So the Ottawa District School Board, in the throes of a major funding crisis is to vote on whether to try to merge with the Catholic board.
You can dress it up as a human rights issue, or pretend you're going to find efficiencies, but has anyone else noticed that it's never the well-run school boards with balanced budgets and good quality schools that want to merge with their counterparts?
Much like city amalgamation, you can bet that the Catholic board's robust finances and carefully managed budget would just disappear overnight.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler Smitherman
Ontario's Minister of Ideologically Sound Health, George Smitherman, thinks we should put in place a system where live donors can be 'compensated' - note, not paid, compensated - for organ donations.
This is the same health minister who recently refused to allow a private clinic to help shorten Ontario's wait list for knee surgeries, on the narrow ideological grounds that only the state should supply health care services. Mr. Smitherman is a hard-left idealogue and a sworn enemy of all private enterprise.
How come Mr. Smitherman's wonderful nanny-knows-best state hasn't been able to provide organs for all its citizens? What will the introduction of private-sector organs mean for Ontarians on the transplant list? Will there be a two tier system with some getting ideologically sound state-sourced organs and others getting a 'cream-skimmed' private sector organ? Is there any danger that Liberal patients might accidentally get contaminated with a piece of Tory liver?
Before the comments start, I'm not trying to belittle the situation of anyone needing a transplant; I'm just sick of Liberal lies and hypocrisy about healthcare in Ontario.
This is the same health minister who recently refused to allow a private clinic to help shorten Ontario's wait list for knee surgeries, on the narrow ideological grounds that only the state should supply health care services. Mr. Smitherman is a hard-left idealogue and a sworn enemy of all private enterprise.
How come Mr. Smitherman's wonderful nanny-knows-best state hasn't been able to provide organs for all its citizens? What will the introduction of private-sector organs mean for Ontarians on the transplant list? Will there be a two tier system with some getting ideologically sound state-sourced organs and others getting a 'cream-skimmed' private sector organ? Is there any danger that Liberal patients might accidentally get contaminated with a piece of Tory liver?
Before the comments start, I'm not trying to belittle the situation of anyone needing a transplant; I'm just sick of Liberal lies and hypocrisy about healthcare in Ontario.
Menu Foods
The corgis think they smell a rat. And for once, it's not Rattus Liberalis. It's Rattus Glutenus.
The Great War and the Afghan War
Watching CBC's The Great War the last two nights has been something of a revelation. Firstly that Al-Jazeera North would even create a production such as this - it goes against every peace-loving, war-hating, liberal, roll-over-and-surrender, Busharper-is-evil bone in their journalistic bodies. But someone, somewhere has overcome this and produced what I think is an exceptional piece of television. Sure, it's not perfect and historians may well find it not entirely accurate. Sure, they cast Justin Trudeau as a war hero who might one day return to lead Canada to united nationhood - little bit of subtle help for Papineau Liberals there. And in common with other Liberal icons it seems he still likes his home comforts. But I digress.
However, the strength of this production is in the ordinary citizens who are reliving the experiences of their ancestors. The combination of documentary showing the sheer, unimaginable scale of the destruction and horror, with the decidedly intimate life stories of soldiers and their descendants is perhaps the most effective way to tell the story of the war that CBC could have found. As an immigrant, it has revealed to me the profound truth of Canada's coming of age in the Great War; something I'd heard talked about but never really understood.
In English schools, the Great War was not taught in history classes, at least in my day. Perhaps this was because my teachers formed the tail end the generation whose own fathers fought, who had experienced the loss or seen the horror of the aftermath. I am therefore shamefully ignorant, and this show has done much for someone in that situation, if only to pique my interest in learning a lot more about this particular event. The particularly Canadian perspective on the Great War is enlightening and, DVD formats permitting, I think a lot of Brits would gain a lot from watching this.
It's inspiring to see and hear young Canadians paying their respects and pledging to carry forward the torch of the Great War Canadians. This is not something you ever see in Britain; sometimes it's hard to imagine there still being a Remembrance Sunday in the UK when the last of the WW2 veterans passes away. Young people there just don't really care.
But what of us, today, with men and women again serving a cause of freedom in a foreign land. How do today's Canadians compare with the hundreds of thousands who volunteered to ship overseas to a land they didn't know, in the defence of a country that was not their own?
The servicemen and women in Afghanistan know what they are there to do and they know the cause in which they fight, risk their lives and in some cases pay the ultimate price. Their families know it too. It doesn't lessen the pain, suffering and fear, but they understand the greater cause. Watching Vimy ceremonies, or interviews in high schools, I see teenagers that 'get it'. But I also see a generation of well-fed, comfortably-off liberal baby-boomers who not only wouldn't lift a finger in the cause of freedom, but who denigrate those who do. Leaders, opinion-writers, politicians who would completely turn their back on the Canada that the Great War built, and turn it into a pale imitation of freedom, where something they misname 'tolerance' erodes all notion of right and wrong, and where any threat or attack no matter how extreme or how evil would be met only with negotiation and surrender.
The Great War generation drew a line in the sand; they said that aggression and evil would not prevail against freedom and against the Canada they had come to build. No matter what the cost, Canada would prevail, and she did. Nobody wanted the war, the destruction, the loss, the pain and the suffering that took an entire generation. But the line had to be drawn and the war was the cost of standing up for right. Just so in Afghanistan. There will always be aggression and evil in the world and there must always be some who will draw that line again and fight against it, or eventually we will all be overrun.
3,600 at Vimy. 6 in Kandahar. The same troops, the same cause, the same fight for freedom and right. We should always honour them all.
However, the strength of this production is in the ordinary citizens who are reliving the experiences of their ancestors. The combination of documentary showing the sheer, unimaginable scale of the destruction and horror, with the decidedly intimate life stories of soldiers and their descendants is perhaps the most effective way to tell the story of the war that CBC could have found. As an immigrant, it has revealed to me the profound truth of Canada's coming of age in the Great War; something I'd heard talked about but never really understood.
In English schools, the Great War was not taught in history classes, at least in my day. Perhaps this was because my teachers formed the tail end the generation whose own fathers fought, who had experienced the loss or seen the horror of the aftermath. I am therefore shamefully ignorant, and this show has done much for someone in that situation, if only to pique my interest in learning a lot more about this particular event. The particularly Canadian perspective on the Great War is enlightening and, DVD formats permitting, I think a lot of Brits would gain a lot from watching this.
It's inspiring to see and hear young Canadians paying their respects and pledging to carry forward the torch of the Great War Canadians. This is not something you ever see in Britain; sometimes it's hard to imagine there still being a Remembrance Sunday in the UK when the last of the WW2 veterans passes away. Young people there just don't really care.
But what of us, today, with men and women again serving a cause of freedom in a foreign land. How do today's Canadians compare with the hundreds of thousands who volunteered to ship overseas to a land they didn't know, in the defence of a country that was not their own?
The servicemen and women in Afghanistan know what they are there to do and they know the cause in which they fight, risk their lives and in some cases pay the ultimate price. Their families know it too. It doesn't lessen the pain, suffering and fear, but they understand the greater cause. Watching Vimy ceremonies, or interviews in high schools, I see teenagers that 'get it'. But I also see a generation of well-fed, comfortably-off liberal baby-boomers who not only wouldn't lift a finger in the cause of freedom, but who denigrate those who do. Leaders, opinion-writers, politicians who would completely turn their back on the Canada that the Great War built, and turn it into a pale imitation of freedom, where something they misname 'tolerance' erodes all notion of right and wrong, and where any threat or attack no matter how extreme or how evil would be met only with negotiation and surrender.
The Great War generation drew a line in the sand; they said that aggression and evil would not prevail against freedom and against the Canada they had come to build. No matter what the cost, Canada would prevail, and she did. Nobody wanted the war, the destruction, the loss, the pain and the suffering that took an entire generation. But the line had to be drawn and the war was the cost of standing up for right. Just so in Afghanistan. There will always be aggression and evil in the world and there must always be some who will draw that line again and fight against it, or eventually we will all be overrun.
3,600 at Vimy. 6 in Kandahar. The same troops, the same cause, the same fight for freedom and right. We should always honour them all.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Shaidle 10, Buckman 0
I listened last night to the podcast of Kathy Shaidle's appearance on TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin, where she debated the concept of worshipping at secular altars with (among others) Warren Kinsella and Dr. Robert Buckman.
Buckman is memorable to English kids of a certain age for his appearance on a science show called 'Don't Ask Me' alongside the mad scientist Magnus Pike (who starred in Thomas Dolby's 'Science' video, but I digress). Buckman made a number of TV series in the UK before emigrating to Canada in the early 90s, where he again pursued parallel medical and TV careers. Recently he's been most famous as the defacto mouthpiece of Canada's humanists.
Now, I like some of Dr. Buckman's work. His books are humurous and interesting, and his take on things like 'alternative' medicine such as reiki, cancer quacks, etc. is right on. But he, in common with most professional atheists, doesn't have much of a case when he comes up against someone like Kathy Shaidle.
Essentially Buckman's problem with religion is that so many bad things have been done in its name. When, as Kathy did, you take this argument apart a little, you find that (a) this can be said of lots of things, (b) that someone perverts a religion, or any cause, and does something bad does not invalidate or in any way imply any judgement of the religion itself, and (c) that people are in general ignorant of the true nature of any religion they criticise in this way.
In an age when secularism surrounds us, envelopes our children from the moment of birth, dominates our political life, our justice system, our education system and every other aspect of our communal life, it's somewhat ironic to hear any problems being blamed on 'religion'.
Kathy manages to bring out several central truths in a very few words in this debate. It's quite masterful and I strongly recommend it.
Buckman is memorable to English kids of a certain age for his appearance on a science show called 'Don't Ask Me' alongside the mad scientist Magnus Pike (who starred in Thomas Dolby's 'Science' video, but I digress). Buckman made a number of TV series in the UK before emigrating to Canada in the early 90s, where he again pursued parallel medical and TV careers. Recently he's been most famous as the defacto mouthpiece of Canada's humanists.
Now, I like some of Dr. Buckman's work. His books are humurous and interesting, and his take on things like 'alternative' medicine such as reiki, cancer quacks, etc. is right on. But he, in common with most professional atheists, doesn't have much of a case when he comes up against someone like Kathy Shaidle.
Essentially Buckman's problem with religion is that so many bad things have been done in its name. When, as Kathy did, you take this argument apart a little, you find that (a) this can be said of lots of things, (b) that someone perverts a religion, or any cause, and does something bad does not invalidate or in any way imply any judgement of the religion itself, and (c) that people are in general ignorant of the true nature of any religion they criticise in this way.
In an age when secularism surrounds us, envelopes our children from the moment of birth, dominates our political life, our justice system, our education system and every other aspect of our communal life, it's somewhat ironic to hear any problems being blamed on 'religion'.
Kathy manages to bring out several central truths in a very few words in this debate. It's quite masterful and I strongly recommend it.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Lorne Calvert Talks Balkans
So Lorne Calvert thinks that PMSH has 'balkanized' Canada by fixing the fiscal imbalance and trying to respect provincial jurisdictions.
As opposed to Lorne, who has balkanized Saskatchewan by making sure that noone can safely get in, out, or around the province.
As opposed to Lorne, who has balkanized Saskatchewan by making sure that noone can safely get in, out, or around the province.
Missing The Target
Environmental groups are unhappy about the Canadian forces plan to sink HMCS Huron in the Pacific ocean. Now, there are arguments to be made, about pollution, and so on, but the newspaper coverage misses the central and most important point: Just how much fun is this going to be for the soldiers, sailors and airmen involved? Never mind Playstation and Wii, this is the kind of game I'd love to play.
A Guest Liberal Blogger Writes
We at TDPC thought it might be interesting to let a Liberal guest blog here for once. Unfortunately, being from Smiths Falls, we couldn't find one. So here's a Q & A session we held here, with one of the corgis playing the part of a famous Liberal blogger named Jay-smoking something-or-other.
Q: What do you think about Stephen Harper's announcement of a Bill of Rights for Canada's veterans, and an ombudsman to ensure they are fairly treated?
A: He's an asshole, mean, a bully and unfair. This is just another example.
Q: What do you think of the fact that all provinces now have agreements in place to guarantee health-care wait times?
A: Stephen Harper is mean, a bully, and an asshole. The wait times guarantee is so unfair.
Q: What did you think of Stephen Harper's apology and reparation for the Chinese head tax?
A: 1. Unfair. 2. Bully. 3. Mean. 4. Asshole.
Q: What do you think about the Harper family fostering kittens from the Ottawa Humane Society at 24 Sussex?
A: Assholemeanbullyunfair.
Q: With your connections in the Liberal party, can you tell us what will be the main focus of the Liberals' next election campaign?
A: That is so unfair. Do you think it's easy to make election campaigns?
Q: What do you think about Stephen Harper's announcement of a Bill of Rights for Canada's veterans, and an ombudsman to ensure they are fairly treated?
A: He's an asshole, mean, a bully and unfair. This is just another example.
Q: What do you think of the fact that all provinces now have agreements in place to guarantee health-care wait times?
A: Stephen Harper is mean, a bully, and an asshole. The wait times guarantee is so unfair.
Q: What did you think of Stephen Harper's apology and reparation for the Chinese head tax?
A: 1. Unfair. 2. Bully. 3. Mean. 4. Asshole.
Q: What do you think about the Harper family fostering kittens from the Ottawa Humane Society at 24 Sussex?
A: Assholemeanbullyunfair.
Q: With your connections in the Liberal party, can you tell us what will be the main focus of the Liberals' next election campaign?
A: That is so unfair. Do you think it's easy to make election campaigns?
A Charter Whose Time Has Come
With Muslim cabdrivers refusing to take blind fares with guide dogs in more than one major city, can there be any doubt that the time has come for a Canadian Charter of Canine Rights and Freedoms?
Although the corgis don't feel the need to avail themselves of same-sex marriage (and wouldn't be seen dead in a taxi) they do feel that it's only right they get the same rights as every other Canadian.
H/t to Neo.
Although the corgis don't feel the need to avail themselves of same-sex marriage (and wouldn't be seen dead in a taxi) they do feel that it's only right they get the same rights as every other Canadian.
H/t to Neo.
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