According to a federal government document issued in 1996, “The Charity Industry and its Tax Treatment”, charities are defined, for tax purposes, in this fashion:
The courts have defined four major categories for charitable purposes. In order to fall into one of these categories, an organization must carry on at least one of the following activities: (1) relief of poverty (e.g. food banks and organizations that provide disadvantaged persons with clothing or furniture), (2) the promotion of religion (the organization must have an element of theistic worship in order to be recognized, and the activities must serve the common good), (3) the promotion of education (the activities must include a substantial educative aspect or be geared to the development of the mental faculties or to advancing a branch of knowledge (e.g. museums) and (4) other activities of benefit to the community, defined by the courts (e.g. environmental protection, child welfare, volunteer firefighters, the prevention of cruelty to animals, the relief of suffering associated with aging)
The document is clear, however, what a charity is not. It is not an organization like the Sierra Club of Canada which indulges in partisan political activity. Its technique is cute. While not expressly endorsing a political party, what it did was conduct a survey, and on that basis, issue a “report card” that assigned grades to the four parties. Only a certified cretin would not understand the top of the Bell curve would be the Sierra Club’s endorsement for voters. Nothing wrong with that of course. Except when you are a “non-profit” organization that accepts donations paid for with tax refunds under registered charity number BN 1194 9789. As they stipulate:
. Organizations that carry on political activities, in whole or in part, are not charities. For example, promoting the objectives of a political party, promoting a political doctrine, persuading the public to adopt a specific point of view on a major social issue or attempting to bring about changes in legislation or government policy would all prevent registration. The Act expressly prohibits any charitable organization from carrying on partisan political activities. Thus, a charity may not give financial or other support to or oppose a political party or a candidate for political office. An organization established for charitable purposes may, however, become involved in non-partisan political activities that directly contribute to the attainment of the organization's objectives, as long as it does not devote more than 10% of its resources to those activities.
However, the area, according to this most recent report by the Sierra Club, is nebulous. http://www.sierraclub.bc.ca/quick-links/media-centre/media-clips/campaign-rules-fear-of-tory-backlash-put-chill-on-critics
Revenue agency rules allow charities, which are authorized to offer tax receipts to donors, to conduct some political action, such as encouraging the public to push for changing a particular government policy, as long as that's a minor part of their activities.
During elections campaigns, the rules become especially murky: Charities are allowed to push for policies that are in line with their own purposes, but prohibited from doing anything that constitutes "direct or indirect support of, or opposition to, any political party or candidate for public office."
But non-profit organizations, or the non-profit wings of organizations strike up a more militant stance than organizations like the Suzuki Foundation that have a charitable orientation. Elizabeth May complained during the election campaign on September 26th, that “What a crime it is that David Suzuki can’t say anything in an election campaign because of its charitable status. This is appalling.”
Executive director Steve Hazell said that the Suzuki Foundation was sufficiently intimidated by potential Canada Revenue Agency reprisals that a scan of their website revealed inoffensive ‘pablum’. Most environment organizations are charities who are cautious with their statements. May insists that cuts to the BC Chapter of the Sierra Club during her tenure as executive tenure were retribution for the positions she took.
If this was indeed the case, it was long over-do. That the memberships of three population stabilization or immigration-reduction organizations should have to pay for the full freight for their membership fees for their organizations while these hypocritical freeloaders in the Sierra Club should enjoy generous tax rebates is outrageous to say the least. Why should they receive my money because their Sierra Club gave the Green Party an A- on its report card but I can’t receive any of their money via a tax rebate when Immigration Watch Canada gives that same Green Party an F- for promoting an immigration policy that would hike greenhouse gas emissions by 38% and accelerate the loss of prime farmland? Advocacy is advocacy.
I find the whole Canadian ethic of the state subsidy of cultures and ideologies philosophically problematic. Be a Liberal, a Tory, a Catholic, a Hindu, an advocate of an environmental cause. But don’t make me underwrite your missionary work.
An advocacy group that fraudulently harvests membership subscriptions and donations because it enjoys charity status should be exposed for two reasons. One, exposure and de-regulation would lesson would lessen the load one everyone or two, it would allow government to deploy the liberated money to bona fide charities.
It is ironic to think that the Sierra Club and the environment NGOs feel hard done by the charities rule book. The only problem with the rule book is that it doesn’t weigh ten tons and it wasn’t throw right on top of them ten years ago.
Friday, October 31, 2008
COURAGE IS THE MEASURE OF A MAN
I have written a lot of scathing articles about Suzuki. I live in the same small community where he has a residence (2700 people). But my antipathies are not personal. And they are not founded on a difference in how calamitous we judge our situation to be or how differently we judge its cause to be. It turns out, we are probably in total agreement about how close we are to disaster and about the role of immigrant-driven population growth as agency of that disaster in Canada. And of the role of population growth in the global environmental meltdown.
The issue I have with Suzuki and Bill Rees is their lack of courage. They have such a fund of celebrity to draw upon that they could afford to part with some of it, a large part of it, to come out publicly against immigration as they have privately. But they won’t. It is as if they know that someone is planning to commandeer a plane and fly it into the twin towers in Manhattan but they won’t tell the FBI, only a friend or two in private.
Rees conceded to me, after 3 days of debate, that yes OK, “in present circumstances” he would like to see a reduction in immigration. Imagine how a public statement from him would have helped our cause during the election. Suzuki told the Population Institute of Canada in a letter last year “keep up the good work.” Imagine how it would have helped us if he had published a letter in the Globe and Mail during the election praising the Population Institute of Canada for its good work in trying to lobby Ottawa to implement a population plan for Canada that would stabilize our population. But he didn’t do it.
Last week he told an interviewer that industrialized countries were “way over-populated”. Imagine if he published a letter in the Toronto Sun and said plainly that CANADA was WAY OVERPOPULATED? Two years ago at this time he told an Australian national radio audience that Australia was over-populated. Why hasn’t he had the courage to give the same message in his own country? If Australia is in overshoot, so are we.
When I see Robert Bateman coming out and putting his head on the public chopping block by making a statement against population growth in Canada, I then realized that David Suzuki had no excuse at all for cowardice. I have a tough time respecting someone with a waterfront home on the Gulf Islands, another in Kitsilano, a handsome income, vast connections, the support of a large family and a network of friends, who refuses to come out of the closet on an issue that he has given private indications he believes in. Immigration has profoundly negative impacts on the environment.
I come from a working class background. Miners, loggers, carpenters, postal workers. We fought and laid down our bodies on the picket lines and risked our livelihoods many, many times on matters of principle. Told the boss to shove it on innumerable occasions. Three uncles faced fascist guns and one didn't come back. It is always confounding to meet people without guts. I can excuse ignorance, or people not yet fully enlightened, or people who don’t share my perspective. Because I have changed my position many times as well. But I would never sit on the truth and be afraid to announce it. And I have paid a heavy cost for that commitment.
I too was of the belief that a courteous gentile approach was the best way to coax support from William Rees, but after three days of discussions in the spring of 2007 and 3 days in the summer of 2008, we were no closer to the truth. He proven evasive and non-committal, an unreconstructed Monbiotist. Steve Hazell also proved to be a public relations exercise. He talked a very good game. He came on to me like the Michael Gorbachev of the Sierra Club. He was a convert to Malthus, and was determined to re-introduce the Sierra Club to the importance of population growth in Canada. Once it was clear that I would no longer attack the Sierra Club and stop being a “rabid dog” as someone put it, once I held out the olive branch to his conversion, he lost interest, and I never heard from him again. I should have known better. Any union negotiator will tell you that is only when the other side is afraid of you that you win any concessions.
Perhaps Dr. Suzuki is inhibited by fundraising considerations. Well, welcome to the blue collar world, where union men put their mortgages on the line and their seniority as well to walk off the job and turn down their paychecks. Some people are willing to sacrifice more than funding for their principles. Some Canadians in Afghanistan sacrificed their lives, as did so many more in the last war. I wouldn't ask Dr. Suzuki to give up his life, only to publicly reveal his private opinions on immigration. To make the same sacrifice that Robert Bateman made when he publicly wrote these words:
"In my view every place in the world, including Canada, is overcrowded. Many vast areas on this planet, including Canada, are not ecologically suitable for human habitation or exploitation. They should be largely left to nature! Environmental organizations and activists are constantly fighting against certain developments and rightly so. But they virtually never mention the elephant in the room . . . too many people. The silence is puzzling and deafening.
The longer this discussion is postponed, the worse the problems we face will become. We need to find a way to end the worship of growth."
As Charles Dickens said, without courage, every other virtue is of no avail.
The issue I have with Suzuki and Bill Rees is their lack of courage. They have such a fund of celebrity to draw upon that they could afford to part with some of it, a large part of it, to come out publicly against immigration as they have privately. But they won’t. It is as if they know that someone is planning to commandeer a plane and fly it into the twin towers in Manhattan but they won’t tell the FBI, only a friend or two in private.
Rees conceded to me, after 3 days of debate, that yes OK, “in present circumstances” he would like to see a reduction in immigration. Imagine how a public statement from him would have helped our cause during the election. Suzuki told the Population Institute of Canada in a letter last year “keep up the good work.” Imagine how it would have helped us if he had published a letter in the Globe and Mail during the election praising the Population Institute of Canada for its good work in trying to lobby Ottawa to implement a population plan for Canada that would stabilize our population. But he didn’t do it.
Last week he told an interviewer that industrialized countries were “way over-populated”. Imagine if he published a letter in the Toronto Sun and said plainly that CANADA was WAY OVERPOPULATED? Two years ago at this time he told an Australian national radio audience that Australia was over-populated. Why hasn’t he had the courage to give the same message in his own country? If Australia is in overshoot, so are we.
When I see Robert Bateman coming out and putting his head on the public chopping block by making a statement against population growth in Canada, I then realized that David Suzuki had no excuse at all for cowardice. I have a tough time respecting someone with a waterfront home on the Gulf Islands, another in Kitsilano, a handsome income, vast connections, the support of a large family and a network of friends, who refuses to come out of the closet on an issue that he has given private indications he believes in. Immigration has profoundly negative impacts on the environment.
I come from a working class background. Miners, loggers, carpenters, postal workers. We fought and laid down our bodies on the picket lines and risked our livelihoods many, many times on matters of principle. Told the boss to shove it on innumerable occasions. Three uncles faced fascist guns and one didn't come back. It is always confounding to meet people without guts. I can excuse ignorance, or people not yet fully enlightened, or people who don’t share my perspective. Because I have changed my position many times as well. But I would never sit on the truth and be afraid to announce it. And I have paid a heavy cost for that commitment.
I too was of the belief that a courteous gentile approach was the best way to coax support from William Rees, but after three days of discussions in the spring of 2007 and 3 days in the summer of 2008, we were no closer to the truth. He proven evasive and non-committal, an unreconstructed Monbiotist. Steve Hazell also proved to be a public relations exercise. He talked a very good game. He came on to me like the Michael Gorbachev of the Sierra Club. He was a convert to Malthus, and was determined to re-introduce the Sierra Club to the importance of population growth in Canada. Once it was clear that I would no longer attack the Sierra Club and stop being a “rabid dog” as someone put it, once I held out the olive branch to his conversion, he lost interest, and I never heard from him again. I should have known better. Any union negotiator will tell you that is only when the other side is afraid of you that you win any concessions.
Perhaps Dr. Suzuki is inhibited by fundraising considerations. Well, welcome to the blue collar world, where union men put their mortgages on the line and their seniority as well to walk off the job and turn down their paychecks. Some people are willing to sacrifice more than funding for their principles. Some Canadians in Afghanistan sacrificed their lives, as did so many more in the last war. I wouldn't ask Dr. Suzuki to give up his life, only to publicly reveal his private opinions on immigration. To make the same sacrifice that Robert Bateman made when he publicly wrote these words:
"In my view every place in the world, including Canada, is overcrowded. Many vast areas on this planet, including Canada, are not ecologically suitable for human habitation or exploitation. They should be largely left to nature! Environmental organizations and activists are constantly fighting against certain developments and rightly so. But they virtually never mention the elephant in the room . . . too many people. The silence is puzzling and deafening.
The longer this discussion is postponed, the worse the problems we face will become. We need to find a way to end the worship of growth."
As Charles Dickens said, without courage, every other virtue is of no avail.
KATHERINE BETTS ON WHY PROFESSIONALS AND ACADEMICS SUPPORT OPEN BORDERS
Australian sociologist Katherine Betts has examined this phenomenon. She uses the term "new class" (a group similar to what former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich calls "symbolic analysts" to describe the intelligentsia, professionally-educated internationalists and cosmopolitans, lawyers, academics, journalists, teachers, artists, activists, and globetrotting business people and travelers. Her cogent analysis of why the new class has eschewed the cause of limiting immigration in Australia is germane to the case of U. S. environmental leaders: "The concept of immigration control has become contaminated in the minds of the new class by the ideas of racism, narrow self-seeking nationalism, and a bigoted preference for cultural homogeneity....Their enthusiasm for anti-racism and international humanitarianism is often sincere but there are also social pressures supporting this sincere commitment and making apostasy difficult." And later: "Ideologically correct attitudes to immigration have offered the warmth of in-group acceptance to supporters and the cold face of exclusion to dissenters." Similar analysis in the United States suggests that it is "politically incorrect" to talk of reducing immigration.
Taboos against challenging immigration policies are enforced by a "political correctness" that often is based on honorable sentiments tied to an individual's personal connections to immigration. These sentiments are usually strongest among those with the most direct, and recent, immigrant experiences in their immediate families, i.e. those whose spouses, parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles immigrated to the United States. Sensitivity is heightened still more for those who feel a strong personal identity as a member of ethnic groups – such as Irish, Italian, Greek, Slavic, Chinese, Japanese, or Jewish – whose members once fled persecution in other countries or who may have met with discrimination in this country. Even when such a person does recognize that U.S. population growth is problematic, and that immigration is a major contributor to it, he or she may well reason that it would be hypocritical, as a descendant of immigrants and indirect beneficiary of a generous immigration policy, to "close the door" even partially on any prospective immigrant. Dealing with immigration can become almost physically sickening for such people, who feel they must make a choice between environmental protection and their view of themselves as a part of an immigrant ethnic group.
Leon Kolankiewicz
Taboos against challenging immigration policies are enforced by a "political correctness" that often is based on honorable sentiments tied to an individual's personal connections to immigration. These sentiments are usually strongest among those with the most direct, and recent, immigrant experiences in their immediate families, i.e. those whose spouses, parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles immigrated to the United States. Sensitivity is heightened still more for those who feel a strong personal identity as a member of ethnic groups – such as Irish, Italian, Greek, Slavic, Chinese, Japanese, or Jewish – whose members once fled persecution in other countries or who may have met with discrimination in this country. Even when such a person does recognize that U.S. population growth is problematic, and that immigration is a major contributor to it, he or she may well reason that it would be hypocritical, as a descendant of immigrants and indirect beneficiary of a generous immigration policy, to "close the door" even partially on any prospective immigrant. Dealing with immigration can become almost physically sickening for such people, who feel they must make a choice between environmental protection and their view of themselves as a part of an immigrant ethnic group.
Leon Kolankiewicz
WHAT IS BEHIND THOSE ACCUSATIONS OF RACISM?
In the October 29th, 2008 edition of the News Times http://www.newtimesslo.com/news/1258/whats-behind-those-ads , Colin Rigley, using two proxies, takes a run at a commercial aired by the Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS). The critics he cites reprise the tired old “Greening of Hate” formula served up by the Carl Pope crew nearly a decade ago to squash efforts by the Sierra Club grass roots to restore sanity and tradition to America’s flagship environmental organization.
Once upon a time the “IPAT” equation was the foundation of environmental thinking in America (and elsewhere). It reasoned that environmental impact (I) equaled (P or population level) times (A affluence or per capita consumption if you like) times (T for technology).
But come the mid 80s, the “P” discreetly vanished from the equation, thus making nonsense out of a comprehensive understanding of environmental degradation. For what sense does it make if environmentalists only key on reducing overconsumption and ignore overpopulation, if they insist, for example, in cutting per capita energy consumption in half, while ignoring the fact that the population will double?
Why the population myopia? In a word, political correctness-- 70% of population growth is driven by immigration, and since the mid-80s, human rights has become the over-riding obsession---the I-word is an ugly taboo. But omelets cannot be made without cracking eggs. To be anti-immigration is not necessarily to be anti-immigrant. Any more than a restaurant owner who bars the door to more customers after his tables are all taken up is “anti-customer.”.
Mike Latner of Cal Poly states that immigrant-caused global-warming is an odd linkage, a logical fallacy and an unprecedented argument. Quite the opposite. In Australia the population increased 30% from 1990 to 2006 and its GHG emissions increased by exactly the same percentage during the same period. In the United States, the population increased 43% from 1970 to 2004 and its GHG emissions increased 43% during that same period. The correlation is clear, is it not? Yet Latner says, “the root problem is America’s CO2 emissions.” Which, I suppose, have nothing to do with the more than 302 million people living there. Can he name a single jurisdiction anywhere that has a growing population but has stopped its GHG emission growth?
Rigley’s article posed the question: “What’s behind the (CAPS) ads?” Some better questions would be supplementary follow-ups. Questions like: “Who’s behind the Sierra Club and what conditions did billionaire David Gelbaum set for his $100 million donation ?”
“What do we mean by ‘right wing’?
“Why is it that those who claim to be left-wing, liberal, or ‘progressive’, who support generous immigration, are on the same side as Microsoft and other huge computer corporations and Archer Midland and other agribusiness lobbies?”
“Why does the anti-immigration and supposedly ‘right-wing’ group ‘Americans for Better Immigration’ give Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont high marks for his opposition to chain migration, amnesty and visa abuse? “ Sanders, like the late Cesar Chavez, fights immigration because he sees it as a right wing agenda to vastly increase the pool of cheap labour to drive wages down.
The advocates of open immigration and runaway population growth question their motives. But what about the motives of those who question their motives? Should motives matter? Or shouldn’t just we worry about the facts? Probing people’s motivations is a job for hypnotists and psychiatrists. What is important is the logic of their arguments. It is irrelevant that I want mushrooms removed from grocery shelves because I hate them. What is relevant is whether I can advance sound empirical evidence that mushrooms offer no nutritional value and are a health hazard. If I can’t, it doesn’t matter if have toxic attitudes toward mushrooms, my arguments will die from exposure to fact.
Perhaps it is time to turn the tables on Southern Poverty Law and the critics of immigration reform and population stabilization movements like CAPS. Perhaps it is time to question their liberal McCarthyism, to question their motivations. Are they motivated by hate? Do they support porous borders and mass immigration because they hate the American working class? So much so that they stood by and watched it lose 5 million jobs under the Bush administration to outsourcing and displacement from the low-wage competition of immigrants who drive down the wages of Americans by 5.25% , according to Harvard’s Dr. George Borjas Do they hate agricultural self-sufficiency, American biodiversity and ecological sustainability?
Are their reflexive charges of xenophobia a cover for self-loathing and guilt?
The answers to these questions will always be speculative and not germane to the point that whether our intentions are malevolent or benevolent, what matters is not intentions or motivations but numbers. Numbers matter. Get CAPS off the psychiatrist’s couch and get out your calculator and make your computations. Number of people. Their per capita consumption. Then figure out what their habitat can tolerate and what the number of consumers consuming at what level of consumption can live there sustainably. Presto. There is your population policy, of which immigration policy is a key part.
Whether the Star Spangled Banner is eventually sung in Spanish or English is not so vitally important as that it is sung by substantially fewer Americans 50 years from now than are alive today.
Once upon a time the “IPAT” equation was the foundation of environmental thinking in America (and elsewhere). It reasoned that environmental impact (I) equaled (P or population level) times (A affluence or per capita consumption if you like) times (T for technology).
But come the mid 80s, the “P” discreetly vanished from the equation, thus making nonsense out of a comprehensive understanding of environmental degradation. For what sense does it make if environmentalists only key on reducing overconsumption and ignore overpopulation, if they insist, for example, in cutting per capita energy consumption in half, while ignoring the fact that the population will double?
Why the population myopia? In a word, political correctness-- 70% of population growth is driven by immigration, and since the mid-80s, human rights has become the over-riding obsession---the I-word is an ugly taboo. But omelets cannot be made without cracking eggs. To be anti-immigration is not necessarily to be anti-immigrant. Any more than a restaurant owner who bars the door to more customers after his tables are all taken up is “anti-customer.”.
Mike Latner of Cal Poly states that immigrant-caused global-warming is an odd linkage, a logical fallacy and an unprecedented argument. Quite the opposite. In Australia the population increased 30% from 1990 to 2006 and its GHG emissions increased by exactly the same percentage during the same period. In the United States, the population increased 43% from 1970 to 2004 and its GHG emissions increased 43% during that same period. The correlation is clear, is it not? Yet Latner says, “the root problem is America’s CO2 emissions.” Which, I suppose, have nothing to do with the more than 302 million people living there. Can he name a single jurisdiction anywhere that has a growing population but has stopped its GHG emission growth?
Rigley’s article posed the question: “What’s behind the (CAPS) ads?” Some better questions would be supplementary follow-ups. Questions like: “Who’s behind the Sierra Club and what conditions did billionaire David Gelbaum set for his $100 million donation ?”
“What do we mean by ‘right wing’?
“Why is it that those who claim to be left-wing, liberal, or ‘progressive’, who support generous immigration, are on the same side as Microsoft and other huge computer corporations and Archer Midland and other agribusiness lobbies?”
“Why does the anti-immigration and supposedly ‘right-wing’ group ‘Americans for Better Immigration’ give Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont high marks for his opposition to chain migration, amnesty and visa abuse? “ Sanders, like the late Cesar Chavez, fights immigration because he sees it as a right wing agenda to vastly increase the pool of cheap labour to drive wages down.
The advocates of open immigration and runaway population growth question their motives. But what about the motives of those who question their motives? Should motives matter? Or shouldn’t just we worry about the facts? Probing people’s motivations is a job for hypnotists and psychiatrists. What is important is the logic of their arguments. It is irrelevant that I want mushrooms removed from grocery shelves because I hate them. What is relevant is whether I can advance sound empirical evidence that mushrooms offer no nutritional value and are a health hazard. If I can’t, it doesn’t matter if have toxic attitudes toward mushrooms, my arguments will die from exposure to fact.
Perhaps it is time to turn the tables on Southern Poverty Law and the critics of immigration reform and population stabilization movements like CAPS. Perhaps it is time to question their liberal McCarthyism, to question their motivations. Are they motivated by hate? Do they support porous borders and mass immigration because they hate the American working class? So much so that they stood by and watched it lose 5 million jobs under the Bush administration to outsourcing and displacement from the low-wage competition of immigrants who drive down the wages of Americans by 5.25% , according to Harvard’s Dr. George Borjas Do they hate agricultural self-sufficiency, American biodiversity and ecological sustainability?
Are their reflexive charges of xenophobia a cover for self-loathing and guilt?
The answers to these questions will always be speculative and not germane to the point that whether our intentions are malevolent or benevolent, what matters is not intentions or motivations but numbers. Numbers matter. Get CAPS off the psychiatrist’s couch and get out your calculator and make your computations. Number of people. Their per capita consumption. Then figure out what their habitat can tolerate and what the number of consumers consuming at what level of consumption can live there sustainably. Presto. There is your population policy, of which immigration policy is a key part.
Whether the Star Spangled Banner is eventually sung in Spanish or English is not so vitally important as that it is sung by substantially fewer Americans 50 years from now than are alive today.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Ms.UNIVERSE COMPETITION: INTRODUCTIONS
Hello my name is Ms. Russia
I lost 7 million people since I stopped being a Communist in 1992. Before that I couldn’t stop my weight gain. Nothing else worked. Not cardio, strength training, dieting or yoga.
I shed 250,000 people in the first half of 2008 alone. I feel and look great. But according to economic theory I should be dead. I guess it proves that both communist and capitalist theoreticians had porridge for brains.
What are my prospects? Despite losing demographic girth, I expect economic growth of 5.5% next year and in ten years I will apparently become the 5th largest economy in the world.
So here is a question or two for my rivals. For Ms. Canada, Ms. Australia, Ms. UK, Ms. Singapore, for the dozens and dozens of those out there who still believe that population growth is necessary to propel economic growth--- how do you account for MY success, and that of Ms. Japan’s?
And must you always conflate aggregative quantitative growth with qualitative development? When you come to the realization that population growth is not a necessary catalyst for economic growth, and you have spent enough time in that mental decompression chamber, you might then be ready for the next one. That economic growth is neither necessary nor sustainable.
If I win the Ms. Universe contest, it will be a victory for population stability and reduction, but not a victory for steady state economics. People will still aspire to consume more and more of the earth’s resources when it is manifestly beyond its absorptive capacity already. But at least the process will be slowed somewhat. I will have broken a path, and perhaps another bolder contestant will challenge for and win this competition. Ms. Negative Population AND Economic Growth.
I lost 7 million people since I stopped being a Communist in 1992. Before that I couldn’t stop my weight gain. Nothing else worked. Not cardio, strength training, dieting or yoga.
I shed 250,000 people in the first half of 2008 alone. I feel and look great. But according to economic theory I should be dead. I guess it proves that both communist and capitalist theoreticians had porridge for brains.
What are my prospects? Despite losing demographic girth, I expect economic growth of 5.5% next year and in ten years I will apparently become the 5th largest economy in the world.
So here is a question or two for my rivals. For Ms. Canada, Ms. Australia, Ms. UK, Ms. Singapore, for the dozens and dozens of those out there who still believe that population growth is necessary to propel economic growth--- how do you account for MY success, and that of Ms. Japan’s?
And must you always conflate aggregative quantitative growth with qualitative development? When you come to the realization that population growth is not a necessary catalyst for economic growth, and you have spent enough time in that mental decompression chamber, you might then be ready for the next one. That economic growth is neither necessary nor sustainable.
If I win the Ms. Universe contest, it will be a victory for population stability and reduction, but not a victory for steady state economics. People will still aspire to consume more and more of the earth’s resources when it is manifestly beyond its absorptive capacity already. But at least the process will be slowed somewhat. I will have broken a path, and perhaps another bolder contestant will challenge for and win this competition. Ms. Negative Population AND Economic Growth.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Chronic Loser Elizabeth May Should Take Her "Diversity" Act To the Middle East
After her second failed attempt to enter the “Common House”, Green Party leader Elizabeth May might consider selling her wares in another market. And I know just the challenge for her. The United Arab Emirates. The UAE is Ms. May’s kind of country. It has one of the highest population growth rates in the world at 5.6% and it will likely stay up there with 45% of its population under 15 at the beginning of the millennium.
This population growth fuelled an astonishing 10% GDP growth rate in the same period and generated “wealth’ which made its religious values and small town traditions quite expendable to the government. Suddenly the needs and desires of western ex-pats and tourists and Asian migrant workers who served economic growth took precedence over the sensibilities of those who always lived there.
Dubai became an oasis of liberal entertainment amid the conservative Middle East. Nevertheless the Islamic legal culture is still intact and public displays of sexual affection are illegal. They remain on the books for the very good reason that they sill represent the popular will of native residents.
This became evident last July (08) when a British tourist couple was arrested for having sexual intercourse on a public beach. Emiratis complained that such was the number and rapidity of the foreign influx that blatant disregard for local customs and laws was so manifest that “they (Emiritis) no longer felt at home in their own country.”(know the feeling!) What feeds their desperation is the demographic trend. Since Dubai is determined to push for even more economic growth, the projected rise in the expatriate ratio of the projection is expected to be 81.7% in 2009. It is tough for 18.3% of the population to defend, never mind “shape”, its culture within that kind of isolation.
So here is where our Elizabeth May should take her road show. Let her go to Dubai and tell Emeritis to lie down and roll over and surrender their traditions to those of outsiders in the interests of the corporate agenda. Only, just don’t tell them about whose interests it is in, just as she doesn’t in Canada. Tell them growth is good. It is not whether you grow, but how you grow that is important. It is not how many people there are but where they live, and it is not even where they live but how they live. If they choose to live like Ghandi, then the UAE can invite the whole world over for tea, but if they chose to live like Bill Gates, then even Bill Gates would be one too many. But know in your heart that your preaching will never get people to reduce their consumption.
May would make these proud Arabs understand that it is important that our Holy Text decrees that all cultures are created equal, and are therefore equally deserving of respect, and that one set of moral values, or lack of values, is as good as any other.. So it is therefore important that touring British couples be made to feel comfortable in practicing their customs of copulating on public beaches in Dubai. Emiritis need to follow her Canadian prescription, that is, be sent to Diversity Awareness Training workshops to learn to become sensitive to the customs of foreigners so that they may pander to their needs, because the God we are now serving is Economic Growth. And to serve Economic Growth, we need more and more foreigners, foreigners who feel comfortable being here. That is what Multiculturalism is all about. It is not about “cultural” enrichment, about savouring “the rich texture of varied cuisines and music”, it is about corporate enrichment, the enrichment of the those who don’t give a damn if they turn a quiet traditional country into a middle eastern Las Vegas whose streets are lined with hookers.
And time passes, foreigners are winning the demographic horse race. In 2009 the expatriate population is projected to grow at more than double the rate (6.9%) of the native population (3.4%) , gaining an even tighter grip on the land. If Elizabeth May was to parachute into such an environment, she just might find fertile ground to plant her Green Party message of unlimited population growth. The ideology of “Secular Multicultural Growthism”. A new kind of theocracy that allows no challenge or criticism. And to think that is an ideology incubated and tested right here in Canada.
This population growth fuelled an astonishing 10% GDP growth rate in the same period and generated “wealth’ which made its religious values and small town traditions quite expendable to the government. Suddenly the needs and desires of western ex-pats and tourists and Asian migrant workers who served economic growth took precedence over the sensibilities of those who always lived there.
Dubai became an oasis of liberal entertainment amid the conservative Middle East. Nevertheless the Islamic legal culture is still intact and public displays of sexual affection are illegal. They remain on the books for the very good reason that they sill represent the popular will of native residents.
This became evident last July (08) when a British tourist couple was arrested for having sexual intercourse on a public beach. Emiratis complained that such was the number and rapidity of the foreign influx that blatant disregard for local customs and laws was so manifest that “they (Emiritis) no longer felt at home in their own country.”(know the feeling!) What feeds their desperation is the demographic trend. Since Dubai is determined to push for even more economic growth, the projected rise in the expatriate ratio of the projection is expected to be 81.7% in 2009. It is tough for 18.3% of the population to defend, never mind “shape”, its culture within that kind of isolation.
So here is where our Elizabeth May should take her road show. Let her go to Dubai and tell Emeritis to lie down and roll over and surrender their traditions to those of outsiders in the interests of the corporate agenda. Only, just don’t tell them about whose interests it is in, just as she doesn’t in Canada. Tell them growth is good. It is not whether you grow, but how you grow that is important. It is not how many people there are but where they live, and it is not even where they live but how they live. If they choose to live like Ghandi, then the UAE can invite the whole world over for tea, but if they chose to live like Bill Gates, then even Bill Gates would be one too many. But know in your heart that your preaching will never get people to reduce their consumption.
May would make these proud Arabs understand that it is important that our Holy Text decrees that all cultures are created equal, and are therefore equally deserving of respect, and that one set of moral values, or lack of values, is as good as any other.. So it is therefore important that touring British couples be made to feel comfortable in practicing their customs of copulating on public beaches in Dubai. Emiritis need to follow her Canadian prescription, that is, be sent to Diversity Awareness Training workshops to learn to become sensitive to the customs of foreigners so that they may pander to their needs, because the God we are now serving is Economic Growth. And to serve Economic Growth, we need more and more foreigners, foreigners who feel comfortable being here. That is what Multiculturalism is all about. It is not about “cultural” enrichment, about savouring “the rich texture of varied cuisines and music”, it is about corporate enrichment, the enrichment of the those who don’t give a damn if they turn a quiet traditional country into a middle eastern Las Vegas whose streets are lined with hookers.
And time passes, foreigners are winning the demographic horse race. In 2009 the expatriate population is projected to grow at more than double the rate (6.9%) of the native population (3.4%) , gaining an even tighter grip on the land. If Elizabeth May was to parachute into such an environment, she just might find fertile ground to plant her Green Party message of unlimited population growth. The ideology of “Secular Multicultural Growthism”. A new kind of theocracy that allows no challenge or criticism. And to think that is an ideology incubated and tested right here in Canada.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
5 REASONS WHY OCTOBER 14/08 WAS MY BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT EVER
Canadian Election Results
Conservatives 143 seats
Liberals 76 seats
BQ 50 seats
NDP 37 seats
INP 2seats
Green 0 seats
1. All four parties lost the election. It is another minority government.
2. The Liberals, with their phony “green shift”, in reality a shift into neutral because of their support of immigration policies which would wipe out any gains from carbon taxes, lost 18 seats.
3. Elizabeth May, leader of the counterfeit Green Party, was kept out of parliament when she lost to Conservative Peter Mckay in Nova Scotia. My “strategic” donation was well spent.
4. My own NDP MP, Catherine Bell, lost to Conservative John Duncan. This was like a dagger driven into the heart of politically correct soft greens. Without her as a rallying point, so many of their pet causes will find no patron. Maybe free speech might stand a chance in my community. A contrarian opinion might be heard and printed.
5. Only 58.3% of registered voters voted, the lowest turnout in history. This is not only a resounding rebuke of the alternatives offered, but, I believe of the system of representative “democracy”. Why must I delegate my power to them in the first place? It is assumed that those who don’t vote are apathetic and have deserted their “democratic’ responsibility. I offer an alternative explanation. Perhaps it is those who vote who desert their democratic responsibility by giving legitimacy to them and their system. Have you considered that the 41.7% who didn’t vote are not apathetic but simply wise to the futility of lending credibility to one of these frauds?
Ah yes, but we must make a choice, we are told. Not between black and white but between shades of grey. Really? A choice between McDonalds, Wendy’s, and Arby’s? What if we prefer to fast rather than wolf down fast-food and then purge at leisure? What if we prefer NOT to vote for any of the four GROWTHIST parties and their QUICK MASS IMMIGRATION FIX as a remedy for whatever ails Canadian society. Need skilled labour? Fly in immigrants. Need to support an aged population? Fly in immigrants. Need to stimulate the economy? Fly in immigrants. Need to win over the ethnic vote for our party? Fly in immigrants.
But we don’t need the Economic Council of Canada, the C.D. Howe Institute, the former Director of the Canadian Immigration Service James Bissett , Professor Don DeVoretz of SFU, Dr. Herbert Grubel of SFU or Dr. Michael Healey of UBC or Statscan to file any reports to tell us that immigration is of no net benefit to Canadian society. It is costing us wages, jobs, 60,000 acres of prime farmland a year and putting over 500 endangered species at risk, as well as causing the emission of close to ten million metric tonnes of green house gasses annually.
Those of us who stayed home and didn’t vote actually cast our votes tonight. We cast our votes twice. Once against the growthist one-party state coalition of Conservative-Liberal-NDP-Green, and at the same time, against the system of representative “democracy”.
Call me misguided. But don’t call me apathetic.
Conservatives 143 seats
Liberals 76 seats
BQ 50 seats
NDP 37 seats
INP 2seats
Green 0 seats
1. All four parties lost the election. It is another minority government.
2. The Liberals, with their phony “green shift”, in reality a shift into neutral because of their support of immigration policies which would wipe out any gains from carbon taxes, lost 18 seats.
3. Elizabeth May, leader of the counterfeit Green Party, was kept out of parliament when she lost to Conservative Peter Mckay in Nova Scotia. My “strategic” donation was well spent.
4. My own NDP MP, Catherine Bell, lost to Conservative John Duncan. This was like a dagger driven into the heart of politically correct soft greens. Without her as a rallying point, so many of their pet causes will find no patron. Maybe free speech might stand a chance in my community. A contrarian opinion might be heard and printed.
5. Only 58.3% of registered voters voted, the lowest turnout in history. This is not only a resounding rebuke of the alternatives offered, but, I believe of the system of representative “democracy”. Why must I delegate my power to them in the first place? It is assumed that those who don’t vote are apathetic and have deserted their “democratic’ responsibility. I offer an alternative explanation. Perhaps it is those who vote who desert their democratic responsibility by giving legitimacy to them and their system. Have you considered that the 41.7% who didn’t vote are not apathetic but simply wise to the futility of lending credibility to one of these frauds?
Ah yes, but we must make a choice, we are told. Not between black and white but between shades of grey. Really? A choice between McDonalds, Wendy’s, and Arby’s? What if we prefer to fast rather than wolf down fast-food and then purge at leisure? What if we prefer NOT to vote for any of the four GROWTHIST parties and their QUICK MASS IMMIGRATION FIX as a remedy for whatever ails Canadian society. Need skilled labour? Fly in immigrants. Need to support an aged population? Fly in immigrants. Need to stimulate the economy? Fly in immigrants. Need to win over the ethnic vote for our party? Fly in immigrants.
But we don’t need the Economic Council of Canada, the C.D. Howe Institute, the former Director of the Canadian Immigration Service James Bissett , Professor Don DeVoretz of SFU, Dr. Herbert Grubel of SFU or Dr. Michael Healey of UBC or Statscan to file any reports to tell us that immigration is of no net benefit to Canadian society. It is costing us wages, jobs, 60,000 acres of prime farmland a year and putting over 500 endangered species at risk, as well as causing the emission of close to ten million metric tonnes of green house gasses annually.
Those of us who stayed home and didn’t vote actually cast our votes tonight. We cast our votes twice. Once against the growthist one-party state coalition of Conservative-Liberal-NDP-Green, and at the same time, against the system of representative “democracy”.
Call me misguided. But don’t call me apathetic.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
IMMIGRATION EQUALS TARSANDS FOR GREENHOUSE GASES IN FOUR YEARS: by Brishen Hoff
"In 2007, Canada admitted 429,649 permanent residents, temporary foreign workers and foreign students." (1)
"Canadians are also among the highest per capita polluters in the world, producing an average of 23 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per person each year." (2)
429,649 immigrants MULTIPLIED BY 23 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions EQUALS 9,881,927 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases directly from immigration annually.
"Annual greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands plants in 2007 are expected to be 39.3-41.4 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent." (3)
So how many years of allowing 429,649 immigrants into Canada would equal the tarsands in greenhouse gas emissions?
41.4 million metric tonnes DIVIDED BY 9.9 million metric tonnes EQUALS 4.18 years!
Therefore, there is a new tarsands worth of greenhouse gas emissions added to Canada every 4 years.
In other words, 1 year of Canada's current immigration intake produces 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions as 1 year of the tarsands.
(1) http://www.migratenow.ca/articles/127.asp
(2) http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/04/22/tech-canada-greenhouse.html
(3) http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/recent/tarsandsfaq#4
Thanks to Tim Murray (http://sinkinglifeboat.blogspot.com) for this comparison idea.
You can read his full article: CLICK HERE
"Canadians are also among the highest per capita polluters in the world, producing an average of 23 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per person each year." (2)
429,649 immigrants MULTIPLIED BY 23 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions EQUALS 9,881,927 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases directly from immigration annually.
"Annual greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands plants in 2007 are expected to be 39.3-41.4 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent." (3)
So how many years of allowing 429,649 immigrants into Canada would equal the tarsands in greenhouse gas emissions?
41.4 million metric tonnes DIVIDED BY 9.9 million metric tonnes EQUALS 4.18 years!
Therefore, there is a new tarsands worth of greenhouse gas emissions added to Canada every 4 years.
In other words, 1 year of Canada's current immigration intake produces 25% of the greenhouse gas emissions as 1 year of the tarsands.
(1) http://www.migratenow.ca/articles/127.asp
(2) http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/04/22/tech-canada-greenhouse.html
(3) http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/recent/tarsandsfaq#4
Thanks to Tim Murray (http://sinkinglifeboat.blogspot.com) for this comparison idea.
You can read his full article: CLICK HERE
Saturday, October 11, 2008
THE DELUSIONAL COALITION-MAKERS: How Can We Vote For The Environment In A Growthist One-Party State?
http://www.voteforenvironment.ca:80/
According to those who track the affiliations of voters with environmental
concerns, if they were to vote along strictly partisan lines,
IF THE ELECTION WERE HELD TODAY:
If we split our votes:
Conservative 135
Liberal 83
NDP 37
Green 0
Bloc 51
IND 2
BIODIVERSITY 0
But on the other hand, if “we” who cared about climate change cast
aside our traditional love toward our favourite party and voted for that
party best able to defeat the Conservative in our own riding, the result
would be a parliament with only 75 Conservatives but 123 Liberals, 52
NDP, 55 Bloc, 1 Green and 2 IND .
Kevin Grandia and his campaign to vote strategically
against the Harper government is based on the fallacy
that the opposition parties do not share the government’s
ecologically suicidal commitment to economic growth.
Growth which is fuelled by runaway immigrant driven
population growth and per capita consumption. The green
coalition which Kevin works to fashion in fact favours 38%
higher immigration levels than the Conservatives, which
would result in 38% more GHG emissions, and about
29% of what the tar sands are putting out now.
And since neither Layton nor May would actually decommission
the tar sands but only stop its further expansion, and Dion will
continue it but vaguely promise to make it “green”, then
immigration is what separates the opposition and the government.
The decision goes to Harper on climate change, although neither
deserve accolades.
But climate change is only the flavour of the month, the loss of
biodiversity services is more pressing and its relationship to population
growth is more obvious to most than global warming. When biodiversity
services are undercut, when 24% of 12 of its vital services are compromised
our survival is imperiled. As it stands, 536 of Canada’s species at risk
lie just at the margins of those cities bulging with immigrant growth.
Those who advocate such growth, the fastest of all countries in the G8
group, are sitting in all 308 seats in all four parties on both sides of
the aisle in the Canadian House of Commons. How, then, as environmentalist
Brishen Hoff asks, can we vote for the environment?
For all intents and purposes, we live in a Growthist one party state.
The contest Kevin describes, between corporate climate changers vs. noble
climate saviours is a sham. We don’t need a change in government. We need a
change in the SYSTEM of government. Direct democracy. And a change in mindset.
According to those who track the affiliations of voters with environmental
concerns, if they were to vote along strictly partisan lines,
IF THE ELECTION WERE HELD TODAY:
If we split our votes:
Conservative 135
Liberal 83
NDP 37
Green 0
Bloc 51
IND 2
BIODIVERSITY 0
But on the other hand, if “we” who cared about climate change cast
aside our traditional love toward our favourite party and voted for that
party best able to defeat the Conservative in our own riding, the result
would be a parliament with only 75 Conservatives but 123 Liberals, 52
NDP, 55 Bloc, 1 Green and 2 IND .
Kevin Grandia and his campaign to vote strategically
against the Harper government is based on the fallacy
that the opposition parties do not share the government’s
ecologically suicidal commitment to economic growth.
Growth which is fuelled by runaway immigrant driven
population growth and per capita consumption. The green
coalition which Kevin works to fashion in fact favours 38%
higher immigration levels than the Conservatives, which
would result in 38% more GHG emissions, and about
29% of what the tar sands are putting out now.
And since neither Layton nor May would actually decommission
the tar sands but only stop its further expansion, and Dion will
continue it but vaguely promise to make it “green”, then
immigration is what separates the opposition and the government.
The decision goes to Harper on climate change, although neither
deserve accolades.
But climate change is only the flavour of the month, the loss of
biodiversity services is more pressing and its relationship to population
growth is more obvious to most than global warming. When biodiversity
services are undercut, when 24% of 12 of its vital services are compromised
our survival is imperiled. As it stands, 536 of Canada’s species at risk
lie just at the margins of those cities bulging with immigrant growth.
Those who advocate such growth, the fastest of all countries in the G8
group, are sitting in all 308 seats in all four parties on both sides of
the aisle in the Canadian House of Commons. How, then, as environmentalist
Brishen Hoff asks, can we vote for the environment?
For all intents and purposes, we live in a Growthist one party state.
The contest Kevin describes, between corporate climate changers vs. noble
climate saviours is a sham. We don’t need a change in government. We need a
change in the SYSTEM of government. Direct democracy. And a change in mindset.
Friday, October 10, 2008
THE OPPOSITION IS EVEN WORSE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE THAN HARPER----BELIEVE OR NOT!
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the greenest party of them all? Well, contrary to conventional belief, it certainly isn’t sitting on the opposition benches. (Actually it is not sitting in the Canadian House of Commons). Certainly if their policies affecting greenhouse gas emissions were the measure of green.
That’s right folks. The Green Coalition that strategic voters are trying to put together would, through their immigration policies, actually cause more climate change than the hated brown ogre of the Harper government.
Let’s examine the facts. In 2007 Captain Harper steamed the HMCS Titanic mindlessly at breakneck speed toward an ecological iceberg and stopped along the way to pick up 240,000 official passengers and another 189,000 residents of a more unofficial nature consisting of temporary visa holders and others who in fact do not leave. All told, according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 429,649 people entered the country last year and remained as residents to leave an environmental footprint.1 Not content with this torrid pace as the fastest vessel in the G8, his rivals in the Liberal, NDP and Green parties would throw even more coal into the furnace by increasing Canada’s immigration intake to 1% plus of its current population. That would be 330,000 people injected each year into our consumer culture, 90,000 more than the Conservatives. Since each Canadian, according to Statscan (April 22/08 report)3 emits 23 metric tonnes of GHG, that means that the opposition parties in effect want to dump an extra 2,070,000 metric tonnes of GHG into the atmosphere annually. They would propose to boost official immigration totals by 38% and in so doing increase the green house impact of immigration by the same amount.
But then it must be remembered that the Harper government allowed 189,000 people to slip by past the immigration gate as temporary visa holders, and other diverse categories like refugees and undocumented workers who never went home. So in tabulating the green coalition’s GHG bill, their baseline should not be 330,000 but 330,000 plus 189,000 ( the extras above the official quota who enter with temporary visas) equals 519,000 new GHG emitters for Canada every year. The Grand Total in Green Hypocrisy: 11,937,000 metric tonnes per year for Canada.
Now here is the 64 thousand dollar question. How much of the wicked Mr. Harper’s tar sands development does the opposition’s appalling immigration policy blind spot forgive? If we as a nation are adding nearly a half million consumers each year, doesn’t it stand to reason that we will force a government to look for energy solutions like this? Oh, do you think we are going to dot the landscape with windmills and solar panels?
It is ultimately not cars, factories or power plants that produce GHGs but the demand of a growing population for the transportation, products and the energy which those things provide. The Kolankiewicz study revealed that 88% of increased energy consumption in America from 1970 to 2004 came from increased population and not from per capita consumption increases. Population grew by 43% while GHG emissions grew by exactly the same amount.4 It is no accident that Canada, the country with the fasting growing population in the G8 group, is also the country with its fastest growing GHG emissions. It can’t be a coincidence that Canada had the fastest growing population in the G8 group and a dramatic rise in its GHG emissions of 25% between 1990 and 2005.5 You can’t have climate change without climate changers.
All of this is not, of course, not to diminish the monstrous enormity of the tar sands disaster, which generates GHG emissions equivalent of 27 million American passenger vehicles annually and more than all of the cars in Canada collectively. Currently all the tar sands plants produce a C02 equivalent of more than 40 million metric tonnes and will double that in a few years.6 At that rate, it would take 1,739,130 immigrants a year to equal that output. That sounds grossly disproportionate until you calculate that if the 2007 immigration rate of 429,000 migrants persisted it would take only 4.054 years to generate the same volume of GHG emissions as another entire tar sands development.7
However, if the immigration policy of the green coalition was followed, and 519,000 consumers were dropped on Canada each year, enough environmental damage would be inflicted in 3.35 years as would be caused by a whole Athabaska tar sands project. Alternatively stated, while it will take Stephen Harper four years of typical immigration to double the sum total of all the GHG emissions of Albertan tar sands operations, it will take the green coalition three and a half years. They will both take us to hell, but the Holy Trinity of Sanctimony will apparently take us there at a faster pace. A mind boggling thought. What price cultural diversity? None the less, the greenhouse footprint of Liberal/NDP/Green immigration by my calculation would be at worst 30% or less than the tars sands development, which, to express it differently, is currently impacting the atmosphere 3.35 times more than the number of people who enter Canada each year.
That being the case, is immigration not then, as Elizabeth May would have it, a “trivial” issue? Is it reason to put to May, Layton, and Dion in the green column and Harper in the role of the black knight? No, it isn’t. Why? Because with the green coalition, you are going get to both. The worst of both worlds. You are going to have to swallow mass immigration on amphetamines and excuses as to why the tar sands development could not be wound down as you were led to be believe by the Pied Pipers of the green left.
I visualize a teeter- totter here. Sitting on one end is Mr. Harper with his oil sands and his 240,000 immigrants . And on the other end are these hypocrites with their 330 000 immigrants and nearly 10 million metric tonnes of GHG emissions. And of course their duplicitous stance against the tar sands. But just what does that amount to? I doubt though that they would stop it. Anymore than the NDP ever stopped uranium mining in Saskatchewan. Or the German social democrats or British Labourites or French socialists stopped nuclear power. Remember how the Liberals were adamantly opposed to Free Trade and the GST? And how the Barrett , Harcourt and Clark NDP governments were going to put an end to the export of raw logs in British Columbia when they sat in opposition? And how they thought clear-cut logging was such a blemish when they were out of power? They all talk a good game, the mystery is, why do people continue to be taken in by their rhetoric?
As it now stands, Jack Layton has only called for a moratorium on further expansion of the oil sands development, but has not gone so far as to call for the industry to shut down. Elizabeth May as well, a position her Sierra Club successor Stephen Hazell finds satisfactory. Stephan Dion, however, for all of his avant garde carbon tax schemes, will only say that he will make it “green”.What next, a green Love Canal?. It seems that even the prospect of melting ice caps, rising seas and searing heat waves can’t compete with a $24 billion industry vested in just one Canadian province.
Promises, promises. Tony Blair promised to cut GHG by 20% during his 10 year term. He left office with GHG 2.5% higher than when he came in. NDP Premier Calvert left office with GHG 60% higher than when he took office, despite promises of a “green agenda”. During Al Gore’s term as Vice-President America’s GHG rose. They all preached the same oxymoronic line. “Sustainable growth”. A healthy environment and a strong economy. An epitaph of our delusions. Maybe an alien archaeologist will read it some centuries hence standing over the rubble of our so-called civilization.
The questions I would put to Canadian voters on October 14th, 2008 are these. In awarding brownie, or should I say, “greenie” points to the most climate-friendly party in this election, should we only focus on its position concerning the carbon tax, or the tar sands, or should we ask ourselves if there is another make ingredient of greenhouse gas emissions, one that in fact is currently contributing to about 29% of all GHG emissions in Canada? Can anyone identify a single jurisdiction anywhere in the world that has experienced a growing population and has reduced its GHG emissions at the same time? Hello?
Tim Murray
1. http://www.migratenow.ca/articles/127.asp
2. Conservative immigration: 240,000 immigrants X 23 metric tonnes per capita = 5,520,000 metric tonnes. Lib/NDP/Green coalition 330,000 immigrants X 23 metric tonnes = 7,590,000 metric tonnes a 38% increase.
3 Statscan Report April 22/08 http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/04/22/tech-canada-greenhouse.html
4.Frederick A. B. Meyers. Rising Carbon Emissions
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/roundtables/population-and-climate-change
5. http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN2235199220080422
6. http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/recent/tarsandsfaq
7.429,000 total residents entered Canada X 23 metric tonnes GHG per capita = 9,867.000 metric tonnes X 4.054 years = 40 million tonnes that the tar sands emits in GHG
That’s right folks. The Green Coalition that strategic voters are trying to put together would, through their immigration policies, actually cause more climate change than the hated brown ogre of the Harper government.
Let’s examine the facts. In 2007 Captain Harper steamed the HMCS Titanic mindlessly at breakneck speed toward an ecological iceberg and stopped along the way to pick up 240,000 official passengers and another 189,000 residents of a more unofficial nature consisting of temporary visa holders and others who in fact do not leave. All told, according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 429,649 people entered the country last year and remained as residents to leave an environmental footprint.1 Not content with this torrid pace as the fastest vessel in the G8, his rivals in the Liberal, NDP and Green parties would throw even more coal into the furnace by increasing Canada’s immigration intake to 1% plus of its current population. That would be 330,000 people injected each year into our consumer culture, 90,000 more than the Conservatives. Since each Canadian, according to Statscan (April 22/08 report)3 emits 23 metric tonnes of GHG, that means that the opposition parties in effect want to dump an extra 2,070,000 metric tonnes of GHG into the atmosphere annually. They would propose to boost official immigration totals by 38% and in so doing increase the green house impact of immigration by the same amount.
But then it must be remembered that the Harper government allowed 189,000 people to slip by past the immigration gate as temporary visa holders, and other diverse categories like refugees and undocumented workers who never went home. So in tabulating the green coalition’s GHG bill, their baseline should not be 330,000 but 330,000 plus 189,000 ( the extras above the official quota who enter with temporary visas) equals 519,000 new GHG emitters for Canada every year. The Grand Total in Green Hypocrisy: 11,937,000 metric tonnes per year for Canada.
Now here is the 64 thousand dollar question. How much of the wicked Mr. Harper’s tar sands development does the opposition’s appalling immigration policy blind spot forgive? If we as a nation are adding nearly a half million consumers each year, doesn’t it stand to reason that we will force a government to look for energy solutions like this? Oh, do you think we are going to dot the landscape with windmills and solar panels?
It is ultimately not cars, factories or power plants that produce GHGs but the demand of a growing population for the transportation, products and the energy which those things provide. The Kolankiewicz study revealed that 88% of increased energy consumption in America from 1970 to 2004 came from increased population and not from per capita consumption increases. Population grew by 43% while GHG emissions grew by exactly the same amount.4 It is no accident that Canada, the country with the fasting growing population in the G8 group, is also the country with its fastest growing GHG emissions. It can’t be a coincidence that Canada had the fastest growing population in the G8 group and a dramatic rise in its GHG emissions of 25% between 1990 and 2005.5 You can’t have climate change without climate changers.
All of this is not, of course, not to diminish the monstrous enormity of the tar sands disaster, which generates GHG emissions equivalent of 27 million American passenger vehicles annually and more than all of the cars in Canada collectively. Currently all the tar sands plants produce a C02 equivalent of more than 40 million metric tonnes and will double that in a few years.6 At that rate, it would take 1,739,130 immigrants a year to equal that output. That sounds grossly disproportionate until you calculate that if the 2007 immigration rate of 429,000 migrants persisted it would take only 4.054 years to generate the same volume of GHG emissions as another entire tar sands development.7
However, if the immigration policy of the green coalition was followed, and 519,000 consumers were dropped on Canada each year, enough environmental damage would be inflicted in 3.35 years as would be caused by a whole Athabaska tar sands project. Alternatively stated, while it will take Stephen Harper four years of typical immigration to double the sum total of all the GHG emissions of Albertan tar sands operations, it will take the green coalition three and a half years. They will both take us to hell, but the Holy Trinity of Sanctimony will apparently take us there at a faster pace. A mind boggling thought. What price cultural diversity? None the less, the greenhouse footprint of Liberal/NDP/Green immigration by my calculation would be at worst 30% or less than the tars sands development, which, to express it differently, is currently impacting the atmosphere 3.35 times more than the number of people who enter Canada each year.
That being the case, is immigration not then, as Elizabeth May would have it, a “trivial” issue? Is it reason to put to May, Layton, and Dion in the green column and Harper in the role of the black knight? No, it isn’t. Why? Because with the green coalition, you are going get to both. The worst of both worlds. You are going to have to swallow mass immigration on amphetamines and excuses as to why the tar sands development could not be wound down as you were led to be believe by the Pied Pipers of the green left.
I visualize a teeter- totter here. Sitting on one end is Mr. Harper with his oil sands and his 240,000 immigrants . And on the other end are these hypocrites with their 330 000 immigrants and nearly 10 million metric tonnes of GHG emissions. And of course their duplicitous stance against the tar sands. But just what does that amount to? I doubt though that they would stop it. Anymore than the NDP ever stopped uranium mining in Saskatchewan. Or the German social democrats or British Labourites or French socialists stopped nuclear power. Remember how the Liberals were adamantly opposed to Free Trade and the GST? And how the Barrett , Harcourt and Clark NDP governments were going to put an end to the export of raw logs in British Columbia when they sat in opposition? And how they thought clear-cut logging was such a blemish when they were out of power? They all talk a good game, the mystery is, why do people continue to be taken in by their rhetoric?
As it now stands, Jack Layton has only called for a moratorium on further expansion of the oil sands development, but has not gone so far as to call for the industry to shut down. Elizabeth May as well, a position her Sierra Club successor Stephen Hazell finds satisfactory. Stephan Dion, however, for all of his avant garde carbon tax schemes, will only say that he will make it “green”.What next, a green Love Canal?. It seems that even the prospect of melting ice caps, rising seas and searing heat waves can’t compete with a $24 billion industry vested in just one Canadian province.
Promises, promises. Tony Blair promised to cut GHG by 20% during his 10 year term. He left office with GHG 2.5% higher than when he came in. NDP Premier Calvert left office with GHG 60% higher than when he took office, despite promises of a “green agenda”. During Al Gore’s term as Vice-President America’s GHG rose. They all preached the same oxymoronic line. “Sustainable growth”. A healthy environment and a strong economy. An epitaph of our delusions. Maybe an alien archaeologist will read it some centuries hence standing over the rubble of our so-called civilization.
The questions I would put to Canadian voters on October 14th, 2008 are these. In awarding brownie, or should I say, “greenie” points to the most climate-friendly party in this election, should we only focus on its position concerning the carbon tax, or the tar sands, or should we ask ourselves if there is another make ingredient of greenhouse gas emissions, one that in fact is currently contributing to about 29% of all GHG emissions in Canada? Can anyone identify a single jurisdiction anywhere in the world that has experienced a growing population and has reduced its GHG emissions at the same time? Hello?
Tim Murray
1. http://www.migratenow.ca/articles/127.asp
2. Conservative immigration: 240,000 immigrants X 23 metric tonnes per capita = 5,520,000 metric tonnes. Lib/NDP/Green coalition 330,000 immigrants X 23 metric tonnes = 7,590,000 metric tonnes a 38% increase.
3 Statscan Report April 22/08 http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/04/22/tech-canada-greenhouse.html
4.Frederick A. B. Meyers. Rising Carbon Emissions
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/roundtables/population-and-climate-change
5. http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN2235199220080422
6. http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/recent/tarsandsfaq
7.429,000 total residents entered Canada X 23 metric tonnes GHG per capita = 9,867.000 metric tonnes X 4.054 years = 40 million tonnes that the tar sands emits in GHG
Saturday, October 4, 2008
THE FACTS ARE IN FOLKS: We Don't Need Growth To Get Rich
The 2008 Fact Book makes for an interesting read. Simply align the rankings by country with their GDP real growth rate % with the population growth rate of that country. Surprise, surprise. Another Canadian myth bites the dust. The myth best articulated by NDP leader Jack Layton’s pea-brain partner MP Olivia Chow when she stated “We need more immigrants because of our aging population. We need families and young people for productivity and growth.”
We won’t deal with the C.D. Howe Report of 2006 that calculated that to maintain our present age structure of 20% seniors through immigration our immigration quota would have to be 28 times its present rate by 2050 boosting our numbers to 167.5 million Canadians. More to the point is while the extravagant immigration that we have suffered in the past two decades, has cost the federal treasury on average $18.3 billion more annually in taxes than incoming revenues according to the 12 year Grubel study, it has also diverted monies away from investment in needed technology. Canada’s labour productivity gains have been substantially below those of France, Japan and the United States. It will be the labour productivity of our workers, not the number of our workers, who will support our retirees.
If one focuses just on the G8 countries, the most salient de-coupling of population growth and economic growth is seen in Russia, which so far has had a growth rate of 7.40% in tandem with a drop of .48% in its population! The Germans had a growth rate of 2.60% while enjoying a drop of .03% in their population. I wished I could emigrate to that country---but as Groucho Marx said of the club that would accept him as a member… http://www.photius.com/rankings/population/population_growth_rate_2008_1.html http://www.photius.com/rankings/economy/gdp_real_growth_rate_2008_1.html
Compare this to dear old Canada. We have this growth rate of 2.50% and look what we are sacrificing to get it. This year a population growth rate of .87% on our best farmland and 5.4% between 2001-2006, the fastest in the G8 group. And the four party leaders who want to increase immigration by 32%, with refugees the wild card!
Other countries, like Italy with 1.90% economic growth and virtual population stability at .01, or Japan at 2.00% economic growth and .09% drop, also poke large holes in the population pyramid growth scam. This frontier mentality of ours that only a demographic booster shot can kick start an economy is one that has been challenged in Australia.
Former NSW Premier Bob Carr once said that it was a lazy Australia that depended on driving up population numbers to stimulate the building of houses and shopping malls, but a smart Australia would create a smart, sustainable economy with value-added products.
Clearly, economic growth is not necessarily predicated on population growth. In fact that is why GDP growth is a delusional yardstick of economic progress, as a growing population will not tell the story of per capita wealth. Middle aged Canadians today will tell you that more waterfront property, more fish, more quality wood, more of the things that are not electronic toys, were much cheaper thirty years ago than they are today. And no matter how great the economies of scale get, our dollars won’t buy back the paved farmland, or the old growth forests that have been cut down. Cell phones and Blackberries won’t recover the time that growth has claimed from our lives in trying to pay for its trappings.
The question then is, while population growth, and the immigration that fuels it, is not needed to propel the economy, do we want economic growth?
The Environmental Commission for the City of Bloomington, Indiana, adopted a position statement on May 22/08 advocating
“A steady state economy in which resource consumption and waste production are maintained within the environment’s capacity to regenerate resources and assimilate waste, emphasizing development as a qualitative, rather than quantitative, process… Ever-increasing economic growth ultimately leads to resource consumption and waste production at rates greater than can be sustained by nature.… A sustainable economy (that is, an economy with a relatively stable, mildly fluctuating product of population and per capita consumption) is a viable alternative to a growing economy and has become a more appropriate goal for the U.S. and other large, wealthy economies.”
Perhaps a declining population that fosters a declining GDP is the optimum scenario, and our worst is the inverse of that. For population growth, as the foregoing numbers have shown, is not the most efficient path toward economic prosperity, not the “biggest bang for the buck”. Nevertheless, intuitively it would seem that GDP would inevitably grow when consumers, however destitute, begin to add up. And that every economic upturn rebounds as an environmental “downturn” however well it is dressed up and blunted with controls and regulations.
But the advocates of steady-state economics would contest this polarized depiction of GDP and dispute the suggestion that the economy would need to be collapsed to shut down growth. Herman Daly insists that a steady state economy cannot be viewed as some kind of failed growth economy, anymore than a hovering helicopter can be viewed as a stalled airplane. They are two entirely different models. Our objective should not be to engineer a catastrophe. Daly describes the difference this way:
“Throughput growth means pushing more of the same food through an ever larger digestive tract; development means eating better food and digesting it more thoroughly. Clearly the economy must conform to the rules of a steady state –seek qualitative development, but stop aggregative quantitative growth. GDP conflates these two very different things.”
Key features of the steady-state model are population stability, limits to inequality and an end to the “arms race of unhappiness”. Beyond a certain threshold of sufficiency, research indicates that both between and within societies growth does not increase everyone’s relative income and that self-evaluated happiness is based on the income status relative to others. Consumerism is a dog chasing his own tail, the Holy Grail of happiness in Growthdom will never be found.
Maybe it’s time to re-define “rich”. When we stop filling up our plate with busy work and consumer goods and unplug Madison Avenue, we might discover that wealth consists of more time with family, friends, animals, nature, art, music and good books. And more than that, with ourselves.
We won’t deal with the C.D. Howe Report of 2006 that calculated that to maintain our present age structure of 20% seniors through immigration our immigration quota would have to be 28 times its present rate by 2050 boosting our numbers to 167.5 million Canadians. More to the point is while the extravagant immigration that we have suffered in the past two decades, has cost the federal treasury on average $18.3 billion more annually in taxes than incoming revenues according to the 12 year Grubel study, it has also diverted monies away from investment in needed technology. Canada’s labour productivity gains have been substantially below those of France, Japan and the United States. It will be the labour productivity of our workers, not the number of our workers, who will support our retirees.
If one focuses just on the G8 countries, the most salient de-coupling of population growth and economic growth is seen in Russia, which so far has had a growth rate of 7.40% in tandem with a drop of .48% in its population! The Germans had a growth rate of 2.60% while enjoying a drop of .03% in their population. I wished I could emigrate to that country---but as Groucho Marx said of the club that would accept him as a member… http://www.photius.com/rankings/population/population_growth_rate_2008_1.html http://www.photius.com/rankings/economy/gdp_real_growth_rate_2008_1.html
Compare this to dear old Canada. We have this growth rate of 2.50% and look what we are sacrificing to get it. This year a population growth rate of .87% on our best farmland and 5.4% between 2001-2006, the fastest in the G8 group. And the four party leaders who want to increase immigration by 32%, with refugees the wild card!
Other countries, like Italy with 1.90% economic growth and virtual population stability at .01, or Japan at 2.00% economic growth and .09% drop, also poke large holes in the population pyramid growth scam. This frontier mentality of ours that only a demographic booster shot can kick start an economy is one that has been challenged in Australia.
Former NSW Premier Bob Carr once said that it was a lazy Australia that depended on driving up population numbers to stimulate the building of houses and shopping malls, but a smart Australia would create a smart, sustainable economy with value-added products.
Clearly, economic growth is not necessarily predicated on population growth. In fact that is why GDP growth is a delusional yardstick of economic progress, as a growing population will not tell the story of per capita wealth. Middle aged Canadians today will tell you that more waterfront property, more fish, more quality wood, more of the things that are not electronic toys, were much cheaper thirty years ago than they are today. And no matter how great the economies of scale get, our dollars won’t buy back the paved farmland, or the old growth forests that have been cut down. Cell phones and Blackberries won’t recover the time that growth has claimed from our lives in trying to pay for its trappings.
The question then is, while population growth, and the immigration that fuels it, is not needed to propel the economy, do we want economic growth?
The Environmental Commission for the City of Bloomington, Indiana, adopted a position statement on May 22/08 advocating
“A steady state economy in which resource consumption and waste production are maintained within the environment’s capacity to regenerate resources and assimilate waste, emphasizing development as a qualitative, rather than quantitative, process… Ever-increasing economic growth ultimately leads to resource consumption and waste production at rates greater than can be sustained by nature.… A sustainable economy (that is, an economy with a relatively stable, mildly fluctuating product of population and per capita consumption) is a viable alternative to a growing economy and has become a more appropriate goal for the U.S. and other large, wealthy economies.”
Perhaps a declining population that fosters a declining GDP is the optimum scenario, and our worst is the inverse of that. For population growth, as the foregoing numbers have shown, is not the most efficient path toward economic prosperity, not the “biggest bang for the buck”. Nevertheless, intuitively it would seem that GDP would inevitably grow when consumers, however destitute, begin to add up. And that every economic upturn rebounds as an environmental “downturn” however well it is dressed up and blunted with controls and regulations.
But the advocates of steady-state economics would contest this polarized depiction of GDP and dispute the suggestion that the economy would need to be collapsed to shut down growth. Herman Daly insists that a steady state economy cannot be viewed as some kind of failed growth economy, anymore than a hovering helicopter can be viewed as a stalled airplane. They are two entirely different models. Our objective should not be to engineer a catastrophe. Daly describes the difference this way:
“Throughput growth means pushing more of the same food through an ever larger digestive tract; development means eating better food and digesting it more thoroughly. Clearly the economy must conform to the rules of a steady state –seek qualitative development, but stop aggregative quantitative growth. GDP conflates these two very different things.”
Key features of the steady-state model are population stability, limits to inequality and an end to the “arms race of unhappiness”. Beyond a certain threshold of sufficiency, research indicates that both between and within societies growth does not increase everyone’s relative income and that self-evaluated happiness is based on the income status relative to others. Consumerism is a dog chasing his own tail, the Holy Grail of happiness in Growthdom will never be found.
Maybe it’s time to re-define “rich”. When we stop filling up our plate with busy work and consumer goods and unplug Madison Avenue, we might discover that wealth consists of more time with family, friends, animals, nature, art, music and good books. And more than that, with ourselves.
Friday, October 3, 2008
HOW ABOUT CHILD-LESS BENEFIT SUBSIDIES?
Canadian Election News 2008
NDP’S CHILD BENEFIT PROGRAMS ONLY THE BEGINNING (Sept 28/08)
TORONTO -- The NDP rolled out a $51.6-billion menu of promises on Sunday, releasing a campaign platform that introduced a new child benefit as its centerpiece that would see all families with children under 18 receiving non-taxable monthly cheques of up to $2,488.
The New Democrats would spend an extra $4.4 billion annually by 2012-13 on the non-taxable payments, which will replace and enhance three existing programs, including the Harper government's $100 monthly payments for children under six.
"The New Democrat's Child Benefit will give every middle-class and working family a raise," Layton said in a statement.
The party would also implement a new national childcare program, to be phased in over four years at a cost of $1.75 billion annually by 2012-13.
The new proposal would be income based, with no families with children receiving less than they do currently.
All families earning less than $188,000 annually would receive more, with a middle-class family of four with two children, earning a household income of $40,000 - $75,000, receiving monthly cheques of $2,140.
JACK LAYTON MAKES A COMMITMENT TO UNIVERSAL DAY CARE FOR FAMILY PETS
The debate about how, where and by whom young dogs should be looked after has occupied much social policy and media attention in recent years because the decline of family values is held responsible for a range of social problems. That the chore of looking after the family dog should fall upon women is unacceptable to the New Democratic Party. They have therefore proposed state intervention in this critical area of our lives.
Once again, the NDP, committed to the belief that there exists a social program to remedy every problem, has stepped into the breech, with a bold initiative calling for State Doggie Daycare Centres for Working Mothers. The concept is simple. Working mothers must have the reasonable chance of career advancement and independent living by leaving their dogs at daycare while working a 37 ½ hour week. All dog care expenses will be picked up by registered taxpaying dog-haters, and by a punitive capital gains tax on known dog-hating CEOs. Eventually, should the economy improve by the exploitation and degradation of yet more of the natural environment, the revenues which will flow from clear-cutting and open-pit mining will fund yet more daycare centres for parakeets, cats and tropical fish which liberated working female pet owners will drop off on their way to their mind-numbing, tedious jobs that Gloria Steinem tells them they are so fulfilled at doing. During their ten minute coffee breaks while they stand shivering outside office buildings furtively chain smoking while thumbing through their John Grisham novels, they can feel secure that “Fifi” is being looked after by the nanny state at someone else’s expense.
NOW HERE IS MY PRESS CONFERENCE:
On behalf of the neo-malthusian Canadian Population Reduction Party I would like to introduce our Child-less Benefit policy to reward those people who were altruistic enough NOT to introduce any more consumers into our highly unsustainable economy. Each child born in Canada will be projected to emit 23.8 metric tonnes of green house gasses and consume 3.7 million pounds of minerals, metals and fuels in his lifetime. I propose a generous benefit to be awarded to each couple or parent to the amount of $1070 per month for each absent child less than the Canadian average. The scheme will be financed with a draconian tax on those with the most children, particularly those who claim that they can afford them, since those are the very children with the highest ecological footprint, due to their conspicuous consumption.
Surplus revenues can be set aside for the research and development of the robots which, according to MIT professor Rodney Brooks, will in less than five decades, be so intrusive in so many areas of our lives that they will obviate the necessity for immigration or birth incentives to fill any labour or skills shortages, particularly in the delivery of health care to the elderly.
One day, of course, robots may win the franchise, and vote to terminate living Canadians, deciding that they are unsustainable in ANY numbers, as they have never proven that they can acknowledge limits or constrain their appetites. Should that happen, foreign visitors will not notice any difference in English Canada though. We are already born dead on arrival, programmed with conditioned responses with no personalities to speak of and waiting for a public broadcasting corporation to down load its PC world view on us.
NDP’S CHILD BENEFIT PROGRAMS ONLY THE BEGINNING (Sept 28/08)
TORONTO -- The NDP rolled out a $51.6-billion menu of promises on Sunday, releasing a campaign platform that introduced a new child benefit as its centerpiece that would see all families with children under 18 receiving non-taxable monthly cheques of up to $2,488.
The New Democrats would spend an extra $4.4 billion annually by 2012-13 on the non-taxable payments, which will replace and enhance three existing programs, including the Harper government's $100 monthly payments for children under six.
"The New Democrat's Child Benefit will give every middle-class and working family a raise," Layton said in a statement.
The party would also implement a new national childcare program, to be phased in over four years at a cost of $1.75 billion annually by 2012-13.
The new proposal would be income based, with no families with children receiving less than they do currently.
All families earning less than $188,000 annually would receive more, with a middle-class family of four with two children, earning a household income of $40,000 - $75,000, receiving monthly cheques of $2,140.
JACK LAYTON MAKES A COMMITMENT TO UNIVERSAL DAY CARE FOR FAMILY PETS
The debate about how, where and by whom young dogs should be looked after has occupied much social policy and media attention in recent years because the decline of family values is held responsible for a range of social problems. That the chore of looking after the family dog should fall upon women is unacceptable to the New Democratic Party. They have therefore proposed state intervention in this critical area of our lives.
Once again, the NDP, committed to the belief that there exists a social program to remedy every problem, has stepped into the breech, with a bold initiative calling for State Doggie Daycare Centres for Working Mothers. The concept is simple. Working mothers must have the reasonable chance of career advancement and independent living by leaving their dogs at daycare while working a 37 ½ hour week. All dog care expenses will be picked up by registered taxpaying dog-haters, and by a punitive capital gains tax on known dog-hating CEOs. Eventually, should the economy improve by the exploitation and degradation of yet more of the natural environment, the revenues which will flow from clear-cutting and open-pit mining will fund yet more daycare centres for parakeets, cats and tropical fish which liberated working female pet owners will drop off on their way to their mind-numbing, tedious jobs that Gloria Steinem tells them they are so fulfilled at doing. During their ten minute coffee breaks while they stand shivering outside office buildings furtively chain smoking while thumbing through their John Grisham novels, they can feel secure that “Fifi” is being looked after by the nanny state at someone else’s expense.
NOW HERE IS MY PRESS CONFERENCE:
On behalf of the neo-malthusian Canadian Population Reduction Party I would like to introduce our Child-less Benefit policy to reward those people who were altruistic enough NOT to introduce any more consumers into our highly unsustainable economy. Each child born in Canada will be projected to emit 23.8 metric tonnes of green house gasses and consume 3.7 million pounds of minerals, metals and fuels in his lifetime. I propose a generous benefit to be awarded to each couple or parent to the amount of $1070 per month for each absent child less than the Canadian average. The scheme will be financed with a draconian tax on those with the most children, particularly those who claim that they can afford them, since those are the very children with the highest ecological footprint, due to their conspicuous consumption.
Surplus revenues can be set aside for the research and development of the robots which, according to MIT professor Rodney Brooks, will in less than five decades, be so intrusive in so many areas of our lives that they will obviate the necessity for immigration or birth incentives to fill any labour or skills shortages, particularly in the delivery of health care to the elderly.
One day, of course, robots may win the franchise, and vote to terminate living Canadians, deciding that they are unsustainable in ANY numbers, as they have never proven that they can acknowledge limits or constrain their appetites. Should that happen, foreign visitors will not notice any difference in English Canada though. We are already born dead on arrival, programmed with conditioned responses with no personalities to speak of and waiting for a public broadcasting corporation to down load its PC world view on us.
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