We are closing in on the goal of raising $600 for the Army Run in support of injured soldiers and military families. At $355, we are 59% of the way there!

I’ve been training hard to not completely embarrass myself, but there is still more to do in raising money and getting me ready for 21 km!  Can you pledge $20 or more in support of the run?

You can make a pledge online here.

Sincerely,

Derek Fildebrandt

Hours ago, Liberal MPs Wayne Easter and Alexandra Mendes held a news conference where on behalf of the Liberals Party of Canada, they awarded several golden pig trophies to the Tories in critique of recent personnel/patronage appointments (choose one depending on your patisan disposition). Anyone who compares photos of the two events would find striking similarities, but for the absence of Pork the Waste Hater.

Most plagiarism in Ottawa is restricted to parties sharing one another’s platforms at budget time, but it seldom degenerates into such brash copy-cattery (new word ©). Ironically enough, those golden pig statues were largely paid for by taxpayers, as the Liberal Party – as do all parties – receive massive subsidies from the public purse in addition to significant office budgets for their leader and individual MPs.

If there has ever been a case of the pot calling the kettle black, it is Liberal MPs harping at the Tories for patronage appointments, including those to the Senate. To use yet another relevant cliche, Wayne Easter and Alexandra Mendes should refrain from throwing stones in a glass house and come clean on who exactly paid for those rip-off “Golden Sows.”

Cross-Posted at taxpayer.com/blog

Fans of the Saskatchewan Roughriders are some of the most passionate fans in Canada, comparable with Leaf fans except in that while Roughrider fans believe that they can win the cup and sometimes do, Leaf fans believe that they will win their league’s respective cup and, well, don’t. Despite this, the passion of Rider Nation often leads to irrational claims that they are the “real” Roughriders, normally explained away by serial conspiracy theories.

Using the most factual source that this author could muster in 10 seconds, Wikipedia settles the debate once and for all, stating clearly that, “The Ottawa Rough Riders were a Canadian Football League (CFL) team based in Ottawa, Ontario, founded in 1876.” In a separate article, Wikipedia states that, “The Saskatchewan Roughriders are a CFL team based in Regina, Saskatchewan, founded in 1910.” For Saskatchewan fans and CTF Webmaster Dean Smith, let it be known that that is 34 years later.

There is some justification however for Saskatchewan’s copying Ottawa’s team name. Canadian football and rugby teams existed in a number of smaller league’s and sporting unions for most of the sport’s early history and so when Saskatchewan founded her team, they were in separate leagues.  Only as the two teams later came into competition with one another did the absurdity of two teams sharing a name in a small league become obvious.

But even the claim (as I made above) that they share the same name is not without challenge. Ottawa’s team is the “Rough Riders”, while Saskatchewan’s is the “Roughriders.”

With Ottawa closing in on re-founding it’s team in the not-to-distant future, it should not be made to squabble below the banner of the “Renegades” or any other new name, but rather, declare that now is the time for a historic truce. The Roughriders in green should – as good sportsmen – allow Ottawa to reclaim it’s rightful name, and the Rough Riders in black should in return cease taunting Saskatchewan for “stealing” or “copying” it’s name.

Lets let the CFL, like Canada itself, return to its normal, quirky and at times bizarre self. Lets bring football back to Ottawa and let the first game kickoff with a showdown between the black and green Rough-Riders.

The Telegraph Journal is reporting that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is eying an office in Halifax in order to establish a regional pressence as Atlantic Canada’s taxpayer watchdog. As a CTF director, I know nothing about this (…) but in the spirit of injecting some excitment into Atlantic Canada’s political sphere, I’ve included a video from a great Canadian west-coast band that seems pretty east-coast. As the CTF is moving from west-to-east, this seems appropriate.

For all you Atlantic Canadians (still out east or exciled westward), please consider making a donation to the CTF to help fund an activist taxpayer presence on the mainland!

An edited version of the following article appeared in the Winter 2009 edition of The Taxpayer. Since this article’s publishing, Parliament has taken steps to limit the practice of “10 percenters.”

What is another word for ‘free money’ on Parliament Hill?  ‘Taxpayer money’, ‘your money’, ‘not my money’ are all fair synonyms.  It’s therefore not surprising when MPs vote themselves all sorts of perks, but many are little understood or even known about by the public.

One perk that has become somewhat more public as of late are “10 percenters.”  In addition to the “right” to free postage that MPs enjoy, these are essentially literature pieces meant to “keep constituents informed on parliamentary issues.”  They are called “10 percenters” because each flyer can only be sent to 10 percent of an MP’s riding, be it theirs or someone else’s.  There is nearly no limit on how many can be sent in total in practical terms.

For example: if an MP wishes to send one of these to every household in a given riding, all he or she must do is have their staff create 10, slightly different pieces of text with different pictures.  Often, these are even centrally coordinated by each party’s respective bureaus and distributed into ridings that they do not hold, obviously to win votes there.  Other times, MPs just blanket their own ridings with smiling pictures of themselves cutting ribbons, kissing babies and milking cows.  Almost as often, these flyers have pictures of other party leaders looking chummy with George W. Bush, kicking puppies, or not holding the door for elderly ladies (maybe I’m exaggerating about Bush).

Those who might think that fighting this practice is not worth the bother and simply wish to unsubscribe from (un)parliamentary junk-mail are unfortunately out of luck, as these flyers are unaddressed mail that blanket entire postal codes.  Unimpressed yet?  It’s worth noting that when MPs of all parties suspect an election will be called, they have these little bundles of joy mailed right before the writ is dropped so that they land on your doorstep as close as possible to election day.

As Rick Mercer said on ‘10 percenters’ this November, “they [MPs] would rather die than waste our money or disrespect their office, or is it the other way around?”

Not surprisingly, this privilege is terribly abused.  And why not?  Its “free” to MPs and can be used to tout their own party line, or to attack their opponents.  Giving politicians a perk like this and expecting them not to take advantage of it is akin to leaving a prime steak in front of a dog and going to work.

That is not to say that there is anything wrong with promoting one’s own party or even attacking opponents (so long as it is honest and genuine), but doing so on the public dime should not be tolerated.

Last year, MPs wasted $10-million of taxpayers’ money on these perks, of which $6-million was from the Conservatives.  In reality, the Conservatives spent more money on these because as most people inside the Queensway know, they are simply better organized.  That however is cold comfort to taxpayers on the hook for these petty perks.

The offensive nature of some recent ‘10 percenters’ has prompted several opposition MPs to call for limits on what can be published in these mail-outs, but such calls completely miss the mark.  Allowing bureaucrats to sift through the thousands of proposed pieces would inevitably require editorial decisions to be made that no free country should allow.  In short, the only way to make sure taxpayers are not paying for material that they may find offensive is to cancel it.

If parties or MPs wish to send out a partisan or attack message – offensive or not – the only fair way to do so is to pay for it with funds donated to them by their supporters, not taxpayers.  Unfortunately, this is only 10 percent of the problem, as the Conservatives, Liberals, Bloc, NDP and Greens all received subsidies from taxpayers in the form of political welfare, costing many more millions every year than ‘10 percenters’.

The Tories have promised to end these welfare subsidies if they win a majority in the next election.  This is an excellent start to be sure, but they can set a clear example right now and end these undeserved perks for all parties.

cross-posted at taxpayer.com/blog

The corruption that fiscal dependency has wreaked on EU member-states is highlighted by Greece’s temper-tantrum over raising its state-mandated retirement age from 61 to 63, all the while German taxpayers – who retire at 67 – are expected to bail that country out after decades of reckless spending that rivals even Quebec’s provincial government.

A McLean’s piece by Mark Steyn paints a pretty picture of the whole scheme and why Germany’s own problems at home will mean that it will soon be unable to carry the EU’s (even) less frugal members.

Canada’s demographic issues are not as acute as Europe’s, but still fatally serious if issues like healthcare and public sector pension obligations are not brought under control.

My tepid support for replacing Ontario’s PST with an HST was based on a few notably positive factors: 1) savings to businesses, 2) applicability to all products and 3) applicability to all consumers. While the CTF has argued that the HST’s applicability to all products should mean that the overall rate should be lowered to ensure revenue neutrality (or offset by income tax cuts), the issue of applying the tax equally to all consumers has until now been taken for granted. Only radical groups demanding an exemption determined on the basis of race have called into question whether or not the HST should apply to all.

Under physical threat of barricading roads during the Stimuli-Summit G8/G20, the federal Conservative and Ontario Liberal governments have caved. Until now, the Ontario PCs have condemned the Liberal government for plain cowardice in dealing with the siege of Caledonia. The Ontario PC’s apparent complacency in caving to these radical demands does not bode well for a party attempting to recover an image of decisiveness and one that actually stands for something again.

And so all Ontarians not blessed with correct lineage will be paying a proportionally greater share of the HST. “Applicability to all consumers,” is no more – and so with this key component for my support now gone the way of balanced budgets and the dodo, so goes my lonely support for the HST.

The federal long-gun registry has finally begun to stare death in the face as it emerges from the Public Safety Committee. As every opposition member on the committee is staunchly supportive of the program, it is no surprise that it voted to recommend that the House not pass Candice Hoeppner’s Bill C-391. 

The House of Commons is a bigger fish bowl however, and swimming in it are 21 opposition members who voted for the Bill at Second Reading. Of these were 12 New Democrats, 8 Liberals and 1 independent. All Bloquists voted “nay”. Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff has now promised to whip his rebel MPs into shape despite the convention that all private members bills be free-votes and Bloc is expected to vote as it did before. This leaves NDP leader Jack Layton unwillingly holding the proverbial bullets to shoot down the long-gun registry.

Will Jack Layton whip his caucus as well? Can he succeed? Will any whipped Liberals or (potentially whipped) New Democrats simply abstain or catch the “Ottawa flu’?  Regardless of what happens, here is how the vote might go down:

According to these figures, the Bill has a living chance of passing in most scenarios with the obvious exception of all opposition parties voting together. Even if both the NDP and Liberals where whipped, some of their dissenting members would feel tremendous pressure from constituents to break party lines and vote for the Bill regardless, or at the very least not vote in opposition.

In the last noted scenario  – that of all dissenting Liberals falling in line with their leader’s whip and all dissenting New Democrats sitting on their hands – the bill would be defeated by a single vote. Since Second Reading however, pro-registry New Democrat Judy Wasylycia-Leis has resigned to run for the mayor’s chair in Winnipeg, bringing the vote to an exact tie.

Much drama awaits the fish bowl of Ottawa!

Advocating for “green” road-tolls to syphon money from drivers to public transit  and a carbon tax (ostensibly to syphon money from Ontarians to China and other polluters), the commissioner would seem to be stepping far beyond the appropriate bounds of an officer of Parliament and directly into the sphere of political advoacy. His plan would put in place tolls on roads to achieve two ends:

1. Lower the number of cars on the road by making driving even more unafforable for all but the affluent; and
2. Channel the funds from the shmuks still on the road into public transit.

Ontario drivers will already be paying a full 34% of their pump price in taxes after the HST takes effect on July 1st. Commissioner Miller doesn’t think that this is enough, and one has to wondering if Ontario’s Environment Minister Gerresten and Premier McGunity agree.

Even if the premier and his environment minister don’t nod in agreement with their spokesman commissioner, they would be wise to recognize that drivers have been directly subsidizing public transit for years. Only recently has the federal government made moves to ensure that gas tax dollars are reinvested into roads, but public transit is still massively subsidized by general revenues (which is Latin for: all taxpayers).

If the commissioner deems that it is in his job description to act as a government-paid front for environmental lobby groups, than he might consider directing his tax-wrath elsewhere. Ontario is plagued by many real and serious environmental problems: the state of the Great Lakes and fuel spills in the north among them. The quality of our land, air and water are areas of concern that matter, with solutions that are grounded in solid science. Political advocacy for more taxes to satisfy some Kyoto met-dream is not only bad for taxpayers, it distracts the public from serious environmental concerns.

In 2002, Brian Mulroney’s portrait was added to the majestic halls of Parliament Hill’s Centre Block outside of the House of Commons. As usual, there was an anti-Mulroney protester intent on making an arse of himself. As usual, Brian Mulroney soothed things over with his deep baritone voice by making light of things. And as usual, then-prime minister Jean Chretien tried to strangle the protester (I exaggerate only slightly). Fortunately for him, security protected him from the feisty Shawinigator before his hands could be firmly grasped around his neck.

The hanging of Brian Mulroney, and the endless and no-longer humorous puns about executing prime ministers: A part of our heritage.

Watch the “Hanging of Brian Mulroney” HERE

Watch Liberal MP Shawn Murphy actually advocating that Brian Mulroney be hanged HERE. Hat-tip Stephen Taylor.