In Google’s latest transparency report there was a minor note about how Passport Canada had requested to ban a YouTube video featuring a passport being pissed on and flushed down the toilet. I’ve tried looking for the video but can’t seem to find it, suggesting that maybe the government had used other means to have the offending material removed.

I can only imagine that the government would’ve use the “passports are government property” excuse as a basis for this, yet considering the fact that a passport is required to both leave and re-enter Canada, to claim that they can control a person’s actions using a passport as a threat (if they can have a video banned, why stop there?), this would go directly against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Mobility Rights clause as well as the Fundamental Freedoms portion. And since this is the highest law in the land, this is a pretty clear-cut example of the government breaking the fundamental laws governing the country, or at least coming very very close. Will anyone be held to account for this? How about a mild reprimand? Maybe a stern nod?

Originally posted at: http://patrickbay.ca/blog/?p=4081

I have to admit that banning plastic bags was a pretty idiotic move on the part of City Hall. I honestly don’t know of a single person, other than the councillors, who though this would be a good idea. It’s fair to say that nobody thought this one through — sure as heck didn’t consult with anyone or allow the people to be heard on the issue.

Which is why Rob Ford’s comments are especially insulting to all of Toronto:

“It’s the people’s fault,” Ford told AM640’s John Oakley. “Honestly, sometimes I get so frustrated because the people are just sitting back listening. They don’t pick up the phone, they don’t go down to City Hall, they don’t ask questions, they just — it’s frustrating. I want people to get engaged in municipal politics to find out who their councillor is and know how they vote.”

What a dickish thing to say coming from a mayor who spent a chunk of his time during the budget deputations out of his seat doing god-knows-what, did his best to ensure that as few people were able to attend as possible by keeping the meeting running all day and night, and had his buddies mouthing off to deputants instead of listening to what they had to say. Not to mention that this plastic bag vote happened pretty much on the spur of the moment and without any chance for any citizen to have their say; maybe Ford expects that citizens should’ve traveled back in time to voice their objections?

Instead of representing his constituents, which he has clearly given up on doing, Ford has now taken to blaming them (clearly the only group of people left to blame) — but only those who don’t support his myopic, austerity-laden visions.

So no, Rob, it’s not the citizen’s fault that they had no chance to make their voice heard on the plastic bag issue, and where the hell do you get off claiming that people aren’t engaged in municipal politics?

Yep, it ain’t just the Conservatives playing the “peons don’t need to know” game.

Six months ago an amendment was passed to Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). It was folded in like whipped egg white to a cake batter, the batter being Bill 122: “An Act to increase the financial accountability of organizations in the broader public sector.” Part VIII of Bill 122 amends FIPPA so that the act “does not apply to records relating to the provision of abortion services.”

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/full-comment/blog.html?b=fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/05/barbara-kay-mcguinty-liberals-put-top-secret-label-on-abortion-figures

Hmmm, seems that Doug Holyday, the Deputy Mayor, might be starting to see exactly why those unions fought for good pay year after year. Except that all those “lefty” concepts of wealth distribution to workers weren’t exactly what he took away from it.

Instead, Holyday is redistributing the money to already higher-earning management who have been responsible for cutting costs (i.e. other employees).

A few dozen senior managers would get annual increases of 2.75 per cent over the four years through 2015.

Altogether, the tab for those raises over four years comes to $30 million.

It’s also proposed that city council reinstate lump-sum bonuses for managers at the top of their salary range. The bonuses were cancelled in 2010 and 2011, which meant about 2,600 managers didn’t receive bonuses. As a result, the city saved about $11 million.

…

Holyday said the senior management has helped cut costs and trim the workforce, steps that were needed to put the city on a sounder financial footing.

So to all those labourers out there who thought that the Rob Ford gang weren’t into this sort of thing, that his cuts and slashes were simply fiscal responsibility intended to weed out greedy unions, I’m afraid you were mistaken. All that extra money, instead of being distributed to workers, is simply being given to those willing to toe the line for the Mayor. And now you can see that, although unions can be problematic, they go a long way to ensuring that the rich don’t simply get richer while the rest of us lose our jobs.

Seems Ford’s interaction with Star reporter Daniel Dale made an impression on Torontonians. But not in a good way. And especially not with the folks in his own riding.

The recent spat between the Mayor and Dale appears to have pushed his approval rating down by 14% from about 47% at around this time in April. That’s not saying much considering Ford has conspicuously scraped the bottom of the mayoral popularity barrel since he got into office, but it’s an additional indictment of a man who is not only abdicating the duties of his office but also seems hell-bent on destroying this city by invoking a constantly changing agenda that is only costing taxpayers more by the day.

Hopefully this is the beginning of the erosion of the Conservative power base in this country. Not that I think the Liberal option is necessarily much better, but it’d be a start.

Bill C-38 is Harper’s so-called “omnibus” budget bill because the government is trying to cram so much into it — some of it good, some of it neutral, much of it horrible. This comes on the heels of other legislative doozies like Bill C-10 (the omnibus crime bill), Bill C-11 (the copyright reform bill), and Bill C-30 (the “Lawful Access” bill). Are you starting to see an ongoing theme here?

Among the list of things that our Fascist-inspired leadership is trying to get passed are:

• Changes to Employment Insurance designed to push Canadians into debt and corporate servitude.
• An increase in the mandatory retirement age designed to ensure people give up more of their earnings to banks through taxes.
• Removal of already mostly non-existent CSIS oversight (this is the Canadian domestic spy agency).
• Giving U.S. law-enforcement agents, such as the FBI, the same powers as members of the RCMP during cross-border operations.
• Changes to environmental rules such as allowing the federal government to crack down on charities, including environmental groups, which advocate for better laws and policies; fast-tracking of big-corp projects through a weaker environmental review process; reduced protection for fish and fish habitats, exempting pipelines and power lines from the Navigable Waters Act and reduced protection for species at risk; laying off of over 600 Parks Canada workers; increased offshore drilling and on publicly-owned grasslands.

In response, a SOPA-like campaign is being waged called “BlackOutSpeakOut” in which some 13,000 websites are going dark to protest the ongoing scumbaggery of our federal government. Additionally, government opposition are doing everything in their power to slow down and kill this thing, or at least have it split up so that each part of the bill can be voted on independently instead of keeping the good parts in limbo because the bad parts have been glued to them in one giant bill.

Originally posted at: http://patrickbay.ca/blog/?p=3268

I’d already been telling people that Rob Ford had given up on losing weight for a number of weeks now, even though technically he had merely “postponed” his weekly weigh-ins. But based on his record, I was pretty sure he’d give it up altogether. And today I was proven right:

“I don’t care about the weigh-in,” Mr. Ford said Sunday on his weekly Newstalk 1010 radio show, which he hosts with his brother, Toronto City Councillor Doug Ford. “I’m not even dieting anymore.”

…

In the same radio program, Mayor Ford pledged to cut the city’s property tax hike to only 2% for 2013. This year, Toronto property owners were hit with a 2.5% rise in property taxes — the first in two years.

The Toronto Sun, a newspaper that insists on supporting the Mayor at all costs, has tried to spin this announcement by saying that he will continue to lose weight “privately”, despite the fact that he repeated more than once that he won’t.

You may not know this but the whole stunt was supposed to be for charity, and it ended up being the only opportunity for the media to meet with Ford as he started to withdraw from public life (with 2 years left on the clock). Of course, he’s blamed the same media for being in a “frenzy”, despite the fact that he invited them to attend the very public weekly weigh in. Just like all good hypocritical jerkholes, he simply can’t take responsibility for any of his failures.

The Cut the Waist website is still up, presumably because brother Doug is still getting pledges, but you gotta wonder exactly where some of that money is going, or if it’ll ever materialize. For example, some of the dubious pledges made include:

Cornell S – Kentuckky Fried Chicken – $10.00

Robette F – Shake Your Keys To Distract Me – $0.25

Fred S – I Cannot Keep Promises Foundation – $1.00
Robert G – Toupes Of Hope – $1.00
Sam X – The Idea Fund Of Sam Xu – $25.00
Roy G – Cacti Association Of Canada – $13.37
Stacey N – Matt Foley Motivational Speaking – $0.25

Who needs a proper investigation with so much evidence piling up?

The Conservative Party’s latest salvo in response accuses the council of having “an improper motive” to Canadians to “damage the Conservative brand through unfounded assertions.” “The applications have been brought solely to provide the Council with a platform to criticize Conservatives, who the Council views as its enemy,” the motion says. In a tart response, Council of Canadians executive director Garry Neil says, “unlike the epithets thrown at their political opponents, we aren’t being accused of being Nazi sympathizers, or terrorists, or being on the side of the child pornographers.” “I only wish the Conservatives had put as much time and effort into their investigation of the robocalls scandal as they’ve put into chastising the Council of Canadians,” said Neil.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/05/24/robocalls-conservative-lawsuit-dismissal-milewski.html

Is it any wonder that while the government is pushing in Employment Insurance changes that will impoverish Canadians, they’ve simultaneously hid key statistical data from their reports?

And just in time, too! Gotta hand it to the Harper government, when they screw over the Canadian population, they make sure to do it right!

Demand for information about EI is running high right now due to the government’s slow strip tease on changes to the program.

“Loss of data will make it much more difficult to analyse the impacts of changes to the EI rules as they are implemented,” said Andrew Jackson, chief economist at the Canadian Labour Congress.

He is concerned that stricter criteria for EI claimants are coming at the same time as Ottawa reduces the avenues for appeal — leaving adjudicators with little leeway to allow for local and personal circumstances.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Politics/20120523/employment-insurance-rules-120523/

If you’re not performing for your corporate overlords, the government is ready to step in and put you back in your place. Now fall in line, maggot!

Raitt told CTV’s Canada AM on Thursday that a negotiated settlement is the best solution, but said the federal government is ready to step in if that doesn’t happen. Raitt estimates a prolonged strike will cost the Canadian economy $540 million per week.

“When 5,000 employees going on strike starts affecting tens of thousands of employees at Ford plants or GM plants or at coal mines or grain farmers, then it’s a bigger impact than what’s just happening at the company,” Raitt said.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Politics/20120524/canadian-pacific-strike-raitt-120524/