Tag Archives: Canadian Centre for Policy Studies

Just In: Trudeau Prefers Separation to Harper: David Krayden

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By David Krayden

Canadians have found out, Justin time. OK, nobody likes a wise guy or a pun so excruciatingly bad that it hurts, but aren’t you beginning to wonder which planet or political miasma Justin Trudeau is inhabiting these days? In his latest attempt at dominating the national news, Trudeau mused that since the country had been taken captive by right-wing extremists, that it might be time for Quebec progressives, in that unique land of liberty, equality and fraternity, to carefully weigh their options: “I always say, if at a certain point, I believe that Canada was really the Canada of Stephen Harper — that we were going against abortion, and we were going against gay marriage, and we were going backwards in 10,000 different ways — maybe I would think about making Quebec a country.”

Apparently this is not something that he always says. He would not have exceeded his quota of media hits this week if that were so. But what is so jarringly silly about the accusation is just how utterly inaccurate is the sentiment. Clearly the Canada of Stephen Harper and his majority government is doing nothing to address the fact of unrestricted abortion in Canada. It should. Most Canadians are fundamentally uncomfortable with the current lack of any abortion law. A clear majority do not believe that the “procedure” should be publicly funded. But no matter. The “right-wing” Harper government is not going to change that. As for gay “marriage,” the Conservative government kept its promise to social conservatives to have another House of Commons vote and did so on Dec. 7, 2006. The minority government lost the vote. Harper and Justice Minister Rob Nichols have both repeatedly said that the issue will not be reopened.

So that leaves just 9,998 other “different ways” for Justin to consider Quebec secession. Though one suspects that these separatist incentives might be just as fictitious as the first two.

When challenged by Parliament Hill reporters to clarify his words, PET II was defiant: “The question is not why does Justin Trudeau suddenly not love this country, because the question is ridiculous.” Well thank you so much for making that clear, but it is probably more ridiculous to insist that Quebec should leave Canada because of Conservative government policies that have neither been discussed nor implemented.

Yet what is perhaps more indicative of extreme political egoism is Justin’s refusal to use the declarative of “I” and to speak instead of himself in the third person, as if he were discussing Douglas MacArthur’s return to the Philippines or ensuring we understand that every utterance from this political colossus is worthy of the historical record. Has he entered a dangerous political zone of detachment from reality?

Ultimately, Trudeau’s performance this week should not just be about his evident political immaturity or apparent desire to cripple a promising career in federal politics, one that seemed both assured and inevitable as the offspring of a former prime minister. Nor should it just be about the annoyance of a Quebecer once again insisting that a province of low-productivity, high unemployment and high taxes is setting the standard for the rest of the nation. The real question raised is why anyone expecting to occupy high office in Canada could possibly advocate the secession of a province because he disagrees with the current government of Canada – a government that was duly elected in a democratic vote.

Despite Trudeau’s denial, that question does not seem so ridiculous.

David Krayden is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, an independent, not-for-profit institution dedicated to the advancement of freedom and prosperity through the development and promotion of good public policy.

 

Republican Race Could Go the Limit: David Krayden

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By David Krayden

The last time that the Republican Party went to its presidential nomination convention without the nominee already decided was in 1940. Wendell Willkie was the Republican candidate in the federal election that year. He lost to Franklin Roosevelt, who had already defeated two previous Republican challengers and would go on to pummel a forth in 1944. Willkie was an unlikely candidate for president. A Wall Street businessman and former Democratic Party supporter, Willkie was the compromise choice for GOP supporters who could not stomach the isolationism of Congressional leaders like Robert Taft or feared the relative youth and foreign policy inexperience of Thomas Dewey, a whiz kid DA from New York.

Well, here we are, 72 years later, and the Republicans could well meet this summer with a deadlocked nomination race, after what has proven to be an erratic and see-saw primary campaign that is leaving everyone wondering. Congressman Ron Paul is certainly an isolationist, 21st century style, but he does not command the prestige and party loyalty of Taft. But to Paul’s credit, he does have a worshipful crop of libertarian kids to cheer him that would have been an impossible dream for Taft, never a folk hero of the young. Romney would seem to bear the greatest resemblance to Willkie, a successful businessman who sometimes suggests that his venture capitalist career makes him a Washington outsider, if only people would forget that he was governor of the most liberal state in the Union and the father of Massachusetts health care.

The similarities end there. Newt Gingrich, a former House Speaker, is anything but an unknown quantity but would seem to possess an unknown potential for being president. He has journeyed all over the political map over the years in an effort to stay both well connected and well paid, written some very good historical novels about the Civil War and continued to admit they he has made mistakes and backed the wrong horses. His behaviour as what was essentially the Republican leader and spokesman during the Clinton era defies simple categorization. At times, when leading the Contract with America and the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, Newt seemed both cognizant and in control of his place in history, relishing the opportunity to tell Americans that being “middle class is a state of mind. Lest we forget, he was Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” in 1995. But when the Speaker ride was over for Newt, he lacked friends and confidence in Congress, and some of his colleagues speak of his leadership in terms that are anything but inspiring, flattering or reassuring.

One of those former colleagues is the ex-Senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum, also in this race. Santorum, who in one candidate’s debate almost described Gingrich’s work style as bordering on crazy, was a distant third place runner last week. But then he won primaries in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri and overtook Gingrich for second place.

So who to choose? It is important to choose a conservative, who is both principled and capable of beating Barack Obama. Romney may be able to beat Obama but anyone who governed Massachusetts can hardly brag about his conservative record. Paul is a libertarian and not a conservative; moreover, his isolationism is a dangerous repudiation of the commitment to global intervention that the Republicans first made in 1952, with the candidacy and presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, and then maintained ever since. In the very unlikely eventuality that Paul should win the nomination, the subsequent election campaign would be a repeat of 1964 when Barry Goldwater was obliterated by Lyndon Johnson.

The choice, barring any last minute compromise candidate, is between Gingrich and Santorum. Though both profess conservative principles and point to a conservative record, it’s the Gingrich private life of three marriages that leaves many conservatives nervous. Santorum, at least, as a proud family man would seem to walk as he talks.

Gingrich is a crap shoot, a fascinating political gamble to take at a time in history when it is necessary to bet on the unknown and to make that calculated risk. Few thought Winston Churchill could ever be prime minister of Great Britain in 1939. But by 1940, he was probably the only leader who could envision ultimate victory against the Nazis and the only prime minister with the brazen moxy to take the fight to Hitler and never accept defeat. The establishment choices for prime minister, like Lord Halifax, would probably have sued for peace and taken the best deal possible from Germany.

With the world economy poised on the brink and American influence evanescent, these may be the times for a Newt Gingrich.

 

It is certainly not the time for anther four years of Obama.

David Krayden is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, an independent, not-for-profit institution dedicated to the advancement of freedom and prosperity through the development and promotion of good public policy.

Lady Thatcher Deserves Better Than This: David Krayden

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By David Krayden

Liberals love to depict the lives of conservatives on screen. It is especially helpful when the subject is suffering from debilitating mental health and their lives can be seen as coming to the finish line with the gracelessness with which liberals like to endow conservatives. Such is how the life of conservative icon and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has translated onto the screen in The Iron Lady.

It is perhaps worthwhile to acknowledge at the start that this film would hardly be; worth watching if not for the talents of Meryl Streep. It may be difficult to praise Ms Streep because not only is she an avowed Hollywood liberal who loathes and despises conservatives, she has actually gone on the record as describing her antipathy towards Lady Thatcher. But unlike a Tina Fey, who is not only an annoying, verbose liberal but also a terribly unfunny comedian, Streep is an undeniably great actress and, at least for extended periods of this film that focus on Thatcher’s present state of mind, the grand dame of the cinema does an eerily  and uncannily effective portrayal of this great woman.

Unfortunately, far too much of the film is encumbered in this time period and beset by this depiction, where Thatcher is shown to be so unaware of reality that she chats at length with her deceased husband Denis when she is not throwing uncaring comments to her children or mistakenly writing her maiden name when she autographs a book for an admirer. The film is constantly moving back and forth from the very unflattering world of the present to the historical record – or Thatcher’s actual life. This directorial method may pass for artistic but it is frankly jarring, confusing and counterproductive to the creation of any feeling for the storyline. This, combined, with the mania in current film-making for the absence of any narrative to place historical events and personalities in some sort of frame or context, makes some of the movie bewildering or at least slightly incomprehensible and certainly out of reach for any in the audience who have neither lived through the era described on the screen nor read the history of the times.

In discussing the film with a friend post-viewing, I quipped that this treatment of Thatcher would be the equivalent of interpreting the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s life from the portal of a Boston pub, where, seeking to pick up twenty something girls, he reminisces of past political triumphs that are shown as flashbacks on the screen. Not so, my friend responded:  in the Ted Kennedy Story, one should be confronted with a terminally-ill cancer patient whose flashback memories would be of pub crawls and skirt chasing.

But that is not how any liberal filmmaker would choose to tell the story.

Kidding aside, Lady Thatcher deserves better than a film where about 70 per cent of the activity depicts a confused woman wondering around her house, emptying closets, viewing television and trying to read a mystery novel.  Her life and legacy as the longest serving British prime minister of the twentieth century is almost an afterthought. We are rushed through the great historical episodes of her life – her election as leader of the Tory Party, the seminal coal miner’s strike, the Falklands War – with the same reckless disregard as a real estate agent providing a quickie tour of a less than desirable house.

There is nothing in this film to outrage conservatives but nothing to inspire us either. Her legacy is vaguely presented as being something noteworthy, positive and lasting. Her will to govern is somewhat depicted as bold, decisive and courageous. But nowhere in the film do we even learn why Thatcher earned the moniker of “iron lady,” the very title of the film. We are not apprised of why Thatcher stands beside Ronald Reagan as the greatest conservative success stories of the latter twentieth century.

Ultimately, it is something of a mystery as to why this film was produced, except perhaps to provide another Oscar opportunity for Streep, who, with 16 other nominations in her acting portfolio, arguably didn’t urgently require further Academy Award recognition.

The Iron Lady will compel you to yearn for the moviemaking of the past where films focussed on the great deeds performed by a personality, the great deeds that justified the remembrance of this life and the production of a film in the first place. Unfortunately, the producers of this Thatcher biopic just didn’t seem to realize that the story of a great life is worth telling and worth telling well; that the decisions and actions that produced greatness must take precedence over the banality of everyday life.

Thank God that Winston Churchill was remembered in an era that could still tell a coherent story. Otherwise we might be alone with a celluloid memory of an octogenarian, drunken and drooling Churchill with only misty memories of inspiring a nation and indeed an entire world to “never surrender.” Somehow, it’s not quite the same.

David Krayden is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, an independent, not-for-profit institution dedicated to the advancement of freedom and prosperity through the development and promotion of good public policy.

Orange Crush Becomes NDP Crushed: David Krayden

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By David Krayden

Members of the decidedly withering Bloc Quebecois caucus would probably be the first to acknowledge, with exuberant pride, their Gaullist ancestry, meaning a family tree with its roots in present-day France.  But what the BQ has never lacked – and what really has fuelled its political history – is just plain gall.  The report this week from La Presse, that former BQ leader and defeated Member of Parliament Gilles Duceppe paid his party’s general manager with House of Commons funds – up to $100,000 annually for seven years – is just another example of how this traitorous party has no business conducting the nation’s business; no reason to occupy seats in the House of Commons except to advance a separatist agenda while collecting a pay cheque and furnishing a pension that are provided by the very country that they are so desperately trying to destroy.

It is difficult to imagine another country where a separatist party can not only sit in the federal legislature but has the mind boggling nerve to spend public money on its private agenda.

There are still four of these misplaced Quebec MPPs taking up space in the House of Commons – one less member than required for official party status – so they will not be paying anyone 100 grand a year with public funds but we will be better off when the last of Bloc head is retired.

Writing the cheerless history of the Bloc is a journey through outrageous entitlement.  Let this latest installment in the BQ Story be the final chapter.

At least there was unanimous party condemnation of the arrangement, with the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP agreeing that this was not public money well spent.  When it comes to criticizing the Bloc, it has been difficult in the past to rouse any sort of emotion approaching outrage, disgust or disapproval from the NDP.  For left-thinking socialists, the trough of tolerance for “progressive,” language-embattled Quebec is deep.  The NDP reserves its contempt for anything or anybody standing in the way of its social reengineering project; it could never quite accept the existence of the Reform Party for instance, as if Preston Manning and his fellow MPs should never have shaken up the ideological status quo in Ottawa.

Perhaps the NDP has discovered a growing antagonism towards the BQ because the effervescence of the “Orange Crush” that seemed so perky in Quebec in the last election has gone flat.  According to a CROP poll this week, this post-election burp has reduced the NDP from 53 per cent support last June to just 29 per cent today.  Though the Conservatives are in second place with 24 per cent, the Bloc is not far behind with 22.  Thus the fight for the hard left vote in Quebec has been defined and, if these numbers remain relatively constant, the next election contest should prove to be a tightly contested four-way fight.

Surely, the NDP did not really believe that it could reelect the entirety of its Quebec caucus, this curious assortment of MPs, many of whom never dreamed of sitting in the House of Commons, and at least one of whom never even bothered to campaign. But it will certainly aspire to repeat this electoral phenomenon and it will strive to outdo the separatists in promising Quebec all manner of special status in Confederation and increased protection of its language, culture and way of life – one that includes massive government spending, higher unemployment than the rest of Canada, low productivity and the highest percentage of part-time workers and absentee employees on the continent.

Whether Quebec votes for soft or hard separatism, it is time that the province joined the rest of the country in the economic realities of the twenty-first century.  Many in Quebec are cognizant of this reality and some of the best conservative thinking resides in that province.  Listen to the economic thinking of Quebec MP  (and former foreign affairs minister) Maxime Bernier and you might be listening to one vying for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party.  Hopefully, in the next election, instead of sending 59 MPs to warm the seats in Parliament, they will choose free-enterprise alternatives who have come to Ottawa to get on with the nation’s business and work for a Quebec that is free, prosperous and equal with every other province.

David Krayden is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, an independent, not-for-profit institution dedicated to the advancement of freedom and prosperity through the development and promotion of good public policy.

Gender or Not, Abortion is About Selection: David Krayden

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By David Krayden

Dr. Rajendra Kale is in hot water with many in Canada who support – no, worship – Canada’s unrestricted and abominable abortion law.  In an editorial for the Canadian Medical Journal, a well respected and influential medical periodical, Kale suggested that a baby’s sex be withheld from inquiring pregnant women because some are deciding to have an abortion if the fetus is female.

“Female feticide happens in India and China by the millions, but it also happens in North America in numbers large enough to distort the male-to-female ratio in some ethnic groups,” reads the editorial.

Kale has been summarily criticized for offering simplistic advice to a “complex issue” or, even worse, of advocating a “racist” policy that will stigmatize certain ethnic communities in Canada.

Let us stop being disingenuous about communities.  We are not speaking of the Glebe or West Vancouver, we are speaking of Asian immigrants and of these, largely Iindo-Canadians.

And please dispense with the racially-charged rhetoric, especially since the good doctor who raised this issue is a member of the ethnic community that he is criticizing and would not seem to be motivated by any white supremacist ideology..

What is interesting about this story is how the defenders of abortion have chosen to evade the primary moral questions of gender-selective abortion, that of whether a female child is worth less than a male child and whether that calculation can justify the eradication of that child’s life.  Instead, they have raised ridiculous irrelevancies such as racism to detract from the key issue.

But isn’t all abortion about one kind of selection or another?  Pro-abortionists like to call themselves pro-choice but isn’t that what gender selection is, a choice?  The decision to abort a fetus is based on the selection of competing options.  Retaining the fetus in the womb requires commitment.  There will be inconvenience at times.  When the baby is born, he or she will require even greater levels of support and will demand time, resources and love.  But in Canada, where abortion is unrestricted and free, the pregnant woman can make another selection.  She can choose to abort the child.  But if we believe that this fetus is a human life, then that is one very problematic choice to make.

The reason that gender-selective abortion has upset and yes, disgusted, so many this week is not just because it is a “woman’s issue” that illustrates how some perceive women to be of lower status than men.  This issue has hit the guts of many Canadians because it has forced us to examine abortion as more than a clinical procedure.  It has asked us to identify what a selection or a choice entails.  It has, for a brief moment, highlighted the life of the child that is so utterly affected by the choice that is made when the abort button is pushed.  Instead of being told by radical feminists that the abortion debate has been decided forever, or being cautioned by Stephen Harper that the abortion debate will not be reopened during his watch, gender selection reminds us of just who is the real loser , and what is the real loss, every time an abortion is performed in Canada.

David Krayden is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, an independent, not-for-profit institution dedicated to the advancement of freedom and prosperity through the development and promotion of good public policy.

Liberals Having a Wonderful Time: David Krayden

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By David Krayden

They already have an NDP interim leader in Bob Rae and now the Liberal Party of Canada will have NDP policies to match. The Grits are meeting this weekend at a policy convention in Ottawa to define themselves – yet again. In its attempt to compete with the socialists for best left-wing performance by a political party, the Liberals are offering a plethora of nonsensical policy initiatives: Resolution #101 encourages Canadians to “minimize reliance on the use of liquid petroleum for transportation,” which I suppose means shutting down the gas pumps. Foreign policy? Forget armed intervention in places like Afghanistan, the Liberals argue in Resolution #64 that we should “create a strategy dedicated to promoting a culture of peace and non-violence” on the world stage. Want to confuse and collectivize our rights even further? Resolution #60 demands “gender-based hate crimes.” Of course you knew that the delegates would want to “legalize and regulate marijuana” (#117) and (#44) strangle ethical oil with another redundant “comprehensive public assessment of the environmental, economic and social impacts of the oil sands developments immediately.”

These might be described as heady days for the Liberals. They just enjoyed the fruits of a political defection this week as former NDP MP Lise St-Denis crossed the floor from a floundering ship to a sinking one. Though Lise may be forgiven for losing interest in the Neo Democrats since half the caucus is away running in an interminable party leadership campaign and those that remain in the House of Commons don’t seem to have the first notion of what the place is all about when they aren’t trying to introduce nonsense legislation like the recent attempt to create a “Department of Peace.” Uh huh. Leave it to the NDP.

But can the Grits be far behind with the kind of policy resolutions like the ones above? Unlike the NDP, who can’t seem to end its leadership race, the Liberals can’t seem to begin. And so we have “interim” party leader Rae, presiding over a policy convention that will not address his leadership. Ever the optimist and sometimes a good comedian Rae kicked off the Liberal love fest by exclaiming:

“This does not look to me like a party that is on its last legs.” If you say so, Bob. Always ready to believe the best, the Toronto Star reported that these immortal words were spoken as Rae “looked out on hundreds of Liberals packed into a ballroom for the weekend convention kickoff.” Hundreds were packed into the room? Were they meeting in a ballroom or a phone booth?

One of the favourite buttons so far is one that reads “Rebuild it and they will come,” which makes a poetic allusion to the baseball flick, “Field of Dreams.” A more appropriate movie reference may be the teaser from the 1986 remake of the Fly: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

Continuing on the same theme, if this convention, with all its odd combination of confusion and bluster, serves to rebrand the Liberal Party, it will as the NDP Part II. Never mind a leadership campaign, the Libs should just stay with Bobby Rae, the former Ontario premier that everyone loves to forget. Until the Liberals decide whether they want to be another socialist party or something approaching support for free enterprise, they would be well advised too put off a leadership campaign indefinitely since no one seems to anxious to inherit the bits and pieces of the shambles that now define what was once a powerful Canadian political institution.

David Krayden is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, an independent, not-for-profit institution dedicated to the advancement of freedom and prosperity through the development and promotion of good public policy.

Welcome to Green Land: David Krayden

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By David Krayden

On January 1, 2012 it became illegal for merchants in Ontario to sell incandescent light bulbs to consumers. You mean, you didn’t stock up at your local dollar store before Dec. 31, 2011? You should have, unless you frequent a province or state with a less totalitarian light bulb policy. This is enviroextremism at its worst. Ontario has thus become the first jurisdiction in North America to ban the sale, if not yet the possession, of a light bulb that was once considered a permanent fixture in every North American home.

Instead of Edison’s invention, the government is demanding the sale of the LED light bulb, a paper clip shaped, low light-emitting bulb that is allegedly more energy efficient and better for the environment. For the Liberal government to coerce citizens to buy any light bulb is one matter, for it to insist that they buy one of questionable environmental benefit is another. Mounting evidence suggests that the LED bulb is neither practical, efficient nor safe, that in fact it contains mercury and other carcinogenic material that is potentially lethal to users.

The McGuinty government’s action on this file is symptomatic of its desire to control, socialize and manipulate the people of Ontario for an allegedly greater environmental good and part of a larger green energy policy that is potentially disastrous for the province – especially in terms of higher energy rates, increased taxes and more unnecessary regulation for businesses. People do not enjoy being told what products to buy or that they should desire to use a particular product because the government says it should. Liberals do not believe that individuals are capable of making informed, intelligent decisions; moreover, they don’t think that individuals should be permitted to make decision on matters affecting Liberal issues like environmental extremism.

The Ontario Liberal government of Premier Dalton McGuinty is one that relishes the opportunity to tell voters what to do, how to think, what to buy and what ideas to support. It is insidious in its desire for thought control and it engages in the severest form of micromanagement in the pursuit of that control and in its desire to create and maintain a form of ideological purity. Its compulsive promotion of the Green Energy Act illustrates both its desire to promote ideology at any cost and to micromanage the lives of Ontarians.

This obsession to indoctrinate the province with its political agenda, combined with the insanity and increasing economic burden of the green energy policy is angering voters and, arguably, should be used as a wedge issue for anyone wishing to defeat the Liberal government and replace it with one more sympathetic to smaller government and reduced regulation in the marketplace. Conceivably, the Progressive Conservative Opposition, under Tim Hudak, should fit that description; however, during the last election campaign, neither Hudak nor party leaders raised the green energy policy as an election issue or even reminded voters that they would be losing their favourite light bulbs at the end of the year.

It’s not just that the LED light bulb is virtually impossible to read by or that it does not adequately light a room; this environmentalist talisman contains mercury and a variety of dangerous and carcinogenic materials. The mercury content alone makes the LED unsafe to dispose of in any standards landfill site (or what used to be called a dump).

There is much that can said about how the government has chartered the province on a collision course to economic disaster with the other elements of its green energy plan — both wind and solar power are both illusionary and responsible for the gargantuan – and growing – hydro rates in Ontario.

We should be grateful that McGuinty was limited to a minority government. But we will also be thankful to have a conservative-minded opposition that recognizes the danger of the environmental path that we trod and can successfully redirect us before calamity strikes.

David Krayden is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, an independent, not-for-profit institution dedicated to the advancement of freedom and prosperity through the development and promotion of good public policy.