Don Drummond, meet Hugh Mackenzie
Then take your stupid report and chuck it. The CCPA has published a new hunk of PDF by economist Hugh Mackenzie which slices and dices the Drummond report’s fiscal forecast and portrays it as a crisis-invention tool. I hate PDFs too, but I think it’s important enough to have a look at it and see what they’re on about.
And again with the pre-emptive legislation, Lisa Raitt
I’m beginning to think this might be a pattern. Same company, same rhetoric, same lies.
Happy International Women’s Day to all the women in my life
Friends, family, comrades, co-workers, store clerks, waiters, all. So much progress made, so much more to do. Personally and politically.
Taxes versus investment, polls versus manipulation
Pollster Frank Graves has an item on iPolitics.ca about the recent spate of polling that media outlets have reported as indicating solid and enthusiastic public support for all manner of spending cuts. The interesting bit to me comes a bit further down in the item wherein Graves talks about two approaches pollsters take to coming [...]
Sigh. I’ll say it. I don’t think Thomas Mulcair is a New Democrat
I’ve got friends and acquaintances in pretty much everyone’s campaign these days. So I’m going to disappoint someone I’m sure when I say that I can’t believe anyone who would be comfortable serving in Jean Charest’s cabinet could turn around and call themselves a New Democrat and be taken seriously, much less be made leader.
Train drivers and bus drivers
So there are three train engineers dead after their train derailed in Burlington, ON today. It’ll be a year before we know the how and the why of what happened.
Cell phone plan calculator: an innovative, digital service government would have offered
Had it not been killed by Tony Clement Treasury Board President, mister innovation and open government. Most likely at the behest of the companies whose labyrinthine, usurious and deliberately devious plans the website sought to unravel so that people could compare them.
Robocall voter “suppression”: who does that?
And more to the point, who orders that done? I don’t for an instant believe it starts and stops with the dude who was offered to the bus wheels this afternoon. It seems like it’s way bigger than just what Michael Sona is purported to have arranged.
The giant squirrel and fish this time
Earlier versions of this one had an end-of-reel shot of the squirrel fishing, which I quite liked. But in the name of brevity, it’s gone.
Toronto stops fielding email inquiries – oh what have you done?
So the City of Toronto’s answer service is going to stop fielding queries by email as of March 15. Because Mayor Rob Ford wants to save $280,000. Because he doesn’t care if hold times go back up to 75 seconds from their current 8 seconds. Because he apparently doesn’t care that his people are going to answer 70,000 more questions by phone instead. That’s how many emails the 311 service handled in 2010.
Full day kindergarten or… pointless tax breaks for profitable corporations
Economist Erin Weir digs up an interesting nugget about the results of the McGuinty government’s changes to corporate tax structure in the Drummond Report. The government claimed that adding HST to hitherto untaxed financial services and business-to-business transactions would nullify any tax savings brought by cutting the basic corporate tax rate.
Numbers or it didn’t happen: Mark Blevis on #TellVicEverything
Mark Blevis, mister podcast now digital public affairs specialist has some numbers on yesterday’s Twitterstorm/party around C-30, the Tories proposed legislation on “Lawful Access” to internet use data normally considered private. Hat tip to Erika Shaker.
So the world may be headed to heck in a handbasket
But I had so much fun with #TellVicEverything that I’m okay with it for now. Tomorrow, I’ll be right back at it working to lessen the stupid and increase the peace but I’m still chuckling over the fun Twitter had at the expense of someone who by all accounts deserves the ridicule he got.
The census is invasive, but warrant-less monitoring of internet use is not?
Is it me or do the Tories seem like they’re trying to suck and blow at the same time? Perhaps not, because of course the mandatory census is done as an issue. So now they can enact legislation that would require ISPs to install snoop ware and would allow police access to ISP subscriber information without a warrant.
Don Drummond will propose eliminating full day kindergarten
I will get to some evidence as to why killing the still-not-completely-implemented full day kindergarten in english public school boards is a really bad idea. I swear. But first, some invective.
