Here are the questions:
- Is Canada Post smoking cheap dope?
- Are tax cuts pretty much all for the rich, and if so, why?
- Are aboriginals stalling development of resources, despite law changes gutting conservation and environmental protection? Will they fail?
- Do you (Mr. Harper) think we voters are all stupid? or just apathetic?
Canada Post. On TV last night I saw again an advertisement for Canada Post: essentially, go buy stuff online and we’ll deliver it to your door. The ad shows a red cart following a shopper, and delivering a package to the shopper’s front door. (Right away, btw.)
This is not going to be the case for long. Canada Post, after buying a new fleet of neat little delivery trucks, is going to force each and every one of us to walk or trudge to a block of mailboxes. Supposedly parcels will be accessible via a key (in the residents’ envelope slot) that opens a larger box (which will of course be available, even during the Christmas rush, and large enough no matter what is being shipped.)
Once I am forced to pick up my mail from a block of remote mail boxes, I am stopping all junk mail and, more to the point, routing all parcel shipments via competitors to Canada Post. FedEx, UPS, and whatever else is good enough.
They will deliver to my door. They make their living by doing this now.
So, first dumb question: Is Canada Post smoking cheap dope? With this ad in particular?
Tax Cuts.
Tax cuts include income splitting, which only affects high-bracket married-with-children unequal-income families. That’s a tax cut for the rich.
Tax cuts apparently include massive subsidies for oil, gas, and coal extraction companies. See earlier blog entries for more on this ($34 billion annually, according to the IMF, as I recall.)
Tax cuts include refunds for costs such as kids’ sports equipment and disabled-occupant renovations. Such tax cuts assume that a) you paid for the stuff before last December, and b) you will get your refund increase in April or May or so, and c) you need that money but can borrow it for five of six months for free. Not so? Then the refund is a tax cut for the rich.
So second dumb question: are these tax cuts for the rich?
Aboriginals and environmental concerns. In an omnibus budget bill, our government undid some 70 environmental protection laws. This will allow polluting of ‘minor streams and lakes’ to go on without environmental assessments.
However, aboriginal groups (with, apparently, good lobbyists and great lawyers) are finding ways of stalling this, especially with regard to oil and gas extraction and pipelines. Apparently our Supreme Court sometimes agrees with them.
So, the third dumb question, is, will the aboriginal attempt to protect the environment succeed? Although it should, I submit that the Federal Government has the power to change the rules.
((for example, the prostitution law was struck down and Our Government given a specific time limit to put in legally correct legislation. Instead, they installed a law that is different, but does not address the safety issues under which a new law was deemed necessary. This stall tactic will work: it will take a few years for a group of sex workers to create a case and prosecute it, again. After which, Harper’s music sheet probably says, Da Capo al Fine (go back to the start and repeat what we just did.) ))
Given the power to change the rules, will our ruler win in the end?
That’s the third dumb question.
Does our government believe that we voters are stupid or apathetic?
Are they getting away with all of the above?
That’s the fourth dumb question.