I Found The Silver Lining

Mulder

I’ve been mulling over the recent Ontario provincial election and wondering if the dark cloud is truly as dark as I thought it was on October 11th.

Well it isn’t. I believe I have found the silver lining.

As per the recent Throne Speech, the federal Conservatives will be doing three things in the coming session of Parliament that when taken together are greater than the sum of the parts.

1) They will be working to move the Federal government out of programs that are Provincial jurisdiction and

2) They will be cutting the GST another point to 5%, and

3) They will be making broad based tax cuts.

When you mix these three with the previous promise to correct the Fiscal Imbalance the sum is greater than the parts. The Feds will fix the Fiscal Imbalance by letting the provinces take more control of their own spending and programs, which costs the Feds less and the provinces more.

Well there is a rumour floating out there that if the GST is cut a point, Quebec plans to raise the provincial tax by that same point to compensate for these downloaded services.

Well if Quebec does it, you can be sure several other provinces will too. And that probably includes Ontario.

When you think about it, if the provincial Tories won the election and then had to raise taxes, they would never have been able to live it down or criticize Dalton McShifty again.

But if services are downloaded to the provincial Liberal government and Yellow Bellied McShifty is required to raise taxes to compensate, you can be sure that tax payers will not treat the Liberal brand in Ontario well.

When Dalton first said he would not raise taxes and did, we were upset but we swallowed it. In the last election he also promised that he would not raise taxes. But if PST goes up to 9% when the GST drops to 5% then you can be sure that the Liberal name will be as good as dirt for one, two and maybe even three elections.

So there is the silver lining for you Ontario Tories out there.

Smackdown – Senator Terry Stratton Lays Into Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams

Mulder

In my honest opinion, Danny Williams needs to shake Newfoundland up and not shake the Federal government down.

Terry Stratton seems to agree that Williams is focussing his energy in the wrong place.

Click the above video ONCE to view. If it does not start playing, you can click the link below to view the video in another browser window.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKnxM3Pzc4Y

Yellow Bellied McShifty Breaks Another Promise – Class Sizes Won't Reach 20

Mulder

Geoff Matthews points this out in today’s Sun newspaper. Not that class sizes need to reach 20, but what the heck was Dalton doing making this promise in the first place?

Now comes word that the provincial government hasn’t a chance of meeting its self-imposed target of cutting classroom sizes for primary grades to no more than 20 students by this September — a promise that was made during, you guessed it, the 2003 election campaign.

The question isn’t whether the goal can be met. It’s why did the premier make the promise in the first place?

Is there some magical reason why a class with 20 students can be managed, while a class with, say, 23, will spiral out of control?

Couldn’t a class of 30 kids work perfectly well in some instances, while in others anything more than a dozen would be a challenge?

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old geezer, let me point out that when I was in school, we had classes of well over 30 students, and we never seemed to lack for a bit of personal attention from the teacher when it was required.

You got it right on the money Geoff. When I was in public school, there were well over 30 kids in my class just about every year. The only time there were less was if a grade only had 25 or so kids or if there were 50 or 55 in the grade and two classes were split.

The issue isn’t class size. It’s how the teachers control that class. And this day and age, they just don’t have the skill or desire to do it. They blame things like ADD or ADHD for their inadequacies in controlling children. They push them along year after year just happy to get the troubled ones out of their class, watering down the value of a high school diploma.

The above article was originally posted on March 8th, 2007, but I thought it was generic enough to repost today. Choose well today at the voting booth.

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

Mulder

I was going to save this piece for next week, but in light of the story breaking on the CTV about General Rick Hillier being replaced, I felt it was necessary to address something right away.

In reading the comments on the above news article, I am shocked at how many Canadians actually think it was Rick Hillier that rebuilt the military and restored the faith and groundswell of support for our troops.

A General within the military does not have the power to acquire Billions of dollars of funding from the Finance Ministry to rebuild the military. That feat was accomplished by the Honourable Gordon O’Connor.

A General within the military is not the one that stick handles billions of dollars of expenditures through committees and the House of Commons in a minority government to ensure the purchases of equipment get made. That feat was accomplished by the Honourable Gordon O’Connor.

A General within the military cannot swing deals with Boeing to get Canada’s C-17 heavy lift moved up to the front of the queue so that we can get our aircraft years ahead of schedule. That feat was accomplished by the Honourable Gordon O’Connor.

The list goes on and on.

The groundswell of support for our troops was not headed up by Hillier either. A big part of this was started by Lisa Miller and Karen Boire, the two young ladies who started the “Wear Red Fridays” drive. This single handedly has to be the one thing that has started to spread across the nation as a show of support for the troops and their families. I still wear red every Friday, even if it is just a small red ribbon pinned to my lapel with a Canada flag pin.

I am not saying Rick Hillier should or should not be removed from his post. My opinion on that is neither here nor there. But what I am saying is that if praise is to be given for the restored quality of our military, and renewed faith that our forces are one of the best outfitted in the world, that praise should be given to the previous Minister of National Defence, Gordon O’Connor.

I for one am extremely proud of Gordon O’Connor and all he has done to ensure our military is well outfitted. Below is a list of accomplishments Minister O’Connor accomplished while he managed the Defence portfolio.

Major Accomplishments

Budgetary Accomplishments:
-Increased Defence budget by $5.3 billion over 5 years

Procurement Accomplishments:
A 3-OCEAN NAVY, A ROBUST ARMY, AND A REVITALIZED AIR FORCE
·Announced up to 8 Arctic/Offshore Patrol Ships ($7.4B)
·100 modern main battle tanks (Leopard 2) ($650M)
·Purchased 4 C-17 strategic airlift aircraft ($3.4B)
·Announced the intention to acquire 17 tactical airlift aircraft (C-130J) ($4.9B)
·Announced the intention to acquire 16 medium-heavy lift helicopters (Chinooks) ($4.7B)
·Announced the intention to acquire 2,300 medium-weight trucks ($1.2B)
·Announced the intention to acquire 3 Joint Support ships (JSS) (2.9B)
·25 New Nyala Armoured Patrol Vehicles ($31M)
·82 Armoured Heavy Support Vehicle Systems (AHSVS) ($87M)
·5 Buffalo, 5 Cougar, and 6 Husky mine-protected vehicles ($29.6M)
·6 M777 Howitzers
·Announced the modernization of 12 Halifax-Class Frigates ($3.1B)

Policy/Operational Accomplishments:
·Announced the establishment of an Air Expeditionary Wing at Bagotville
·Announced the re-opening of the College Militaire Royal (CMR) St-Jean
·Extension of Afghan mission until 2009
·Extension of NORAD Agreement, incl. maritime surveillance
·Deployment of HMCS Ottawa to the Gulf under Operation ALTAIR
·An infantry to protect the PRT
·A Leopard tank squadron to Kandahar
·Military engineers to PRT’s
·Counter-mortar capability
·Opening of the Sergeant David L. Pitcher NORAD facility at North Bay

CF Force Expansion:
·New Recruit Advertising Campaign Launched
·In 2006 the Total Paid Strength of the CF grew by over 2,000
·In October 2006, the recruiting process was streamlined

Quality of Life/Other:
·Introduction of a modernized pension plan for CF reservists
·New operational allowance for CF members who are medically repatriated
·Opening of the Operational Stress Injury Social Support (OSISS) facility at Gagetown
·$19 million provided to 41 Military Family Resource Centers
·Clifton Wenzel receives compensation

Smackdown: Charles Adler Goes One On One With Dipper Alexa McDonough And Kicks Butt

Mulder

When I asked McDonough to name one single fact in the Karzai speech that was untrue, she said this issue wasn’t about the truth. The former boss of the New Democratic Party spoke volumes with that little chestnut. Ideologues care little about the truth.

…

The NDP could learn a lot from the graciousness of the Afghan leader. He has far more respect for our military than the NDP does. And it isn’t because military communications people laid down a few words on a piece of paper to help him get his message across. It’s because they laid down their lives to give his people an opportunity to have a life.

I don’t know if it can be said any clearer than that.

In this interview Charles does what he does best. He puts the facts out for Alexa and she trips on them over and over and over. A must listen.

Listen to the whole interview with McDonough.

H/T

One Man's Opinion That I Share

Mulder

Today an old friend emailed me the following health care opinion and asked if it was accurate. All I could answer was yes. This is what happens when unions get a hold of health care. It also means that left leaning pro union parties are obligated to support the public system despite it’s obvious cost overruns and wait times.

(p.s. I changed the names to protect the innocent.)

I saw on the news up here in Canada where Hillary Clinton introduced her new health care plan. Something similar to what we have in Canada. I also heard that Michael Moore was raving about the health care up here in Canada in his latest movie. As your friend and someone who lives with the Canada health care plan I thought I would give you some facts about this great medical plan that we have in Canada.

First of all

1) The health care plan in Canada is not free. We pay a premium every month of $96. for [Jane] and I to be covered. Sounds great eh. What they don’t tell you is how much we pay in taxes to keep the health care system afloat. I am personally in the 55% tax bracket. Yes 55% of my earnings go to taxes. A large portion of that and I am not sure of the exact amount goes directly to health care our #1 expense.

2) I would not classify what we have as health care plan, it is more like a health diagnosis system. You can get into to see a doctor quick enough so he can tell you “yes indeed you are sick or you need an operation” but now the challenge becomes getting treated or operated on. We have waiting lists out the ying yang some as much as 2 years down the road.

3) Rather than fix what is wrong with you the usual tactic in Canada is to prescribe drugs. Have a pain here is a drug to take- not what is causing the pain and why. No time for checking you out because it is more important to move as many patients thru as possible each hour for Government re-imbursement

4) Many Canadians do not have a family Doctor.

5) Don’t require emergency treatment as you may wait for hours in the emergency room waiting for treatment.

6) [Jane’s] dad cut his hand on a power saw a few weeks back and it required that his hand be put in a splint – to our surprise we had to pay $125. for a splint because it is not covered under health care plus we have to pay $60. for each visit for him to check it out each week.

7) Shirley’s cousin was diagnosed with a heart blockage. Put on a waiting list . Died before he could get treatment.

8) Government allots so many operations per year. When that is done no more operations, unless you go to your local newspaper and plead your case and embarrass the government then money suddenly appears.

9)The Government takes great pride in telling us how much more they are increasing the funding for health care but waiting lists never get shorter. Government just keeps throwing money at the problem but it never goes away. But they are good at finding new ways to tax us, but they don’t call it a tax anymore it is now a user fee.

10) A friend needs an operation for a blockage in her leg but because she is a smoker they will not do it. Despite paying into the health care system all these years. My friend is 65 years old. Now there is talk that maybe we should not treat fat and obese people either because they are a drain on the health care system. Let me see now, what we want in Canada is a health care system for healthy people only. That should reduce our health care costs.

11) Forget getting a second opinion, what you see is what you get.

12) I can spend what money I have left after taxes on booze, cigarettes, junk food and anything else that could kill me but I am not allowed by law to spend my money on getting an operation I need because that would be jumping the queue. I must wait my turn except if I am a hockey player or athlete [or the Minister for Health Promotion getting a Cancerous skin lesion removed] then I can get looked at right away. Go figger [sic]. Where else in the world can you spend money to kill yourself but not allowed to spend money to get healthy.

13) Oh did I mention that immigrants are covered automatically at tax payer expense having never contributed a dollar to the system and pay no premiums.

14) Oh yeh we now give free needles to drug users to try and keep them healthy. Wouldn’t want a sickly druggie breaking into your house and stealing your things. But people with diabetes who pay into the health care system have to pay for their needles because it is not covered but the health care system.

I send this out not looking for sympathy but as the election looms in the states you will be hearing more and more about universal health care down there and the advocates will be pointing to Canada. I just want to make sure that you hear the truth about health care up here and have some food for thought and informed questions to ask when broached with this subject.

Step wisely and don’t make the same mistakes we have.

I would like to add a bit more.

15) The loonie left in Canada will fight to keep you from having heart surgery, a PET scan or an MRI at a private clinic, but they will be the first to defend abortions that are only performed in private clinics.

16) (to expand on 14 above). We used to have needle exchange programs, but now they are Needle Distribution Programs (ironically acronymed NDP, the same as our left leaning political party). So the city of Ottawa pays someone $50,000 to pick up dirty needles. If we had maintained the needle exchange, at least the druggies would have been helping us keep our children safe from finding these things on the street.

17) God help the person who has no family to help them go through any major operation in the hospitals. The blame is not on the nurses who do an amazing job with what they are given to work with. But in this day and age, someone having an operation almost HAS to have family members around to help care for them and make sure they are getting what they need, when they need it because the logistics and planning in hospitals just does not allow for smooth timely operation. My mother had heart surgery last November and the ice chip machine on the Critical Care Unit floor at Sunnybrook hospital was broken so we would go to different floors to bring her ice chips.

Ontario residents need to send Premier Yellow Bellied McShifty a clear message this October 10th.

Dalton McGuinty Misleads Us Yet Again In Latest Commercial

Mulder

Last night I saw a new Liberal commercial featuring your favourite liar and mine, Yellow Bellied McShifty, the leader of the Ontario provincial Liberal party.

Well in this commercial (and in one other) Dalton says, and I quote:

I believe that taking half a billion much needed dollars from [public] schools to give to private religious schools is a mistake.

Dalton assumes that to fund faith based schools, one must take money out of the current public school system. This is clearly inaccurate and McShifty knows it.

Even the Ontario Public School Board Association noted on page 4 of a 2005 report on the status of school funding that one of their four priorities was:

all allocations are on a per pupil basis while some allocations per “school” would be more appropriate.

This is in line with what my last post alluded to. The schools are currently funded on a “per butt in the seat” basis and funding faith based schools, (of which the majority are Christian but non-Catholic) would only inject money into the current system and not take a penny out of the current system.

Trade Offs. I Will Take Tory's Faith Based Funding Over The Liberal's Lawyer and Crony Based Funding Anyday

Mulder

Let’s look at some numbers (again).

Yellow Bellied McShifty, by his party’s own admission, says that the per capita cost to funding the current public school system is $9,526 per child.

The statistics show that there are approximately 55,000 children in faith based schools that are not receiving funding.

I must point out here that schools get their funding based on a per “butt on the seat” aspect. i.e. if a child is not in a school seat the school does NOT get funding. This is VERY important for people to understand.

What it means is that while everyone in the province pays taxes, funding a faith based school would NOT take money out of the current system. In fact, it would inject money INTO our education system because people who have already made the decision to have their children go to a faith based school would now get funding. How much?

Well the math is easy. $9,526 x 55,000 children is approximatley $524 Million.

What does McShifty do with this money at this point in time? He keeps it to spend on other things. Like what you ask?

Those taxes collected from the parents of children in faith based schools gets spent on scandals like the $1 Million that went to a cricket club when they only asked for $150,000. Tie in the other end of year budget shopping sprees and we get…

Total Wasted: $32 Million

It also get’s spent on provincial advertising campaigns for Caledonia that line the pockets of Liberal supporters and their families.

Total Wasted: $50,000

It goes to fund the pockets of Liberals and Liberal cronies such as Jane Stewart and David Peterson for negotiating with criminals like the natives in Caledonia.

It goes to buy land so that the OPP doesn’t have to do their job and clean out criminal land squatters in Caledonia who resort to violence.

Total Wasted: $55 Million

It goes to pay lawyers to fight against funding for autistic kids and, even more so, it goes to paying lawyers to fight to hide the cost of that fight!!! How OfficiallyScrewed is that???

Total Wasted: $2.4M on the first case and an unknown amount fighting both NDP MPP Shelley Martel and the Privacy Commissioner.

The list could go on and on.

Here’s some more math. The Health tax that McShifty brought down shortly after promising not to raise taxes brought the province of Ontario approximately $2.6 BILLION a year in revenue.

Wake up Ontario. It’s Tory Time.

My Treasure Hunt

Mulder

For 10 days CFRA radio along with three other affiliated stations here in Ottawa held a contest where they gave a clue to the whereabouts of a key to Colonel By’s treasure (which is $50,000 in cash).

I slowly collected each clue and worked on an answer until I came up with the location I believe the key is. Below is the list of clues and my answer.

Since the answer had to be entered today by three pm, I don’t mind sharing these results. The answer will be revealed Monday. I will let you know how I do.

Clue 1: Colonel By worked with five of the best contractors. Only one will be the right man. Name him.

Answer: Well I had a few and one was named Philemon Wright, but after reading more I discovered that Thomas McKay was the primary contractor so I went with:

McKay

Clue 2: There was a chap who leaked the tale of the treasure to me. He penned himself a bit of a book, but made no mention of the treasure. Funny how he only spent a few of these in Canada.

Answer: The author is a John MacTaggart who penned a book entitled “3 years in Canada”. So the answer is

Years

Clue 3: The year was 1819. No, No, it wasn’t. That’s something else. Where was I? Ah Yes. Today there’s an upper and lower but when I navigated my way to Bytown, I travelled rapidly through them.

Answer: This one could have been a few as there is an Upper and Lower Brewer’s Locks, an upper and lower Rideau Lake, but the rapidly through them leads me to think it is rapids and we have upper and lower

Nicholson’s Rapids

Clue 4: Here’s a combination to help you find the key: 45 22 75 43

Answer: I thought perhaps highways as three of the four are in Ontario with 43 being a prominent one in the area, but after looking at Google Earth I determined these co-ordinates are the lattitude and longitude that point ust west and slightly north of the Hog’s Back locks. Since it actually pointed to a street named Vanson with absolutely no tie to the rest of the clues, I left this blank. I was later told to not overthink it and that this could simply be pointing to

Ottawa

Clue 5: It was 1827. Between Wardsville and Edmund’s Rapids is where Colonel By first heard of my plan to capture his treasure.

Answer: Every map I looked at simply points to

Old Sly’s

Clue 6: The key to Colonel By’s Treasure, I have no doubt, is covered with this.

Answer: I originally thought it had to be water as sunken treasures seemed to fit with all the locks and the canal. But after getting clue 10, I simply thought I should change it to either Sand or Stone and since either fit the final answer I submitted, I just chose

Stone

Clue 7: Life jacket’s on. The treasure was carried on one of Captain Cook’s most famous ships, whose whereabouts is still a secret. Name it.

Research garnered a ship named

Endeavour

Clue 8: You’ve done well to come this far. Thomas and John were related in one way but not another. Find them in Canal Lore.

Answer: I first assumed this may be referring to Thomas McKay and John Redpath, two of the original contractors, but later was pointed to two gentleman named Burrowes and Burrows who both painted. So the answer I chose was

Burrowes

Clue 9: Google Y (WHY?) Your answer will be found on that page.

Since googling either Why, Y or Wie garnered littel so I used some Freud and said to myself ” sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and chose the letter

Y

Clue 10: Nag A Ram

Answer: Nag A Ram is an anagram for the word “anagram” so I assumed that the final clue means the answer is an anagram. I included the final clue answer which was

Anagram

Taking the first letter of each word, I came up with
M, Y, N, O, O, S, E, B, Y, and A

These letters can be rearranged to spell out

MOONEY’S BAY

If you took part in this contest, I urge you to post your answer in the comments. I am also open to opinions on my work.