participation in their own government for a change?
6.) Why shouldn’t lower taxation be translated into greater respect for private property and perhaps a constitutional entrenchment of that right, which the Ottawa government has not and will not give us?
7.) Why should Western Canadians continue to allow decisions to be made where the decision makers are primarily elected in Quebec and Ontario, where the Supreme Court of Canada is appointed primarily from Quebec and Ontario with six of the nine judges coming from those provinces, and the Senate and central Canadian media, owned, operated and dominated from Quebec and Ontario? Why is this good for us and why should we continue to pay for it?
8.) What is the reason and benefit behind all the wonderful analysis of Lisa Corbella if it doesn’t provide a positive alternative in a Western Canadian independence that makes all the economic sense in the world?
9.) Why does Lisa Corbella have to address the subject as if she was a “fairy godmother,” knowing full well that the changes that will be inflicted on Western Canada in the name of environmentalism and by the transfer process will inevitably kill the oil sands and the pipeline to deliver to the hungry consumers of China, India, and the Pacific Rim?
10.) Why do we need a fairy godmother to pretend when actually Western Canadians could, if they chose in a referendum, make these wishes which were always tongue-in-cheek less likely to be a reality?
11.) If we need a fairy godmother, why wouldn’t we want one that would give us our wishes and not accomplish the dire and destructive preferences of the central Canadian establishment, who have one sole goal – that is to keep Western Canada as a captive audience for provision, at less than world market price if possible, of oil, natural gas, fresh water, fishery, forestry, mining, and agriculture, to the rapacious spendthrift governments of Ontario and Quebec? Why should we continue to put up with this?
These are questions that Lisa Corbella and those who only complain about the problem, never really ask. It seems it’s so much easier to pretend than deal with the real world and do something about it. At least with the Western Block, Western Canada Concept, and my efforts since 1974, there was a clear alternative provided and an answer that would make Western Canada a better alternative.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Multiculturalism vs. Religious Freedom
How many times have I tried to explain that official multiculturalism should never be allowed to trump individual rights to freedom of religion or expression? I argued this in the Keegstra case, in the Zundel case, in the Malcolm Ross case, and in various human rights cases as recent as the case of Terry Tremaine. The Human Rights laws have so far reigned supreme in the name of tolerance.
The contrary argument goes that the goal of religious, racial, and ethnic harmony supersedes the rights of free speech and freedom of religion because if free speech or freedom of religion were superior individual rights they could cause intolerance. Of course they could. Of course they will. Speech and religion will inevitably express views advocating the superiority of one culture, race, religion, or sexual orientation over another. True tolerance is the tolerance given to one person by another to say A is right and B is wrong. The great questions of morality, ethnicity, culture, language, or philosophy to the extent they are important at all will inevitably claim one is right and the other is wrong. When we ask if we should allow this, the first and more important question to ask first is which is true.
To the liberal, the answer is nothing is true or false, because all truths are merely opinions and they are equal and must be tolerated. This is where the liberal and the believer part company. So far, the liberal has been able to silence the believer by force of law using the trump card of multiculturalism, which criminalizes the believer in any religious, racial, moral, or ethnic superiority. Multiculturalism is a state religion, and religious belief of any other kind cannot peacefully co-exist.
Multiculturalism is the new totalitarianism which the Canadian state has enshrined as a state religion. The place of the inquisition has been taken by the Human Rights Tribunals. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate this than the new Alberta Education Act, which incorporates the Human Rights Act. The combination will make it illegal for a school, public or private, to teach the correctness of any religion over another or that homosexuality is wrong.
The Human Rights Act in every classroom will make it illegal for a teacher to tell any unpleasant truth about a race, religion, or sexual practice which might cause discrimination. This, 30 years after the fact, seems to point at the Keegstra case.
Quebec’s new “ethnic and religious culture” curriculum aims to teach religious tolerance by teaching that religious differences don’t matter. As Father Raymond de Souza put it: “If you are a Muslim parent who wants to teach your child that Islam is superior to being an atheist or being a witch, the education system will teach the opposite.” There are no exemptions. All children must go to these classes. The Supreme Court of Canada, the ultimate authority in Canada in these matters agrees. Parents have no right to disagree with the State religion.
Similarly in Ontario, the government demands schools teach homosexuality is right and proper under the guise of defeating bullying. They are not satisfied to stop bullying by punishing the bullies. They demand a moral affirmation of homosexuality as well.
So everyone is free to teach their children one set of morals, religious values, or cultural beliefs at home, so long as they surrender their children to the State to be taught the opposite in many cases. It is the State’s version upon which they will be tested and if they disagree, they will be marked down and held up to scorn and ridicule by or in front of their peers. That, the State teaches, is teaching tolerance.
The contrary argument goes that the goal of religious, racial, and ethnic harmony supersedes the rights of free speech and freedom of religion because if free speech or freedom of religion were superior individual rights they could cause intolerance. Of course they could. Of course they will. Speech and religion will inevitably express views advocating the superiority of one culture, race, religion, or sexual orientation over another. True tolerance is the tolerance given to one person by another to say A is right and B is wrong. The great questions of morality, ethnicity, culture, language, or philosophy to the extent they are important at all will inevitably claim one is right and the other is wrong. When we ask if we should allow this, the first and more important question to ask first is which is true.
To the liberal, the answer is nothing is true or false, because all truths are merely opinions and they are equal and must be tolerated. This is where the liberal and the believer part company. So far, the liberal has been able to silence the believer by force of law using the trump card of multiculturalism, which criminalizes the believer in any religious, racial, moral, or ethnic superiority. Multiculturalism is a state religion, and religious belief of any other kind cannot peacefully co-exist.
Multiculturalism is the new totalitarianism which the Canadian state has enshrined as a state religion. The place of the inquisition has been taken by the Human Rights Tribunals. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate this than the new Alberta Education Act, which incorporates the Human Rights Act. The combination will make it illegal for a school, public or private, to teach the correctness of any religion over another or that homosexuality is wrong.
The Human Rights Act in every classroom will make it illegal for a teacher to tell any unpleasant truth about a race, religion, or sexual practice which might cause discrimination. This, 30 years after the fact, seems to point at the Keegstra case.
Quebec’s new “ethnic and religious culture” curriculum aims to teach religious tolerance by teaching that religious differences don’t matter. As Father Raymond de Souza put it: “If you are a Muslim parent who wants to teach your child that Islam is superior to being an atheist or being a witch, the education system will teach the opposite.” There are no exemptions. All children must go to these classes. The Supreme Court of Canada, the ultimate authority in Canada in these matters agrees. Parents have no right to disagree with the State religion.
Similarly in Ontario, the government demands schools teach homosexuality is right and proper under the guise of defeating bullying. They are not satisfied to stop bullying by punishing the bullies. They demand a moral affirmation of homosexuality as well.
So everyone is free to teach their children one set of morals, religious values, or cultural beliefs at home, so long as they surrender their children to the State to be taught the opposite in many cases. It is the State’s version upon which they will be tested and if they disagree, they will be marked down and held up to scorn and ridicule by or in front of their peers. That, the State teaches, is teaching tolerance.
The Libyan Experience & Western Canada
In Libya, we managed using force from 40,000 feet to kill Moamar Gaddafi and now separatism is breaking out. The region of Cyrenaica (an old Roman province) from Ras Lanuf on the Mediterranean to the Egyptian border, and from the Mediterranean to Chad contains three quarters of Libya’s oil reserves and desires to separate. What was their grievance?
They claim under Gaddafi, this oil rich eastern province was marginalized and exploited to support the dictator’s popularity in the densely populated areas of Tripolitania and Fezzan. This sounds very familiar.
How ironic that Nato has achieved the hiving off of the oil rich region which no doubt will be more than willing to sell oil at a reasonable price in exchange for independence. The residents of this area will no doubt be better off individually, freer as a people, and better able to preserve their democratic rights and legal and cultural identity than subordinated to the Libyan version of Ontario which Moamar Gaddafi had so carefully manipulated.
Everywhere in the world, small nations are emerging from resource-based economies, which are better able to reflect the democratic will of the people in the land where they live. Usually this is by force of arms. Here in Canada, we have a legal method – The Clarity Act – whereby this can be achieved by the peaceful means of a democratic referendum. Why should we blindly surrender to the Ontario dictatorship and more than Cyrenaica did the Gaddafi dictatorship? They had to fight for their freedom. All we have to do is wake up, organize, and vote!
They claim under Gaddafi, this oil rich eastern province was marginalized and exploited to support the dictator’s popularity in the densely populated areas of Tripolitania and Fezzan. This sounds very familiar.
How ironic that Nato has achieved the hiving off of the oil rich region which no doubt will be more than willing to sell oil at a reasonable price in exchange for independence. The residents of this area will no doubt be better off individually, freer as a people, and better able to preserve their democratic rights and legal and cultural identity than subordinated to the Libyan version of Ontario which Moamar Gaddafi had so carefully manipulated.
Everywhere in the world, small nations are emerging from resource-based economies, which are better able to reflect the democratic will of the people in the land where they live. Usually this is by force of arms. Here in Canada, we have a legal method – The Clarity Act – whereby this can be achieved by the peaceful means of a democratic referendum. Why should we blindly surrender to the Ontario dictatorship and more than Cyrenaica did the Gaddafi dictatorship? They had to fight for their freedom. All we have to do is wake up, organize, and vote!
Friday, February 10, 2012
Some Thoughts on a Jail Visit
When I arrived here, I was told by control that because my clients “A” and “B” were in segregation and there was a program running (i.e. the general population inmates were in the yard), A and B could not be brought through the yard to the visitation area. Thus, all my plans of a 45-minute visit were tossed out the door.
“Control” told me I could leave or I would wait 25 minutes to speak to my clients. This is so typical of the prison in which we are all being gradually required to live. The authorities create conflicts which they alone can mediate, solve, and harmonize. Thus, the elites acquire special significance and justification by bringing law and order to a chaotic world, a chaos they themselves created. How similar this is to the growing body of complex laws which only benefit the bureaucrats, the lawyers, the police, the judges, the elite, while it lays up heavier and heavier burdens on the lives and increases the taxes for ordinary people.
In fact, over the last 40 years of visits to prisons in my country, I have developed an insight into the general direction of society as a whole as it grows progressively more restrictive, controlling, authoritarian, intrusive, and complex. So few people are able to see the big picture. We are developing into a massive prison or police state, and nobody seems to notice. Politicians of all stripes and all parties compete with each other, promising to develop more and more rules, regulations, and punishments to gradually impose on society a prohibition on anything fun, anything profitable, anything original, anything which builds bridges between the various isolated special interests and islands of special rights which the state has done its best to isolate and alienate from one another.
The State seeks to be the arbiter of all conflict which the State has encouraged and arranged between its various competing special interest groups. Pretty soon, they will have us all in a form of protective custody where no one can talk to anyone else. By such a means, communication at the personal level, on anything important that they understand, is eliminated in favour of the rule of and by control. No wonder Chief Justice McLachlin says they have to deal with facebook and Twitter who might not support the justice system. No wonder communication and free speech are the real battlefield. The State must silence all criticism. That is control.
I have waited for 30 minutes and still no clients. If I was being paid at even the rate of a junior lawyer of say $200/hour, who would pay for that? Does society care? I will pay with half an hour of my life. The system makes no exceptions. Control will be obeyed. If you want to see your client, you will wait. This is a jail. You are not entitled to special treatment. The bureaucracy has rules. Nobody contradicts control. More and more, the system has rules. They do not vary. There are no exceptions. You can wait or you can go. Your client, your time, your life means nothing. You have a panic button you can press in an emergency, but God help you if you press it and there is no emergency, only an inconvenience. You will be dealt with.
These thoughts run through my mind as I wait and consider the prison as a microcosm of society. I must share these thoughts as a word of warning to the Western World. If these words sound familiar, I am aware of the writer who originally chose them. Very apt they truly are.
“Control” told me I could leave or I would wait 25 minutes to speak to my clients. This is so typical of the prison in which we are all being gradually required to live. The authorities create conflicts which they alone can mediate, solve, and harmonize. Thus, the elites acquire special significance and justification by bringing law and order to a chaotic world, a chaos they themselves created. How similar this is to the growing body of complex laws which only benefit the bureaucrats, the lawyers, the police, the judges, the elite, while it lays up heavier and heavier burdens on the lives and increases the taxes for ordinary people.
In fact, over the last 40 years of visits to prisons in my country, I have developed an insight into the general direction of society as a whole as it grows progressively more restrictive, controlling, authoritarian, intrusive, and complex. So few people are able to see the big picture. We are developing into a massive prison or police state, and nobody seems to notice. Politicians of all stripes and all parties compete with each other, promising to develop more and more rules, regulations, and punishments to gradually impose on society a prohibition on anything fun, anything profitable, anything original, anything which builds bridges between the various isolated special interests and islands of special rights which the state has done its best to isolate and alienate from one another.
The State seeks to be the arbiter of all conflict which the State has encouraged and arranged between its various competing special interest groups. Pretty soon, they will have us all in a form of protective custody where no one can talk to anyone else. By such a means, communication at the personal level, on anything important that they understand, is eliminated in favour of the rule of and by control. No wonder Chief Justice McLachlin says they have to deal with facebook and Twitter who might not support the justice system. No wonder communication and free speech are the real battlefield. The State must silence all criticism. That is control.
I have waited for 30 minutes and still no clients. If I was being paid at even the rate of a junior lawyer of say $200/hour, who would pay for that? Does society care? I will pay with half an hour of my life. The system makes no exceptions. Control will be obeyed. If you want to see your client, you will wait. This is a jail. You are not entitled to special treatment. The bureaucracy has rules. Nobody contradicts control. More and more, the system has rules. They do not vary. There are no exceptions. You can wait or you can go. Your client, your time, your life means nothing. You have a panic button you can press in an emergency, but God help you if you press it and there is no emergency, only an inconvenience. You will be dealt with.
These thoughts run through my mind as I wait and consider the prison as a microcosm of society. I must share these thoughts as a word of warning to the Western World. If these words sound familiar, I am aware of the writer who originally chose them. Very apt they truly are.
Thoughts on The Iron Lady
Having recently seen the movie, The Iron Lady, and read the reviews previous to that, I can understand why many left wing reviewers dislike this movie.
It demonstrates, above and beyond all other possible examples, that one man of courage, or in this case a woman, constitutes a majority. The vast majority of so-called conservatives are nothing but imitation socialists of a more moderate persuasion. The irony of Margaret Thatcher's life is that as an individual, she triumphed over a collectivist mentality within her own party but only for a time.
As age advances, it becomes inevitable that the majority of those who prefer mediocrity to perfection or anything close to it, and compromise as opposed to truth or justice, will bring down those individuals who rise above the herd.
It demonstrates, above and beyond all other possible examples, that one man of courage, or in this case a woman, constitutes a majority. The vast majority of so-called conservatives are nothing but imitation socialists of a more moderate persuasion. The irony of Margaret Thatcher's life is that as an individual, she triumphed over a collectivist mentality within her own party but only for a time.
As age advances, it becomes inevitable that the majority of those who prefer mediocrity to perfection or anything close to it, and compromise as opposed to truth or justice, will bring down those individuals who rise above the herd.
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