Saturday, March 6, 2010

Canadians Against McGuinty Proroguing Parliament?

I was born and raised in the province of Ontario, and many of my family members still live there today. I am concerned about Dalton McGuinty proroguing the provincial legislature, and how this erosion of democracy could harm my family. For guidance I went to visit the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament website so often advertised as the epicenter of grassroots Democracy. Surely there I would be able to make some sense of it all; this is after all where Canadians gather to share in their common anger at prorogation of parliaments. Sadly, in browsing through the message boards, the discussion threads, I could not find any mention of Dalton's evil deed. There were however plenty of insults hurled at "the neo cons" on their "wall".

"Harper can't even wipe his ass without getting an OK first from the PNAC mafia lords."

"Conservative Party Policy on Administration:
Rule#1 - The Leader is always right.
Rule#2 - If Leader is wrong - see Rule# 1."

"This afgan torture issue has been bothering me all day. So if these accusations are true and if the govt has been willingly handing over prisoners for torture..then my question is How long before they start doing the same to us?"

"I would check the PM's residence for Crosby's glove and stick."

"I was musing to myself yesterday that if any of these conservative MP's had any personal integrity left, they should cross the floor next week."

"Stephen Harper - you just can't trust him". - You and I know this but there are millions of Canadians who don't. We have a project to put this message before Canadians through advertisements in the mainstream media."

"Is Pamela Wallin flirting with fascism by paling around with Palin the lying twit?"

They also have individual discussion boards for members to have enlightened conversations on specific subject threads of vital importance to the prorogation of parliaments. Again there were no threads about Dalton McGuinty, but there were the following.

Should CAPP be mobilized to stand up against the privatization of government assets?
38 posts. Created 10 hours ago

should Mr.harper be investigated for war crimes?
296 posts. Created on January 24, 2010 at 4:17pm

Political Participation or Harper bashing
127 posts. Created on March 5, 2010 at 4:08am

Israeli Apartheid Week - stop Ignatieff's stupidity
41 posts. Created on March 5, 2010 at 7:42am

Internation Criminal Court - Harper Investigation
146 posts. Created on January 9, 2010 at 4:38am

How Orangemen became Red Tories and Progressive Conservatves
7 posts. Created 5 hours ago

13 comments:

  1. There is nothing wrong with proroguing as long as you are not running from accountability and war crimes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Typical Liberal response from Brian. Proroguing is O.K. when it is done, either by another Liberal, or when it's for a reason the Liberals support; otherwise it's bad.
    They never change.

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  3. They have changed the narrative from our troops committing war crimes to Harper himself committing war crimes, and Terry Milweski can prove it! Let's not forget that the prisoner transfer agreement that led to the alleged abuse was created by the Martin Administration. In a haste to stop handing prisoners over to our NATO allies, they failed to put any Red Cross oversight into the system. Colvin said that the system the Liberals created had no monitoring, and that the allegations of Afghan abuse were rampant before Colvin ever arrived in Afghanistan.

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  4. Brian said...

    There is nothing wrong with proroguing as long as you are not running from accountability and war crimes.

    So therefore you agree that the Liberal Government was wrong to prorogue during the Somalia Inquiry and the ADSCAM inquiry.

    Just checking your consistency

    ReplyDelete
  5. Over 8 million Canadians voted for someone other than the Conservative Party in 2008. 200,000 of them joined a Facebook group. 98% of opposition voters have not joined CAPP. 30% - 40% of Canadians have Facebook accounts. Based on the math, there should be at least 3 million opposition voters with Facebook accounts. So what, 6% of opposition voters with Facebook accounts joined Canadians Against Prorogation? How is that a grassroots movement? I can think of a lot of things that a tiny fraction of Canadians support that should not be considered endearing for no other purpose than it is supported by the fringe.

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  6. That apartheid thing is working, considering a french service org in Ottawa has put out a calendar without a Saturday on it. Isn't that the Jewish Sabbath. MooseandSquirrel has the story.
    There are maps in the middle east with no Israel on them, so why not eliminate Saturday on a Calendar.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ice - 6% - and if you spent any time on there at all, you'd find a huge number of fake accounts created just to give the impression of large numbers. Some of the names are questionable at best, and a big chunk of that is just Harper bashing.

    It's probably more like 3 or 4% real, actual people (not people with multiple accounts).

    Just saying... but it's good to see you've done some homework here.

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  8. It is nice to have people back on politics. My site traffic is up 35% for the first 6 days of March versus the last 6 days of February. I am on pace for just under 400,000 page views in 2010 and thus far this year I have had 39,000 unique visitors. And yet I am only at 21 Twitter followers.

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  9. My letter in the National Post yesterday:

    Re: Limiting The Power To Prorogue, editorial, March 3.
    > Your editorial board agrees with Jack Layton that Parliament should only be
    > prorogued "when a majority of MPs vote to close it." This seems to assume
    > that our parliamentary system is under threat from the perils of the
    > "dictatorship of the minority."
    > Canada is possibly the only country with this belief. Anywhere else,
    > instability is rightly considered the greatest risk associated with minority
    > governments.
    > Let¹s remember that opposition parties yield the ultimate weapon against
    > minority government: the vote of non-confidence. Your proposal would do
    > nothing to control the real and much greater risk, under a parliamentary
    > system, of the "dictatorship of the majority" when one party controls the
    > House.

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  10. Thucydides asked: “So therefore you agree that the Liberal Government was wrong to prorogue during the Somalia Inquiry and the ADSCAM inquiry.”

    1. Was Chrétien ordered by parliament to hand over documents? Did Chrétien prorogue to avoid carrying out a parliamentary order?
    2. Did anyone go to jail due to the enquiries that Chrétien called even when Chrétien held a majority government?
    3. Chrétien had a majority government and we still had enquiries. People went to jail. The way Harper abuses his power, if he had a majority, how do you think he would be handling allegations of war crimes?
    4. Did Chrétien act cowardly by hiding behind the troops in order to avoid scrutiny the way the Harper and his lackeys routinely do?

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  11. Every bit as amusing is CAPP's 2nd wave of action.

    It seems like the initial rage has been wittled down to just over 2,000 people. My how the mighty have fallen.

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  12. Iceman - i have one question for you. To read thru all this and over and above that to listen to the rot on CBC, if your day made up of 48 hrs?

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  13. One of my most frequently asked questions; do you sleep? The answer, not nearly as much as I'd like.

    ReplyDelete