Fuschi’s Canadian Forum

The purpose of legislation and its policy initiatives is generally to fulfill some public need, or to address a glaring problem. You would think that there were no shortage of such needs and problems in today’s Ontario. However, Dalton McGuinty’s policy initiatives, since he was elected, follow a predictable pattern, which sidesteps obvious glaring problems such as the loss of 300,000 manufacturing jobs. Nor have they fulfilled any public needs, such as the real improvement of health-care delivery. All of McGuinty’s policy fronts have had no substantive edifice behind the false front. Their objectives have been threefold: (1) the appeasement, through legislation, of some noisy social activist segment; (2) the creation of makework to service the legislation; (3) the resultant (from the first two) creation of new bodies of people who depend on the Liberal party, either for the furtherance of their causes, or for their livelyhood. 

Do the math yourself and see if any of his new policies, such as cigarette bans, or pesticide bans, etc. etc., do not fulfill these objectives, while completely overlooking the province’s real problems. Now look at his latest initiative in these terms, and it begins to make more sense. That is the proposal for full day kindergarten. 

First let me say that such a proposal is a Godsend to many parents. My wife and I paid substantial sums to get the same service effect, when our pockets were the only alternative. To people like us, who might ask, "How did we manage up untill now?" Or to people who no longer have the preoccupation of seeking good daily care for their children, and ask, "Why am I paying for this?" The answer is, "Too bad." It will be a very difficult issue to oppose. And, that too is part of the McGuinty strategy. How can anyone oppose the restriction of cigarette smoking, for example? All his policies fit this defense.

So what is wrong with this proposal, is that it comes at a time when no one was paying any attention to it. The house was on fire economically, and everyone was busy hauling buckets, and along comes McGuinty, apparently oblivious to the activity around him, and proposes a new, billion dollar expenditure which no one will be able to resist. All of a sudden, many voters are distracted from the fire, the childcare lobby is appeased, the need for many new and Liberally grateful teachers is created out of nothing, and, not the least, thousands of new, lifetime Liberal voters are created, just when things were looking bleak.

On top of this, there is an additional layer of icing. Just when the miniscule Ontario attention span was starting to gel around the real effects of the new Dalton sales tax gouge, presto, it is about to gain a compelling reason for being. I can hear his words now: "A small, noisy segment of Ontario citizens, oppose the job-creating , and simplified nature of our new Harmonized Sales Levy. To them, we all ask, what do you have against the expansion of early education and child care upon which hundreds of thousands of Ontario families depend?"

Hook baited, set, …reel in.  

I can’t take credit for the discovery of governmentium, (see www.dullmen.com/governmentium.htm ) but I can tell where there are large deposits of it. It is obvious that in the case of the inquisition of Lisa Raitt, that the "forces called morons, surrounded by…peons" are having profound effect on the function of government. There is no right and wrong side to this argument, and if common sense were involved, it might have disappeared from sheer stupidity. But governmentium forces a minute reaction to take far longer to complete than is normal in the rest of nature.

I can’t possibly decide what Miss Raitt had in mind when she saw sex in the sordid life of the Chalk River facility and its isotope shortage. We’ll have to leave that one to Dr. Freud. But is the missplacement of sex in one’s perceptions, suddenly against the law? Is it considered indictable in the function of government? If so the jails would be full worldwide. But more importantly, was the reporting of this perceived indiscretion by the Halifax Chronicle-Herald’s Stephen Maher, seen to be sexy, as reporting scoops go? It must have been, judging by his actions.

Which leads us to the real debate which noone is having. If this is the best the media can do in its daily attempts to inform us, will we miss them when they are gone, buried by the avalanche of meaningless twitters and blogs?

Just a reminder to all those who - having been baited and hooked by this mindless distraction - have already forgotten that a Liberal administration is once again misappropriating taxpayer’s money with a wink and a nod to its beneficiaries. Much about the eHealth scandal, has the smell of scam to it. Much about the firing of the actors smacks of the whipping boy treatment of non-political actors in adscam. So far no politicians have been caught in a legal net, just like adscam. And, similarly, we have no idea of the extent of such practices in the ever-expanding McGuinty administration. While these questions remain unanswered, the media looks up its navel at a story of no consequence to the intelligent world.

If anyone was still in the dark about McGuinty’s motivation for a combined sales tax, the latest trial baloon should clear your mind. The Toronto Star says that there is pressure from within the party to hide the sales tax within the price of goods.

There can only be two reasons for wanting this outcome. The first is that when the tax hits us, the outrageous result to the price of such things as gasoline, heating costs, hydro, funerals, etc., will cause us all to go ballistic. And, perhaps, finally, to pick up our pitchfork and look for some politician’s rear to bury it in.  

The second, and by far the more dangerous, is that a hidden tax can be raised anytime without lighting any fuses. This is the longterm intention of the McGuinty government. Remember, these guys had drained the treasury and were going into deficit before the US mortgage meltdown hit the financial markets. In an era of economic bounty, they had seen fit to saddle Ontarioans with the biggest tax hike in history (health tax), and then went on a spending spree to rival Bob Rae, and to purchase enough public sector dependents to buy the next election. While all this transpired, they were setting the stage for a rout of Ontario’s industrial capacity, loosing hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs before this hyper-recession even hit us.

The inevitable outcome of this ineptitude is a massive projected deficit which will compete with the federal deficit for superlatives. The feds, however, are spending their money on stimulus measures, while McGuinty is hosing the countryside in an effort to retain voting constituents and create makework of the "cigarette police" variety.

A local talk show edition on the subject of the HST, clogged telephone lines for three hours. Consumers are worried, but not totally informed on the enormity of this tax gouge. Some say, with resignation, "Let them bury it, I don’t  want to know. They are going to take it anyway."

This attitude is dead wrong. There would be no discussion of hiding the tax, if, first, it was a good economic measure, and secondly, if politicians were not scared already. It is not, and they are, and some pressure now, will tip the scales. We should be cramming the phone lines and e-mail boxes of local Liberal politicians, with fire in our voices.

Remember this, that once the tax is put in place, only hell will remove it. And, once it is hidden, we will be raped.

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PS: While I am always grateful to hear from those who take the time to leave a comment, the ones that appear below, are missing the point. It does not matter what shape these taxes take, although, as I pointed out, a hidden tax will create great opportunity for the government to abuse the taxpayer. This province is undergoing wrenching economic turmoil. We have become a have-not province for the first time. Huge taxpayer funded bailouts are occurring to revive the auto sector. In the face of all this, does it make any sense whatever to be spiking energy costs? That alone will crush any economic revival that may be occurring by next summer, and will drive another nail in the coffin of our auto industry. Does this government have any clue what it is doing?

One of the ironies emerging from the auto bankruptcy circus is the establishment of Health Care Trusts (HCT) to relieve the legacy burden carried by Chrysler and GM (so far). The trust is funded by the manufacturer through some of the wage concessions, but will then be administered by the CAW and its appointed trustees.

The ironic part of this development is encompassed in the words of "CAW economist" (sort of like jumbo shrimp) Jim Stanford; "We get some security but we also get some risk."

No kidding! More than that, the union has embraced a trojan horse, and now gets to embark on a market adventure from which its ideological fundamentals cannot survive intact. To understand this, note the following description of the fund’s potential, as found in the May 25, National Post: "Whether funds in the HCT will be sufficient to repay the full level of benefits to retirees will depend on several factors, including investment returns, life expectancy and health-care inflation."

First the union will have to accept the ideology that profits matter, and that maximization of investment returns is not a matter of greed, but the difference between an adequately financed fund, and a flop. No one can do anything about life expectancy, nor do we want them to, short of finding the fountain of youth. That leaves, health-care, and the unions are going to find that their ideology on the subject, will undergo tremendous strain.

Remember that the union’s most important emphasis in their salesmanship of publicly funded health, is that it remain publicly owned. They have insisted all along, that this formula is a Canadian advantage for the Canadian based manufacturers, as opposed to US. The obvious question, then, is, why do we need an HCT? If our public health system is such an advantage, why is the company paying enormous sums to provide us with coverage? The handbook of covered services (including claims info and exclusions) runs 32 pages and itemizes scores of procedures and medical equipment ranging from hospital rooms to dental services to nutritional supplements to emergency air ambulance, which would not otherwise be fully covered by the national plan. 

If the Canadian companies have been saddled with this incredible array of medical expenses, then what is so good about our publicly owned and funded system? This is a question which the union must now begin to address. Their advocacy of a system which protects its union brotherhood, at the expense of the taxpayer and patient, will now begin to deteriorate the ability of the union operated health fund, to cover all the items their membership has become accustomed to. They will face the fact that the inefficiency of public ownership, will not produce the result they hope to extract from the HCT. 

I awoke this morning to the sight of 99.9 cent gasoline. A neat ten cent jump from where I last saw it. The last time it hovered at that mark, the price of a barrel of oil was around $100 compared to the current $62 and change. The value of the Canadian dollar accounts for part of that difference. The rest, I’m not sure. It is easy, in the absence of any other explanation, to conclude that refiners are gouging us. I’ve read that gasoline supplies are high, and that economic factors are pushing the price down, so how do we account for the second ten cent jump in two weeks?

Letters in the news appear regularly, pleading for government investigation and control. But we’ve played that game a thousand times, and there is no way to blame refiners for collusion when we are so willing to pay the price. The government, whose enormous taxes greatly inflate the price of gasoline, is not the right entity to ask for help. (Stay tuned for McGuinty’s enormous tax gouge through combined sales taxes. If gasoline reaches $1.50 a litre, by then, you will suddenly have to pay an additional 12 cents on top of that.)

Let’s face the facts. As long as we willingly keep purchasing this commodity at whatever price is asked, we are in no position to complain. But the cost of a barrel is much lower, you say. So what? They can charge whatever they want regardless of cost. Your only respite, is to act as a consumer body, to force the price back down. Until we get the hang of doing that, the sky is the limit. It now appears that since the $1.50 mark has already been reached, and we have been acclimatized to it, the refiners will do every thing they can to get us back to that point as soon as possible.

What can we do? I’m not sure, but lining up at the pump to fill up in anticipation of another increase, is a for sure way to get it. When prices look like an obvious gouge, buy $10 dollars at a time, charge it if possible, and raise their transaction costs to the sky. Only then will they stop to listen. 

All the expected vultures are picking at the bones of ex-PM Brian Mulrooney. They finally have him red-handed, with his fist clearly stuck in the cookie jar. They knew it all along, you know. It took several inquisitory proceedings, but the truth is finally out. And, after all, it’s truth we want, right? The sort of truth we can count on when we rely on a human parasite like Schreiber, to impale a prime minister on his own misdeed. Mulrooney perpetrated the greatest possible misdeed that a Conservative can make. He forgot how severely scrutinized are the actions of the right, by the forces of the left, - media foremost.

That is not to say that surrendering to the allure of Schreiber’s filthy lucre, did not diminish the pristine facade which a prime minister must always present. It did, and our compassion should mitigate the damage, if only we put ourselves in his mortal shoes. But we have not. The hangman’s noose is more fun.

When we are done picking at the bones, I will be waiting with bated breath for the vultures to move to another juicy target which has been awaiting their scrutiny for quite a while. We have yet to pursue to its source, the stench of adscam. We have settled for the necks of a couple of fall guys and bagmen, to the great relief of the Liberal establishment. They are still laughing at the notion that the public could be suckered so easily. That we would believe that a couple of two bit operators could so easily redirect vast amounts of tax dollars for personal Liberal use, without any direction from the political top. We got offered a phoney bridge and we took it.

We should burn into our consciousness, this reality. Mulrooney was wrong to take Schreiber’s money, because it looked bad. But he did not steal it. It was willingly offered by a snake. On the other hand, the Liberals stole tax money and perpetrated a scam to hide their actions, - a far greater wrong - and none of the political leaders have yet paid the price at the hands of the law. 

In continuing defiance of Benjamin Franklin’s common sense, the McGuinty government has again robbed us of a bit of "essential liberty". So far it appears that our willingness to exchange such essentials for that "little (bit of) safety" promised, has overriden our desire to remain members of a free society. In his latest personification of "Big Brother", McGuinty has taken away the right to consume even a single alcoholic beverage prior to operating a vehicle. And, he has backed that threat with measures which are surely meant to use a sledge hammer, where subtlety would have been more reasonable.

In light of the seemingly unceasing barrage of such attacks, (most recently, cell phone use, smoking in vehicles, and now this) it is becoming appropriate to ask what kind of life McGuinty leads? Does he not see a deterioration in what we call democracy, with this growing, stifling web of restrictions on our lives? Either he lives like a monk, or he knows that consequences will never touch him. The next question is what is the political value of doing this, and why are we allowing it.

First, he is doing it because each of these measures, by itself, seems unthreatening, and, on the surface, beneficial. This is how he gets his foot in the door, and creates the illusion for Ontario’s legion of sunshine democrats, that he is running the province and improving our lives. We allow this to happen, first, because we are afraid to be seen on the other side of these motherhood issues. It takes courage in today’s Ontario, to stand on your soapbox and argue against more restrictive drinking laws. No one wants to be on the side in which he will so easily labelled a boozer. The legal right to smoke in comfort, has been almost entirely surrendered by its users, on flimsy evidence, because they feel and act as outcasts. They will cower in the cold to pursue their legal habit, not with rage in their eyes, but with the thankfulness of the beaten. McGuinty has deftly divided and conquered us, and we let him.

There is another reason why this is happening. Because it creates bureaucratic employment and Liberal dependents (voters). All of these measures need to be administered (smoke police) and paid for (harmonized sales taxes). A government which demonstrated it has little clue of the effective economic measures to stop Ontario’s slide, is instead creating makework through an impenetrable web of regulation. We saw this strategy during the Bob Rae era and we know where it will lead us. But, we are too unsophisticated to see the probable consequences of each of these regulations (wait until you get stopped in a radar trap at 50 km. over, and watch your life change for the worst). Worse, we are too forgiving of charlatans who come to us promising to make us safer, because we have allowed them to label the resistors as boozers, smokers, racers, and so on. We have allowed this vilification because we consider ourselves above this rabble. It is little wonder, then, that Ontario’s passive sheeple are about to get sheared by the biggest taxgrab in Canada’s history.

For having allowed this to happen in McGuinty’s Ontario, we deserve his scorn, which these measures display, but we deserve no liberty or safety.

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In answer to Rural’s comments:

It is not only MADD that has gone too far, but the anti-smoking lobby as well. We seem to breed zealot do-gooders in this province. The obvious dangers of allowing our lives to be run this way, are clearly escaping us. But even more dangerous is that every time a new group of zealots spawns a new body of bureaucrats to grind their particular axe, we are stuck with more public dependents who, when they succeed in suppressing us, will move on to something else just to justify their jobs.

Put the Liberal party in opposition long enough, and they start to hallucinate. They begin to see the ghost of Trudeau reincarnated in a new form and anticipate the day he will deliver them from their wanderings. They summon leaders from the past, and hang on their words, fantasizing that they are hearing great wisdom, rather than seeing Chretien for what he really was. Strangest of all, their bureau-philosophers begin to ruminate about the true emerging nature of the Liberal party, and think lofty thoughts about the nobility of its goals and values.

Thomas Axworthy’s May 2 piece in the National Post is such a mental exercise. He too is hallucinating, and seeing, emerging before him an entity which must answer certain profound questions in order to be reborn. But surely, the Axworthys of the Liberal world are thinking too hard. Why reinvent the wheel, when the Liberal future is so clearly piloted by the actions of the past? Why else pine for another Trudeau, and recycle "da boss" for another dose of inspiring bs?

Let me be of help to Mr. Axworthy and company, and answer his four profound questions with the raw materials of Liberal essence, where the solutions will inevitably be found.

1. To the question about the most pressing issue of our times, and how the Liberals should respond, it is simply getting re-elected, at whatever cost.

2. What are the values that should motivate progressives? Easy, just promise the voters whatever they want to hear.

3. What human and financial capabilities are required? Just a good supply of brown paper envelopes, and a list of Italian reastaurants.

4. What is required to animate the volunteer base of the party, is much as it always was. Turn as many Canadians as possible into public dependents of the Liberal party, and they will be motivated by every external threat to their lifeline.

Whatever Mr. Axworthy’s true intent, these are the common denominators which inevitably emerge from Liberal politics. If that were not the case, why would they honour the man who led them into the wilderness in the first place? If Chretien saw nothing, did nothing, and knew nothing ( I agree with him), why have none ever asked who did? Because as long as the four answers to the questions, continued to function successfully, no one in the Liberal party gave a damn.

The road travelled by the auto negotiations (Canadian), was entirely predictable. After the CAW’s Lewenza was done with his chest-beating, he quietly capitulated behind closed doors. Unable to use any of the coercive levers of the past, he had no choice but to dance to the piper’s tune "with a gun to our head". All the fire and brimstone pronouncements made to the media throughout the course of exhaustive contract-making, was entirely for his membership, who, in turn, were played by him like fiddles. The glossy handout given to voting union members at the ratification, was no last minute print job. Its contents had to be finalized well before the last minute handshake.

Sad to say, because I am one of them, most members were unaware of the game being played on their behalf. When "Kenny" said, we won’t take concessions because it’s not our fault, they cheered him on and resolved to fight the demands. When he told them what had been surrendered, they cheered the victory, and thanked him. What will come next, and is already emanating from the propaganda of the inner circle, are the targets of blame. Nothing learned here.

You will continue to hear about poor management and what their greed did to workers. That’s a historic theme which is not about to go away. You will see repeated the refrain that these people took no concessions in their pays. Never mind that the ranks of management at all levels are being decimated, in the egalitarian world of the union, every shop floor labourer is worth as much as a CEO, and the two should be treated equally. This makes the never-spoken assumption that union leaders are not subject to this same judgement, and they never make any mistakes. Nothing learned here.

Most of all, you are going to see repeated ad nauseam, the accusations against Harper’s government. Today’s papers already talk about Harper’s and Clement’s efforts at union-busting, and promises of revenge. That revenge, however is the same one that was exercised when the CAW’s Hargrove, in a display of utter paranoia, recommended that we vote for Liberal Adscam liars, Bloc separatists, NDP, perhaps even Bin Laden himself, as long as they showed no allegiance to anything conservative. Nothing new here. The present conflagration is just a newfound rekindling of old hatreds. Nothing learned here.

In stubborn contrast to this anti-conservative paranoia, is the utter silence regarding the part played by Obama, who essentially set the scenario in which the union found itself giving so much back to the company (Chrysler). Harper’s government, in turn, found itself between the edicts of the US president, which they could not refuse, and the ire of Canadian voters/taxpayers who do not show much sympathy for the predicament of Canadian auto workers. If Obama repays his union campaign donors by bringing home assembly plants, the CAW will still blame Harper. Nothing learned here.

At the very least, CAW members, especially union propagandists, should air these grumblings amongst themselves, where the ground is fertile for reenforcement. Not in the media, where soreheaded complaints about giving up $240 million because of those bastards in government, and with a gun to one’s head, are received with utter scorn. Nothing learned here.

My golf buddy, Mark, used to be what I would label a "conformist", with little patience for social mavericks. That all changed when a driver blew past us on the 401 yesterday. Mark, who is wedded to his cruise control, shocked me when he yelled out a supporting, "Give them hell, buddy!"  It seems he has had an epiphany, compliments of Ontario. It had occurred to him that almost everything you did, these days, brought social sanctions with it and he had had enough. "You can’t do a ——- thing without looking over your shoulder, in this God—- province."

Just to remind us how true that is, the pesticide ban just took effect. Then I read that using a cell phone in the car was, by a new edict, worth a $1,000. Each is innocuous enough by itself - like banning pitbulls - but accumulated over six years of this government’s lawmaking, it begins to look like a dangerous web of decrees. As in the case of the street-racing edict, each will capture many people whose intentions were not reflective of the law’s goals.

These are the sorts of laws passed when a government is unclear on the scope of its true responsibilities. McGuinty’s is a sunshine government which meddles with our lives on apple pie issues which, individually, are difficult to oppose. But!! The sunshine has gone behind very dark clouds, and this government is no longer just unclear, they are oblivious. I am reminded of this every time I think of the fallout which will ensue from attacking the consumer with eight percent higher gasoline and heating costs. These alone will likely add two billion dollars in taxes, on top of our shaky legs. Add to that the cost of greening our energy structure, and Ontario will remain in recession for years to come.

Where can we look for salvation from this shipwreck? I am becoming increasingly fearful that Ontario’s Conservative opposition shows few signs of being able to take the helm. Do any of the prospective leadership hopefuls show the right stuff to save us? Randy Hillier will be challenged to appeal to Toronto’s triple cream crowd. Tim Hudak is currently the only one making some of the correct noises, but his genteel manner and low profile will keep him from sparking the imaginations of sleepy Ontario. Frank Klees, whom I would normally support, appears to be starting from half a lap back, and has been in politics too long to make the necessary noise. Christine Elliot appears to sport certain advantages, not the least of which is her gender, and her cosmopolitan career. However, I don’t think a female John Tory is going to cut it, and you can expect the teaching cartel and other beneficiaries of McGuinty’s largesse to go at her with troops and money, just because of her connection to the Harris administration (through her husband, Mr. Flaherty).

One would think that the economic mess should sink the Dalton gang and make any of these candidates sufficient to lead the Conservative party to victory. Unfortunately, I have the unconfirmed suspicion that voters blame economies disproportionately on Conservative governments. McGuinty is an adept liar, and Ontario voters are adept at biting hooks, hence his administration can survive this. The candidates, on the other hand, show no signs of understanding that they need to involve the voters now, in their drive to the top, and are busy discussing beer sales and tourism while the economic whirlpool sucks all of us under. If any of this bunch, other than Mr. Hudak, has looked into the crystal ball and seen what McGuinty’s mismeasures are going to do to us, they have not shown the necessary fire to help stop the coming wreck. If they have not seen it, they have no business trying to run the province.