Voice of the Association

On May 27, 2007 Liberal Senator Colin Kenny published an article in the Montreal Gazette calling Prime Minister Harper a “toy soldier” who is exploiting Afghanistan for political purposes. His theory is that the PM has “announced just enough equipment purchases over the past year to create the illusion that it is determined to resuscitate Canada’s military capacity, without committing nearly enough money to make that promise come true.”

“Canada will not be able to play a responsible role in defending itself or advancing our interests around the world without a reasonably muscular military,” says Senator Kenny. “That’s not me, a senator, playing soldier. That’s surviving in a world in which some countries and some movements won’t listen to reason.” When asking rhetorically if we should be paying for the Afghanistan mission, “Yes, he should be pumping money into that mission.” Kenny responds.

This stands in stark contrast to defense critic, Denis Coderre’s assessment: “This attempt to change the channel is not fooling anyone. The fact remains that this government has completely changed the scope of this mission,” said Mr. Coderre. “We now know that they spent nearly $1.2 billion to purchase 100 new tanks - more than the total funding committed to the reconstruction effort. Total spending by this government on the military aspects of this mission has been nearly 10 times greater than on the humanitarian side. Canadians are not pleased with the direction this government is taking the mission.”

Senator Kenny’s waxes even more militant with comments like, “…it is extremely difficult for a country without a capable military capacity to insure itself against physical disaster while playing a constructive role in the world,” and “…there is a sense that de-emphasizing the military must be a better way to go. It is, if you get lucky and don’t need to defend yourself. It is, if you’re selfish and don’t care to recognize that creating a more just and stable world can’t be accomplished with kind thoughts alone.”

Referring to the current defense procurements by the Conservative government, Senator Kenny says, “These all constitute reasonable purchases, and …they help create an image of a no-nonsense government that believes that military strength is essential to sovereignty. Not like those creepy Liberals, who let Canada’s defences run down in their drive to shrivel the national debt… Well, at least those Liberal governments were honest - they simply didn’t attach that big a priority to the military.” This is why General Rick Hillier was right in calling the Liberal reign “the decade of darkness” for the military.

On the other side, Coderre is still mired in the muck of Liberal anti-military criticism. “The minority Conservative government’s flurry of spending on tanks and other equipment for the Afghanistan mission has left Canada’s military without enough money to upgrade its search-and-rescue capacity, Liberal Defence Critic Denis Coderre said today. “The purchase of new search-and-rescue aircraft was the number one equipment priority for the Canadian Forces in 2003,” Mr. Coderre said from Oslo, where NATO is meeting on the Afghanistan mission. “But this government’s recent spree of equipment purchases has stretched the budget so thin that this critical purchase has been shelved indefinitely.”

What is Senator Kenny’s view on this? “…[T]he government is going to have to spend many billions more on defence than its plans call for now. Otherwise the Canadian Forces are going to deteriorate once again. There will be huge holes in the navy, the air force, and in the army as well.”

Which Liberal critic should we believe? This just proves once again the Liberals can take both sides of an issue and lie through their teeth while keeping a straight face before the Canadian public. No wonder their caucus has so many circus acts in the House of Commons.

7 Questions that will resolve the debate on Canada and Kyoto:

1. What are GHG’s and how much of them are warming our planet?
2. What percentage of the world’s GHG’s would Canada reduce if we met all of our Kyoto targets on time?
3. What percentage of world emissions will not be reduced by the Kyoto Agreement?
4. If every nation in Kyoto met all of their targets, what would be the impact on climate change?
5. If Canada implemented Kyoto as demanded by Liberal Bill C-288, what would be the cost to the Canadian economy?
6. Is the Liberals’ champion on Kyoto (Al Gore) a reliable source of information for deciding the best way to combat climate change?
7. What would happen to Liberal fortunes if the Conservative EcoAction Plan actually stops the rise of GHG’s and begins steady reductions in emissions?

Answers…

In the interest of brevity, we have posted the complete article here. In summary however, it should be noted that:

• Schools around the country are showing An Inconvenient Truth, while all but censoring debate about any other approach to global warming.
• The film’s producer, Paramount, has created a companion book and teacher’s guide to aid in the indoctrination of our children.
• Even Canadian Senators attribute their belief in Kyotoism to Al Gore’s movie.
• Scientists who have worked on the IPCC reports are now backing away from Gore.
  
• Left wing American news networks are even raising questions about the issue.
• Almost 18,000 scientists signed a petition refuting the “scientific consensus” theory.
• Kyoto is at the bottom of the list of ways to best combat death and destruction.
• The world is warming, but the debate on what causes it to warm is far from over.
• You owe it to yourself to at least give a hearing to the opposing points of view.
  

L’honorable Josée Verner, Ministre de la Coopération internationale et ministre de la Francophonie et des Langues officielles, participe au lancement d’un projet pilote avec des enfants à Edmundston.

Les enfants et les parents des communautés francophones en situation minoritaire de Saint John, Edmundston, Cornwall, Durham et Edmonton participeront à un projet pilote et se verront offrir des services de garde en français pour les aider à développer leurs compétences linguistiques et favoriser leur identification à la culture francophone. De plus, des ateliers familiaux d’alphabétisation offriront aux parents des conseils, des ressources et de la formation pour les aider à encourager leur enfant dans son apprentissage. Ce projet pilote s’inscrit dans le Plan d’action du gouvernement en matière de langues officielles. Le nouveau gouvernement du Canada s’est engagé à verser 10,8 millions de dollars pour ce projet pilote au cours des cinq prochaines années. Les projets se dérouleront de septembre 2007 à octobre 2009.

This month, Minister Monte Solberg gave Canadians an update on what the new government is doing for childcare.

“Canada’s New Government promised choice in child care and we have delivered. The Universal Child Care Benefit goes to the families of almost two million children under the age of six and will deliver $12 billion over five years directly to parents.

In Budget 2007, we invested an additional $250 million to help provinces and territories to create new child care spaces. This new funding is on top of the $850 million we already provide to provinces and territories for child care each year.

Governments are not the only bodies interested in child care. That is why our government introduced a new investment tax credit of up to 25 per cent (maximum amount of $10,000) for businesses that create new child care spaces in the workplace.

That said, no one is more involved with child care than parents. That is why we announced a new $2,000 Child Tax Credit for families of children under 18 so they can save up to $310 per year. The Child Tax Credit will give about $1.5 billion per year in tax support to more than 3 million Canadian families.”

Much was made of the formal Liberal government’s plans to invest $5 billion dollars in early learning and childcare. The question has been asked, “How much does the Government of Canada actually invest in child care and early learning each year?” The answer is as follows:

“In total, Canada’s New Government will provide nearly $5.6 billion in 2007–08 in support of child care and early learning through transfers, direct spending and tax measures.”

The fact is that we are already making a greater investment in childcare than the much vaunted Liberal plan. Canada’s Conservative government is getting it done for children and families!

It seems that reporters are becoming more and more careless with the facts, particularly if they can make the Conservatives look bad. Below is one example of sloppy reporting which should have been caught by editors and even the most superficial reader:

Aaron Wherry, Macleans.ca May 17, 2007

“It might be tempting to point out here that since 5.3 million Canadians voted for the Conservative party in the last election, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 27 million did not…”

Aaron is using a 32 million figure which is the entire population of Canada. Of course he should know that every man, woman and child is not eligible to vote! There were actually only 23 million eligible voters in Canada in 2006. Of these 23 million possible electors, only 14.8 million valid votes were cast in the 2006 General Election (Elections Canada, Table 8). 14.8 million is roughly 1/2 the baseline of 32 million used by Mr. Wherry for comparison.

Since the total number of valid votes is the true baseline for judging voter support, there were not “27 million” people who did not vote Conservative – but rather 9.5 million (roughly 1/3 of the impressive figure cited by Mr. Wherry). This means that the author overstated the number of Canadians who did not support the Conservative party by a factor of 300%!

What are the real results of the 2006 Election?

Total Valid Votes: 14,817,159

Conservative 5,374,071 36.3%

Liberal 4,479,415 30.2%

NDP 2,589,597 17.5%

Bloc 1,553,201 10.5%

Green 664,068 4.5%

Sadly, on issues from the environment to voter support, reporters have a hard time telling the facts from a fax!