Leftist "think tank" urges Obama to reject Keysone XL

Globe and Mail:

... the Center for American Progress (CAP) challenged the assumption that the project would have little impact on the amount of future investment or production from Alberta’s carbon-intensive oil sector ...

... CAP plays on the left side of Democratic Party policy making. Its founder and former chair is John Podesta, who is now serving as senior environmental adviser to President Obama. 

... CAP’s director of climate strategy, Daniel Weiss, said Canadian optimism about a pending approval may be misplaced. He noted Secretary of State John Kerry will play a major role in the decision-making, and Mr. Kerry has ratcheted up his department’s activism on climate change since taking office.

Also on the CAP Board of Directors - climate alarmist billionaire and Obama cheerleader, Tom Steyer.  CAP is a big climate catastrophe booster that regularly produces junk science based propaganda like this. 

Income splitting helps the poor, too

Lawrence Solomon:

Many left-leaning advocacy groups and some on the right criticize the federal government’s income-splitting proposal as sops for the rich that offer nothing to 85% of Canadian households.  To the contrary, the middle class and especially the poor would be profound beneficiaries of income splitting, along with society as a whole. ...

The family should be recognized for its fundamental role in wealth creation ...

Tory thinking compared with Putin's Russia

William Watson on Fin Min Flaherty's suggestion that the Tories might renege on PM Harper's income-splitting promise:

... The buzz is that the government may backtrack on its promise to introduce income-splitting once it has balanced the budget. 

... If the Tories do decide not to spend a couple of billion dollars establishing what most of their supporters do think of as fairness in the tax system, they need to come up with a better rationale than the one they’ve floated so far, which is the Liberal-technocratic one that in today’s labour market the skill shortage is so acute we mustn’t do anything that encourages skilled workers to withdraw ...

Don’t we know there’s a skill shortage (supposedly) and a productivity crisis (supposedly) and that, like our Olympic athletes, we all need to put our shoulder to the wheel for the Motherland?

Well, that may be how they do things in Putin’s Russia, where the leadership regards every Russian as one of Putin’s workers. But it’s not how we do things here. We’re not all Harper’s, or Flaherty’s, workers.

How we do things here is that we establish a fair tax system that raises the revenues we need to pay for basic services  .... And then we let people make their own decisions about the relative worth of making an extra dollar of market income versus tending to their own or their family’s needs.  In particular, we don’t have a policy that says, even implicitly, a woman’s place is in the labour market combating the skill shortage.

Strengthening families by increasing their options has been core Conservative social policy from square one. And tax policy that encourages people to raise families is one way (besides immigration) to help sustain our economic growth. It is also a step towards an effective alternative to unaffordable "progressive" programs like national universal daycare.

If Stephen Harper fails to keep his income-splitting promise it will be at the Conservatives' peril. While no serious Conservative supporter would waste his vote on any other party, many, like me, would simply withhold their vote and stop donations if betrayed on this.

Sex scandal detection

[h/t Vinney]

General Leslie's moving expenses

MND Rob Nicholson and others are making a lot of noise about General Andrew Leslie's moving expense claims.

Like most media accounts the above linked article fails to tell us what moving expenses government/Treasury Board/DND regulations actually allow (and disallow). General Leslie's move was a local move (within 40 km) to an Intended Place of Residence (IPR) on release. His move was authorized under these regulations so it would be logical to conclude that his moving expense claim was within the rules. General Leslie would have been advised by DND administrative staff what expenses would be covered.

Rob Nicholson's observation that Leslie's local moving expense claims "appear grossly excessive" is understandable. So is his pledge to look into it:

"... I will be asking the Department of National Defence to examine how an in-city move could possibly total over $72,000".

That's good. It does seem excessive. He should look into it.

But Nicholson also attacked General Leslie's integrity:

"In the meantime, it is important for Andrew Leslie to explain why he believes this is a reasonable expense for hard working Canadians to absorb. This is a matter of judgment and the responsible use of taxpayers dollars."

There Nicholson is way off base. Leslie doesn't have to "explain" anything (even if he is an advisor to that dipsh*t, Justin Trudeau).   It's the Treasury Board and Nicholson's own DND officials, those responsible for the regulations and the authorizing of claims, that have the explaining to do.  Nicholson will be eating crow (and demanding changes in the rules).

FYI, the applicable government regulations are described here (see Chapter 14):
http://www.forces.gc.ca/assets/FORCES_Internet/docs/en/about-policies-standards-benefits-relocation/aps-paa-2009-eng.pdf

Update - Ezra Levant's take:



I agree with Ezra on the Media Party's double standard, the partisan bias and that Leslie is now fair game for partisan criticism.  However, like many partisan conservatives Ezra portrays General Leslie's claim for local moving expenses as some kind of  moral outrage.  It isn't.  That moving expense benefit has been available to all ranks for decades.  The  relocation regulations in question do not discriminate based on rank.  And since there are many more lower ranks than there are generals it can be assumed that there has been a lot more money shelled out for similar expenses for the lower ranks than for generals.  Now, if it were to be discovered that the lower ranks have been denied that benefit, then we'd have a real scandal on our hands.

How our immigration system went wrong

George Jonas:

... The assumption, unspoken but taken for granted until the 1960s, was that immigration was beneficial as long as it was designed to serve the interests of the host society first. 

... It was in the past 40 years that the immigrant of dubious loyalty emerged, followed by the disloyal native-born, sometimes of immigrant ancestry, sometimes of Islamic conversion. The new immigrant seemed ready to share the West’s wealth but not its values.

... How did this come about? Three reasons stand out.

One, we retreated from the principle that immigration should serve the interests of the host country first.  ...

Next, we tried to turn this liability into an asset by promoting multiculturalism....

Finally, in fundamentalist Islam, we’ve come up against a culture for which the very concept of rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s is alien.  ...

.... When Canada is no longer regarded as a culture, with its own traditions and narratives, but a clean slate for anyone to write on what he will, immigrants of the new school will be ready with their own texts, including some that aren’t very pleasant. 

Justin Trudeau's "one-purge-fits-all style"

Rex Murphy:

Mr. Trudeau’s one-purge-fits-all style offers no gradation, no evaluation of individuals, no acknowledgement that some Senators are honourable, some have worked well for Canadians, some have not seen the Senate as a lottery pit for their own enrichment.

As a response to the Senate’s problems, Mr. Trudeau’s publicity-winning move is glib rather than profound, a sloughing off of the problem rather than a real addressing of it.  Ultimately, “go away” is not a policy.