There are, however, a few comments my politically minded self would like to point out.

First, let’s talk about the F-35s.

Stephen Harper states they are affordable. Everyone else seems to disagree. Apparently the Canadian Government does not have to start making payments on the military fighter jets until 2015. Additionally they will then have the payments spread over more than a decade.

Amanda Lang for the CBC stated during The National broadcast that the fighter planes would be able to be purchased within the existing defense budget. A budget that has however, more than doubled over the past ten years. There is a caveat, we would have had to completed the mission in Afghanistan.

Which, honestly, should happen by that time, but this is also a task that has now taken nearly ten years. Far exceeding original estimates. This also suggests that we will also not become involved in any other nation building exercises. Can we guarantee this at a time when the Middle East is continually destabilizing?

Brian Stewart, also for the CBC, claims that we will be in for quite the shock when it comes to defense spending. Everything in the Canadian Forces, especially the navy, is suffering from the creaks of old age. Are new planes the best policy? On an unproven plane model at that.

It’s up in the air and I don’t see any one “right” on this issue.

Sticking with the military theme I thought it was quite disgusting of Michael Ignatieff to suggest Jack Layton was not a “supporter” of the troops. I dealt with years of this despicable tactic while I was living in the United States. It is a distraction that play at having substance while having none. There is nothing about a particular mission, being there or not, or how successful it is that somehow signifies whether you support the men and women in our national forces.

For more despicable acts we turn back to Harper, who lied through his teeth. And then lied, and lied, and then lied some more. He continued to assert that there would be no tax rate reductions for corporations. The actual truth is that the corporate tax rate will be dropping by 1.5% for this year, and another 1.5% for 2012, bring the corporate tax rate to 15%. I assume Harper is trying to rely on the fact that these actions have already been put in motion rather then a new bill to be delivered, but really, that’s just hackery. Under his current plan, they will be going down.

Then we have Layton. I thought he made a very good point on Ignatieff’s attendance record, apparently the man has a problem showing up for work. Come on, Iggy! You can only bother to show up for class 4 out of 10 times. I know you come from academia but damn.

The problem? Layton quoted a 70% attendance failure when it was actually 59%. I don’t see the point; it’s been included in the advertisements now as well. Missing 59% is bad, and it would still bring the point across, but he softens blow by entering shifty math into the equation. He took a #winning statement into a #FAIL!

Ah the #FAIL. People seem to fall one of two ways on this one; hilarious or pandering to the youth vote. To which I say, why not? Anyone under 25 is completely ignored by the political parties. The argument is always that the youth don’t vote. Ignoring the fact that historically the younger generations vote less often (young non-voters become older voters) and that we have quite a bit of a chicken and egg problem here. Maybe the youth don’t vote because no candidates can be bothered to speak to them.

Example? Barack Obama’s campaign caused a record number of under 25 voters to hit the polls. He doubled this demographic in Iowa from the previous election in 2004. Why? Because he actually acted like they mattered. Instead of telling them they are irresponsible hooligans, he reached out to them, included them in his campaign, and hey, even attended an Usher concert. If that’s not sacrifice, I don’t know what is. When it came down to the final tally on the real election, Obama walked away with 68% of the youth vote* and the number of youth votes increased by several million for the 2008 elections over 2004.

See, when Canadian politicians attempt to appeal to students, it’s generally with exasperatingly poor policy. Take Ignatieff’s plan of debt forgiveness. If you donate 150 hours of your time, we will forgive $1,500 of school debt. Awesome! I can get paid, like, $10 an hour to volunteer!

Wait? Ten dollars? I don’t know if you’ve noticed Mr. Ignatieff but that’s below minimum wage. So, if the concern is actually debt, students would still be far better off, working for that money. Especially considering the fact that most students will see more money returned to them than anything taken off in taxes taken from their paycheque. And you don’t get the money until you successfully complete your program either. Why would someone wait four years when they could pick up an extra six hour shift every two weeks and put that extra $1530 into a savings account for four years? If they are concerned about the money.

This is a great policy if you were already planning a four week mission trip, or you already donate your time. But students concerned about money are generally already stretched to the limit trying to juggle study time and working hours. Of course, this volunteer service also has to be part of the Canadian Service Corps. that is still to be created, so we have no idea what these volunteer positions will be.

Well, I’ll stop there because I’ve now gone over that infamous 1,000 word mark, though I’m sure I could go on and on. I’m sure there will be another couple complaint posts before this election is over.

Oh and Gilles Duceppe is excellent comic relief; he’s such a pisser.

Links:
Fact checking the Leaders’ Debate

* Youth vote in this instance is 29 and under.

Photo by Sean Kilpatrick for the Canadian Press

“OK, who let these two in here?”

'Cause, like, "Moo!"

So the candidates have been campaigning for a couple of weeks now, the platforms are out, and apparently they are already all out of ideas to talk about.

I don’t understand how Harper can possible win elections, he runs the most horrible campaigns. When he’s not busy trying to tell us how much better he is than Trudeau, he’s deciding that current dairy policy is some kind of election issue.

Seriously? Why go out of your way to say you’re protecting the dairy industry. Oh yeah, because when you actually plan on screwing over everyone in the agricultural industry.

Harper argues that he is going to open global markets for Canadian agriculture but maintain supply management.

Yeah, good luck with that. Everyone loves to be told that you should get open and free trade agreements while also maintaining protectionist policies.

Let’s be honest, what farmers want and what conservatives want, are diametrically opposed. Good or bad, that’s not the point here, but can the conservatives please stop blowing smoke up every groups ass and be honest about their policies.

Actually give them some credit, they know perfectly well if they shared that plan they would lose all hope of a majority.

The decision to allow companies such as Bell charge secondary Internet Service Providers (ISPs) excess fees is very detrimental to the future of internet service in Canada. They are giving large monopolistic companies such as Bell and Rogers the ability to render their competition completely ineffective and unable to compete with the larger brands.

It’s kind of like allowing McDonald’s to set the prices for all other fast food chains. It couldn’t be any more anti-competition. Of course, the big telecom companies don’t exactly want competition, they’re scared.

Bell built its empire on a service that, frankly, is becoming obsolete. The younger generations have no interest in landline telephones.  The cell phone market has been cracked open with new competitors such as Wind and Public Mobile. People are turning away from traditional tv services such as cable and satellite, in favour of convenient on-demand products such as NetFlix.

It seems that they are feeling some kind of a pinch. Bell apparently had a little over a five percent drop in profit over the third quarter last year. Rogers suffered from a twenty-four percent drop.

So why not remove two competitors with one swoop? Make alternative ISPs an unsavory choice and continually reduce service by reducing so-called bandwidth caps, limiting tv internet options.

On the positive side, it seems like this decision will not stand. NDP critic Charlie Angus spoke out first, the Liberal party fell in line and now Stephen Harper is tweeting that he was “concerned” over the CRTC decision. Perhaps the mess will be cleaned up.

The more disturbing aspect is there is now a theme in the CRTC, to be a corporate protectionist agency. They claim that they “regulate and supervise” but with this decision and their previous decision of trying to prevent Wind Mobile from entering the market, it seems the only thing they are interested in supervising is higher profits for the large telcos.

It’s just another case of Canadians having no idea how their country works (and having politicians trying to capitalize).

I’ll start with this.  There was absolutely NO impropriety in refugees coming to this country unannounced.  Anyone who would even make a hint to this being the case is either extremely uneducated in the matter or a liar. The concept of “spontaneous arrivals” is well enshrined and protected in our domestic laws in addition to various international agreements.

So why the outrage? Why the warnings about scary, scary immigrants?

They were allowed to show. Canada processes thousands of refugees every year, we have the resources, they are set aside with the immigration plan every year.

Some try to take the angle that we should have stopped the refugees in order to discourage further ‘human trafficking’.  As if criminals would really care that once they’ve gotten all their money, their ‘customers’ did not make it to their final destination. Really? It’s not like there’s going to be complaints to a better business bureau, they’re criminals for a reason.

Add to this that there are actually many legitimate refugee claims from Sri Lanka every year. If they are not legitimate?  They will be sent back. You don’t just show up and become insta-refugee.

The we just have the added confusion of reporters trying to write about something they really don’t know about. Take this article for example.

But, in a very significant move, the UN said Tamils leaving Sri Lanka should no longer be automatically presumed to be refugees, and that asylum claims should be considered strictly on individual merit.

See even the UN says don’t take them! However, ALL refugee claims have ALWAYS been “considered strictly on individual merit.” That’s how the system works. The UN is reiterating what they just happened to put together in the 1951 Convention Relating to Refugees. It’s only been around for almost 60 years, I’m sure it’s on their reading list.

The UN warns: “Regular contributions of large sums of money, with the knowledge that those funds will be used to commit serious crimes, may also be an independent basis for exclusion [from refugee status.]”

Given reports that migrants paid up to $50,000 each to human smugglers connected to the Tamil Tigers, it would be irresponsible for the government to ignore the UN’s advice.

*SIGH* Again, if we actually bothered to research the topic… Criminal activity will prevent you from attaining refugee status BUT there is a general exemption if these acts are done in the process of leaving your country in order to claim refugee status. That way you won’t be denied status if you happen to buy a fake passport or other superficial reasons, such as, you know, paying for transport, which happens to be a boat across the Pacific.

Therein lies the problem. The sources that are supposed to actually inform you, don’t really know themselves, and sadly spread misinformation. And then people are bending over backwards to keep spreading that misinformation.

There’s no legal, financial, or policy reason to send them back. It really is just a complete racist anti-immigration stance.

Kelly McParland tries to be ironic with this, calling Canadians “anti-immigration SOBs” and “anti-Tamil bigots” before linking the Send Them Back attitude with a mistrust of the immigration system. But it’s not irony. With claims of the system being “badly broken” and yet no real grasp of how the system works; it seems to me that we have an easy excuse.

No one who actually understands the issue at hand would suggest that you send back refugee claimants because you think some changes need to be made to the immigration system.

To punctuate the point? A sampling of the racist comments found on the National Post article.

“Perhaps Canadians are fed up with people who come to this country and call themselves Saudi-Canadians Palestinian-Canadians or Tamil-Canadians”

“I hate when the government print things in other languages other than ENglish and French”

” [...] what Canada DOES NOT stand for – becoming a roach motel for transient welfare-hounds and a playground for various ethnic-mafia snakeheads.”

“close immigration from terrorist nations, promote reproduction by our own population…”

“I don’t want TERRORIST refugees here.”

“I don’t think it’s much of stretch to say almost all immigrants, not all, but almost all come from blatantly racist countries and many of these individuals harbour racist feelings but are good at hiding it , they are bringing it here and we are not doing much to stop it.”

“They are here to continue their old life, complete with prejudices and hatred, and attempt to mold Canada to support their “struggle”, while at the same time draining the resources of money that taxpayers contribute for OUR wellbeing.”

“Canadians are not anti immigrant snobs. True Canadians are gracious, kind and considerate. The problem that we Canadians face is that we have now had two generations of immigrants many that are loud, demanding, arrogant and obnoxious.”

It’s not us! It’s them! It’s just not our fault that they don’t want to integrate, and they speak another language, and they just want to live on welfare, that they are terrorists, that actually they are the racist ones, and that all our recent immigrants suck. By the way we should really be breeding more white babies.

Nope, no racism there.

And oh yeah,

I’m not an anti-immigrant snob. Many of my best and dearest friends are immigrants and I made a good living teaching ESL.

I can’t be racist! I know minorities!

Spare me.

Further Information:

Immigration and Refugee Protection Act
1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees & 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees