At the Manning Conference, Doug Ford demonstrated that he's the best bet the Progressive Conservatives have to defeat Wynne

While it wasn't exactly a lion's den that Doug Ford walked into on Saturday morning, it was in front of a crowd at the Manning Conference in Ottawa more likely to be inimical than friendly.

The Manning Conference is conservative in bent, but those attending the three-day event are mainly the 'elites' in the conservative movement, the very people Ford has said have lost touch with the common person in Ontario. His disfavor among the Conservative patrician class was suggested by the disadvantageous time slot he was allocated. Eight fifteen on a Saturday morning following a Friday night of parties and entertainment at hospitality suites that went into the wee hours seemed a guarantee of a poor turnout. But interest in the populist firebrand was so substantial that Ford drew a much larger crowd than Caroline Mulroney had the day before and was about equal to the size Christine Elliott garnered at the prime time she was given just before lunch.

The interview was conducted by columnist and radio host Anthony Furey, who is one of Canada's most capable, thoughtful, reasonable journalists. He evoked Ford's approach to leadership and the person beyond just the politician. Ford's sharp contrast to  his rivals won over many of the Manning attendees. More importantly, it is likely to win over Ontarians of all political stripes.

Christine Elliott repeated that she was willing to welcome anyone who shares her "conservative values." Ford however stressed that his movement reaches out to, and and takes in, people who are politically unaffiliated as well as those who identify as NDP or Liberal. Political party membership doesn't mean acceptance of the total fiscal irresponsibility that Kathleen Wynne has brought to the province. Ford discussed the huge numbers of hard-working union members who support him, and are fed up with the incompetence and over-taxation that are key components of the Wynne government.  I can attest to that. I have friends in public service unions who are disgusted with the waste they see of taxpayer dollars at their places of work, and how increases in taxes do little that isn't for the benefit of high-paid insiders.

It was the sort of talk, along with his commitment to lowering taxes and government interference in people's lives, that won the room over for Ford. The other factor that overwhelmingly favors Ford is his sincerity. Christine Elliott and Caroline Mulroney seem like nice people, but they exude neither  full commitment nor total sincerity. One gets the feeling from Mulroney and Elliott that they tailor their message to whichever room where they're speaking. With Ford, you get the same message, and  know that whether or not you like what you're hearing, he means it. That's something even the Toronto Star begrudgingly recognizes.

To win the general election, the Progressive Conservative leader needs to understand how to reach out to everyone in the province. Ford knows that better than anyone. Ford Nation, which the left-wing Toronto Star enjoys disparaging, is the antithesis of the reality of the establishment who deride it. If you go to a Liberal Party meeting, you could be forgiven for confusing it with a Bay Street Bankers conference from 1972. As for the NDP, one of their their typical gatherings usually is exclusively made up of more bitter, old, upper-middle class white people than a John Birch Society meeting.

But at a Doug Ford rally, you'll find a wide mix of every ethnicity, age, and income status that you can find among the province's citizens. It's that broad-based appeal that is one of the main differences between Ford and his rivals. Beyond that is charisma and the ability to communicate a message. Those are traits that neither Mulroney or Elliott possess to the impressive extent as Ford. In fact, Mulroney's public performance was so weak that rumors are now circulating that she is planning to drop out of the leadership contest soon.

Despite being abysmal at governing, Kathleen Wynne is a formidable election campaigner. Whether Ford wins the Progressive Conservative Party by election or acclimation, one thing most people have come to realize is that he is the one candidate with the determination, the fighting skills, and the credibility to defeat the Wynne government and reverse the dire economic situation the Liberals have brought to Ontario.

Why I wouldn't invest in the Corner Gas movie (but am anyway)

An article in the National Post a few days ago with the headline "Corner Gas movie’s $8.5M budget is 75% from government funding despite success of the original TV series" implied that it was surprising and unnecessary for a successful Canadian TV series to require public funds for its film incarnation.

In reality, that requirement is neither surprising nor unnecessary. What it is, however, is probably the equivalent of flushing public money down the toilet, or handing it to the already affluent Brent Butt, which might be even more offensive to Canadian taxpayers.

Movie people tend not to like to make public predictions about the commercial success of movies, for the obvious reason that if a prediction is wrong, it could come back to haunt them. I worked in Hollywood for a production company which garnered about a dozen major Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture and two for Best Original Screenplay, for movies I was involved with during my time there. With all due modesty, I was very good at my job and one of the things I did extremely well was to predict at the development stage whether a movie would be able to perform at the box office.

Most Hollywood executives would have you believe that such a thing can't be done. They'll tell you predicting movie performances is "like trying trying to capture lightning in a bottle."

That's not true. While it can't be done without any margin for error, and it is actually hard to predict whether something will be a runaway hit like Star Wars, or a fluke success like The Blair Witch Project, it's not hard to tell whether a movie has the basic elements of a success or failure. The rather obvious reason that Hollywood execs don't want you, or in particular their bosses, to believe that it can is because most of them just aren't very good at it. But if anyone is worse at predicting success than a Hollywood executive, it's a Telefilm Canada executive.

Yes, Corner Gas The Movie absolutely does need government funds, and I'll tell you why I think the movie, which has not yet gone into production, will never come close to making it all back.

As its producers and fans like to remind us, Corner Gas was the most successful Canadian television series ever. In Hollywood terms, that's only slightly less impressive than being the most successful Ukrainian television series ever. It's like saying you've got the world's third smartest tree frog. That's all very interesting to those few people who are interested in that sort of thing, but really, who cares? And outside of Canada, no one cares about Corner Gas.

I've watched the show a few times and I don't hate it. It had the usual "let's laugh at the antics of silly hicks" formula that's been around since before I watched Green Acres reruns as a little kid. Corner Gas'  writing wasn't very clever and had no edge to it, but it wasn't the worst thing on TV. Although that's an easy bar to get over, particularly when the main Canadian competition was CBC's painfully unfunny Little Mosque on The Prairie.

So let's look at Corner Gas The Movie's potential for success. First of all, movie versions of TV shows with the original cast are very rarely hits. Star Trek is the notable exception, but it took 10 years after cancellation and massive worldwide cult status already in place before that happened. In Canada, as an example of how these things don't work, we have the precedent of Red Green: Duct Tape Forever.

We also have the example of The Trailer Park Boys movies, but there is a substantial difference. Those movies are made on lower budgets, less of which is government-funded, and unlike Corner Gas, the Trailer Park Boys have an edge and a natural audience among a desired movie-going demographic, (kids in their mid-teens to late twenties and stoners), where Corner Gas has none.  And even then, on the $5 Million budget that The Trailer Park Boys Movie cost, it still lost money, which doesn't leave much hope for the Corner Gas movie.

Who will be starring in Corner Gas The Movie? That's right - no one that anyone outside of Canada has ever heard of, and other than Brent Butt, no one that most people in Canada could name. Which means that all of Corner Gas The Movie's receipts will be from the Canadian domestic box office, and that isn't exactly for the movie business what Saudi Arabia is for oil.

If you're wondering how much a movie has to gross to be profitable on an $8.5 Million budget like that of Corner Gas The Movie, the answer is a hell of a lot more than $8.5 Million. There are advertising costs, which are massive for movies, plus distributors' and exhibitors' fees involved. There may be some variances, depending on marketing strategies and other factors, but in general, the rule of thumb is that a movie needs to gross three times the production budget to break even.

So even giving it a break on estimates for some of those factors and giving it a generous estimate on TV and DVD sales, on an $8.5 million budget, Corner Gas The Movie would need to make at least $20 million at the box office just to stay out of the red.  Since it is a virtual certainty that all of that money will have to come from a Canadian audience, it means that, just to break even, one out of every 22 Canadians will have to pay to see Corner Gas The Movie in a theater.

What do you think the odds are of that happening?

Based on those figures, I wouldn't put a dime into producing Corner Gas The Movie. Although I am anyway, as are you, courtesy of the choices made on our behalf by the Canadian government.

Olivia Chow wants to be your kids' role model

Chow demonstrating with Islamist hatemonger and antisemitic al Quds Day organizer Zafar Bangash

NDP MP Olivia Chow has been making the rounds pushing her memoirs and in an effort to boost sales, is coyly hinting about her widely presumed entry into Toronto's 2014 mayoral race.

Part of the purpose of Chow's tedious exercise in narcissism, titled My Journey, is to whitewash her past with some revisionist history.

As The Globe and Mail reports:  

Ms. Chow also tries to clear the air on the accusations that she and Mr. Layton lived in subsidized units when they both had apartments in a downtown Toronto co-op housing building before and after they were married.

“Both Jack and I paid full market rent for our apartments,” she writes, later adding, “The self-appointed lynch mob sought to destroy the safe haven Jack and I sought not just for our family but for the community. To this day, the slander is repeated by people who mistakenly believed it at the time – as well as by opponents who know better.”

Since Ms Chow is claiming it's "slander" to accuse her and her husband, who were making a combined annual income of almost $150,000 of exploiting taxpayers and abusing their position by helping themselves to subsidized housing, then she may want to take issue with the official record of the Legislature of Ontario.

According to Hansard (the Legislature's official transcripts), a 1998 exchange between Provincial Housing Minister Al Leach and MPP's Rosario Marchese, Terence Young, and John Gerretsen went as follows:

Mr Young: In New York City today, I'm sure you're aware, Minister -- I don't know if the committee members are aware -- there are rental control units occupied by wealthy movie stars, $2,000 a month or whatever. We've seen a situation here where two Toronto councillors with the combined income of I think over $130,000 to $140,000 a year were both living in government-assisted housing. How do we prevent wealthy people from living in housing subsidized by their fellow taxpayers and just get money to the people who have the need?

Mr Marchese: They were paying market value, Terry.

Mr Gerretsen: Those people were paying market value.

Hon Mr Leach: I'm aware of the councillors in question. I understand that they are no longer living there but they were paying market value. But as I pointed out earlier, the market value that was charged to a co-op was about $900 a month where the actual cost of operating the unit was $1,200 a month, so that people who claimed that they were paying market value were still getting a substantial subsidy from the taxpayers of Ontario. There is no doubt about that whatsoever. I believe that the individuals you are talking about, who will go nameless, are no longer in that circumstance.

Mr Marchese: Would that be Jack Layton and Olivia Chow?

Hon Mr Leach: I think if you look around the city of Toronto council, you might find that there are still a couple who are living in co-op housing units.

Mr Marchese: I used to live in one too.

Hon Mr Leach: It's a good concept as long as you pay your full share. If you want to pay $1,200 a month, which is the actual operating cost, be my guest, but don't live in a co-op saying you're paying market rent of $900 when it costs $1,200 to operate and you're getting a subsidy of $300 from the taxpayers of Ontario.

When asked about Toronto's current mayor, Chow's pat line, which she has repeated in a number of interviews, is that she doesn't 'think Rob Ford is a very good role model for the kids.'

Oh. So is that what we elect our mayors to do, be role models for 8 year olds?

Actually, 'a role model for the kids'  isn't a consideration when I cast a vote. I want a politician who tries to keep election promises and takes the use of public expenditures and the wishes of constituents very seriously. As long as he or she is doing a good job representing my interests, as far as a politician's personal life goes, as the expression goes, I couldn't give a toss.

If being a role model is the case, then one could as easily question the value of the leadership of a dopey pothead who only got his job because he has a famous last name. Or that of a pompous liar who frequented hand job parlors.

Ms Chow's repeated criticism of Ford's adequacy as a role model suggests she thinks that she would make a suitable substitute in that department.

There probably aren't a lot of people who would want someone for a role model who is a rich person who shrilly accuses people of "slander" for calling her out for milking taxpayers for $300 a month.

For that matter, I'm not sure how someone who has spent almost all her adult life in the public trough as a professional politician, with no notable political achievement to her name other than being the junior partner in a political marriage, qualifies as a role model. But you wouldn't know that from the way the liberal media fawns over Ms. Chow.

While they were both MP's Jack Layton and Olivia Chow could be described as Mr. & Mrs. Gravy Train. The pair of them charged over $1.1 million per year to Canadian taxpayers in expenses alone so they could maintain their lavish lifestyle.

Rob Ford has voluntarily returned his salary increases back to the City each year and cut his own office budget and expenses. Considering that, Olivia Chow may want to stop using her "role model" line, because upon closer examination, compared to Rob Ford, she may not do too well in that area either.

h/t Sanwin

Just in case you needed confirmation that Toronto Councillor Shelley Carroll is an idiot

One of the reasons that embattled Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's support is holding so firm, aside from his sincere efforts to curb wasteful municipal spending, is one of default. It's that his City Council opponents are blithering idiots who are salivating at the prospect at getting their grubby hands back inside your wallets. 

One such example is Shelley Carroll, a posturing, juvenile grandstander who is obviously exactly as bright as she presents.

According to The Toronto Sun:

Carroll suggested Ford was holding up that police probe by “hiding behind his lawyer” and refusing to meet with investigators.

“We are now at the point where I can’t think of any Torontonian who would have been able to put off answering questions for the police who have politely asked for this long,” Carroll said.   

Evidently Ms Carroll is unaware that unlike Stalin's Russia or Castro's Cuba, a state that has the affinity of the left wing of Toronto's City Council, Canadians cannot be legally compelled to speak to police.

They can be arrested if police believe they have sufficient grounds to lay charges (which they evidently do not in the case of Ford) , but even then they cannot be forced to answer police questions. We have this thing called a Constitution and a Charter of Rights, plus long-standing British legal traditions which deal with these matters.

It couldn't be that Ms Carroll was having some drug-induced hallucination where she thought we were all living in the sort of police state we would have if she and her ilk were ever placed in charge, could it?

The real "shame and embarrassment" of being a Torontonian

Olivia Chow, a Member of Parliament for a downtown Toronto riding and a presumed candidate for the position of mayor in the city's next election, spoke recently of the "embarrassment" that Rob Ford had brought upon her by his antics. "We are being embarrassed" she professed at a recent media scrum. This is the same Olivia Chow who is the widow of Jack Layton, who led the New Democratic Party from 2003 until his death, and about whom it was revealed that during their marriage he was caught by police in a dingy Chinatown brothel after receiving a hand-job (at the least) from a hooker.

I don't recall Ms Chow professing her embarrassment about that, just as she did not proclaim her "shame" about being exposed for taking advantage of subsidized housing while she and her husband were making a combined six-figure salary.

But because of the current Toronto mayor's occasional drug use and his intemperate remarks, now, finally, Olivia Chow has come to learn what it is to be humiliated.

If you say so, Olivia...

Toronto Ward 21 Councillor "Fiasco" Joe Mihevc sent out an email to his constituents a couple of weeks ago in which he bemoaned "the shame and embarrassment Mayor Ford has brought upon us."

The very same Mihevic whose advocacy for, and bumbling oversight of an unnecessary dedicated streetcar lane along St. Clair Avenue in Toronto became the exemplar of how not to do a civics project. Disruption from the lengthy construction, which went more than twice the planned time at almost three times the cost to taxpayers, caused some local businesses to go bust. The resulting lane divided the neighborhood, created a nightmare of traffic congestion, made a number of intersections death-traps for pedestrians, and resulted in only a minimal reduction in travel time for public transit patrons.

I haven't been able to locate any expression of "shame and embarrassment" for his role in causing that fiasco. Last time I checked, Mihevc was still praising himself in the face of his incompetence.

But now, because of Rob Ford, a man for whom Mihevc has frequently and very publicly expressed his detestation, suddenly, a grotesque, enormous blot of shame has enshrouded "Fiasco" Joe.

A couple of days ago, I had a long conversation with an old friend in Los Angeles who is a film producer who has worked with people such as Steven Spielberg and Michael Mann. He asked me about Toronto and rather than shame, there was quite a bit of laughter in recounting the recent goings-on in my city's municipal politics.

One thing that did seem to surprise him was the increase in support for Ford since his confirmation of having smoked crack cocaine. It's easy to understand how someone not familiar with Toronto politics would find that unusual, and to explain that, I had to describe the Rob Ford phenomenon.

Despite the obvious problematic components, Rob Ford, at least in his role as a public servant and politician, is completely forthright, which places him in stark contrast with his opponents. He may tell stupid lies about his personal behavior, but when he says he wants to do something in the political arena, you know he means it and isn't saying it just for public consumption as is so often the case with his rivals. Ford may me prone to bizarre outbursts, but he is genuinely passionate about his concern for the average citizen.

After years of the city's being run by a wasteful nanny-statist, Ford was in large measure a reaction to the paternalism and deceit coming from our city's "mainstream" politicians.

Conrad Black put it well earlier in the week in an editorial for the National Post when he wrote that the people who support Ford "are not scandalized by obesity, occasional cocaine use, occasional drunkenness, or the odd whirl at the wheel of a car when a breathalyzer, if applied, could be problematical. They are, however, scandalized by rank hypocrisy from mouthy journalists and gimcrack municipal politicians, and by the confected and inflated sanctimony of prigs and twits."

Ford`s supporters are frequently portrayed by some of the stupider pundits and political prognosticators as only being concerned with keeping taxes down. If that were the case, then that fails to explain why Ford`s support held firm despite the need for a tax increase to help pay for a much-needed subway expansion in Scarborough. What those ideological enemies of Ford fail to grasp is that the mayor`s support is not based from people who hate taxes, but those who hate seeing taxes used wastefully, as they are so often by Toronto politicians who want to double as social engineers.

Last week, in what some have described as a palace coup, Toronto`s City Council stripped Ford of most of his mayoral authority, even though the excuse was little more than that they dislike and claim to be embarrassed by him. Ford has neither been charged with nor convicted of a crime while in office.

Then, as if on cue, only a couple of days later, the idiots on City Council started talking about imposing a property tax increase well above the limit Ford would have ever proposed. The backlash was swift and immediate. Ford`s opponents fell right into his hands, playing to his strength as a champion of taxpayers and his narrative that the rebellion was motivated entirely by ideology.

Ford is now rising even more in the polls, with him being favored more than any other candidate to be best qualified to manage Toronto`s budget.

Explaining Ford`s rise in popularity to my LA friend, I said, given the pathetic alternatives we have among municipal politicians here, the idea of a guy who takes the occasional puff of crack and goes on weird drunken tirades is still a lot more attractive than anyone else we have on offer.

"Wow," he replied, "things must be really bad there."

It was then that I felt a tinge of embarrassment. "Yeah," I said back, "they are."

Plus : No comment on this

Toronto Mayor Ford's statement on the slimy, lying, incompetent government of Kathleen Wynne

Kathleen Wynne's government "told me to raise taxes on the backs of hard working Torontonians"

McWynnety's F-you message to Toronto: "Raise taxes"

Kathleen Wynne's Provincial Liberals have reneged on a promise which the Globe and Mail had reported verified in a letter to the City of Toronto, to maintain annual transfer payments until 2018.

The clear reason is to punish the city for electing a capable fiscal conservative who highlights Wynne's inept, unmandated government's incompetence.

The incredibly biased Toronto Star, which inserted a gratuitous crack cocaine reference in its article, reports:

“Relationships involve more than one party,” Wynne said curtly Tuesday.

Her comments came after the mayor’s tumultuous one-hour meeting Monday with Finance Minister Charles Sousa at Queen’s Park.

Ford left saying he was “furious” at a change in funding arrangements that will leave the city with a $50 million budget hole to fix next year.

“He told me to increase taxes. This was a complete waste of everyone’s time today. I’m very disappointed,” a visibly seething mayor said afterward.

Incompetent Ontario Premier Wynne set to punish Toronto for electing Rob Ford

...[Kathleen Wynne's] government plans to make up the cash it needs to sustain the Sunshine List lifestyle the public sector is accustomed to.

Within seconds of seeing this disgraceful sight came word from the provincial government that it will be cutting Toronto’s funding thanks to their incompetent money management.

But it was more of a direct shot at Mayor Rob Ford personally — on the backs of Torontonians but designed to hurt his chances of re-election.

The message was made disgracefully clear by, in essence, sending the message, “So you want to be fiscally prudent, eh, fat boy? Watch this.”

Kelly McParland: Rob Ford’s enemies prove to be his greatest strength

Anyone wondering how Rob Ford manages to retain a solid core of supporters despite his sea of troubles need only look at the nature of his challengers. With enemies like this, who needs friends?

...The more the privileged core of “activists”, “progressives” and downtown-dwellers vent about Rob Ford, the more determined his fan base becomes to keep him in office.  The Toronto Star, chief cheerleader for the anti-Ford forces, keeps searching for polls that suggest the mayor is toast, but instead finds voters think he’s the target of a jihad. An Ipsos Reid poll conducted weeks after Ford was alleged to have used crack cocaine found that half the people polled thought the claims were proof of a media (read: Toronto Star) agenda against Ford. The core of his support, not surprisingly, was in the same suburbs that made him mayor and resents the downtowners’ unending crusade to negate the election. When the Star sent a reporter out to mock Ford supporters — standing on a roadside with a sign seeking interviews — it discovered they don’t care about imagery and are happy that he’s controlled taxes. “They believe there is a vendetta against the Fords and that we journalists are making money along the way,” sighed the reporter.

Read all of Kelly McParland's column at THE NATIONAL POST 

h/t Marvin W.

Hudak says Wynne's Liberal government "has crossed the line into corruption"

Rob Ford on crack is still better for Toronto than his "sober" spendthrift opponents

Property taxes skyrocketing, unions dominating city spending, introductions of new taxes disguised as user fees, like a new garbage-pick up fee, complete capitulation to a civic union after a lengthy garbage strike, imposition of dictates on how neighbourhoods should be from city bureaucrats and politicians, inept wast of city funds, like the St. Clair streetcar fiasco, and total incompetence characterized the tenure of David Miller, Rob Ford's predecessor as mayor of Toronto.

In complete contrast, since becoming mayor, Rob Ford kept his promise of eliminating the Vehicle Transfer Tax, he reduced the amount of money individual City Councillors are allowed to spend on office expenses, he saved the city millions by outsourcing garbage pick up west of Yonge Street and knowing he would stand up to them, negotiated fair and reasonable contracts with civic unions.

And under Ford's stewardship, for the first time ever, the city's spending has flatlined.

His commitment to put taxpayers above special interests who rely on public-funded entitlements has made Ford plenty of enemies. The Toronto Star has been relentless in attacking the mayor, devoted unprecedented resources to defaming him and actually libeled Ford by falsely accusing him, based on hearsay,  of assaulting a high school football player. A charge that the student, once located, refuted himself. There hasn't been a week when the Star hasn't found some petty grievance that it tried to magnify into a mountain of disdain against Rob Ford.

And now it emerges that Rob Ford may have smoked crack cocaine.

Even if the charges are true, while expecting the mayor to seek help and conduct himself with more decorum in the future, the city is still far better off with Ford as mayor than it would be under any of his spendthrift opponents.

When Grover Cleveland, the former mayor of Buffalo and a man considered to be a thoroughly honest politician, was running against James G. Blaine for the US Presidency in the 19th Century, it was considered a scandal that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child. The Republican Blaine was a good family man who was widely believed to have accepted bribes while Speaker of the House of Representatives.

A newspaper editorial at the time said in effect that Cleveland was a disappointment as a family man while staying honorable in his role as a public servant, while Blaine was immaculate in his private dealings but thoroughly corrupt as a politician. The right thing to do therefore, was that the two should be consigned by the voters to the lives they led best - Cleveland to public life and Blaine back to private life. Grover Cleveland defeated won the election.

The analogy holds true of Ford. The man has never taken a cent in public funds in any way that could be deemed inappropriate. He is even famous for paying his office expenses from his own pocket rather than charging them to the taxpayers.

Lucia Corbella noted in The Calgary Herald that the hypocrisy exhibited by Ford's enemies regarding his alleged substance abuse is astounding:

"Funny how quickly, though, lefties who use that excuse for beautiful losers they admire, or for the downtrodden on their city streets, have abandoned their hackneyed mantra when a person they despise is a user."

The Toronto Star lavished praise on the unbalanced kleptomaniac MP Svend Robinson. But he had, in their eyes, the benefit of of being a member of the socialist New Democratic Party.

In the last municipal election, The Toronto Star endorsed George Smitherman, a drug-addict who was responsible for a billion dollars worth of wasted taxpayer funds. But he was a Liberal, so as far as the Star was concerned, he was just great.

Ford's Council opponents are incompetents who lavish public money on their special interest friends. To put them back in charge of the city's coffers would be disastrous for the taxpayers of Toronto.

While we want to get Ford to get of his crack, he spends other people's money responsibly. Whether sober or on drugs, leftist city councilors like Adam Vauhgan, Joe Mihevc, Janet Davis and Gord Perks spend tax dollars like crackheads who have just pulled off a successful home invasion.

And that's a type of addiction Toronto really can't afford.

New York's nanny Mayor Bloomberg makes Bill Maher want to "join the Tea Party and marry Ann Coulter"

Nominate Brian Lilley`s CBC Exposed for the CBC Book Awards

That`ll show 'em!

Brian Lilley's book covers waste and corruption that Canadian taxpayers subsidize to the tune of one billion dollars each year.

You can nominate CBC Exposed as best Canadian book of 2012 through THIS LINK. (UPDATE  - March 28 - the CBC has killed the nomination page - it had 37 comments - 34 of them nominating CBC Exposed and they had hundreds of "plus ratings")

Copies of the book can be purchased through Amazon and Chapters Indigo.


h/t Matthew L.










Update: and for those interested in doing more good works, you can find out about sponsoring a ride for cancer research here

UPDATE 2: The Ceeb website has closed comments on the awards...not hard to figure out why.

Great Leader Kim Dong Wynne takes a massive dump on Ontario taxpayers

Despite her rhetoric about working with both parties, it’s now clear Wynne intends to buy the support of the NDP with our tax dollars, in an attempt to keep her Liberal minority government alive.

Her throne speech was politically dishonest and awash in elitist bafflegab meant to deceive average Ontarians about what the Liberals have in mind.

Take, for example, how Wynne purports to inform residents of the Greater Toronto Area that her government is going to impose higher taxes and road tolls on them, without ever using the words “tax” or “toll”, ostensibly to pay for improved public transit.

To wit: “If we continue to argue about the tools this investment will require, then we are deaf to the symphony of progress that echoes around us.  “

The new government is confident that the people of Ontario are willing to participate in a practical discussion of these costs if they can be guaranteed measurable results.”

What a load of bull.

Another prespective from Kelly McParland's piece in the National Post

Vote buying: Ontario's Liberals sell out taxpayer interests to corrupt union

Remember the union that brought you the $143.00 pencil sharpener installation at the [Toronto District School Board] TDSB? Well Ontario's Liberal government has just preserved the union's monopoly agreement with the school board so you can look forward to more $143.00 dollar pencil sharpener installations.  The TDSB is a mismanaged money pit that wastes our money by the truckload and this is how the Liberal government has decided to answer your concerns.


More here

Obama made the right call on the deficit in `08 - he just totally screwed up on it since then

h-t Small Dead Animals

The NDP wants to give you a big tax deduction for paying off Brian Topp's debt

Jack Layton's unsuccessful designee to the mantle of federal NDP boss spent a lot of money and incurred a lot of debt in his failed leadership campaign.  Brain Topp was one of the old Gang of Four, the unofficial policy brain trust (if one can use that expression referring to our federal socialist party) along with Layton's wife, Trinity Spadina MP Olivia Chow and the aged, cranky sage of the west , Ed Broadbent. It was that committee who crafted Layton`s `deathbed letter`of inane platitudes that has become some sort of Sermon on the Mount to the sub-par intellects of the left.

As both a gesture of party solidarity and as a means of solidifying his control at the top, Official Opposition leader `Tin Foil` Tom Mulcair is joining Chow and Topp at a fundraiser to help pay off his former rival`s campaign debt.  According to the NDP email,  `all proceeds will be donated to retire Brian Topp`s campaign loan - part of our party`s commitment to clear the deck and then focus on the next federal election so together we can defeat Stephen Harper.``

The laws around campaign debt are murky and confusing in Canada. Even so, the NDP`s offer of a generous tax credit for paying off Brian Topp`s bills sounds pretty hypocritical. The so-called Next Step Dinner has tables which can be purchased for $1000 and taking money out of the tax base to benefit a party that wants higher taxes and more public spending. If you want Peking Duck dressed with a sour sauce of resentment and a stale fortune cookie predicting years of unwarranted entitlements, then this is the dinner for you.

Why is the government handing over $1 Million to the Sea Hitler organizers?

Alternatives International is a Montreal-based non-governmental agency that has been accorded charity status by Revenue Canada. Describing itself as "social and political movements struggling against social injustices, neoliberalism, imperialism and war," their actual charitable work is rather difficult to determine.

One of Alternatives' activities last year was to serve as the financial conduit for the Canadian boat that attempted to break the sea blockade imposed around the Gaza strip by Israel in order to prevent arms smuggling by Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. That boat, derisively known as The Sea Hitler, was intercepted by Israel's navy after repeated warnings by the Canadian and Israeli governments against sailing to Gaza. (Currently, its Canadian owner, Sandra Ruch, is trying to launch a far-fetched lawsuit to recover the Comoros-registered vessel) .

From Alternatives' 2011 tax filing

According to its tax-filings for the 2011 calendar year, Alternatives received $685,172 from the federal government and $409,117 from provincial government (presumably Quebec) sources. That's over a million taxpayer dollars to the radical Sea Hitler organizers.

Whether Alternatives International has violated the regulations for charitable activities by intentionally engaging in activities that place both Canadians and Israelis at risk is an interesting question.

What is more clear is Alternatives' agenda. On its board sits an individual named Ali Mallah. A close confederate of notorious Khomeinist hatemonger Zafar Bangash, Mallah, a burly, perpetually unkempt Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) organizer is a fixture among the most virulent anti-Israel fanatics in Canada. He was the vice president of the Canadian Arab Federation when that organization lost its federal funding after Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney identified it as being anti-Semitic.

Alternatives is currently the conduit for funds for another attempt to break Israel's sea embargo of the terrorist-controlled Gaza strip. This time by trying to launch the boat from Gaza.

The delivery of tax funds to an organization that seems to be engaged in activities designed to undermine Canadian foreign policy goals could be seen as not only wasteful but irresponsible. Newly appointed International Cooperation Minister Julian Fantino, who is now responsible for the Canadian International Development Agency has said he will ensure "that every nickel of taxpayer money is spent for the right reasons." A good way for him to start would be to review federal handouts to Alternatives International and put a stop to the almost three and a half million nickels it receives annually from the federal government.


International Cooperation Minister Fanino can be contacted by email at fantij@parl.gc.ca

and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Kenney at jason.kenney@parl.gc.ca


Alternatives International's Ali Mallah leads a chant calling for the destruction of Israel at a March 2012 pro-Iran rally in  Toronto:

Promotion of violence from the airheads at OISE

No one familiar with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education gets surprised any longer by the idiotic fanaticism that goes on there.

They have programs that tacitly defend forced female genital mutilation, that are anti-Semitic, overtly anti-Western and largely anti-democratic. Sadly this institution produces people who go on to be senior school administrators and policy advisers to various provincial Ministries of Education.

Their latest gem is this gathering of morons on July 12 called:

Palestine to Philippines: It’s Right to Rebel

Internationalist Solidarity and Resistance Against Occupation and Counter-Insurgency

In other words OISE-approved terrorism and violence. Charming, huh? Your tax dollars help support travesties like this.

And for added insult to the University of Toronto, the fees it  forcibly extracts from students for "activities" and are funneled into the radical communist Ontario Public Interest Research Group is helping to pay for it.

Toronto is governed by a City Council comprised mainly of idiots

Toronto City Council just voted to ban plastic bags for single use i.e. the ones you get at grocery stores. This silly motion was carried by a combination of left wing and mushy middle councilors However the motion was so poorly crafted, Council can't figure out whether the wording allows them to continue imposing the current 5 cent plastic bag tax until the ban takes effect next year.

Council also has no idea whether they have the legal authority to impose such a prohibition. Councillor Minnan-Wong proposed a motion that the City Solicitor offer a legal opinion as to whether the ban is allowable. That simple, rather obvious necessity did not get enough votes from the geniuses running Toronto to pass. 

Council Speaker Nunziata warned that the ban is going to face an expensive legal challenge but what do our idiot Councilors care? They have no problem spending loads of your money on their half-baked ideas.

The behavior of Toronto's municipal councilors, mainly ones from the downtown wards is shocking. Many of them behave like spoiled, petulant, stupid children.

You can watch Toronto Council in session at this link, but do so at your own risk. Witnessing the how these facile simpletons make decisions that affects everyone who lives in the city is a heartbreaking sight that can shatter your faith in government.

What it means is that all of us have to get more involved in our democracy.