03.30.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:45 pm by Administrator
I’ll have more to say on this in the future, but I thought that I’d point out something from the Liberals’ background document on their pension proposal today:
A Liberal government will work with the provinces and territories to enhance the CPP in two complementary ways. We will support a gradual increase in premiums and benefits under the core CPP to enhance the retirement security of all Canadians.
I’m astonished that we haven’t seen more of this in the media today. This is an issue that impacts all Canadians – especially young Canadians. CPP Premiums are one tax that everyone who works pays. More to the point – they’re a tax for something (a Canadian public pension) which seems likely to be either insignificant or non-existent by the time that it would matter to me (by the middle of the century). Given the aging of our population – and the continued global inflationary cost pressures on everything – it’s quite likely that my own share of the Canada Pension Plan will, by the middle of the century, be either inflated into irrelevancy or – even more likely – means tested out of existence.
And, in any case, we’re talking – in my own case and in the case of millions of other Canadians – about something that’s going to pay out a dubious benefit in the middle of the century.
I’m amazed at the willingness of the media to gloss over this – and that it hasn’t been picked up across the rest of the internet so far today. We already know that Mr. Ignatieff wants to raise taxes on businesses to support his give-away schemes and we know that those costs will be passed on down to Canadians. We’ve had – and will have – that fight. This, however, is a tax increased on ordinary working Canadians.
People forget – because of the fact that half of this tax is hidden from them – just how much this tax is worth. As things stand today, this tax impacts Canadians making as little as $48,300 per year to the tune of $4435.20. How much do the Liberals want to increase this tax?
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03.15.11
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:01 am by Administrator
Noted advocate of human rights Justin Trudeau responded to a Government of Canada publication that describes such practices as wife-beating, “honour” killings, and forced marriages as “barbaric” by… denouncing the language and calling for “responsible neutrality” in the government’s approach towards, well… all of the above. At first I found this somewhat difficult to believe – until I read the news reports and the exact words used by Trudeau himself:
“In casual conversation, I’d even use the word barbaric to describe female circumcision, for example, but in an official Government of Canada publication, there needs to be a little bit of an attempt at responsible neutrality.”
Umm… Why? Who exactly are we going to offend if we rightly condemn those who murder women who marry the “wrong” man or who in some other way offend the sensibilities of some sort of lunatic fundamentalist? The Taliban? Shouldn’t we desire that our society offend their ilk?
On fundamental questions such as these – regarding the abuse, torture, and murder of innocent women and children, can such a thing exist as a “responsible neutrality”? I put it to you that neutrality is irresponsible and immoral.
Ladies and gentlemen, there’s moral equivalency and then there’s moral equivalency. There’s only one word I can think of to describe the process of reading a document condemning the senseless murder of young girls and then complaining that the language used in the condemnation is offensive: idiocy.
Frankly, it suggests something that goes beyond the ordinary unwillingness of certain squishes on the liberal-left to condemn practices by members of certain groups that, were they engaged in by the majority in this country, they would rightfully use violence to stop. This is the level of parodic leftist non-judgement that I would normally expect to see on display in an Onion article or attributed to the villains in one of the Left Behind books.
It’s alarming to imagine that there is a sizable contingent in this man’s party who would like to see him be the Prime Minister someday. This sort of bizarre thinking suggests a mind so removed from anything resembling what most of us consider to be reality that, frankly, I would call into question this man’s ability to conduct his own affairs, let alone those of the nation.
And, further, let me just offer a few words of praise for Jason Kenney, the clear adult in this situation. Thank God (or whoever, in the spirit of Canadian non-judgementalism) that we have a government run by mature and confident individuals with the sort of clear-headed reason that allows them to look at these sort of practices and see them for what they are.
Under the last government – and governments of its ilk all over the world – there has been a sick willingness to make allowances for frankly barbaric practices – such as the “honour” killings denounced here – out of either cowardice in the face of pressure from a fanatical minority within one or another immigrant group or out of cold-blooded calculations that held that it was worth sacrificing the rights of a few citizens that happened to be little regarded among the minority group whose votes were being sought.
There was a time when we in the West had the self-confidence to stand up for human rights, even under difficult conditions. One of my favourite stories emerging from the old Raj. A delegation of local notables came to visit General Charles Napier to protest the British decision to ban the custom of Sati – the burning alive of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre. The General responded:
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; [then] beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
I wonder if the General’s lack of “responsible neutrality” towards the act of burning women alive would offend Mr. Trudeau as well.
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