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Politicians focus too much on the wallets of the few.

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We welcome opinions from our readers like this one from Garfield Marks of Red Deer, AB.

According to the Ethics Commissioner, Trudeau broke ethical guidelines on behalf of a big corporate entity, SNC-Lavalin, and as expected, it appears, everyone is calling for his resignation. I am confused, but hasn’t almost every politician of a major political party, for the last few decades, been advocating breaks for big corporations and the top 1%.

Didn’t Alberta elect a Premier who had to pay an ethics violation fine when he was a federal cabinet minister? Does he not lead a party who had issues with electoral fraud, kamikaze candidate and members issued $75,000 in fines by the ethics commissioner, due to actions during their leadership race?

Was it not a conservative government that supposedly just gave a $4.5 billion tax break to businesses? Was it not a conservative government that was supposedly lowering taxes for the top 1%? Was it not a conservative government(s) that was cutting services to everyone else to pay for these tax breaks?

Here in Alberta was there not lots of promises of jobs to rationalize billions in tax breaks for corporations only to find out that Alberta then subsequently lost 14,000 jobs in July alone?

I am not saying that Trudeau’s actions pressuring the Attorney General to give a deal to a big company is okay, but don’t they all do special deals for big corporations? Don’t we as tax payers subsidize the oil industry, cow tail to unions, pay homage to gun manufacturers, serve the auto industry, and placate the wealthy? The average voter just pays for them.

My wallet sure feels those political fingers. My costs keep going up, while my income hasn’t kept pace.

My mind has tuned out the politicians, and their desire to woo the rich and big corporations, and my heart is focused on the future, and my family.

Scientists and engineers have made great discoveries and given me some great things like cars, computers, cell phones and medical break-throughs but these same non-partisan intellectuals have also made huge unsettling discoveries, and given me causes for concern.

Issues like climate change, reminiscent of second hand smoke, are concerns to our health and our lives but are not given the same level of regard as tax breaks for the big corporations.

Second hand smoke was a major health care cost but tax breaks for cigarette companies and tobacco growers were the demands.

There is an election this fall and here in my riding there is no contest, as the conservatives will win, then become a seat warmer no one hears about, till the next election. My concerns will be ignored, my wallet will get thinner to placate the more well to do.

I do think it is about time to move on from focusing on the wallets of the few and focus on the health of the whole community. The person or party that can convince me that their focus is on the whole, for the future and not on big corporations and the wealthiest in a realistic manner, will get my support and vote.

Will my wallet survive the next election? I hope so, but I cannot be certain. I am worried we might get a Trump-like Prime Minister out of protest and the climate crisis will be pushed back and my wallet will be front and centre for political fingers for another few decades.

Is there another option?

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Hillary Clinton Calls for Stricter Online Censorship as Establishment Fears Losing “Total Control”

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From Reclaim The Net

In an interview with CNN, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed her pressing need for social media companies to enhance censorship measures, suggesting that failure to do so would lead to the loss of “total control.” This declaration aligns with broader concerns expressed by figures within the Democratic Party regarding the control of information online.

Clinton’s remarks come in the wake of substantial changes in the space of online expression, notably influenced by Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022. Under Musk’s stewardship, the platform, now rebranded as X, has championed a more laissez-faire approach to content moderation. This stance has facilitated a pushback against what some perceive as misleading mainstream narratives, particularly evident in the recent coverage of FEMA’s reported mishandling of hurricane relief efforts in North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee – a narrative that the government is calling “misinformation.”

During her conversation with Michael Smerconish, Clinton criticized the existing legal framework that she believes enables unchecked content dissemination. “We should be, in my view, repealing something called Section 230, which gave platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs, that they shouldn’t be judged for the content that is posted,” she explained. “If they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control,” Clinton argued, using the think of the children argument.

She argues that this perspective is outdated and that without active moderation from platforms like Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, and TikTok, the consequences extend beyond mere social and psychological impacts to encompass real-world harm.

Adding to the discourse, John Kerry recently echoed similar sentiments at a World Economic Forum sustainability meeting, bemoaning the obstacles the First Amendment poses in controlling information flow. “It’s really hard to govern today. The referees we used to have to determine what’s a fact and what isn’t a fact has been eviscerated to a certain degree,” Kerry stated.

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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Is the Senate in Violation of the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and Hindering Reconciliation?

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Nina Green

Since it is abundantly clear there are no missing Indian residential school children, the ‘missing records’ by which they can be found are also imaginary, and the Senate Committee has been on a pointless wild goose chase

In July 2024 the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples issued an Interim Report entitled ‘Missing Records, Missing Children’.

The problem with that title?  There are no missing Indian residential school children.

Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray told the Senate Committee on 21 March 2023 that there are no missing children, and in support of that one need only look to her own two interim reports, neither of which identifies a single Indian residential school child who went missing and whose parents didn’t know what happened to their child.  In two years as Special Interlocutor, Kimberly Murray has not been able to name a single child who verifiably went missing from an Indian residential school.

Similarly, after two years of hearings, the Senate Committee itself was unable to name a single verifiably-missing Indian residential school child in its report.

Nor in fact has anyone in Canada to date been able to name a single verifiably-missing Indian residential school child.

Since it is abundantly clear there are no missing Indian residential school children, the ‘missing records’ by which they can be found are also imaginary, and the Senate Committee has been on a pointless wild goose chase which has cost Canadian provinces a very considerable amount of money since many of the witnesses called by the Committee have been provincial government employees whose departments have been forced to expend staff time and financial resources fruitlessly searching for records of missing Indian residential school children who are not missing.

Moreover by calling provincial coroners, medical examiners, and vital statistics department officials as witnesses, the Senate Committee has given the distinct impression that it is conducting a criminal investigation, and by focussing on Indian residential schools, the Committee has also given the distinct impression it has reconstituted itself as a new Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and is therefore in violation of the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

What justification does the Senate Committee have for conducting this public inquiry into ‘Missing Records, Missing Children’, and threatening to compel the attendance of witnesses at its hearings?

The Committee cites the following Order of Reference passed by the full Senate as justification for its July 2024 report, and for the sweeping and far-reaching recommendations the report contains:

ORDER OF REFERENCE

Extract from the Journals of the Senate of Thursday, March 3, 2022:

The Honourable Senator Francis moved, seconded by the Honourable Senator Cordy:

That the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples be authorized to examine and report on the federal government’s constitutional, treaty, political and legal responsibilities to First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples and any other subject concerning Indigenous Peoples; . . . .

It is glaringly obvious that the Order of Reference did not authorize the Committee to examine and report on missing Indian residential school children and missing records.  The Senate is part of the federal government, the major party to the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement under which Canadian taxpayers paid out billions of dollars to have all matters related to Indian residential schools settled once and for all – not re-opened by the Senate Committee on a whim.  The Senate Committee has thus interpreted the Order of Reference as giving it an authority the full Senate did not explicitly mention, and in fact had no power to grant to the Committee.

During its proceedings over the past two years, the Senate Committee did not trouble itself to prove that there actually are missing Indian residential school children.  Instead, the Committee operated on the basis that there are missing children even when Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray told the Committee that ‘The children aren’t missing’.

Based on the false assumption that there are missing Indian residential children, the Committee proceeded to castigate those the Committee falsely claimed were ‘withholding’ records which would help to find them.

In doing so, the Committee ignored the fact that the only body which was ever actually entitled to records was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Under the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, $60 million dollars was allocated to fund a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and section 11 of the TRC’s Schedule N mandate stated that, subject to privacy interests:

Canada and the churches will provide all relevant documents in their possession or control to and for the use of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

It should be noted that under the TRC’s Schedule N mandate important limitations were put in place stipulating who was obligated to provide documents to the TRC, how long that obligation was to exist, and what was to be done in case of a dispute about the production of documents.  The TRC’s Schedule N mandate provided that:

(1) only the federal government and the churches  – i.e., not provincial governments or any other entity – were obliged to provide documents;

(2) the federal government and churches were only obliged to provide documents to the TRC during the TRC’s five-year mandate; and

(3) under section 2(l) of the TRC’s Schedule N mandate any ‘disputes over document production’ would be referred to an officially-designated body, the National Administration Committee (NAC) set up under section 4.11 of the 2006 Settlement Agreement.

The TRC concluded its work and issued a final report in 2015.  That marked the end of any obligation on the part of the federal government and the churches to provide documents to the TRC, which ceased to exist and had no successor.

The Senate Committee has thus invented a problem where none existed.

That being the case – there was no problem until the Senate Committee invented one – exactly what is the problem the Senate Committee invented?

Again, one must refer back to the 2006 Settlement Agreement and the TRC’s Schedule N mandate.  Section 2(a) of the Schedule N mandate states that, subject to privacy legislation, the TRC was:

authorized and required in the public interest to archive all such documents, materials, and transcripts or records of statements received, in a manner that will ensure their preservation and accessibility to the public.

To fulfil this part of its mandate, in 2013 the TRC entered into a trust deed with the University of Manitoba by which the University undertook to preserve the TRC records and make them available to the general public.  That has not been done.  The University of Manitoba has not made the records generated by the TRC itself in the course of its work and the records turned over to it by the federal government and the churches prior to 2015 available to the general public on its National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) Archives website.  In particular, the University of Manitoba has not made available on its NCTR website the Sisters’ chronicles and Oblate codices which recorded daily life in the schools.  Instead, the University has allowed its staff at the NCTR (which is not a legal entity and is not a successor to the TRC, but merely a building on the University of Manitoba campus staffed by University of Manitoba employees) to turn its millions of digitized records into a publicly-funded Indigenous genealogical service, as Head Archivist Raymond Frogner has explained on several occasions, and as Tanya Talaga documents in her new book, The Knowing.

Thus, if the Senate Committee had wanted to investigate an actual problem, it could have investigated why the University of Manitoba has not complied with its legal obligations under the 2013 trust deed and has not made the TRC records available to the general public as mandated by the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement and the TRC’s Schedule N mandate, particularly the Sisters’ chronicles and Oblate codices which recorded daily life in the schools.

Instead of investigating that very real problem, the Senate Committee pursued a problem of its own invention by falsely claiming that records were being withheld from the ‘NCTR’ by Catholic church and provincial entities.  This appears to be deliberate obfuscation because the Senate Committee must surely know that the NCTR is not a legal entity, and thus cannot legally receive documents.  The actual recipient of documents sent to the ‘NCTR’ is the University of Manitoba, a fact which is never mentioned in the Senate report.  Moreover the Senate report provided no evidence that any documents were actually being withheld, which of course it could not have done even had it tried since there is no legal obligation on the part of any entity to provide the University of Manitoba and the University’s NCTR staff with documents or records.

Ignoring the fact that it had invented a non-existent problem, the Senate Committee forged ahead, holding hearings and threatening to compel the attendance of witnesses.  It is noteworthy that in so doing the Committee engaged in conduct which the TRC itself was forbidden to engage in under its Schedule N mandate, which states that ‘Pursuant to the Court-approved final settlement agreement and the class action judgments’, the TRC:

(b) shall not hold formal hearings, nor act as a public inquiry, nor conduct a formal legal process;

(c) shall not possess subpoena powers, and do not have powers to compel attendance or participation in any of its activities or events.  Participation in all Commission events and activities is entirely voluntary;

Here is what Senator Scott Tannas had to say about holding hearings and hauling up witnesses in public on 21 March 2023 in an exchange with the University of Manitoba’s employee, Stephanie Scott:

Senator Tannas: Thank you for being here today. Ms. Scott, you mentioned that there are still organizations and people with data that has not been turned over to you. We all want to do things to help. Part of helping is listening and talking, but sometimes part of help that we can provide is to actually do something. Here in the Senate, we do have the ability to hold oversight hearings. We can compel people to come and testify before us. What would you think if you gave us the names and the contacts for organizations that aren’t providing data, and we’ll haul them up here in public and we’ll ask them why?

Ms. Scott: I would love for you to do that. We have been waiting a long time, and I think it’s absolutely crucial. When Tk’emlúps happened and the children began to speak from beyond, that’s when the world and the landscape changed for us. We used to have to do a lot of reaching out across the country, developing partnerships, still trying to acquire different records. We have worked closely — I think it’s time — the time is now, the time could be today that you call upon those people, and I would be more than willing to share that information with you. We have done a public media campaign. There are no secrets. Everything has been public and we all know what’s happened, many of us here at this table. If you are willing to do that, I respectfully would ask you to help.

Senator Tannas: I certainly would advocate for that. If you want to send the clerk, for future discussions, the name of let’s say the three most flagrant and obvious resistors, we could start maybe there and talk about it as a group. All senators would have to agree that’s a kind of meeting that we were going to have. To me, there is a time for action. As Senator Arnot mentioned, we’re not going to get anywhere until we get all the data. We won’t get to the full and complete truth, which is what all Canadians should want. It’s the only way we’re going to move forward. Thank you, that’s the only question I had.

‘Flagrant and obvious resistors’?  It is unconscionable that Stephanie Scott, an employee of the University of Manitoba, would agree to provide (and did provide) the Senate Committee with a list of ‘flagrant and obvious resistors’ when she has to be aware that there is no legal obligation on the part of any entity to provide a single document to the University of Manitoba or its NCTR staff.

But even more importantly, it is unconscionable that the University of Manitoba and its NCTR employees continue to pretend that there are missing children, and continue to pretend that the University needs millions of records to identify these non-existent missing children.

Does the Senate Committee’s report further reconciliation? Obviously not.  The report misleads Canadians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, in a way which is harmful to both by pretending that thousands of Indian residential school children are missing who are not missing, and that the provinces and the Catholic Church are withholding records that would help find them.

The Senate Committee should immediately withdraw its July 2024 interim report.

Nina Green is an independent researcher who lives in British Columbia.

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