The Thin Red Book

Ontario Minister of Invented Porfolios, former Ottawa mayor and perennial rent-a-mouth Jim Watson was on CBC this morning explaining the Ontario Liberal response to complaints about the property tax assessment system and MPAC, the corporation that adminsters tax assessments in Ontario. The government is suspending tax assessments for two years and there will be no re-assessment in 2006/07. Doing nothing, in other words.

It struck me that this strong and decisive move is similar to the Liberal plan to deal with many other issues. Let's recap:

1. Health: The Liberals have introduced a health tax; number of Ontarians without a family doctor continues to rise. Access to health care for rural residents in particular is getting worse and worse. Net Liberal action: None.
2. Education: The Liberals have bought off the teachers unions and given school boards the extra money for the cave-in. Net extra money for things that actually matter, like books, for example: None. No matter. With falling standards in Ontario schools, fewer people will be reading anyway. Net Liberal action: None.
3. Electricity: The Liberal plan: Close coal fired power stations. Net Liberal action: None.
4. Caledonia: Criminals take over private property, commit assaults, vandalism, intimidation, etc. Net Liberal action: None.
5. that's enough Liberal inaction - Ed.

If they plan on keeping up this record, the next Ontario edition of the Red Book will be pretty thin.

Trillium Traction

Nice to see the PC party getting some traction in the media on the issue of the McShifty gang's stealth redesign of the Ontario provincial logo.

The province's stationery and websites had already undergone a makeover to Liberal colours, but changing the government logo to match the Liberal party one is a step beyond the traditional makeover that comes with changing governments.

That Dalton handed out $6.5 million to his friends at Bensimmon "Soldiers. In our cities." Byrne is not surprising. Ontario Liberals are just as entitled to their entitlements as their federal cousins once were.

The Save The Trillium campaign is a good idea, but I fear doomed to failure, as the McGuinty Liberals have a worse than usual case of deafness when it comes to their public - witness the situation in Caledonia.

Black Magic

The marketing folks at Guiness have always had a certain Pure Genius^TM, but their latest effort, combining hitech electronic gadgetry with beer, seems certain to hit the mark with their target demographic. I hate when I recognise myself as a target demographic, but I neeeeeeeeeed one of these.

Celestial Junk Blog: Caledonia: Where Liberalism Meets Reality

Celestial Junk Blog: Caledonia: Where Liberalism Meets Reality

CBC Rider : A Shadowy Flight Into A Dangerous Mind Whose World Does Not Exist

Larry Zolf has obviously had too much sun of late, or else he has been drinking or smoking something he shouldn't. He's bounced from 'we, the press can unelect Harper' to 'well, maybe we can't', to this week's completely unhinged rant on CBC's Viewpoint.

The piece is barely coherent; one pictures Zolf foaming at the mouth and gesticulating wildly as he spouts delusion after delusion.

He begins with a list of things that Stephen Harper supposedly believes. No fewer than 18 different beliefs. There is nothing at all to back up any of the assertions. No quote, no fact, not even any hearsay. No, Zolf says this is what Stephen Harper believes, so it must be.

Personal favorites:

• Harper believes that the state is inherently evil and cannot be trusted with anything.
• He was violently opposed to day-care centres because he saw them as bastions of socialism.
• Oil-rich Alberta has the right to be untouched by federal regulations on climate change.
• His enormous respect for the military [shows] how little use he has for traditional Canadian liberal values

This last point is of particular interest, because it reveals (unwittingly, I presume) some true Liberal (and liberal) thinking. Apparently, traditional Canadian values don't involve respecting the military at all. Zolf is entitled to his opinion, of course, but I really think it's a shame when a supposed dean of journalists at Canada's state broadcaster holds the Canadian forces in such open contempt.

There's some other, more predictable lies in Zolf's piece too:

'Harper claims he's only an economic conservative, not a social conservative. But here is the rub. Harper won't give the state a brake in economic matters, but on social matters like same-sex marriage and abortion, he is ready, willing and able to interfere.'

This notwithstanding that (a) nothing will happen on abortion under a Harper government (although how Zolf and his ilk wish it would), and (b) all that is proposed on same-sex marriage is what should have happened in the first place: a free vote in parliament. Of course, if PMSH really wanted to get rid of same-sex marriage, there would be no free vote, but a party whip.

I think we can be fairly sure that Zolf does know that he is an outright liar - even 40 years with the CBC can't have completely eroded his ability to distinguish truth from fiction. So it's interesting to read his conclusions: that Ontario and middle-class Canada is already so alienated from the Conservative government that the Liberals will walk back into power the second they have a new leader. This is not lies, but wishful thinking. A world that no longer exists.

Poor Larry Zolf - he's a tired old hack whose time has come and gone, and whose dream of Stalinist utopia has fallen out of his reach. However, at least his pursuit of it lasted long enough to take him from the slums of Winnipeg to 40 years of comfort living off the taxpayer, and a retirement on a fat CBC pension to boot. All this, of course, paid for by those middle classes he despises. Heck, some of them might even be military. He might not respect you boys and girls in Afghanistan, but he'll take your money, thanks very much.

The CBC is a completely objective and unbiased media organization; salmon live in trees and eat pencils and bananas are marsupials.

The LCBO : An Insurance Company

I was chatting to some friends this Saturday while waiting to climb into a dragon boat and paddle my way to a not-very-glorious result in the Nortel Ottawa Dragon Boat festival, when the subject of beer (always close to my heart) came up. I was reminiscing about how odd it seemed to us, when, fresh of the plane from England, we discovered that liquor retail was a state-owned monopoly in Ontario.

Being of a naturally small-c conservative disposition, at first the whole notion seemed vaguely wrong. Subsequently, I have come to accept and even admire the LCBO. They do a fine job of bringing a vast array of interesting products to us, at fairly competitive prices (being the largest purchaser of beverage alcohol in the world). Their staff are well trained and highly knowledgeable and their advertising material is a good read in its own right.

I had still been struggling with the notion of all this being state-owned, however, until this weekend, when it suddenly hit me: The LCBO is not a liquor retailer, but an insurance company. We drinkers are putting away a little hard-earned cash with the LCBO markup on every bottle. This cash finds its way through the Ontario government's bureaucracy and into the healthcare system.

Thus the more I drink, the more I am putting away towards the care of my own liver when it eventually begins to complain. I feel so good knowing that I am not drinking myself into being a burden on the taxpayer, I think I'll have another. Cheers.

OPP Gives Up

According to this story in the Toronto Star, the OPP has ceded control of part of Caledonia to the Six Nations and:

OPP officers will no longer respond to calls from non-native home and property owners who live on the 6th Line, a county road running along the southwest border of a housing development occupied by native protestors — a move that has some residents feeling helpless and sick with worry.

How far is the Ontario government prepared to go here? There is no longer even the pretence of enforcing the law in Caledonia. Does this 'no-go' apply to fire and rescue services as well?

I don't think anyone can seriously accept this. What has to happen before McGuinty does something... ANYTHING... here? How much destruction will it take, Dalton? How many 'non-native' (sic) deaths will be OK by you?

There are just no words to adequately express what's going on here.

Ask Nicely, Dalton

Dalton McGuinty thinks it's time for the Six Nations protestors to leave the contested development site in Caledonia. Only 120 days in, Dalton? Sure you're not being a little hasty there?

I'm sure that the Mohawk Warriors will respond rapidly to Dalton's nice words. He's such a powerful leader, eh?

Always The Bridesmaid

Perennial CBC radio and TV stand-in host Lucy van Oldenbarneveld has been passed over for the Ottawa Morning and The House jobs vacated by Anthony Germain. According to the Ottawa Citizen, she is disappointed and is said to be considering her future at CBC.

Kathleen Petty, who will be moving from Calgary to take up the position has always done a good job when I've heard her on As It Happens. She is definitely a serious journalist. We at The Doggerel Party are hoping her appointment might mean a temporary halt to the dumbing-down of CBC Ottawa, and an escape from the fake, girly gossipy tone that Ottawa Morning has been adopting.

All In A Day at the other end of the workday has been ably rescued from mediocrity by Adrian Harewood. So far so good.

No Facts Please, I'm A Canadian Journalist

Heather Mallick, always good for a dose of bizarre reasoning and twisted thinking, has really outdone herself in this latest ramble for CBC's Viewpoint. Her target today is Christie Blatchford of the Globe and Mail.

Let's go back to the beginning. At the press conference held to announce the arrest of 17 suspects on terrorism charges, the police announced that the suspects were a diverse group from all strata of Canadian society. Blatchford took exception to this. She wrote:

"The accused men are mostly young and mostly bearded in the Taliban fashion. They have first names like Mohamed, middle names like Mohamed and last names like Mohamed. Some of their female relatives at the Brampton courthouse who were there in their support wore black head-to-toe burkas … which is not a getup I have ever seen on anyone but Muslim women."

Mallick is 'horrified' by this paragraph. Most of her column is then devoted to material written by Robert Fisk - well, it saves having to write your own column if Fisk has already done it for you, I suppose. Fisk is well dealt with by Andrew Coyne here, so we can pass over his contribution.

Mallick also quotes 'brave and unstoppable' Antonia Zerbisias, omitting to mention that the column she praises so mightily had to be withdrawn and re-written, and Zerbisias had to apologize for calling Blatchford a Nazi - apparently Mallick feels that Zerbisias had it right the first time.

Mallick re-quotes the offending paragraph with Jewish names, in pursuit of the Blatchford-as-Nazi plot, but then clarifies that 'of course Christie Blatchford didn't write that'. However, that's what Mallick apparently read - she's now decided that she is such a supreme journalist she doesn't actually read what's written on a page, she makes it up for herself. That this is her approach to reading the work of others, goes some way to explaining the quality of her writing.

Mallick further takes exception to a witness quoted in the Globe, who describes two of the suspects as 'brown-skinned'. Apparently, she feels that the Globe should not have printed this statement. No matter that the quote was that of a witness - that he said this is a fact - and no matter that the individuals concerned are brown-skinned, another fact. No, get the facts out of news reporting at the Globe, please.

Finally, Mallick objects to a distinction being made in this case between Canadian and Canadian-born men. The distinction is important, because there has always been a perception that terrorists were recent immigrants. To find that a group of men that were mostly born and raised in Canada harbour enough rage agains their own nation to plot such an attack has shocked many people and is certainly relevant to any discourse on the prevention of terrorism. Mallick deliberately interprets the distinction as being racist, as if between a white and non-white Canadian, when in fact it is nothing of the kind. But Mallick is not interested in the prevention of terrorism - no, we racist, conservative, white, Nazi Canadians - us Globe & Mail-ites, we deserve to be blown up, don't ya know.

What we have then, is a leading journalist in this country's public broadcaster who feels that we should not report any fact that might make us uncomfortable. We should suppress any truth that doesn't fit her worldview. No matter that leaders in the Muslim community are already acknowledging the common thread of radical Islam that runs through the 17 Toronto suspects. No matter that their actions were clearly motivated by religious faith, no matter how misguided. No truth here, this is the CBC.

No, says Mallick, we must not mention that the Toronto 17 were Muslims, even though they are. We must not mention that they were Canadian-born, even though they were. Anyone who does? She's a Nazi, says Mallick.

Funny how someone who professes to despize Nazis and similar regimes should make such great use of some of the Nazi's own tools - propaganda, hiding the truth, distorting facts and labelling anyone who disagrees with her with a nice. simple, hateful badge.

Unless, of course Mallick is just taking a name-calling pot-shot at the newspaper that fired her. But no self-respecting writer would ever do such a thing on the back of an issue as serious as either terrorism or racism... would she?