Shychemist

Elizabeth May: Kickass Canadians

All photos courtesy of Green Party of Canada

A little while back, I got the following email from Ottawa-South Green Party of Ontario member James Mihaychuk:

“You need to get Elizabeth May on your site. Elizabeth has been an activist, environmental lawyer, federal policy advisor, head of the Sierra Club Canada, our first elected Green MP, and was the 2012 Parliamentarian of the Year as selected by other MPs.”

Quite the endorsement. Not that the Green Party of Canada leader really needs it. She’s had an extraordinary life so far.

Read through Elizabeth’s Green Party bio or Wikipedia entry and you’ll learn that she was just a teenager when she led a successful campaign to prevent insecticide spraying on the forests of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. That finances kept her from finishing an undergraduate degree, but that she got through Dalhousie Law School anyway as a mature student (graduating in 1983 with a reference letter from then-Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton).

Good read.

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PM's former chief of staff controlled secret Tory fund - Politics - CBC News

CBC News has learned that Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, had control of a secret fund in the Prime Minister’s Office when he cut the now infamous $90,000 “personal cheque” to disgraced Senator Mike Duffy.

In exclusive interviews, sources familiar with the fund tell CBC the money in it comes from Conservative Party coffers, and at times has reached almost $1 million.

Like all political party funds, more than half of all the cash in the secret PMO stash ultimately comes from taxpayers’ pockets. Individual donors to political parties receive generous tax credits. Parties also receive millions from taxpayers through a per-vote subsidy, which is being phased out by 2015.

Sources tell CBC that Harper’s chief of staff — to date, there have been four, including Wright — has exclusive signing authority over the fund, which was set up in the PMO when the Conservatives came to power in 2006.

Its existence has apparently been a closely guarded secret for the past seven years, even within the Prime Minister’s Office. Only a few Conservative insiders know how the PMO cash stash has been spent.

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Call Me Crazy for Wanting the Government to Do its Job

Last week, citizens demanded answers from their Prime Minister — a reasonable enough request — and the leader of our responsible government promptly ignored us. He treats us like we have no rights at all. And given our lack of reaction, I guess we don’t.

Greg Weston: Senate scandal may be Harper's worst hour - Canada - CBC News

The widening Senate scandal that the prime minister flippantly tried to dismiss as a ‘distraction’ just days ago has instead become arguably Stephen Harper’s worst hour.

The question is no longer only whether taxpayers have been stiffed by the expense-account hijinks of a few senators feeling overly entitled to their entitlements.

At risk is Harper’s own credibility, with his apparent mismanagement of the growing political crisis having already provoked rare public criticism from members of his own cabinet, caucus and Conservative party core.

The worst part about this isn’t that so much wrong doing has been done in this scandal, its that the PM hasn’t admitted any fault what so ever. This man doesn’t have an ounce of accountability in his body. I’m sorry but no one is going to believe that someone who is such a control freak, would not know what his staff and ministers are doing. This is just the latest in a long line of scandals and rogue, disrespectful behaviours.

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Canada has lost international stature, Chrétien says

A decade after Jean Chrétien risked the ire of the United States by declining to support its attack on Iraq, the former prime minister says Canada has lost some of the international stature that helped it take a more independent line.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Mr. Chrétien said Canada made the right decision by refusing to join the war without a clear resolution from the United Nations Security Council. But he also expressed regret that Canada’s status within that body may have slipped since that time, with the country losing its bid for a Security Council seat and reducing its presence in Africa in recent years.

This month, Americans are marking the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq with a sense of profound introspection.

Public opinion polls suggest many believe the war, in which tens of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans died, was a mistake.

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Where does Tom Flanagan think child porn comes from? iPolitics Insight

When Tom Flanagan appeared on CBC, he was usually as frisky as an Ikea meatball.

Lots of horseplay: the monkey suit, looking into his coffee in a spoof of Chief Theresa Spence seeking enlightenment in her fish broth, the dagger smile after a droll put-down.

Now the man behind Stephen Harper’s rise to power has blown himself up over stupefying comments about child pornography. CBC’s Power and Politics has dumped Flanagan. The PM’s communications director, Andrew MacDougall, tweeted out the death sentence on the PM’s former confidante, describing his views on child pornography as “repugnant, ignorant and appalling”.

Tom is toast — and this is a big deal for the Conservative party.

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Glad this repulsive man’s career is over. Ugh.

These are the people who are running my country.

New policy gives government power to muzzle DFO scientists

“Everything has a crack in it; that’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen, take a bow.

Another crack has appeared in the Harper government’s surreptitious but merciless war to muzzle Canadian scientists — and just about everyone else.

The light entering through this particular crack shines on a disturbing fact. Canada, the only parliamentary democracy in the Commonwealth where a government has been found in contempt of Parliament, is now the only democracy in the world where a government bureaucrat can suppress scientific research.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada, where a reign of terror aimed at choking off internal leaks has been in full swing since the disastrous decision to close the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), has issued a new policy on the publication of scientific papers.

[…]

“The most disconcerting elements to the new policy are that they will apply to all scientific submissions, including those co-authored by non-DFO scientists, and that DFO managers have been given a hammer that they have not previously been able to wield: the withholding of copyright permission to allow for the publication of an article that has been externally peer-reviewed and accepted for publication by a scientific journal.”

Hutchings thinks that this could lead to government scientists, especially younger ones, thinking twice before undertaking certain projects that might displease their managers. Even if never exercised, the mere existence of this new power for DFO managers could suppress scientific ideas, hypotheses, data and conclusions that might raise serious objections to government policy.

The Harper government is well known for its policy-based approach to the facts rather than evidence-based decision making. The classic example was the disbanding of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy because, as Harper cabinet minister John Baird explained at the time, the government didn’t like the advice it was getting.

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And the great canadian muzzling of scientists continues. .____.

This government needs to go.

Canadian LOLitics: Best of '12: Canadian Political Quotes of Year

canadianlolitics:

‘I should have called him an Honourable Asshole.’ - Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre

‘Mr. Speaker, […] I rise today to condemn the Conservatives for their boosterism and cheerleading of the asbestos cartel and the human misery it causes. […]Dante should have reserved a special level of hell for [these] charlatans and the fraudsters.’ - Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre

‘I want my Canada back!’ - Justin Trudeau, MP for Papineau

‘Rupert Murdoch is a bag of shit.’ - Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre

‘This is a minister who uses extreme language, who shouts and sounds like the angry troll under the bridge in 3 Billy Goats Gruff.’ - Charlie Angus, MP for Timmins-James Bay

‘It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to connect the dots’ - Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre

‘Who the hell uses a burner cell phone when they’re not trying to hide something? [..] Only dope dealers, and Hell’s Angels, and Tony Soprano use burner cell phones.’ - Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre

‘We do not want any smartass gibberish from the member for Peterborough. We have had enough of that.’ - Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre

‘Don’t you threaten me you little pissant.’ - Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre

‘The good new is I wrote ‘Fuck You Stephen Gordon’ then erased it. But I reserve the right to call you a pompous dickhead’ - Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre

‘Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for 8 Mile for the question. […] I will simply say I am not afraid to stand and defend our party, but he is not The Real Slim Shady.’ - Dean Del Mastro, MP for Peterborough and Parliamentary Secretary

‘The Ballad of Justin and Patrick’ - Rodger Cuzner, MP for Bras d’Or—Cape Breton

‘This is such an asinine process that the Conservatives have put us in.’ - The Honourable Scott Brison, MP for Kings-Hants

“If the arse falls out of the Euro, even with primary creditor status these are uncharted territories.” - The Honourable Scott Brison, MP for Kings-Hants

‘The PM doesn’t know his arse from a hole in the ground’ - Ryan Cleary, MP for St. John’s South-Mount Pearl

Is the guy that stupid or is he that stupid? I know he sleeps a lot, but I didn’t realise he was also that stupid. […] It symbolises he’s an idiot and shouldn’t be sitting in parliament. […] What a dickhead, I’d say it stronger than that, but what a complete dickhead. - Peter Stoffer, MP for Sackville-Eastern Shore

‘[The BBC] told us to fuck off’ - The Honourable John Baird, MP for Ottawa West-Nepean and Minister of Foreign Affairs

I hear [my Twitter followers] say, you know, ‘Bob Rae, you’re an asshole’. […] I’m working my way and trying to represent the people and speaking in Question Period and here we have vox populi, the thoughtful man on the street, ‘you are an asshole!’. Thank you very much. I read it on my Twitter and I get up and ask a question.’  - The Honourable Bob Rae, MP for Toronto Centre and Interim Leader of the Liberal Party

“Listen, I would never judge someone who screwed their babysitter for years or knocked up their secretary, so don’t ask me to.” - Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre

“I’m not ‘worked up’ so much as ‘fed up’ with the rat faced whores in the Conservative Party who neglect to invite me to announcements in my riding.” - Pat Martin, MP for Winnipeg Centre