Poll says Canadians think justice system is too lenient, so Liberals, NDP and the CBC say Canadians must be reeducated

In a move that is entirely typical of the delusional arrogance of Canada's leftist political establishment, their response to a poll indicating that a majority of Canadians have lost confidence in the justice system is not to fix the system but to want to reeducate the pubic to be satisfied with it.

An internal study conducted by the Justice Department and obtained by the Canadian Press  "concludes the public believes victims are too often ignored in the justice system, and that prisons do a poor job of rehabilitating offenders."

The Conservative government has committed to introducing legislation to impose tougher mandatory sentences for crimes such as sex offenses against children and for the system to place more importance on the right of victims. But Opposition critics in the NDP and Liberal parties, as well as some federal bureaucrats argue that declining rates of crime in some areas mean that Canadians need to be "educated" about the virtues of the existing system.

These opposition critics probably do not live in crime-ridden areas of Toronto, however one or two may represent areas of Vancouver where during elections, junkies are reportedly given sandwiches   and are bussed to polling stations with instructions to cast a vote for a particular candidate.

Remarkably, in its usual effort to spin the news to its own biases, the CBC reported this story as "Canadians think fix for courts lies in education, report says" implying it it is not a small number of politicians and bureaucrats and CBC wonks who think that, but the majority of Canadians who in fact hold the opposite view.

This CBC headline implies the exact opposite of the study's conclusion

As Stephen Harper prepares to leave for Israel, NDP-linked website rabble.ca publishes a shockingly anti-Semitic article

Jews only care about Israel. They care about Israel more than Canada. Stephen Harper and Canada's Conservative Party know this and it forms the basis of their public support for Israel.

Anti-Semitic charges like that form the basis of many discussions among depraved neo-Nazis in their septic online bunkers. The above are not the precise words, but form the clear, obvious message of an article published by the far-left website rabble.ca on the day that Canada's Prime Minster will leave for an official trip to Israel.

Karl Nerenberg, the Ottawa correspondent for rabble, attributes Conservative wins in the last election in a few urban ridings with a substantial number of Jewish voters exclusively to Stephen Harper's support for Israel. He says, in essence, that that the Jews were responsible for the victories of under-qualified politicians in key ridings solely because of Harper's support for the Jewish State.

According to rabble's Nerenberg, the Conservatives "are banking on their [the Jews'] ardent support of Israel to gain needed voters, and so far it's working. In 2011, in Toronto’s York Centre, a rather indifferent Conservative candidate, with the thinnest of thin résumés, Mark Adler, managed to defeat hockey Hall-of-Famer and Liberal champion of a national daycare program, Ken Dryden. The riding’s Jewish voters moved quite significantly toward the Conservatives in that case."

A simple review of Canada's most recent census reveals that Nerenberg's reasoning is as facile as it is bigoted.  There are more than a million Muslims in Canada compared with less than three hundred thirty thousand Jews. Were Nerenberg correct in his assertion that Harper's Mid East policies are a cynical ploy to entice Jews, then it would follow to reason that strongly favoring Israel would repel Muslims. All major political parties attempt to appeal to ethnic voting blocs. But as a strategy whose sole goal was to win elections, it would be preposterous to try to win over one group at the expense of alienating another that is more than three times as large.

Founded by anti-Israel fanatic Judy Rebick, rabble's publisher is the same-sex partner of Libby Davies, the Deputy Leader of Canada's Official Opposition whom, in in 2010, was condemned by current NDP leader Tom Mulcair for her comments that effectively denied Israel's legitimacy and right to exist. Funding for that online hub of extremism, which has billed itself as the "official media sponsor" of the annual hate-fest "Israeli Apartheid Week" comes in part from the NDP think-tank The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The article today by Nerenberg reflects the hateful biases which form rabble.ca's core values. He claims that in 2011, he overheard Cabinet Minister Jason Kenney, "loudly telling someone at the other end of his cell phone call about the Conservatives’ excellent chances in a number of urban ridings -- all because of the Jewish vote."

Naturally, the collapse of the Liberal Party because of a terrible campaign headed by the poor political skills of Michael Ignatieff plays no role in Nerenberg's explanation for gains by the Conservatives in the ridings he describes. Nerenberg's implications are that they are only because of a sinister confluence of Jewish self-interest and loyalty to a foreign country with cynical Conservative politicking.

Stephen Harper has been clear about the reasons for his support of Israel, a liberal democracy, in its strife dealing with neighbors who are antithetical to western values and who have expressed genocidal aspirations towards Jews. But no, that's all a big put-on by Harper if Nerenberg's "analysis" is to be accepted. Nerenberg's claim of what he allegedly overheard is, in his mind, evidence of his own conspiracy theory.

Oddly for the Jewish community, there are some useful idiots within it who would make common cause with people like rabble's Karl Nerenberg. Former Jewish Canadian Congress boss Bernie Farber recently appeared along with Nerenberg at a panel at the "progressive" Toronto synagogue Temple Emanu-El. When confronted by concerns from Jewish Defense League head Meir Weinstein on his giving imprimatur to the hateful views promoted by Nerenberg and his employer, Farber dismissed them, referring to his co-panelist as a "respected journalist."

The quarters in which a person respects the types of biases expressed by Karl Nerenberg are ones that many decent people would avoid like the plague.

If Nerenberg is really interested in quotes from Jason Kenney, hopefully he will heed one from an interview the Conservative Minister gave this week to Postmedia's Mark Kennedy. 

"“We see the kind of culture of hatred in various parts of the world, regrettably in some dark corners of Canada, as some of this kind of new anti-Semitism...It often finds itself at the nexus between radical Jihadi Islamism and the far left" said Kenney. 

The 'nexus' of which Kenney spoke is in strong evidence at rabble.ca, where they act as apologists for Islamic terror against Israel.

But this nexus is nothing new. It happened in the Second World War when the Islamic prelate in the Palestinian Mandate, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, allied himself with Adolf Hitler and helped him raise troops with the shared intent of annihilating Jews.

Reading the extremist leftism in rabble.ca today, and how similar some of the commentary is to right-wing extremism, it serves as a reminder that NAZI is an acronym for National Socialist.

Tories may take the wind out of Justin Trudeau's only policy plan

OTTAWA — As the year ends, Justice Minister Peter MacKay is strongly hinting that steps to modernize Canada's marijuana laws might be just around the corner.

Fining pot smokers for possession of small amounts is one policy the government will likely consider.

"That doesn't mean decriminalizing or legalizing, but it does mean giving police options, for example, to issue fines in addition to any other sanctions, or as a substitute for other sanctions," MacKay told QMI Agency. "These are things that we are willing to look at in the new year, but there's been no decision taken."

This is the first time the Conservatives have mentioned the idea since Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the feds were looking "very carefully" at it in August.

The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police says fining pot smokers may be just the ticket to give officers an option other than ignoring law-breakers or criminally charging them, setting up a long, expensive legal process.

Lunatic leftist group says CBC boss Hubert Lacroix is part of an evil Conservative Party conspiracy

Really? Hubert Lacriox???

From LeadNow's website

The loons at Leadnow.ca, the organization that brought you enough BS about the "Robocalls Scandal" to fertilize all of Saskatchewan, have completely gone off the deep end.


h/t Matthew L

How dare the mean Tories make fun of Prince Bonehead Trudeau!??!

Attack Ads have a valuable place in our political system.

But morons in the (big L) Liberal media, with a puppy love crush on Prince Bonehead, can't handle it when their idol is mocked and have flocked to his defense..



UPDATE: An idiotic Toronto Star columnist has jumped the shark, going beyond the facile comparison of attack ads to "cyber bullying," he has compared them to terrorism:

What does it mean to say these ads “work”? It doesn’t mean public discourse about issues is, in any sense, enhanced. It doesn’t mean voter turnout is increased, or respect for the political process deepened, or the country strengthened. No, to say attack ads work means that the “attacker” benefits, gets more power, earns more money, has more control, while the “attacked” is weakened, diminished, left powerless.... 

Lots of nasty things in our society work, in this sense, quite nicely. Yes, let’s start with bullying. It often works rather well, in the tawdry way we’ve defined: Creepy little twerps with crummy self-esteem feel important when they humiliate others. 

Terrorism works, too, as we’ve been reminded again recently — a whole city was shut down, every major media outlet placed on monovision, by two losers who are now famous around the world. If that’s not a victory, what would one would look like?

And incidentally, the Star has the concept backwards - terrorism, like attack ads, doesn't work if the targets are capable of responding  effectively. Ask Osama bin Laden if you don't believe me. And if one dead and one wounded, incarcerated and one soon-to-be-tried-for-a-capitol-offense Boston Marathon terrorist, who have shamed their Islamist ideology is The Star's idea of "victory," then it explains a great deal about their vapid, defeatist, self-pitying editorial philosophy.

Former Drama teacher Trudeau has lame response to "in over his head" ad

Liberals may lap up Justin Trudeau's wimpy response to the Conservative attack ad "just in over his head" launched against last week.

In a cheesy classroom setting Trudeau effectively reminds us that he isn't up to the job to which he aspires. Repeating "he worked hard" to get where he is, with his paper-thin list of accomplishments, implicit is that the hardest work he ever did was manage to get the surname "Trudeau" on his birth certificate.

His father's looks, his mother's brains

A day after winning the Liberal Party leadership, the Conservatives launch an attack ad against Justin Trudeau. The theme of him not being too bright is one they will hammer away at for the next 2 years. And Trudeau has given them plenty of ammunition.

Liberal and NDP Proportional Representation pushers' open secret: It's about defeating Harper

Two prominent Members of Parliament and Elizabeth May's predecessor as head of Canada's Green Party were the speakers Thursday night at what was billed as a Town Hall to discus the merits of changing Canada's electoral system to Proportional Representation (PR).

Liberal Carolyn Bennett and former NDP leadership candidate Peggy Nash along with the Green's Jim Harris were at the 519 Church Street Community Centre in downtown Toronto at what could  more appropriately be described as a pep rally for PR and strategy session on how to defeat Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

Jim Harris, Carolyn Bennett &
Peggy Nash at the "Town Hall"

The speakers, moderator, organizers and hundred or so audience members in the room, with the exception of one, were uniformly there to express support for PR and to find ways advancing it as the way Canada is governed. The gathering it should be noted, was not a typical cross-section of Canadian voters. The 519 Centre is a hub in what is commonly known as Toronto's Gay Ghetto, a bustling, neon-lit strip of bars, restaurants and clubs. The Centre itself is a meeting place for a number of radical groups that are considered to be extremist, even within Toronto's "progressive" leaning Gay community.

Dr. Bennett, the St Paul's MP, was the first speaker and confirmed that the crowd there all supported changing the electoral system to PR, so she didn't try to sell the concept. She did discuss how to sell it to the rest of the electorate. Ontario held a referendum in 2007 on proportional representation and it was resoundingly rejected by 63.13% of the vote.

The consensus from the dais was that the reason the proposition failed was due to insufficient time and efforts devoted to education about Proportional Representation and its supposed advantages. This assumption reflected an unfortunate arrogance all-too-common to our political classes which presupposes that the public is stupid, and when we make decisions of which "progressive" leaders disapprove, it's because we are "uneducated."

There were quite a few suppositions by the speakers in at the Town Hall and the most glaring was that everyone agreed that Harper's Conservative government must be defeated at all costs. Indeed, assuming a uniform outlook, they didn't even bother to disguise their motive for wanting Proportional Representation - that it was the best way to prevent the Tories from getting a majority government.

Dr. Bennett, who was a member of Paul Martin's Liberal government, has only taken on her fervent advocacy of PR since her party lost power, and embraced it further since the Liberals lost Official Opposition status. It doesn't require an exceptional measure of cynicism to guess at the motive for her new-found enthusiasm for change.

The discussion by Bennett, Nash and Harris made that enthusiasm all the clearer when they made it clear that   the primary goal of electoral reform is that in through a system that necessitated cooperation between parties and made majorities more difficult, they would be able to keep Harper out of power. Oddly, no one mentioned the fact that when Harper had a minority government prior to the last election, the Liberals and NDP couldn't bring themselves to unite to form a minority government. There is probably a mathematical formula which calculates the level of desperation for power measured by the time since it was last held. I'm not sure of the actual figures for that equation, but the hunger from the Green, NDP and Liberal representatives to get more of it was palpable and made an appetite for any compromise to get it more palatable.

Their frustration was so apparent that one of the electoral devices discussed at the meeting was "vote swapping," which while not illegal, has a very unethical tinge about it. In essence, the practice would entail Liberal, NDP and Green voters communicating with each other and agreeing to trade votes in ridings where the other party's candidate had a better chance of defeating the Conservative.  The main concern expressed about that by Dr. Bennett was not the ethics but the fear that the Conservatives might infiltrate those lists and abuse them.

It fell to Peggy Nash to be the voice of reason on "vote swapping," reminding the room that many people died so we could have a democracy with a secret vote, and she didn't feel abandoning it, even to defeat Stephen Harper, was the right choice.

A member of Liberal Leadership candidate Joyce Murray's policy team then spoke to explain her proposal that riding associations could make a choice to cooperate and perhaps not run candidates in order to bolster the chances of the strongest opponent to the local Tory.

The Greens' Harris argued that reform was necessary because the Conservatives negative ads are so effective that they can destroy the standing of their opponents with the public. I've argued before that attack ads are a useful component of our political process.  After all, if a candidate who wants to lead a country is incapable of dealing with an attack ad from a fairly benign domestic political rival, how could they possibly function as a leader on the world stage, dealing with potentially hostile foreign interests?

After the presentations by the politicians, the floor was opened to questions from the audience. It was a moment of significant irony that I was the first person to ask a question and the response that followed.  I was the only person who spoke out against PR at the meeting and pointed out that the two MPs on the panel had passed that minimum threshold of getting a plurality in their riding. If that bar were lowered and representatives need not get that but only a small percentage of the national vote, you were guaranteed to have, among other things, Nazis in Parliament.

That prospect is neither far-fetched nor unrealistic, because that is what is happening right now in Europe with their legislatures elected through Proportional Representation. But that point infuriated the panel's moderator, John Deverell. Visibly agitated at my pooping on his party and perhaps trying to invoke some version of Godwin's Law, he interrupted me and tried to prevent me from finishing my question, saying I was lying and didn't know what I was talking about.

During her presentation, Peggy Nash complained that Harper`s majority government didn`t allow proper debate and questions in Parliament. The irony of Deverell attempting to do just that in a gathering proposing to change that system seemed utterly lost on him.

But I refused to be bullied into silence and pointed out that it would be a disgrace that in a public meeting that ostensibly is for the purpose of improving Canada`s democracy, he was trying to prevent the asking of a question he didn`t like and I continued.

Raising another aspect that I felt would get traction with that particular audience, I noted that there are many people opposed to legal abortions in Canada and political parties who want laws to that effect. If at some point, in order to cobble a governing coalition together, the balance were to be held by a `Pro-Life" party, we  are virtually guaranteed to have abortion laws in Canada again and I asked the panel to respond to that concern.

Jim Harris and Carolyn Bennett both spoke and in essence gave the same answer. They said that Canada would have to enact a higher threshold for party status than in countries like Italy and Israel, which are teeming with parties that only require 1% of the vote to get a place in their legislatures.

That response was not particularly encouraging. Even if it were as high as the 5 or 7 percent that Dr. Bennett suggested, fringe parties which would never be able to get a plurality in any riding in Canada would be able to have Parliamentary representation.

There are some basic facts about our system that those in our political classes who want proportional representation don't want to acknowledge and it's easy to understand why. They operate from the belief that many Canadians are disengaged from the political process because they feel "their vote doesn't count."  There is plenty of evidence to indicate that is not the case. When there is an issue or politician people care about, then the voter turnout is high. Toronto during the last municipal election is a good example, where more than 14% more people voted than in the previous two elections. Lots of people wanted the change that Ford represented and plenty felt threatened by it and both sides came to cast their ballots.

But rather than their votes not counting, many Canadians remain disengaged from politics because there simply aren't many politicians, from any party, that people feel are worth voting for. In short, the problem isn't the system, it's the crappy politicians who inhabit it.

Another facet of proportional representation that went unmentioned during the "Town Hall" was how that system is actually less democratic than our current one. When we cast a vote, we don't vote just do it to choose a political party but a person to represent us. That's particularly important given that parties frequently run on platforms and policies they have absolutely no intention of implementing if they get in power (remember Jean Chretien's GST promise, and all the lies Dalton McGuinty's Liberals ran on?).

With 'first-past-the-post' each MP has been elected by at least a plurality of voters who the politician will represent. With PR, even in the proposed mixed-member system, political parties, rather than voters will select who gets to sit in Parliament. We would have a number of MPs who couldn't even get the most votes in their own ridings. That seems a step back in democracy, not forward.

The Greens' Harris, during the pro-PR pep talk, trying to energize the audience, said that a small group of people can make a big change and they could be the people to bring such a change about.

The room was filled with older people, some men with pony-tails, lots of macrame vests and shirts replete with cause-promoting buttons. Making histrionic speeches and complaints, they looked and sounded like since the 1960's, their politics have matured as little as their fashion sense.

Harris was right was right about a few people being able to make a big difference. But it's doubtful he picked the right group to expect from whom to expect any major achievements and that seems for the best. With their primary focus of implementing PR mainly as a tactic to get rid of Stephen Harper, a sincere effort to advance democracy was secondary, if at all on their agenda.

Tattooed putative 3rd party leader calls Canada's governing party and Official Opposition "fringe" parties

Is this the guy you want to be in charge of your nation's economy?

Conservatives for Justin Trudeau for Liberal Leadership

It's time for Conservatives to stand up and support Justin for Liberal leadership. What other leader could guarantee another Conservative majority?

Check out the facebook page HERE

h/t Terry Glavin

Journalism school instructor calls people “idiots” for voting Conservative

As if there wasn't enough evidence of extreme anti-Conservative bias in the media, take a look at this

Highlights from London Mayor Boris Johnson's speech to the British Tory conference

Some funny stuff here - he's quite the charismatic speaker...

The importance of attack ads in our political process

A silly debate that never disappears from the political scene is whether "attack ads" should be allowed.

Aside from the free speech component of the matter that make attack ads constitutionally protected, the motives of people opposed to them is rather transparent. It's because the candidates they support are vulnerable to them. The previous two Liberal leaders were particularly harmed by attack ads in Canada's last two national elections.

Stephane Dion was the target of a very effective Conservative ad campaign leading up to the 2008 election that portrayed him as "not up to the job" of being a leader. Michael Ignatieff was similarly harmed in the 2011 election by being successfully characterized as an elitist who was "just visiting" Canada for the sake of  personal ambition.



The raucous nature of political campaigns are really about pointing out not just the advantages of one side, but the deficits of the other. This relatively minor test of fire is an important element of the election process for a very basic and obvious reason. If a candidate who wants to lead a country is incapable of dealing with an attack ad from a fairly benign domestic political rival, how could they possibly function as a leader on the world stage, dealing with potentially hostile foreign interests?

In that sense, attack ads are the most basic test someone who wants to be put in a position of power and responsibility should be able to overcome. If they can't, they have no busness asking millions of Canadians to entrust them with that responsibility.

Robocalls hysterics do their opponents a favor every time they open their mouths

Jon Allen was one of the main organizers of a clownish rally demanding new elections and a Parliamentary inquiry on the basis of robocalls made during Canada's 2011 election campaign, which evidently did not prevent a single person from casting a vote. The allegations of callers misrepresenting themselves as Elections Canada officials suggests a crime which merits police investigation. But the ridiculous hysteria of people like Allan, while professing devotion to "democracy," is clearly motivated by nothing other than an intense hatred of the Conservative government and conservatives in general.

And how do we know that? Because they tell us so.

Sun TV host Michael Coren and Allan have become embroiled in a war of words in the last couple of days, in which Coren mocked Allan for his histrionic idiocy of suggesting the robocalls were the beginnings of a fascist Canada.

Allan responded with a facebook posting that while meant to refute Coren, actually helps reinforce the conservative pundit's case. Aside from a dispute over the numbers where Allan inflates the attendance of his gathering by a factor of about 3 times the actual amount, the real meat of the dispute comes from the perceived value of rally co-organizer Zafar Bangash. While accusing Coren of "mental disabilities" Allan praises Bangash, a fierce advocate of the Holocaust-denying Iranian regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as "an exemplary citizen." Some of Bangash's exemplary citizenship includes implicitly threatening the lives of Jews in Iran, his racist reference to American President Barack Obama as "this black man in the White House," his call for war and the imposition of Islamic law in Israel, and his support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah.

While he might be able to credibly profess ignorance about Bangash, since ignorance is obviously an area in which Mr. Allan excels, his claim that his wishes are for "democratic accountability, regardless of the party in power" are undermined by his inability to keep himself from making statements revealing his partisan biases.

In response to one of his online cheerleaders in his posting's comments, Allan replied, "I hate Sun media, and I hate that they;re (sic) buying up all the small town newspapers in Canada because now they are propagating this filth to the small towners... no wonder the Conservatives are gaining support."

Aside from betraying an astonishing contempt for the intelligence of small town Canadians by assuming their political leanings could be so easily affected, Allan conveniently lets anyone interested know that his real motivation is hatred of the Conservative party.

Mr. Allan is not unique in his dissembling. This profession of concern for democracy, which he paradoxically wants manifested in the form of the rejection of a valid election because of the objections of a few radical activists, is a position shared by the partisan LeadNow organization. The difference between Allan and LeadNow's intelligent Executive Director Jamie Biggar is that the latter is smart enough not to publicly boast about his more obvious motives.

h/t Blazing Cat Fur

The people pushing the "robocalls" scandal have their own credibility issues

From a small office in Vancouver,  rented in a shared space with the Canadian branch of PBS station KCTS, Jamie Biggar and the people behind LeadNow.ca want to undo the decision reached by almost 15 million voters in Canada's 2011 election.

Biggar, LeadNow's Executive Director,  is a thoughtful, personable young man who was once the Chairman of the Sierra Club of British Columbia, the provincial branch of a US-based environmental group. In a talk last week,  Biggar pointed out that his organization is not partisan in that it doesn't endorse any particular political party and its goal is to hold the government, any government, to account for its potentially destructive policies. The goal, he said, is to serve the interests of democracy.

However the campaign to have democratic elections undone based on conjecture and unsubstantiated allegations would not appear to support those goals.

Biggar acknowledged that the much vaunted "31,000" number of complaints to Elections Canada were not actually people complaining about receiving calls misdirecting them to non-existent poling locations. That number, which has now grown to over 43,000 is merely automated messages of pre-written "concern" that are generated from LeadNow's website with the ease of clicking a "send" button. As we now know, the actual number of complaints to Election Canada about 700. But more significantly, not a single one of those complaints, on the basis of which LeadNow suggests new elections should be held, alleges that they did not cast their vote because of those calls.

In fact, LeadNow's campaign to delegitimize the 2011 election is based entirely on stringing together a bunch of ifs, could-haves, and maybes, without a solitary piece of solid evidence of wrongdoing by the Prime Minister of any senior Conservative Party member. One such piece of so-called support that Biggar referred me to was a report produced by Simon Fraser University Professor Anke Kessler which is based entirely on guesswork, corollaries and false postulations, such as the figure of 31,000 complaints being from people having reported receiving the robocalls rather than the actuality of that number only being LeadNow generated emails of "concern."

If one is going to make reasonable guesses based on corollaries, something more indicative of reality can be inferred from the people involved with LeadNow. Biggar was adamant that media reports of financial involvement from far-left activist funders like George Soros and the Tides Foundation were not true.

But LeadNow's Advisory Board reads like a who's who of vociferous enemies of the Conservative government, who have been known to become hysterical in their opposition to not only almost anything the Harper government does, but its very existence.

Zafar Bangash speaking at
robocalls rally in Toronto
(photo by Blazing Cat Fur)

People like Judy Rebick, who founded the fanatical website rabble.ca, which is financed almost exclusively by public service unions and NDP-linked organizations, Ian Capstick, a former top-level NDP backroom fixture, Jim Stafford, an economist in the employ of the Canadian Auto Workers union. The LeadNow-inspired rallies decrying the government over the robocalls issue went so far as to involve people like Zafar Bangash as organizers. Bangash is a Khomeinist propagandist and notorious hatemonger who advocates Sharia-Law and supports the Iranian dictatorship of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. One of the many absurd ironies that the robocalls hysterics have produced is a criticism of Canadian democracy supported by the radical left coming from one of the most brutal, undemocratic regimes on earth. That came in the form of Rebick's rabble.ca republishing a report from Iranian state-owned Press TV condemning Canada's so-called election fraud.

Whilke LeadNow may not be dishonest in any outright, planned way, their zeal and hatred of the Harper government has made their commitment to honesty highly suspect and what they purport to be facts to be false. As an investigation proceeds into the robocalls matter, LeadNow's efforts to damage the credibility and validity of the Harper government may just have the reverse effect and discredit LeadNow and those associated with it.

Toronto Robocalls 'outrage rally' a big fail, no matter what the media tells you

At the height of the gathering at Dundas Square
Not exactly a massive outpouring of support

A rally of the usual suspects in the anti-Harper left failed to mass much of a turnout in Toronto this afternoon.

Piggybacking on Toronto's St.Patrick's Day Parade, they were still unable to accumulate more than 1000 people, despite the organizers' inflated claims of three thousand being in attendance.

Some "average Canadians" outraged
about the Robocalls

What was striking about the rally was not who was there, but who wasn't. Other than a handful of curiosity seekers and media, there was no indication of interest from any normal, mainstream Canadians in the manufactured outrage that opponents of the current government are trying to inflame.

The crowd was made up exclusively of members of the International Socialists, some unkempt burned-out pseudo-hippies who were ejected from the Occupy Toronto encampment a few months ago, union activists who have a pro-Islamist bent, like Ali Mallah, and some pro-Iranian Islamists like notorious hatemonger Zafar Bangash who employ radical leftists as their useful idiots in their efforts to harm the pro-Israel government of Stephen Harper.

Ali Mallah chats up some Harper-hatin' 'sisters'

Rally co-organizer Bangash mounted a pick up truck sporting an AL QUDS vanity plate owned by the recently defunded terror-apologists at Palestine House to deliver a heated speech. He denounced Harper and threatened that Canada's Prime Minister would "end up in a cage" like Egypt's recently deposed Hosni Mubarak. Another of the organizers suggested that Harper is a fascist,  failing to understand that if we actually were living under fascist rule, rallies of the type he was speaking at wouldn't be allowed to occur.

The rally itself was less impressive than the anti-Harper rallies that were initiated by the far left and NDP activists prior to the last general election when the Governor General prorogued Parliament at the Prime Minister's request. The public also saw through the AstroTurf political movement behind that hyperbole. At the time, the Conservatives had a minority government, and if the outrage expressed by the Liberals and NDP wasn't fake, they had only to pass a non-confidence motion to force another election as soon as Parliament resumed. They failed to do that, and when they finally mustered the initiative to bring down the Harper government with a motion finding it in contempt of Parliament, the resulting election gave the Conservatives a solid majority.

The media to protester ratio was extremely high

The "robocalls" issue is a serious one and deserves police investigation for the possibility of election fraud. But LeadNow.ca is behind the manufactured outrage that is preposterously suggesting that the government itself was responsible for misleading automated phone calls they claim invalidates the last election. One only has to look at who is involved with LeadNow to get an accurate idea of what the "outrage" is really about.

Lead Now's advisers read like a who's who of the Looney Left, with Judy Rebick, NDP advisor Ian Capstick, Canadian Auto Workers economic advisor Jim Stafford,  and a host of other fellow travellers who are lending their hand to a political manipulation machine.

Not quite the 3000 people the organizers claimed
Not by a long shot

Combined with characters like pro-Iran shills Bangash and Mallah, the fake movement to stir up anger at the government over the robocalls will end up as just another tiresome exercise in bias confirmation for a handful of radical leftist fanatics and their cheerleaders in the media. For the rest of Canada, it's just another yawn.





UPDATE: a picture of the massive anti-Harper Robocalls rally at Parliament Hill in Ottawa today at THIS LINK. There aren't enough people to get the group discount seating rate for a Blue Jays game.

Another 'typical Canadian' expressing her disdain for the government...
or practicing her hula-hooping skills
(Photo by BCF)

Blazing Cat Fur has a report and pictures

All photos in this post © 2012 Eye on a Crazy Planet

unless otherwise indicated

Extremists on both sides are trying to hit Harper on abortion

Being a national leader means that no matter what, some people are going to be upset with you, either for what you are doing, for what you aren't doing. In the case of some of Canada's political extremists, they might even hate you because you're doing what they want, but they suspect you might secretly do something else. Or  because by doing what they actually want, you're diminishing their opportunity to publicly hate you the way they feel entitled

Sound crazy and confusing? You bet it does, but that's what's happening right now with the abortion situation in Canada.

The Canadian Supreme Court struck down Canada's abortion laws in 1988 as being unconstitutional. The Mulroney Conservatives failed at an attempt to bring in a new abortion law and since then, no government has made an attempt to introduce legislation on the volatile, contentious subject. Aside from the difficulties of creating a law that would conform to constitutional legalities as defined by the highest court in the land, stirring up the emotional debate on a matter would be political suicide.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised that neither he nor his government would introduce any new abortion legislation and he has kept his word. That has a few people in his caucus and very many in the far-right anti-abortion camp angry. They see Harper as standing in the way of their divine mission to prevent the termination of thousands of unborn children.

On the other side of the spectrum, the Looney Left is always complaining about Harper's secret agenda of reintroducing abortion laws, going so far as to claim that by not funding Third World abortions, Canada is somehow on the road to restricting the procedure internally.

There may be good heath policy arguments for funding foreign abortions in impoverished countries, just as there are sound political reasons for not doing so. But that hardly makes an open foreign aid policy part of a secret domestic agenda.

One thing this matter indicates is that when both political extremes think you're going too far in favoring the other side, it places you firmly in the political centre. Harper's ability to supplant the Liberals in that political middle ground has been the key to his electoral success. If he can keep the Conservative keel steady there, aided by the ineptitude of the most incompetent Official Opposition in this nation's history, he could easily sail on to more election victories.

Canada's "Occupy" Movement: Intellectually vapid activists desperate for attention

We saw some of the intellectual bankruptcy that characterizes the current "Occupy" movement in the form of Senate page Brigette De Pape, who, after unfolding a homemade protest sign during a joint Parliamentary session, proclaimed "Canada needs its Arab Spring."

Her statement reflects a lack of intelligence among a certain class of activists rather than the frustration of the Canadian populace about the failure of our democratic institutions. Remember, when De Pape unveiled her crayon drawing, Canada had just seen a free, fair, democratic election. But the problem for her was that the NDP, her party of choice, lost.

For De Pape and the vacuous, aggrieved losers that lionize her, that wasn't an indication that their ideas and policies had ben rejected by the vast majority of Canadians, who between them voted overwhelmingly for the Conservatives and Liberals, both of whom have similar economic programs. For the radical activists, it was a call to "resistance."

Understand what that really means. These people are anti-democratic fanatics who think that because they lost an election, they have the right to ignore it and rebel against its outcome.

There were provincial elections in Canada last week. In Manitoba, the socialist NDP was victorious. Are there calls by Conservatives and Liberals to "resist" the democratic choice made by that province's electorate? There are not.

But when the Conservatives win an election, radical wannabe-autocrats betray their agenda.  In that sense, perhaps De Pape was telling the truth about her wishes for an Arab Spring in Canada. What started as a popular movement remains in danger of being usurped by power-crazed totalitarian religious zealots who want to impose their will on their countries and deny them democracy, just as the Khomeinists did in Iran in 1979.

For the "Occupy" movement, the religion is Marxism and the liturgy, if they get their way, will resemble the worst abuses of Lenin and Stalin.

There are vehicles for change in democratic societies such as ours. Protests are valid forms of them, but protests are not entitled to take peoples freedom of movement and livelihoods away, as the "Occupiers" intend. Free speech and a free press are other means by which citizens of democracies can mobilize. Yet is it notable how many on the radical left oppose free speech. Their commitment to free speech was demonstrated by their failed attempt to have the conservative Sun-TV news network banned in Canada. Their idea of free expression is "free speech for me but not for thee."

Some of the "Occupy" activists have, long before the movement emerged in the United States, already called for violent revolution in Canada. Democracies don't need violent revolutions. We have regular, peaceful revolutions in the form of elections, in which the people have the opportunity to overthrow the current government and replace it. Or retain it if they choose.

Democracy is the will of the people and not all, but quite a few of the "Occupiers" are attempting to undermine democracy for their own ends.

The "Occupy" movement in Canada are largely made up of Marxofascists who seeks to mobilize the left. They will fail because most leftists aren't idiots. They understand the democratic process and that Marxism leads to less (actually none whatsoever), not more democracy. Be prepared to see the usual suspects out there trying to co-opt the protests to their own ends. OCAP, No One Is Illegal, International Socialists, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, the (misleadingly named) Canadian Peace Alliance. And the tiresome, hackneyed speeches from the likes of Naomi Klein, Syd Ryan and Judy Rebick. Thankfully, when you see one of these groups or individuals associated with something, you know it has absolutely no credibility.

These Canadian "Occupiers" should keep something in mind. They are the most vocal supporters of resistance to occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine. They should be prepared to meet resistance to their attempt to occupy Canada.

Ontario voters choose McGuinty over McGuinty-lite

The real question is: when do the Progressive Conservatives in Ontario hold their next leadership conference?

Prediction: With the Liberals one seat short of a majority, McGuinty makes someone a sweet offer to cross the floor in the coming months.

Libby Davies makes the NDP look foolish with the withdrawl of an embarrassing motion

Last week, Vancouver East MP and NDP Leadership hopeful Libby Davies withdrew Motion 141, a proposal she had made to parliament on June 6th to reduce the waiting period for recent immigrants to collect Canadian government-paid old-age pensions.

Davies who clearly has ambitions to replace Jack Layton as NDP leader finally clued in to the fact that legislation proposed by the Official Opposition will garner attention, and when the NDP gets attention, it's usually of the negative variety.

Davies explained in an article she wrote for her spouse's website today that, "We have a national media scrutinizing us as never before (I learned this lesson well with motion 141 just recently). We have a majority Conservative government who see three opposition parties without permanent leaders, and easy pickings ahead. For those of us in the NDP caucus, we will need to be fully engaged and active in Parliament as never before."

It's good to learn that Davies thinks the NDP should finally take their role in parliament seriously, even if that new course is motivated by fear of embarrassment in the media rather than professionalism and conscientiousness as public officials.

However there is a difference between wanting and doing, as Davies yet again demonstrated. In withdrawing the motion, the NDP has again managed to make fools of themselves by saying,

"As for motion 141, this was submitted in error and Libby Davies (Vancouver East) is withdrawing it."

Get that? Davies, the NDP's Deputy Leader, accidentally tabled a motion to Parliament. The fact that it was widely criticized and ridiculed with a party leadership convention on the horizon no doubt helped Davies recognize her mistake.

But David Akin pointed out on his blog that if Davies made a mistake by tabling that motion, it's a mistake she has repeated frequently. Akin noted the same motion was put forward by Davies more than ten times in the last ten years.

Conservative MP Kevin Sorinson explained Davies 'mistake' more plausibly: "The only reason Ms. Davies is withdrawing her OAS Motion M-141 is because her leadership contention musings is forcing issues like this one into the spotlight. She has to try and rid herself of this kind of reckless-spending measure that her and her Opposition colleagues are always pulling on the governing party. "

With ringmaster Layton gone, the clowns are running the NDP circus. The laughs will keep coming, but only as long as Canadians continue to realize that people like Libby Davies should be kept as far as possible from the reins of power.

• 
• 
•