OTTAWA–The federal Conservatives have quietly killed a giant information registry that was used by lawyers, academics, journalists and ordinary citizens to hold government accountable.
The registry, created in 1989, is an electronic list of every request filed to all federal departments and agencies under the Access to Information Act.
Known as CAIRS, for Co-ordination of Access to Information Requests System, the database allowed ordinary citizens to identify millions of pages of once-secret documents that became public through individual freedom-of-information requests over many years.
This is a short-sighted move that simply feeds the perception of a controlling Conservative government. I first found this resource through David Akin's Political Links for Canadian Reporters. Although I've never used it for an Information Request, I often visit it to see what reports are being requested and who by. At a time when we should be working on releasing more documents into the public domain, were heading in the opposite direction. Disclosure may not always be comfortable for the government in power, but we didn't elect them to be comfortable, we elected them to represent us. In cases like this , they're doing a damn poor job. Open, transparent government indeed.
Panel to scrutinize avalanche of flyers from Commons printers Apr 18, 2008 04:30 AM Bruce Cheadle The Canadian Press OTTAWA–The panel that polices House of Commons rules is taking a look at free MP mail-outs amidst complaints over a blizzard of partisan Conservative flyers blanketing Canadian households. Opposition MPs are pointing at the Tories for what they say is an unprecedented abuse of taxpayer-funded parliamentary services, and the Commons board of internal economy is examining the matter. At issue are so-called "10-percenters" – black-and-white flyers produced on Commons printers that MPs bulk-mail to their constituents and others beyond their individual ridings. All federal parties use the practice, but the current Tory campaign appears unprecedented in its scope and tone.
CPC $3.2 Million, 127 MPs $25,196.85 per MP Liberals $1.9 million 96 MPs $19,791.67 per MP NDP $1.4 million 30 MPs $46,666.67 per MP BQ $1.1 million $22,916.67 per MP
Personally, I think the whole 10 per cent program should be scrapped, but until it is, save the holier-than-thou attitudes for someone who might actually believe it.
Quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of all the whining about CBC 2's recent changes, specifically the cancellation of the Radio 2 Orchestra and downgrading of classical music on the station.
CBC will now play 4 to 6 hours of classical music, down from 12 hours per day. WTF! There aren't enough other alternative forms of music for CBC to play?
If you want more classical music per day, then pay for it yourself. Spend some of your money and buy a satellite channel, stream it online or learn how to use an IPod or other electronic device. If you seriously expect the rest of the Canadian public to continue to subsidize your narrow view of what alternative programming should be then - FUCK YOU, pay for it yourself.
Out of all the musical genres in existence today, why should classsical music deserve 12 hours per day of radio time, to the exclusion of all others.
Is it any wonder why we spend close to a billion dollars per year subsidizing the CBC?
While the Liberals are enjoying the latest "revelation" of a tape recording of Jason Kenney, you have to wonder if they really believe that NONE of their members are on tape themselves.
The Liberals are desperate enough these days to use anything and everything they can. The Conservatives can afford to keep their powder dry for another day.
To listen to the media tell it, Canada scored a victory last week at the NATO summit. We got the extra 1,000 troops that the Harper government said were needed to continue our involvement in the Afghan war.
So the fact that we're going to continue to fight in Afghanistan – which most Canadians oppose, according to the polls – has been transformed into a victory. We did it! We got the extra troops for a war Canadians don't want! Bravo!
Actually, the media have confused the Harper government achieving its own objectives with the national interest being advanced.
Yes, the staunchly pro-Washington Harper government cleverly manipulated the weak Liberal opposition into supporting the Afghan military venture, largely by presenting it as an international duty mandated by NATO.
In fact, the countries that make up NATO have no more interest in fighting in Afghanistan than the Canadian public does, which is why the 1,000 extra troops are coming from the United States – the one country that is keen to fight over there.
Nothing like a stirring round of anti-American pot shots to rally the anti-war crowd.
Once you're done lining your bird cage with McQuaig's latest, settle in with your beverage of choice and read Terry Glavin's The Cairo Clique: Anti-Zionism and the Canadian Left. It's thirteen pages, but well worth the read. With anti-war activists in Canada stepping up their efforts of late with actions like the CF/DND media ban at the University of Ottawa's newspaper and last weeks defacing of the Peacekeeping Memorial, Glavin's piece is a timely look behind the "peaceful" facade of various Canadian anti-war groups, led by the Canadian Peace Alliance.
It's not as if Mayor Miller of Toronto doesn't already have enough to deal with. In politics, when unpleasant or uncomfortable things are happening in your own bailiwick, what do you do?
I've just finished migrating my site to Joomla 1.5 . I'll have the comments back sometime later this evening. Once I have all that in place, I can start figuring out what I want for a new template.
For an organization that embraces activism and confrontration, this response by St. Pierre fisherman was rather fitting.
On Friday the Mowat was docked at the French island of Miquelon, off Newfoundland's south coast, while waiting for the hunt to resume next week.
The Farley Mowat was forced out of the harbour at Miquelon's neighbouring French island of St-Pierre Friday when angry fishermen cut its mooring lines with axes, Watson said.
"They cut away at our mooring lines, threw a bicycle in the water, threw our gangplank in the water and attacked one of our cameramen," he said.
The confrontation was in protest of comments Watson made the day before when he said the Magdalen Islands sealers' deaths were a tragedy, but the slaughter of young seals is a "greater tragedy."
"Our anger was stronger than anything else and we didn't wait for the authorities to react," St-Pierre fisherman Carl Beaupertuis told Radio-Canada, the French arm of CBC.
On Friday, Watson stood by his words.
"I said the sealers who died, it was a tragedy and the Canadian government's incompetence led to the deaths."
He added: "Killing 325,000 seals is a far greater tragedy . . . and I stand by that comment."
If the fisherman of Miquelon need an axe, I'd be willing to FedEx a nice sharp one.
The next time you hear of an anti-war rally in your area organized by or supported by the Canadian Peace Alliance, see if your local media reports on some of this organization's friends or their interesting positions. Have an NDP MP in your riding? Do they attend CPA rallies?
Political poison
Western politics is infected with a lethal virus, diagnoses Eric Walberg
All this is in fact an eerie replay of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's argument about the Israeli lobby in the US, whose "core" is "American Jews who make a significant effort in their daily lives to bend US policy so that it furthers Israel's interests." Its Canadian counterpart, led by the CJC and Bnai Brith, through extensive media control and privileged access to the highest levels of government, has poisoned the Canadian political scene, paralysing the anti-war majority and choking all debate, pushing the Liberals into the Conservatives' arms on the one issue that could win them the next election. Canada's continued agony in Afghanistan is vital to the Israeli lobby; after all, a rejection of the Canadian role in the genocide in Afghanistan is a step down the slippery slope of a rejection of blind support for Israel's genocide in Palestine.
...
This poison has unfortunately infected the NDP as well as shown by its caving in to the Zionist lobby on its campaign to boycott Durban 2, the UN Conference against Racism to be held next year in South Africa. The upcoming conference was loudly denounced by both Harper and Dion for daring to criticise Zionism as a form of racism, and NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar, apparently without clearance from Layton, joined the chorus. When CPA activists protested to Layton personally, he claimed ignorance and to his credit had all references to this criticism of the UN conference removed from NDP websites. However, he did not actually support the conference and certainly would never dare criticise Israel or Zionism in any significant way. On the contrary, several NDP MPs are outspoken supporters of Israel. None openly support Palestine. So the rot goes deep into all parties on the Canadian political scene.
Bob Rae is poison because his wife is Jewish.
The Jews control the Canadian media.
The "poison" of Jews has infected the NDP.
CPA activists claim "personal" access to NDP leader Jack Layton, apparently with enough influence to censor an NDP MP's statements that they don't agree with.
This article is from a Cairo based online magazine, Al-Ahram Weekly. The report was apparently compiled by speaking with CPA attendees at the sixth international Cairo Conference against imperialism and Zionism.
