Category Archives: Uncategorized

Peter MacKay’s 2014 Bill C-36

2014s, Bill C-36 shows Mackay’s true colours.

 There are four professions that are almost as old as time, the oldest of which is the medicine man /woman which predates recorded time.

Next are the three beauties, Prostitutes, Lawyers and Politicians.

 The first of these, the prostitute served a valuable service both back then and indeed today.

 The second and third are both parasites.

 Why do I start with these assertions? Well because one man, who is determined to eradicate one of these more recent, in comparison to the medicine man/woman, through bill C-36 is indeed all three himself.

 He is a lawyer, how much practicing he did is a mote point, he is a politician of very dubious believability, and a prostitute in the way he sold himself and the Progressive Conservative party of Canada to Harper’s bunch of Reform/Alliance religious misfits in order to give them a household name people could vote for, and ensuring himself of a permanent cabinet position no matter how badly he performed in any ministerial capacity.

This is what I managed to finally get from a government site:

“Before entering politics, Mr. MacKay had a private law practice in New Glasgow, specializing in criminal and family law. In 1993, he accepted an appointment as Crown Attorney for the Central Region of Nova Scotia. He prosecuted cases at all levels, including youth and provincial courts as well as the Supreme Court of Canada. Mr. MacKay has served on volunteer boards including New Leaf and Tearmann House. As well, he has been active in Big Brothers-Big Sisters, the Pictou County Senior Rugby Club and the YMCA. After graduating from Acadia University, Mr. MacKay went on to study law at Dalhousie University. He was called to the Nova Scotia Bar in June 1991.”

So he was on his own for two years before he was rescued by the province of Nava Scotia to be a crown prosecutor. Impressive. Wonder how much his daddy had to do with that rescue?

From the same site:

“Peter MacKay was first elected to Parliament in 1997 and re-elected in 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2011. In July 2013, Mr. MacKay was appointed Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. Previously, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency in February 2006 and Minister of National Defence in August 2007. In his first five years in the House of Commons, Mr. MacKay served as House Leader for the Progressive Conservative caucus. On May 31, 2003, he became Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. In March 2004, he was named Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and was renamed Deputy Leader following the June 2004 election.”

Lets see now, He made an agreement with David Orchard to become leader of the progressive conservative party of Canada in 2003, and within a year he had completely betrayed that agreement with Orchard and sold Harper the name “Conservative”. He was appointed deputy leader of the CPC for his perfidy, and then made a cabinet member when Harper used the name Conservative to gain his minority Government, and has been a cabinet minister of doubtful abilities ever since.

According to the The Canadian Oxford Paperback Dictionary under the definition of prostitute is this:

2. a person who missuses his or her talents or skills for money…uses one’s abilities etc., wrongly or in a way that is not worthy of them especially in order to earn money.

Did he misuse his talents as a liar, thief and cheat to make money as the deputy leader of the Conservative Party of Canada? – I would say yes.

Did he use his abilities as the above to gain a permanent cabinet position for money? I would say yes.  This makes him a prostitute according to the Dictionary.

As for his political experience as a cabinet minister I quote from Wikipedia:

Minister of Foreign Affairs[edit]

Following the Conservative victory in the 2006 election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper named MacKay as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency; he was also tasked to be the political minister for both his home province, and for neighbouring Prince Edward Island, just as his father Elmer had done between 1988 and 1993.[citation needed]

During the first mandate, his biggest issue was the Lebanon–Israel–Hezbollah crisis that occurred in July 2006. The government decided to evacuate thousands of Canadians from Lebanon to safer locations and many back to Canada. MacKay responded to critics saying that the process was slow, that the boats (those which were used to evacuate) had limited capacity. MacKay’s statements in support of the Israeli during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict created a national debate in Canada, especially among Arabs and Muslim Canadians who opposed MacKay’s position. During this period MacKay and the Conservative Party of Canada joined the Bush Administration in opposing the United Nations‘ call for a ceasefire. It was also during this period that MacKay made a controversial statement in which he referred to Hezbollah as a “cancer” in Lebanon.[7] Hezbollah is formally recognized by the government of Canada as a terrorist organization.[8]

Minister of Defence[edit]

Peter MacKay meeting with Condoleezza Rice, April 13, 2006.

On August 14, 2007, Stephen Harper shuffled MacKay from Foreign Affairs to Defence, replacing Gordon O’Connor. On November 6, 2007, while attending a meeting at Forward Operating Base Wilson, 20 kilometres west of Kandahar City, Mackay was unharmed as two rockets struck the base at about 11 a.m. local time. Mackay described the incident: “There was an explosion. It was a loud bang”, said MacKay. “When it happened, we heard the explosion, we heard the whistle overhead, we were told to get down and we did.”[9] The incident happened on the same day that a suicide bomber detonated an explosive in Baghlanin the northeastern part of the country killing at least 35 including several politicians. While Taliban insurgents were suspected of being behind the bombing, it was not believed to be related to the attack in Kandahar.[10]

MacKay with US Senator John McCain and Colombian Minister of National Defense Juan Carlos Pinzón Bueno at the Halifax International Security Forum 2012

In 2008, MacKay announced a broad exhaustive and very expensive program to upgrade the Canadian military’s equipment, spending over $400 billion over 25 years. Unlike every previous spending announcement of its kind, no “white paper” or detailed breakdown of this number was available nor was any claimed to exist. This led to widespread speculation that an election was coming. Stephen Harper did in fact declare Parliament “dysfunctional” in August 2008 and called on Governor General of Canada Michaëlle Jean to dissolve parliament for the 2008 federal election. The opposition objected but did not offer to form another government.

In July 2010, MacKay was involved in a scandal that involved the use of a Canadian Cormorant military helicopter in order to ferry the minister from a private fishing camp in Newfoundland to Gander Airport. The cost of this to taxpayers was approximately $16,000.[11]

On June 5, 2012, it was revealed that a widely publicized 2010 news conference announcing Conservative plans to buy 65 F-35 Stealth Fighters had cost $47,000. Documents provided to parliament by Peter Mackay indicated that Lockheed Martin had delivered the F-35 mockup used in the photo-op for free, and that the cost was primarily for services to support the news conference and one hundred invited guests.[12]

 

 

What is not mentioned here, and I wonder why, is the destruction of Libya and the murder of Gadhafi conducted under his Ministry at the urging of the IMF and NATO, John Baird and ,presumably, Harper himself. Good job Peter ! That I admit is sarcasm.

During the election of 2011 Harper claimed that a deal had been made and the purchase made of the F-35 aircraft, and MacKay who knew very well that was a lie, said nothing. Obviously a man of great integrity.

So what do we have here?

A lawyer who was basically rescued by the province of Nova Scotia, a politician who could not wait to break his word to David Orchard, and in the following 10 years has been a prime example of what a politician should not be, and ultimately a prostitute to himself and Canada.

So Peter, I guess the question is that made by Madam Boivine during your pathetic appearance at the summer recess version of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights meeting #33…”Will you be ensuring that this (Bill C-36) will come before the House of Commons at report stage in the fall sitting of the House?” It was not clear from your answers to the repeated question that it would be and judging from your administration’s complete lack of regard for any House rules it would not surprise me if by the time the House returns in September it had already passed through your lap dog Senate and had received Royal Assent. Since your administration has absolutely no interest in improving any of its terrible proposed legislation, I suppose it would not matter anyway.

Does your father approve of your shenanigans Peter? Probably he taught you how to do them.

I know that I do not approve at all. In  fact as a Canadian you are a disgrace to Canada.

What we need in Canada is MPs who actually listen to and care about the people of Canada, and we do not (with the possible exception of Ms. May and Mr. Hyer) have any of them at this time.

In 2015 we must elect some independents and small party (such as the Canadian Action Party) MPs who can offer some control over the House and perhaps restore a vestige of belief that Canadian politicians are any bloody good at all.

 

Jeremy Arney

July 2014

Concerning Canadian Parliament Committees

Concerning Canadian Parliamentary Committees.

I have watched in frustration too many committees both in the House of Commons and in the Senate which are, under this government, completely functions in stupidity.
So I went looking for what committees are supposed to do and looked in both “Beauchesne Parliamentary Rules and Forms” and of course “O’Brien and Bosc”.

From the former I read:
Page 190 Chapter 15 (2)
“Committees receive their authority from the House itself and that authority overrides that of any committee” …Journals Dec 1 1964 pp 941-7

And (3)
“The speaker has ruled on many occasions that it is not competent for him to exercise procedural control over the committees. Committees are and must remain masters of their own procedure” , Journal Dec 1973 pp709-10
510. It is the duty of all committees to give to the matters referred to them due and sufficient consideration.

From these I deduce that it is Parliament, in the form of the House of Commons (or the Senate I suppose) that gives authority to the committees not the government of the day. But today that authority is usurped by the Harper government majority in all committees in both houses of parliament, and as such committees do not have the mastery of their own procedures any more, nor are they capable of giving matters referred to them sufficient consideration, simply because the Harper government will not allow it. There is such a rush to get things rammed through under this Harper Government that committees cannot spend time to really examine that which they have been entrusted by parliament to examine, amend or even reject. More than the questions, the answers, or even the attitude of the chairperson and members of the committees, is the constraint of time. More and more the chairperson is reminding members that their time is up when they are only just getting the presenters (specially the Ministers when they bother to appear) to the point of giving real answers. How can they make a real decision if they can’t get the answers they seek because they don’t have time? Does this lack of time come from the PMO or parliament? Is it not time for committee members to stand up and ask those questions not only of the chair of the committee but of parliament itself. Combine this lack of time with the lack of ability to make amendments or even suggestion there is an inevitable air of frustration appearing because members cannot fulfill their mandates.

On the matter of “In Camera” sittings, a very common practice today…
Page 199 (1)
“A committee having the right to exclude strangers at any time, it may be inferred, has the right to sit in private and have its proceedings protected by privilege. The publication of its proceedings in that case would be an offense which the House could deal with upon receiving a report from the committee.”
(2)
The purpose of the in camera sittings is to allow the members to feel free to negotiate, discuss, deliberate and, sometimes, compromise without the glare of publicity which might add to the difficulties of agreeing to reports when it is desirable for those proceedings to be treated in confidence. The final decision of whether to sit in camera, however, rests with the members themselves” …. Journals June 21 1955 pp781-2

To say the least, interesting.

Then from O’Brien and Bosc comes this quote to open the chapter on Committees:

“Experience has shown that smaller and more flexible committees, when entrusted with interesting matters, can have a very positive impact on the development of our parliamentary system, upgrade the role of Members of Parliament, sharpen their interest and ultimately enable this institution to produce much more enlightened measures that better meet the wishes of the Canadian people.”
Yvon Pinard, President of the Privy Council
(Debates, November 29, 1982, p. 21071

Obrien and Bosc has pages of information on the various committees and their functions, which I will not reproduce here but can be seen at:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/procedure-book-livre/Document.aspx?sbdid=DC42FA65-ADAA-426C-8763-C9B4F52A1277&sbpidx=1&Language=E&Mode=1
for anyone who wants to check it out.

It is interesting to see how far we have come in the last few years from functional committees to complete dysfunctionality.
By this I mean that committees were established all those centuries ago to ensure that all elected members had a say in what happened, and what was right and good for the people of, in this case, Canada. Rules were established to ensure that partisanship was not prevalent, and even in the original ‘Committees of the Whole’ in the UK any member could talk as often as he wanted, provided he kept to the subject.

Thus it was with some interest that I tuned in to CPAC today (Friday 6th April 2012) to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates and there were two consecutive quests: Robert Marleau, a past clerk of the HOC, and John Williams a past MP and past chairman of that committee.
What they had to say rang a strong bell with me as I have believed for some time now that the HOC and Senate committees are a total waste of time.
I do not believe that in this 41st parliament either a motion or amendment proposed by the members of the opposition has been accepted, and all amendments or motions (including going into camera) from the government side have been automatically accepted.
So when the above gentlemen suggested to the members of this committee that they could indeed serve their constituents and help to keep the government answerable to parliament (under whose authority they actually exist) my interest was peeked.
It seems that this particular committee has some teeth, should they choose to exercise them, to hold government accountable as to why they are carrying out, or demolishing, certain programs and can indeed call the Ministers into the chamber of the House of Commons to answer their questions in front of the House on any sitting Wednesday at 1 pm.
What I found interesting in this committee was that there only appeared to be one excessive disciple of Mein Herr Harper, and the questions asked by members indicated a genuine interest in doing something about the present partisan nonsense that exists both in this committee and all the others.
Both Marleau and Williams suggested to the Committee on Government Operations and Expenses that they should examine their mandate and decide what they wanted to do to be effective. Williams suggested they should go in camera to do this.

Of course I had to check out their mandate and I found it had changed a bit since 2006 – what a surprise !

In 2006 this is how it started:
Mandate
The mandate of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates enhances the traditional “government operations” committee mandate that focused on central agencies, with two innovations:
• First, it reflects recommendations of the 1998 Report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (Catterall-Williams Report), by locating, within a single committee, broad responsibilities relating to the supply process, and financial reporting to Parliament by government organizations.
• Second, it reflects the new importance of information and communication technologies, as an aspect of government operations having potentially transformative impacts on all aspects of governance.

Then in 2011 that had disappeared and was replaced with this:

Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates Then (OGGO)
Then

Contact Committees | Contact OGGO | FAQ | Site Map | Subscribe | Text Mode
41st Parliament, 1st Session
June 2, 2011 – Present
Select a different Session ▼

About this Committee
Mandate
Pursuant to paragraph 108(3)(c) of the House of Commons Standing Orders, the mandate of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates includes primarily the study of:
• the effectiveness of government operations;
• expenditure budgets of central departments and agencies;
• format and content of all Estimates documents;
• cross-departmental mandates – programs delivered by more than one department or agency;
• new information and communication technologies adopted by the government;
• statutory programs, tax expenditures, loan guaranties, contingency funds and private foundations deriving the majority of their funding from the Government of Canada.
The Committee is specifically mandated to examine and conduct studies related to the following organizations, whose operational responsibilities extend across the government:
Central Agencies and Departments
• Privy Council Office/Prime Minister’s Office
• Treasury Board Secretariat
• Public Works and Government Services Canada
Organizations Related to Human Resources Matters
• Public Service Commission
• Public Services Human Resources Management Agency of Canada
• Canada School of Public Service
Other Organizations
• Office of the Governor General
• Public Service Labour Relations Board
• Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat
Crown Corporations
• Canada Lands Company
• Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
• Canada Post Corporation
• Defence Construction (1951) Limited
• Old Port of Montréal Corporation Inc.
• Public Sector Pension Investment Board
• Queens Quay West Land Corporation
• Royal Canadian Mint

Bearing in mind that all the authority of this committee is from parliament, not the Government, there is potential here for some good if the members were to decide to look after the interests of Canadians and ensure that by choosing a few programs and concentrating upon them and determining if they are effective, or why they were cancelled etc., and forcing the Minister to defend his/her decision in the House perhaps we could see a change in some of the more ideological decisions this Harper government is making. Question is as always will Harper allow it to happen, or will he insist that his MPs are obedient to him, not loyal to the House and therefore Canadians?
Can you really see this committee being allowed to look at the ‘cooked’ books of the Privy Council, the PMO, the Treasury Board or even the office of the Governor General (cooked or otherwise)? I don’t think so either.

The fact is that time and again in this 41st parliament committees are a joke when you consider what they are supposed to be.

On about 12th March comes this:
Concerning C-11
“This week’s “clause-by-clause” review had left 39 amendments on the table: 17 from the NDP, 14 from the Liberals and eight from the Tories. Geist’s personal blog has a quick summary of the proposed amendments by party, but upon the conclusion of the review, the eight government amendments were successfully added while the 31 opposition amendments were effectively shelved.” Chase Kell of Yahoo News.

This summary of Bill C-11 committee states well the practices of present committees and their partisan destruction of both parliamentary ideals and what little democracy we have remaining here in Canada.

So what is my summary? The basic context of committees developed over the centuries is sound, but the makeup of them in Canada today is absolutely unbalanced and thus not representative of the Canadian people and thus the parliament of Canada. Let’s not confuse the parliament of Canada with the government of the day. 39% of the people who voted in 2011 did so for the Corporate Party of Canada and thus they should have no more than 39% of the members of the committees, and the chairpersons who should be none voting. Percentage of votes would be a better representation on decison making committees than number of seats of various parties, specially when there are two parties represented in the House that are excluded from committees.

This would have two results:
Firstly, bad legislation for the people of Canada would be rejected at this level and therefore cause better legislation to be proposed for Canadians by this present government.
Secondly, there would be ample time given to actually examining the Bills that will make a difference in the lives of Canadians resulting in the will of the people having a better chance of being complied with.

The chances of this happening under any government of Canada, never mind this one which is ideologically bound to destroy Canada anyway, is very unlikely as no government has the gumption to put itself up for real examination by the people of Canada, which is of course the basis of democracy.

Unfortunately we do not have democracy here in Canada.

Jeremy Arney

23rd April 2012

What if….

One night not so long ago I was in bed thinking instead of sleeping, which I seem to do more today than yesterday and I was thinking thus:

Power in the hands of a few people, or one person, has the ablility to be very destructive. It will overcome common sense, lead to acts of extravagant stupidty, blind ideology, destruction of values and to wars both within a country and in foreign lands.

Over the years checks and balances were created to protect against absolute power, but even those can be overcome as is now happening in Canada, where by mischance both the House of Commons and its Speaker, the House of Sober Second Thought and the courts have all fallen under the control of one man….Or have they.

This led me to write this letter to all the Conservative Party of Canada backbenchers on February 21st 2012:

The letter was entitled “What if”.

An open letter to Government backbenchers.

 

Some of you will not read this because I am not from your riding, but I hope most of you will as it is not an attack upon you or the government caucus to which you belong.

 

It is generally accepted that the power of government rests with the PMO and the Cabinet , but that is, in my view, an illusion. The power rests with you the “back benchers” because without your support the government and its agenda cease to be.

 

I have watched on CPAC as some of you read PMO statements and as you stumble over words like ‘democracy’ or phrases such as ‘represent your constituents’ (usually directed at the opposition members), I have to wonder if perhaps you are in entire agreement with what you are reading. Maybe you are but what if you are not? What if you question this whole represent your constituents thing?

 

The job of the opposition is to study proposed bills, offer suggestions or amendments to improve them in both the house and committee, or to vote against them if those improvement suggestions are rejected and they believe the bill to be bad for the Canadian people.

 

I would submit to you that your job as a government backbencher is no different.  I do not think your job is to just rise from your seat and vote when so directed by thePMO.

 

Being an MP is not an easy job; being away all week that the House is sitting;  being available to your constituents when you are home; sacrificing family life to live in a hotel or lonely apartment in Ottawa; working on committees and keeping up with what must be endless correspondence requires dedication, and I applaud you for that.

 

But is it not in the interests of your constituents to ensure that legislation is the best it can be for them? You were elected to be their MP.  If we look at the national average then 25% of eligible voters or 39% of actual voters in our current system elected this government. This means that 61% of the actual voters did not vote for you, yes in some ridings this was not the case but I am using the national average.  Does this mean that 61% of your constituents are not represented by you, and if so how democratic is that?

 

What if you actually went to the Liberal, NDP, or Green people who represent the majority in your riding and asked them what they think?  What if you actually represented your whole riding to Ottawa, not the government to your selected minority of the riding? That is your job, and if you do that why would you ever be rejected by the people or your party?

 

Democracy in Canada has been dead for years because we the people are not only under represented but are largely ignored except at election time, and it is, I think, because of fear of rejection  by the ‘party’ that causes MP obedience to the party line.  Yet the party of any government is made up largely of backbenchers such as you and without you they have no clout. If by standing up in the House, or in committee, and asking for the best for the people of Canada you feel you run the risk of being rejected by your party I have to ask:

 

Is this what you would be doing, going against the party or are you actually saying to the leader that you have a voice on behalf of all the people of your riding and you should be heard because your support is very important, actually vital, to the government?

 

I leave you with this thought. 

There is an opportunity to reclaim parliament, at all levels, for the people of Canada and it rests with you the backbenchers of this government to do this.

 

You have the power but will you use it?

 

Thank you for reading this.

 

Jeremy Arney

Why have Canadian Laws lost thier way

 

Well it’s not only the new Canadian laws that are totally flawed, but these laws of today are now being carried to a level of total absurdity and political games.

 

The point of laws is that they should create a framework in which every member of society, or businesses, should be protected from maleficence. Today, with this Harper Government, that is not the case with all the advertisable jingly catchy ACT names designed to make opposition to them anti Canadian no matter how “Harper ideological”  those Acts may be.

 

Way back the throne, whether regal or empiric, determined everything and taxed everyone and that was simple enough, but of course abused.  Governments were formed from which came the parliamentary system which we were given here in Canada. (This simple precise of history will be criticized by scholars as simplistic but so be it.)

 

Naturally enough this created a class of crooks called Lawyers, who wrote the laws and enforced them in courts created and peopled by them. Right from the start “legal” language was developed and is still used today, and it is very clear that the interpretation of the laws is up to the judges not to the people. Even politicians don’t understand the laws they enact.

 

A prime example of this is the current new proposed law in Canada, the omnibus crime bill otherwise known as the Safe Streets and Communities Act, as yet still Bill C-10.   The Minister of Justice and for that matter the entire CPC caucus touts this as being hard on crime and standing up for victims, and indeed Nicholson has spat out to the opposition in the House of Commons many times that his government is the only one standing up for victims.  On the other hand the opposition claim that such a bill flies in the face of decreasing crime in Canada showing that the existing system is actually working, and mandatory sentences and mega jails are a waste of money and has already proven to be ineffectual in any jurisdiction where it has been imposed, particularly in the USA.

 

So, two diametrically opposed views of the same words? Or just political rhetoric?

 

Having examined all the bills that were rolled into this one I could not find anywhere where any victims of crime were protected, looked after or even fully recognized with the exception of the victims of acts of terrorism; those victims have been given the right to sue the terrorists ! Good luck with that.

For those whom this government claims this act was intended to defend and protect, ie; drug users, children used in pornography or even molested children there is absolutely nothing in Bill C-10 to ‘stand up for’, look after or protect them in any way.

 

The language of the bill is of course open to the same interpretation as are all bills (or Acts), and that really is the judge’s interpretation not anyone else’s.  I was watching a senate hearing on this the other day and heard a witness from the justice department talk about the word ‘may’ as opposed to ‘shall’ or ‘must’, and I know that in Blacks Law Dictionary, ‘may’ actually means ‘shall’ or ‘must’ when used in legislation;  but this learned member of the justice department was not saying that at all, as she was claiming that in legislation ‘may’ has the same meaning as in real life.  Goobleygook

 

Let’s not forget too that in BC where I live the legal system particularly the justice / court side of it is totally broken as shown by this comment:

 

B.C. Chief Justice Robert Bauman had warned that the  judicial system is nearing a “tipping point” because there wasn’t enough judges and funding to hear cases properly, with 2,500 cases waiting for 18 months and 7,600 cases over a year old, causing 109    cases to be tossed out in 2011, double the year before. (quoted by me not my grammar)

 

So the anticipated new criminals Nicholson claims are out there will just add to the problem of overloaded courts and too few judges.  Maybe it’s time he just bypassed the whole system and did what they are planning in the USA, which is just have the military pick up anyone without any real reason, trial or proof and imprison them indefinitely. How about that Nicholson, is that next?

 

There is a part of each bill called definitions, usually right at the front, clause 2 or 3, in which the meaning of words for that particular act are given .  Sometimes that makes sense, but in the case of the Income Tax Act for example ‘income’ is not defined nor is ‘profit’.  My assumption is that by not defining income, or profit upon which the original tax was based, the judges have the power to determine what meaning they choose to allot to those words. 

 

Why is this so important you may ask?

 

Well that’s the whole point of Canadian law. It is not simple, it is not designed for the ordinary person to read and understand, although they must obey it; it is designed to trap and ensnare us with double speak stupidity disguised as learned words.

 

Another contentious phrase is ‘natural person”. 

 

What is a natural person?

Blacks Law Dictionary  defines a natural person as: A human being, as distinguished from an artificial person created by law.

An artificial person: An entity, such as a corporation, created by law and given certain legal rights and duties of a human being; a being, real or imaginary, who for the purpose of legal reasoning is treated more or less as a human being.  Cf legal entity.

Legal entity: A body, other than a natural person, that can function legally, sue or be sued, and make decisions through agents.

 

If we were to refer to the Canadian Law dictionary it is a little different:

 

Natural Person:

A natural person is a human being that has the capacity for rights and duties. compare artificial person ; corporation

Artificial person:

A legal entity, not a human being, recognized as a person in law to whom legal rights and duties may attach eg: a body corporate; see corporation

Corporation:

An association of shareholders created under law and regarded as an artificial person by the courts and thus “treated like any other independent person with its rights and liabilities appropriate to itself,”  A corporation has the capacity of taking, holding and conveying property, suing and being sued, and exercising such other powers as may be conferred on it by law, just as a natural person

 

This infers that a corporation is a human being ! Well that may be so in the USA but here?

 

It is interesting to note in the Bank Act that any director of a Canadian Bank must be a ‘natural’ person.

 

No matter what one thinks about natural or artificial persons, one has to wonder why these distinctions were created and why also none of the legal dictionaries define a human being. It is also interesting that the courts do not want to recognize human beings as natural persons, and seem to indicate that under law both natural and artificial persons are the same thing.  Why then are they defined separately and for that matter even acknowledged in the definitions in laws? More specifically why can only natural persons be bank directors?

 

Show me any Bill that does not refer to another bill, or two or three ,if  you can find one. Of course this does not include Bill C-1, which is as meaningless as any of them and is never debated nor enacted even though it has been proposed and printed about 41 times !

 

One more thing which really bothers me is the trend set by this Harper regime to change the focus of law breaking to regulation contravention.  An example of this is the Consumer Product Protection Act, which clearly states that charges will be on noncompliance with regulations and are subject only to Ministerial hearings and dictate.  No access to courts will be available to the offenders because no law has been broken! The Navigable Waters Act was amended to do the same thing so in other words we are changing from rule of law to rule by regulation. In the case of the CPPA it was rushed through with much fanfare and as yet the regulations are still not in place that I can find even now 14 months later.

 

As long as we continue to enact laws that are based on words that have multiple meanings that are subject to the individual interpretations of anyone who can take the time to decipher them but only the interpretations of the judges count, we will never have the democracy that all MPs, Senators, media and sound bite talking heads say we have but Canadians know only too well we do not.

 

K I S S

 

Jeremy Arney

Letter to the Premier of BC re 2012

Dear Premier,

I am sure you are overwhelmed with advice and suggestions from political pundits, journalists or lobbyists all paid to bend your mind in their favour, and with little interest in the people and families of BC. Here then are some thoughts from someone who is just a BC resident for you to consider (maybe) in this new year stretching ahead of us.

It is often said that health care costs are becoming too large a part of the provincial (and I suppose federal) budget, and my thought on this is that as you decrease the revenue, by decreasing or eliminating major corporate taxes, then inevitably the health care cost increases (even though in fact relatively meager) become a larger percentage of the decreased available budget. But then so does the cost of each MLA and the attendant staff for them. The point here is that even if health care costs were to remain static, their proportion in a decreasing pie increases upwards. The percentage tells only that there is a falsehood in announcing that health care costs are increasingly too high. No – the pie is being made too small.

I am a simple man without any degrees in economics but I do know that if my expenses outstrip my income I am heading for trouble. In fact I am now old enough that I should be able to survive without having to work, but it appears that I will still be working when I reach 8o simply to be able to eat and pay my MSP premium now increased to $64 per month, thank you. The other alternative is to borrow against the future and that incurs interest on the monies borrowed. This is what BC is doing and foolishly you are paying way too high compounding interest to commercial, probably international, banks instead of using the Bank of Canada. In fact you have told municipalities which borrowing organizations they should use have you not? and they do not include the Bank of Canada.

How often I have heard politicians of all stripes saying we have to lower or eliminate corporate taxes to invite investment in our country or province, and that to me is absurd. We have resources that the world needs and people who can and will work hard. I say to those corporations: “Come and get them and pay a fair share for them”. We have water we are giving away to resource developments which will poison our headwaters and eventually all our rivers, aquafers and lakes and then what will we use to drink and to irrigate our farms? But by then all our water will be owned and controlled by French companies through CETA ( and you had better believe they will not allow free access to “their” water for hydraulic fracturing for instance) , but we will still have the same problem and that is: how do you get around a toxic water supply?

It would seem to me that any company wishing to invest in a province would like to know foremost that the province is financially sound not going broke, and able to provide the manpower and services they will require. It is said that if you build a better mouse trap the world will buy it, in the same way BC can and should be a place where being a partner in prosperity for ALL is a requirement, not just a place that allows itself to be plundered for the sake of a dollar or two profit to outsiders.

Everything stems from a healthy budget which in turn means healthy revenues from ALL participants in our province not just the working stiffs.

Ms. Clark, the Bank of Canada was designed to help the Federal and Provincial governments and even the municipalities to avoid the high compounding interest of the commercial banks you are using now to cover your budgetary shortfalls. I recommend that you use the Bank of Canada to benefit us all today and help us establish a financially strong and vibrant BC for our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Your so called “work plan” seems to revolve around drilling, digging or “fracking” things from the ground and shipping the result along with raw logs to Asia and that really does us a lot of good doesn’t it? How about manufacturing some things Ms. Clark? We used to do that once and used B C people to do it . Now we only use people to dig and cut and then to ship raw materials overseas just so we can get those loaded container ships sent back here again with those same raw materials changed into cheaply made goods as it shows in your TV ads. Shouldn’t we be sending those containers back loaded with BC made products?

The BC Green plan is and always was a double standard and simply a Campbell/Liberal con game. If you add a carbon tax on fuels, and then use that tax to promote coal, gold and copper mines, as well as oil and gas exploration – including drilling in the Georgia Straight and up through the Charlottes ! – all of which are many times more carbon intensive and destructive than automotive fuels then there is an obvious self-defeating effect. With your tax exemptions and subsidies to the resource sector this carbon tax is paid for largely by the people who have to use cars because public transport is soo poor everywhere except perhaps Vancouver. Everyone knows that a certain amount of carbon is necessary for healthy forests and plant life and for healthy oceans. It is the commercial excesses and by products that are the main problem along with their attending toxic gasses and liquids. The fact is Ms. Clark that the only real beneficiaries of carbon taxes are corporations such as Goldman Sachs who corner the market in carbon futures and make a financial fortune without producing or doing anything of value. Surely you understand that the unproductive oil futures are what causes the price at the pumps and heating fuels to be so high? What we really need is a pollution tax exempted from any futures plan. So let’s have a REAL Green plan, not some flimflam mumbo jumbo.

Finally, Ms. Clark, Premier of BC, the biggest capital that BC has is not in the ground, but is above it in the form of the people of BC.

We are BC.

We are the past, present and future of BC and until politicians such as yourself not only recognize that but act upon it, BC has little of real value to offer the country or the world except to be open to the exploitation of our resources.

It’s not rocket science Ms Clarke, but rather common sense, which seems to have but little value today in the Canadian political worlds.

Please instead of expensive American and Harper style attack ads against your opponents, why not concentrate on BC and our real problems and fix them. That in itself would serve you much better in the eyes of those whose votes you are seeking. We are all tired of attack ads which indicate we are fearful children unable to think for ourselves.

Jeremy

An extra 30 MPs is good for what? or whom?

THE ABSOLUTE FOLLY OF BILL C-20

Well like in so many other things Dictator Harper has rammed through his Bill C-20 to enlarge the House of Commons by 30 more MPs at a financial cost of about $100 million per election cycle and with only one thing to actually show for it.

Less representation for the people of Canada.

How can that be you may ask, well its actually very simple.
There is already no time for most MPs to represent what they think their constituents may think or feel, never mind what their party does, and closure is called more often than not, so where are the extra 30 voices going to be heard? And how can this extra number of MPs jostling for time be either fair, representative or even loosely democratic.

Oh wait a minute, they will probably all be CPC voices so it doesn’t matter, it’s just extra bums getting off the back benches to vote as instructed by Harper when the time comes.

This is another example of sleight of hand where the object is not allowed to be examined to carefully lest the public see what is really going on here.

Have you ever played “Find the Queen” ? well that is what’s going on here

Let it be said that I have nothing against real representation and would applaud it if it were happening here in Canada. It is not and will not under Harper, and with more MPs it will just get worse.

The financial shell game being played on Canadians is absolutely appalling. We
have the ability to be debt free in the eyes of the world, no compounding interest to international banks, no debt to the IMF, World Bank or Bank of International Settlements. Just a debt to ourselves through the Bank of Canada, and any interest we were charged by the BOC would be paid back to us again; so simple and so pure and yet so unfriendly to the IMF, etc., that we would never be allowed to do it.. The last country that tried to do this (Libya) Canada helped bomb into destruction and killed the leader at the behest of those same banks. In fact we “lead” the mission, if doing the bidding of the IMF, USA, Israel etc., can be called leading.

 

Back to those extra 30 MPs.

How can more be better in a restricted time and place?

Is quantity better than quality?

Is force better than serious contemplation?

Silly questions to ask the CPC as they have no voice,.

Silly questions to ask Harper because he will not answer.

Can you imagine Question Period with an extra 30 MPs to drown out questioners and hurl jeers and smears at them?

I have suggested to the opposition leaders that as question period does not elicit any real answers from any minister, including the head one, in this Harper Government that they should just get up and walk out for the 45 minutes of oral questions and do some work in their offices for their constituents instead of wasting time at a verbal bun fight.

That would be the day !

Meanwhile we are now stuck with an extra $100 million to be found, and you know that is coming from the pockets of the working stiffs, not the corporations who are getting yet another tax gift.

Jeremy

What’s in a name?

What’s in a name?

The Chretien Government for example was called that by the media, MPs of all sides and the people of Canada specially those who could not bear the thought of a Liberal Government.

I have not been able to find where that name went any further than what was really a nickname.

The “Harper Government” on the other hand has letter head for governmental communications, instructions from the PMO to refer to the government as the Harper Government, and of course media branding as well. All back benchers for the government refer to “our” government or even “this conservative” government and I feel sure that is because they cannot use the name Harper in the House.

So why am I going through this exercise?

Well I suppose it is because the Harper Government does not reflect the views, morals or concerns of the Canadian People either here at home or to the world generally. I have no need I think to list where we have lost our way internationally, but I believe it is because the Harper Government is based completely on an ideology which is in turn based on international corporate needs and regulations, and trade deals that are not in Canada’s best interests, nor those of the Canadian People.

So I reluctantly acknowledge that the government we currently have is not the Government of Canada, but is indeed the Harper Government. In a way I am glad because I would hate to think that any Government of Canada would openly and proudly use its military to destroy another country (Libya) simply because the corporate IMF told it to do so.
I would hate to think that a Government of Canada would be so inept as to be unable to get a seat on the security council of the UN; nor so determined to sabotage and disrespect the world’s attempts to get some control over climate change simply to protect a filthy development in Alberta.

For these reasons and others too numerous to list here I would say that on May 2nd we elected for better or worse a majority “Conservative” Government for Canada, based on election lies, contempt and disrespect for the Canadian People. However we did not elect a “Harper Government” and frankly I refuse to acknowledge that this Harper Government is in fact the Government of Canada.
As we are stuck with this Harper Government which is determined to completely change Canada as we have known it, by its leader’s boast, let them do their worst as we cannot stop them, but let it be known that the damage is being done by the Harper Government, not the Government of Canada.

Jeremy

How did this Canadians First Nations situation come about?

For some time now I have been amazed at the way the Canadian Government treats our first Nation and aboriginal peoples.

Let’s just go back a short way in history, a couple of hundred years or so would do, and see what we have done.

For thousands of years the peoples of North American survived very nicely in conditions that were really not much of a problem to them. They had their ways of feeding themselves, and surviving the weather and the seasons that were very efficient. To prove that we just have to see that for thousands of years they survived.

Largely their food supplies came to them in the form of roving herds of beasties (or fish and whales on the coasts), and those beasties provided them with their houses, clothes, tools and food. Water was plentiful, clean and full of fish. Certainly some of the watering holes would be a mess after a herd of beasties had passed through, but nature has a way of solving that problem on it’s own very quickly. On the coasts fish and whales were plentiful, trees were used for buildings and clothes and tools and in other words the local and readily available resources were used in traditional ways that worked.

To sum this all up, there really wasn’t a problem with their way of life in that it worked very well for them for as I say thousands of years. Yes there were wars amongst the nations but not fake or mystical religious wars, rather wars of envy of location, housing, animals, crops, women, or power struggles or simply amalgamation, and let’s not criticizes that as it has been historic all over the world. They believed then and still do in the creator who had different names in the different languages but in essence was the same creator, a kind and gentle “being”, for want of a better word, who asked little of his people but that they look after the land for him.

But then along came the settlers from the old countries who knew best how to live, which of course is why they were looking for better lands to plunder having ruined their own lands.

The arrogance of these early arrivers that their way of business, living and religion was best and therefore had to be adopted by the “ignorant savages” still boggles my mind, but it was of course a product of that time.

Or was it?

Have we moved on?

We bought them strange diseases, deceit, destruction of their lands, huge reduction of their beasties, poisoning of their water, removal of trees and worst of all an insistence that our form of housing in a specific static place, thus removing their ability to move when and if they needed to and had done so for centuries.

Is today any different?

We still tell them what to do, when and how, and it is our way as non-aboriginals that we force them to accept, still completely and arrogantly assuming that our way is the best; that the deals we made with them in the form of treaties were made by others and therefore not to be taken seriously; that we have herded them into and onto reservations and taken away their traditional ways of surviving; that we have plundered and continue to plunder their lands, turned their water poisonous; forced them to accept a form of housing that isn’t even sustainable in the cities; having bought them disease we make them sicker with our presumptuous form of medicine which works in a way that is totally foreign to their ways. Treating symptoms with money driven drugs instead of treating the cause of the symptoms which is what they had done for centuries doesn’t serve them anymore than it serves the rest of us. The claim that new diseases need these drugs is of course self-serving as we bought them these diseases and then removed their ability to treat them their way.

I listen to committee meetings in both houses and am amazed that this government is trying to shift the blame for the current state of affairs firmly onto the ‘incapable’ first nations instead of acknowledging that their way of life was damaged so badly and that we are not allowing our historically competent aboriginals to decide for themselves what they want to do. We still insist after a couple of centuries of failure that we know best. A look at our inner cities with their ever growing homeless peoples would show that this claim is false. Slums, overcrowding, disease, poverty, mentally sick, alcoholism, drug use, broken buildings crumbling instead of being refurbished to use by the poor and sick and homeless all show how successful we are.

I believe it is time we woke up to the fact that we do not know best, that we are murdering this land called Canada along with is original peoples and we do not have that right.

It is too late to undo the wrong we have done, fake and insincere apologies will not work, but it is not too late to support and allow the aboriginals of our country to live their own way at their own pace and if we are smart we will learn from them how to treat this land and indeed this planet so our children and grandchildren will have a habitable place on which to live.

“Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.” … a Cree Indian prophecy

Jack Etkin on Border Action Plan

Harper’s Border Action Plan: 

‘                                                             ONE BORDER’

TO BE PUT AROUND CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

and the border between us is being removed …

Last week, in Washington D.C, Stephen Harper and Barack Obama announced the next step in the corporate takeover of North America.  This new agreement aims to put one ‘corporate-planned’ border around both Canada and the United States, while at the same time largely ‘removing’ the border between our two countries,  to create ‘something new’.    Negotiations between our governments, and the world’s biggest corporations, have been going on for the past 18 months or more  –  in complete secrecy.  On December 7th the ‘Joint Action Plan’ was publicly announced, with a massive propaganda barrage aimed at Canadians to convince us that this is a truly wonderful new deal for us all.

But it’s not!

REMEMBER:  THE CORPORATIONS WANT THE DEAL. THE CORPORATIONS  OWN THE MEDIA. THEIR MEDIA TELLS US THE DEAL IS GREAT

One part of this deal is to put one border around both Canada and the United States probably to give the corporations more control than they already have.

Canadian resources will become ‘North American’ resources.

Beginning in the summer of 2012, police forces from both countries will begin to operate on ‘both sides’ of what used to be our border.

As of 2015, Canadian nursing graduates will have to pass an American exam in order to work in what used to be Canada.  At the same time, our governments are being completely removed from the governing ‘process’, because  with two countries inside one border, but with only ‘one set of rules’, who will be making those rules?

Luckily,

a new ‘corporate authority’ The Regulatory Cooperation Council has been set up to do just that…

ANOTHER PART OF THIS PLAN IS TO WEAKEN AND GET RID OF ALL OF THE RULES AND REGULATIONS THAT PROTECT US FROM THE CORPORATIONS AND ALLOW PEOPLE TO HAVE SOME CHOICES.

Pesticide rules in Canada have recently been watered down to the more corporate-friendly US rules; so we Canadians now have more pesticides in our foods.  Similarly, every safety standard and health standard and environmental standard that they can get their hands on is going to be destroyed under this new agreement.

Several Canadian provinces, led by BC and Alberta, are already involved in secret agreements that give businesses the legal right to demand – on a wide variety of issues – that the lowest standard in any participating province will be applied to them, even if the province they are in has higher standards.  The corporations want one low level of standards right across Canada and the United States, and this is happening with the full support of very corrupt politicians and a totally corrupt media.  Neither Canadians nor Americans are even told about all of this, instead we are just betrayed.

To see the Harper Government’s point of view,   www.borderactionplan.gc.ca    Please click on the ‘Regulatory Cooperation Council’.  This is the corporate group that has been set up to bring in lower standards.

For the corporate point of view on all of this, Google:    CCCE The Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) represents 150 of the largest corporations in Canada.  Many people think the CCCE is the real government of Canada, and their website will tell you what a wonderful new border plan this is.  Virtually every tv station, radio station, and newspaper in Canada is owned by a CCCE member, which is exactly how they control everything that we see, hear and read in their media.  The two parts of this new plan are:   The Action Plan on Perimeter Security and Economic Competiveness    and the Action Plan on Regulatory Cooperation Both parts of this plan seem to be evolving without any participation from the citizens of either country, or our governments.  Just Mr. Harper and Mr. Obama.  Our two corporate puppets.

  What can we do?

1.  Support independent media.

The corporate control of the media is one of their most powerful weapons, and a real enemy of our democracy.

2. Support democracy.

Right now the corporations have all the power.  More democracy will give us citizens a voice in what is going on, and that has to be a good thing.

If you want to know more about Jack Etkin, google “Face to Face with Jack Etkin” , and enjoy his work in conjunction with Steve Poole, both of whom are from Victoria BC.

Rememberance Day letter to two of my grandsons

To my grandsons Kieran and Aiden.

This is Remembrance Day, November 11th 2011, and I have been having some thoughts today which I wanted to pass to you. I believe you are old enough to understand and if not, to ask questions.

This is the day when we are to remember those men and women who gave their lives for their countries believing that they and their countries were on the right side. Here in Canada, as in other countries, we tend to remember only our own men and women, but I have over the last few years been thinking not only of my own family but of all families from every country who lost their loved ones in war. I have met a pilot from Germany from WW2 and he was a man the same age as my father, with a wonderful family and they fed me in the south of France when I ran out of money. He was a human being as our First Nations People say.

For me in the 2nd World War, which was my mother’s and father’s generation’s war,  there were 5 men, 2 brothers for my mother and two more brothers for my father.  All those men, my father and 4 uncles, took part in WW2. 3 survived and 2 died.

My father’s brother died in England flying an airplane using a new on board radar system which was being tested. Unfortunately they had it hooked up backwards and instead of flying away from mountain in the dark, he flew into the mountain. I do not understand why they didn’t test it during the day when he could see, but they did not and my uncle Frederick died.  To make it worse my father was one of those scientists who was working on the new radar.  He didn’t say very much about it.

My mother’s brother was sent in a plane to parachute into Holland behind the enemy lines to try and help the Dutch resistance.  Again, unfortunately, the plan was leaked and the Germans were waiting for them and not one man arrived on the ground alive…my uncle Peter was one of them.

Yes it is important to protect all of us against what we think is evil, and in your Kung Fu lessons you are getting a taste of that in what you are taught about bullying and how to protect yourselves and others from it.

One of the things I have learned is that most wars are not brought about by hatred, but rather by a collection of cruel men (and women) who use something called propaganda to create passions of hatred and fear where none existed.  Today, there are advertisements for games of war on TV along with images of people being beaten by police or killed by terrorists, this is what creates the passions of fear and hate and not love for one another.

That is propaganda.

The difference between you and the boys from Japan, China, Germany, Russia and India are only really the colour of your skin and the language you speak. You all want to play and learn, so we should let you instead of creating the desire to kill even if it is only a video game or the fear of being different.

The town in which I was born, Southampton in England, was attacked during the war almost every night.  It was a mere few miles, or kilometers if you wish, from Portsmouth which was and still is a huge Naval Base.  Some lights were left on to fool the enemy into thinking it was Portsmouth and the result is that Southampton was very badly damaged and had to be rebuilt after the war. I showed your sister Shelby where the old High Street used to be inside the old castle walls and now it is new shopping centers, walk ways for people and commercial buildings.  The old walls still remain, but not in the way I remember them as a very small boy. So when in your games you blow up buildings and destroy towns, I think of my town of birth.  Maybe that’s another reason why I don’t like those video games.

Today, I went to Island View Beach and sat on a log and smoked a cigar and thought about not only my uncles but those I went to school with who have been killed in war, and I wept for them.

If you ask why I don’t go to the public ceremonies anymore it’s because they are now, I think, politicized and made into religious events and only serve to create passion for what our armed forces are doing now.

There is no way I can stand in a crowd of people who believe that dropping bombs from modern planes on unarmed and unsuspecting men, women and children, in the name of protecting them is what Canadians or any human beings should be doing. Yes civilians have always suffered in war, usually high numbers of them but wars, particularly today’s wars, are only about money and people are used as the excuse. To hear war and death being glorified and prayers being offered to one god or another for the success of those wars about money is more than I can stand.

So I go alone to the flag pole at Beacon Hill Park, or this year Island View Beach, and if one year you wish to come with me I will be happy to take you.

Your loving granpa.