Dog Whistles

I see that Alberta's "PC's" are busy pandering to their base.

The recent delisting of Gender Reassignment Surgery cannot be even close to actual, meaningful cost cutting.

Consider the following:

Cutting the service will save Alberta Health and Wellness about $700,000 each year out of its $12.9-billion budget.

So, in cutting GRS from the budget, the province saves a grand total of 0.005% of the total health care budget. Anybody with a grain of sense understands that in a budget of billions, that amount is pocket change - it's nothing more than margin of error.

This is not cost savings in any meaningful sense - this is the Stelmach Tories playing to the "base" - the same bunch of ignorant clods that PMSH plays to when he accuses Ignatieff of lacking a moral compass (an absolutely nonsensical statement, really, but coming from PMSH, not one that surprises me).

It's becoming all too clear that Ted Morton has far more influence than he should have at Stelmach's cabinet table - or either that, Stelmach is just as hostile to anything he doesn't understand.

Cutting GRS is not responsible budgeting, it's pandering - and it's done at the expense of people that they don't think can hit back.

Transsexuals In Alberta To Bear The Brunt of Liepert's Mendacity

Apparently, in Alberta, being a transsexual also means that it's your fault that the "Health Superboard" is in the hole to the tune of a little over $1 billion dollars for fiscal 2008.

Calgary Herald:

Today's budget also eliminates "gender reassignment" surgery, meaning it will no longer pay for Albertans to have sex change operations, saving the system about $700,000 a year.

The government hasn't simply reduced the number of procedures that they pay for, or the proportion that they will pay. No, in this case, they have axed it outright. This puts a lot of people into really awkward straights. Not all transsexuals have the kind of professional income that would allow them to pay that cost out of their own pocket - in fact relatively few do.

Similarly, I have to wonder at the long term costs of yanking funding for chiropractic care. Who is going to be most affected by this? Seniors, who are not only on fixed incomes, but for whom chiropractic care is often a vital relief from chronic back problems.

Then we find Liepert bragging about this:

The province's superboard received a modest increase in funding of about $550 million, bringing its budget to $7.7 billion.

"We are maintaining our spending from last year and are also able to give Alberta Health Services an increase," said Health Minister Ron Liepert, in a statement.

Think about this, while cutting $700,000 (less than 1% of the Health "Superboard" budget), the Alberta government brags about adding funding. Typical Conservative policy - when times get tough, attack the people who can do the least about it.

Oh ... That's Gotta Sting

It's a tough life for Stephen Harper. Not only is he quickly descending to depths of unpopularity not plumbed since Mulroney's era, but Mulroney himself left office with the dubious honor of being Canada's most unpopular Prime Minister.

It seems that someone in Ignatieff's office clued into the idea that Mulroney might be a wedge to divide the Conservatives:

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff offered unexpected praise for Brian Mulroney Monday and criticized Stephen Harper for failing to show the veteran Tory due respect – comments calculated to exploit unprecedented public bickering in Conservative government ranks over the former prime minister.

Tory MPs and senators have been quarrelling this past week over how the Harper government is treating Mr. Mulroney as a public inquiry begins probing his dealings with businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.

Actually, this is fairly decent tactics. Mulroney is spectre in most voter's minds, and his image is what will scare people - especially in Ontario. The comments also play against the Conservatives in Quebec, where Mulroney is still held in high regard by many.

“A lot of Canadians have a lot of respect for Mr. Mulroney's strengths, and you have to show some respect. It's simple. And I believe that Mr. Harper is lacking respect towards Mr. Mulroney,” Mr. Ignatieff told reporters in Calgary.

It has been no secret that the HarperCon$ have been trying desperately to distance themselves from Mulroney, and in doing so have been dividing their own ranks on parliament hill rapidly. Harper's tactics play well in Alberta - but in Alberta, it's possible to get a bale of hay elected as long it has a Conservative nomination.

Reflecting On Alberta's Democratic Deficit

Anyone who has paid attention to politics in Alberta for any length of time has to wonder aloud about how the province got into a state where it has effectively been one party rule for so long.

Today, it is virtually impossible to get elected without being some variety of Conservative, and even more depressingly, it seems as though the only alternatives that show up with any regularity are regularly even more extreme instances of right-wing politics than the current incumbents. Center and left-leaning political parties seem to be doomed to the political wilderness here - and nobody seems to really understand why this is the case.

In Alberta Views April issue, are some truly troubling letters-to-the-editor that should cause anyone living in a democracy pause.



There are two letters in particular I wish to draw your attention to:

First, is the leading letter, which discusses a movement to address some serious issues around a small, regional hospital in Beaverlodge. The author writes:

One of the organizers found a great deal of community reluctance to confront the local MLA on the issue, saying "I've encountered an immense fear within my community that sounds like this: If this debate takes place in the legislature or if we organize a grassrots movement to oppose these reforms we risk offending rural Conservative MLAs

Think about this for a moment. We are talking about MLAs - people who are duly elected to act as our representatives to the provincial government. Their duty is to their constituents first, not to the party, and certainly not to the aggrandizement of their egos. A citizen should never fear political debate in this way - the implication is that one has to curry favour with your MLA to get them to do their job? This is wrong on so many levels, and abusive to the interests of the population in general.

It tells us something of the attitude that has evolved within conservative Alberta - MLAs see themselves not as representatives to the government, but rather purveyors of the governing party's mood towards their respective ridings. A chilling thought indeed.

The second letter tells us something about the conservative attitude towards electoral democracy. It describes their experience as a scrutineer for one of the opposition parties during an election a few years ago, and I have heard anecdotally similar stories in recent years:

While I was expecting to be received by the Returning officer with professional indifference, what I wasn't prepared for was open hostility to the fact I had dared to be there in the first place. I was told to sit in a chair at the far side of the hall and not to move unless she said so. During the day, as voters trickled in and cast their votes, her partisanship was blatantly apparent ...

Considering that Alberta recently fired the man who proposed serious change to make our elections run better, one can only imagine the sense of entitlement that has permeated both our governing party and the degree to which they have taken control over the very levers of democracy.

It is little surprise indeed that Alberta's voters stay home in droves rather than making the trip out to the polls. Ironically, I can find very few people who claim to have voted for the current Stelmach government, yet it sits with a majority as large as any that Ralph Klein presided over - and Stelmach hardly has the personal charm that Klein seemed to possess.

One last thought - the key leadership of the federal Conservatives comes from Alberta as well, and under Harper, they exhibit the same aura of thin-skinned, unwillingness to think for themselves that their brethren in Alberta demonstrate. It is a sad state of affairs, indeed.

Canada's Conservatives: Detention Without Trial

I cannot believe this appalling abuse by the Canadian government.

The Conservative government reversed itself today and denied an emergency passport to Abousfian Abdelrazik, preventing the Canadian citizen - blacklisted as a terrorist - from flying home to Montreal.

In a terse explanation, it said Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon considers Mr. Abdelrazik a national security threat.

In a one-sentence letter, delivered this morning to Mr. Abdelrazik's lawyers, the justice department said “the minister of foreign affairs has decided to refuse your client's request for an emergency passport.” It cited Section 10.1 of the Canada Passport Order which says “the minister may refuse or revoke a passport if the minister is of the option that such action is necessary for the national security of Canada or another country.”

The refusal represents a complete reversal of the government's written promise of three months ago to issue Mr. Abdelrazik an emergency passport if he had a paid-for ticket home. Mr. Abdelrazik remains stranded in the lobby of the Canadian embassy in Khartoum, where he has living for nearly 11 months, granted “temporary safe haven” by former Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier.

As the Globe and Mail points out here, not only is there no case against the man, but the government is simply moving goalposts about in an effort to be obstructive.

Let's consider this for a moment. Mr. Abdelrazik is virtually a prisoner in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum - he really cannot leave the embassy without risking arrest and further maltreatment at the hands of Sudanese authorities. The Canadian government refuses to issue him the travel documents he needs to return to Canada, and worse, insists that he get himself removed from a "travel ban" list that the UN maintains. Individuals cannot approach the UN to have themselves removed from that list, their government is obliged to do this.

In essence, the Canadian government has imprisoned Mr. Abdelrazik without trial, without charge and without recourse. Think about this. This is yet another in a long, and seemingly growing list of Canadian nationals abroad that the Conservative government has failed. In this case, the Canadian government has done worse than that, it has acted maliciously to obstruct Mr. Abdelrazik.

Canada's Conservative government - standing up for ... well ... repeating George Bush II, actually.

More Harper Hypocrisy

Earlier this week, we found out that Canadian troops in Afghanistan are backing a regime that is moving, quite explicitly, to subjugate women instead of treating them as equal partners.

It used to be a mission to give a future to little girls. Now the government is scrambling to explain why Canadian troops are fighting for an Afghanistan that legalizes rape within marriage.

The new Afghan law, apparently approved by President Hamid Karzai, led Western diplomats in Kabul to call an emergency meeting and hammer out a concerted response, pressuring the Karzai administration to back down.

Canadian officials insisted that Mr. Karzai still has some "wiggle room" before the law is implemented, and waited impatiently for the President's first public comments on the law.

The Conservative government expressed outrage, and opposition politicians said Canadian soldiers did not fight and die for an Afghanistan that would pass such a law.

Anyone else remember all the right wingers in this country bragging about how our troops were "over there liberating people"?

But that isn't the hypocrisy at all. Only the completely clueless would believe that little lie.

No. The hypocrisy is in the actions of the Harper government themselves. Think back to 2006. Remember the spending cuts they did back then? Kind of focused on Women's and minority programs, didn't they? Then there is Harper's personal support for Bill C-484, which would essentially strip a woman of the right to control her reproductive destiny and Bill C-537, the so-called "medical practitioner's conscience" act - another piece of moralizing garbage legislation which fundamentally affects women disproportionately.

In this light, the government's "outrage" over Afghanistan's law suddenly seems just a trifle contrived.

Gearing Up For An Election, Steve?

So, I see that the HarperCon$ have decided to start combining issues ... in this case by re-introducing their legislation to kill the gun registry, but in the Senate this time.

Realistically, the last two attempts to pass this legislation failed in the House of Commons because the HarperCon$ either allowed it to fail by taking no steps to bring any of the opposition onside - mostly so they could whine and bellyache about how "dysfunctional" parliament was.

This latest maneuver is little more than an attempt to get the Conservative "base" in Alberta wound up over two issues at the same time. They'll find it particularly easy to whine about how the evil senate gets in the way of government legislation, and because there is little chance that this legislation will ever get to the House of Commons before parliament is dissolved next, it means that the Con$ can whine further about how "undemocratic" that is. Ignoring, of course, the fact that the legislation has about as much chance of passing in the House of Commons as it did the previous two times.

While this maneuver will play well in Alberta, I'm less convinced that it will make that much difference elsewhere in the country. Frankly, given some of the horrendous legislation the HarperCon$ have proposed, I'm glad that the Senate has been able to put the brakes on some of it.