Any one else see a trend here?

As with any budget there are winners and losers, with the true test of a budget at least in my mind being the determination of who wins and who loses. As the days pass and people have had time to scour the latest Conservative government budget a picture of who loses this time around has emerged and surprise surprise it is civil society, access to data and information plus the most vulnerable among us.

With election fraud,F-35's and cuts to the CBC using up most of the oxygen many of the smaller yet just as important cuts in the budget are gaining little notice, no doubt much to the Harper regimes delight. Lets take a look at three of those "minor" cuts that I feel will highlight just what this government is trying to accomplish.


The National Aboriginal Health Organization’s (NAHO) funding has been cut by Health Canada. NAHO which provides research and has formed partnerships with many in the healthcare sector provides vital information on the healthcare needs of people who are often under served by our healthcare system. Their website alone saw 640,000 publications downloaded by those seeking the latest information regarding the health needs of Aboriginals with another 250,000 sent out via snail mail last year alone


Plug pulled on public Internet access program ( CAP ) Started in 1995 this program was set up to ensure that those unable to afford internet access could at least access the net through terminals placed in public spaces such as libraries and community centres. The Harperites as usual play loose with the truth in their attempts to justify this cut. saying that since 79% of us now enjoy some type of access there is no longer a need for CAP to continue. Putting aside the fact that this ignores the 21% that do not have access, according to Eric Stackhouse, Nova Scotia CAP administration chair there is still very much a need for CAP to continue "All of our usage numbers are the same as they always were or increasing," Plus lets not forget that this government is actively forcing us to access more of it's programs online thus denying this population access to much needed programs.


Scrapping welfare council is a cheap shot by a government that doesn’t care about the poor Around since 1969 the National Council of Welfare has been an invaluable ally in the fight against poverty, perhaps too invaluable for it's own good given Harper's desire to strip us of the information we need to fight back against his ruinous policies. The government didn't even have the decency to announce its death,as former Director Steve Kerstetter pointed out in his article. "The budget papers included a table in one of the appendices that showed a cut of $1.1 million a year in the council’s budget beginning next year. What the papers didn’t bother to say was that $1.1 million is the council’s entire budget."  Check out this  table, 
A Snapshot of Racialized Poverty in Canada to get a sense of the type of research the council provides Canadians and why Harper is so bent on silencing them.

Any one else see a trend here?. Each of these organizations served marginalized communities and helped keep Canadians informed, leaving no doubt if there was ever one as to to what the Harperites agenda  truly is.

Shame on us: 600,000 Canadian kids live in poverty

I wonder what happened to the pledge to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000? While the goal of eliminating child poverty was likely never achievable, it isn't unfair to expect that at least we could have made some significant gains to that end. Instead while the percentage of children living in poverty has decreased from 11.9 % in 1989 when Parliament passed the resolution pledging to eliminate child poverty by 2000, to 9.5 in 2009, the number of kids affected has risen and likely has even worsened since 2009 given the persistence of unemployment and the move to insecure low paying jobs.

Campaign 2000 in it's 20th annual Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada paints a bleak picture of the state of child poverty in Canada. Some of it's key findings include:

One in 10 children still lives in poverty in Canada. It’s worse for children living in First Nations communities: 1 in 4 grow up in poverty.

Employment is not always an assured pathway out of poverty: 1 in 3 low-income children lives in families where at least one parent works full-time year round and 1 in 4 workers is in a low-wage job earning less than $13.32 per hour. 

Public investments make a difference: without the income transfers in 2009, 1 in 4 children would have lived in poverty. Canada’s public programs brought the child poverty rate down to 14% (LICO Before-Tax).

 Although the rapid rise in the number of working mothers is one of the key social changes of the last century, Canada still has no societal response to the need for child care. Less than 1 in 5 children (0 -12 years) has access to a regulated child care space.

Housing is the single largest expense for low- and modest-income families. One in 4 households pays more than 30% of their income on housing. And 750,000 children (under 15 years) live in housing that is either unaffordable, substandard, overcrowded or all three.

Clearly we can and must do better, unfortunately with governments at all levels hellbent on instituting ruinous austerity measures and the continuance of corporate tax cuts the situation will only worsen and significantly so. All the more reason for us as citizens and caring human beings to rise up in opposition to this corporately driven agenda.

Of Bankster Coups d'etat

First it was Papandreou of Greece and now Berlusconi of Italy has resigned in the wake of a bailout agreement. These resignations are being played in the corporate media as contrite politicians admitting failure and falling on their swords. In fact they are nothing of a sort, rather they are Bankster led Coups d'etat forced upon them by the troika of European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank.

Their resignations merely paving the way for new handpicked governments absent any democratic legitimacy who's sole purpose is  imposing the dictates of the Bankster elite upon the citizens of each nation. In addition the message has been delivered loud and clear to the leaders of other nations...Falter for just a second in implementing the Elites austerity agenda and you're next.

No matter what you call it,you sure can't call it Democracy.

Stand Up, Fight Back

Earlier this evening, I came across this slick video, USW The Fighting Spirit, put out by the Steelworkers that I can only describe as kickass. Hope you enjoy it.

Before Wisconsin there was Puerto Rico

Governor Scott Walker's actions in Wisconsin brought the NeoLiberal agenda into the mainstream conscientiousness. Many were surprised by the viciousness with which Walker implemented his agenda yet we shouldn't have been surprised at all, he was merely aping Puerto Rican Gov.Luis Fortuno's tactics that he used in inflicting this agenda on the citizens of the Island.

Starting in 2009 Fortuno while making deep cuts in corporate taxes also stripped unions of bargaining rights,laid off tens of thousands of civil servants,privatised government on a massive scale and raised tuition fees, making education too expensive for many, leading to much unrest in the streets and on the campuses of the US territory.

As always happens with NeoLiberalism and austerity the people suffer tremendously.Puerto Rico is on pace to have the worst economic performance in the world, has the highest rates in the US for Unemployment,poverty,murder and foodstamp usage.No one should be surprised here for this is always the end result of the NeoLiberal austerity for the masses and handouts for the corporations agenda.

NeoLiberalism and the inevitable pushback

What we are seeing in places like the Mid East,North Africa, Europe and even the States is the inevitable push back against NeoLiberalism . I say inevitable because NeoLiberal policies  are so ruinious for the vast majority of the people that eventually we reach a critical mass of  victims who feel that they have nothing left to lose, for many worldwide that time is now.

To date here in Canada we have been able to delude ourselves into believing that we are somehow magically immune from the forces that are creating so much unrest elsewhere.However it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain this fiction, especially with governments at all levels embracing the austerity movement.

With austerity we will be told that we have to sacrifice even deeper than we have already have, while governments continue to offer corporations and the richest among us ever greater tax breaks, tax breaks that as has been proven time and time again do not create jobs, never have, never will. While we suffer Harper will also reward the corporations with with our tax dollars by building prisons buying jets even the Americans say are overpriced and as he lays off tens of thousands of civil servants he will quietly replace them at greater cost

So as it is everywhere else the push back will come to our shores eventually and the kicker is that all those security measures many have supported will be turned back against all of us. And don't think for a moment that authourities won't resort to the type of violent response that we have seen overseas, as we have seen at APEC,Summit of the Americas and the G20 our police forces have and will respond with violence towards peaceful citizens.Violence that will be visited upon us all including the many who cheered it on in the past.

One more thing to ponder is the aftermath of the G20. We now have thousands of cops from every region of Canada who are trained in the violent suppression of peaceful protest and they are extremly well armed what with all that taxpayer money that went into funding the purchase of weaponry such as water and sound cannons.