The incredible rise of a lightweight

The rise of Justin Trudeau has been like the rise of a helium balloon.  A celebrity lightweight with an inflated ego and sense of entitlement - arising entirely from his accident of birth - Justin was released and wafted aloft by the LPC and a liberal dominated mainstream media that has never stopped idolizing, mythologizing and worshipping his father Pierre as their secular god.  The son of "god", Justin, born on Christmas day no less, has been afforded similar adoration - as a Liberal Party messiah.  The liberal media propaganda machine inflated Justin's image and minimized or ignored his gaffes while relentlessly and viciously demonizing the "Nixonian" enemy, Stephen Harper.   That's how a completely unqualified lightweight, the lightest in Canadian history, came to be elected Prime Minister last night.


Having the Liberals undeservedly returned to power from third place is bad enough, but having to accept the foppish boy-Justin as my Prime Minister is absolutely galling.  You can't blame Justin, it's not his fault he was born a Trudeau, but to think that someone, anyone, with a resume as thin as his could go from backbench MP to party leader to Prime Minister on his first try, is incredible.

"The cause of the Canada-U.S. price gap is obvious — the government"

Mark Milke:

... the federal government recently introduced legislation — dubbed the Price Transparency Act — that will force retailers to explain why Canadians sometimes pay higher prices than Americans for the same products. 

... To think a government is remotely capable of collecting and properly collating this type of comparative information assumes a degree of specific knowledge that governments do not possess, as it would be impossible to track the millions of business decisions that are made on a daily basis.

... All of this ...ignores one significant reason why some prices in Canada are higher than those in the United States: government policy.  ... For example ... Ontario’s rising electricity costs ... federal “supply management” policies ... airline fares - federal government policy that prevents full cabotage ...

Several others have also written about James Moore’s proposed law:

Andrew Coyne: The whole ‘Canada-U.S. price gap’ issue is a con surrounded by hypocrisy
John Ivison: Moore trades tariff relief for discredited 1970s policies
Peter Foster: Regulations R Us

All make excellent points.  There is certainly nothing “conservative” about such regulation.  We are blessed with (mostly) free markets in this country.  Retailers are best able to price their products in those markets and consumers are perfectly capable of sorting out where to buy them and deciding what price is fair.  The government should not be meddling with or attempting to micro-manage retail businesses.

Tougher sentencing, bigger prisons

Earlier this week John Ivison criticized Tory spending on increased prison capacity saying it's "tough on taxpayers and bad policy".

A couple of days ago near my neighbourhood there was an armed home invasion where one of the two collared perps was described as:

... a “prolific offender” with “quite a lengthy property-crime record.”

Forgive me for asking, but WTH was this guy doing on the street?  He must have been a known 'bad apple' before graduating to "prolific offender".  We need tougher sentencing.  If we get it and that means bigger prisons then Tory policy is good policy.

Dion on Kyoto - duplicitous or duped?

John Ivison's column in today's National Post raises important questions concerning Dion's commitment to the Kyoto Accord. He quotes B.C.- based emissions management consultant Aldyen Donnelly:

"The only way industry can do its 'fair share' under the Kyoto cap is to shut down at least 20% of existing manufacturing capacity and jobs over the next 36 months," she said. Even if a new government closed all of Ontario's coal-fired power stations, shut down all oilsands activity in Alberta and slapped a moratorium on new development, it would address less than one-quarter of Canada's current "Kyoto gap."

Mr. Ivison then correctly wonders:

Is Mr. Dion prepared to let the Canadian public in on this reality check, or is he deliberately misleading an electorate that polls suggest is in favour of Kyoto, even though two in three acknowledge they don't know anything about it?

[...]

Either Mr. Dion knows this and is being duplicitous for political gain or, worse, he doesn't and has been duped by the environmental lobby. Neither explanation inspires much confidence in him as a future prime minister.

I'd also bet most Canadians are unaware that even if we did meet our Kyoto targets at the expense of a 20% chop to the economy, the net effect on global climate would be near zero. In fact, since Canada's contribution to global GHGs is small, the effect on climate of shutting the economy down all together would be negligible.

That's not to say, assuming there's a chance anthropogenic GHGs are actually the culprit, we shouldn't be doing our 'precautionary' bit. But it does strongly suggest that there's no great urgency, no reason for Canada to commit economic suicide other than to prove itself a global goody-two-shoes. Doesn't the world already know this?

I hope the National Post editorial board gets a chance soon to quiz Mr. Dion, and Messrs Harper and Layton, on these things. Canadians need to be informed.