I haven't attended one, no, it's been a while since I've visited a reserve but I'm lucky to work for an arts organization in Toronto that values and respects Indigenous peoples and makes it part of our mandate to be respectful and welcoming to them. That's definitely not a given, even in today's more liberal climate; there are lots of promise-breakers out there.
So... who likes pre-paying for their electricity?
http://cherylgallant.com/2016/10/11/...liament-oct16/
looks like a certain University of Toronto professor and non-gender-binary people are at odds with each other. The non-gender-binaries want to the right to be addressed by a pronoun of their choosing, and if not, the person failing to do so will be charged with a hate crime. The professor says this takes away our free speech, since the government will literally be forcing people to use certain language.
I don't get what the issue is, I wanted to honestly watch the whole thing to give his P.O.V a shot but I can't. If someone wants to be addressed as she/he/them etc... then call them by such. The guy says some discrimination in some instances is fair, what else needs to be said? WTF does Marxism and Soviet history have to do with identity politics? He's just a bitter dick who doesn't want to call a transwomen/men "her/him" or whatever they might identify as. He isn't a brave free speech crusader, just an old bigot who still think Communists are the monsters under your bed.
Last edited by icecream; 12-24-2016 at 02:17 AM.
His fears of Stalinist like revisionism and labour camps seem a lot pre emptive. I think that the bulk of the concern is that the Bill C16 is vague at best. No one is sure how charges of criminality
may or may not be applied in the future. As far as I am aware this is the first legislation dealing with language that people "have" to use versus language that is prohibited. So at best it's something that's good
and gurantees basic rights to a minority, at worst it might cause infringment on free speech. No one knows because the proposed bill is unclear.
Kevin O'Leary is our Canadian version of Donald Trump.
He doesn't speak a word in French and decided to officially announced his candidature today, a date after the PCC French debate.
What a coward. Chicken O'Leary.
kevin o'leary wishes he had half the charm and intelligence of drumpf. (sarcasm)
(shudder) he is a chicken, and i wish the sky would LITERALLY fall on his head.
not looking forward to the probability of following the leader-next-door, but i am not feeling a whole lot of faith in our fellow canadians.
sad, man. very sad.
hell, not feeling much faith in humans, period, these days.
Last edited by Lew; 01-18-2017 at 05:40 PM. Reason: eeyore was not quite done splashing the blue aboot
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/elec...line-1.3969098
ye fellow canucks...please sign and share if you are so inclined.
thank you.
Are you not worried that this reform might be detrimental to the well being of Canada? Nothing will get done and coalitions will need to be formed to enact and move legislation. It could take the government 5 years to agree on something because of political discourse. This could also put fringe extreme parties into power.
agreed.
i am not comfortable, in any area of life, with the majority of power resting in the hands of one group.
i would very much like to see proportional representation in place here.
yes, the shift will be a shit show, but too bad....it is worth it in the long run. (imo)
to
my way of thinking this only highlights the need for canadians to be engaged...to demand not only representation but to demand maturity in the people being paid to run our country...
politicians seem to find coalitions/consensus to be scary...look what harper did when the makings of a coalition was staring him in the face...he shut that shit down pronto.
yes, guaranteed, that political discourse (deliberate, likely) will need to addressed...hell, i anticipate deliberate b.s. to try to kill the shift and to maintain a "gee, folks, see what happens if you try to FORCE adults into comprimise" so that we can continue to bounce back and forth between a liberal and conservative majority...because THAT is what best suits career politicians.
and as to fringe parties getting power: ok. if that is the will of the people, so be it. truthfully part of me welcomes the idea, simply to get things MOVING.
proportional representation hasn't caused goverments anywhere else to implode, seems to be working fine...so why not?
i remember voting for proportional representation in the referendum. i remember thinking "fuck me. this will never fly simply because people are so fucking terrified of change." plus, elections canada did a shitastic job of defining clearly what it actually meant. i had a huge number of friends and family who were voting no because they simply didn't understand what it meant.
i, personally, am gratified by the noise canadians are making over this...even if JUST to hold trudeau to his platform promises. we let politicians away with far too much. this engagement is surprising and most welcome, from my perspective.
Nanny state and Prime Minister Selfie back at it
http://business.financialpost.com/fp...al-gains-taxes
It's official. Canadian government has introduce bills legalizing recreational marijuana.
When I was a teenager, I always wondered if I would ever witness pot being legal. I guess I will.
I haven't smoked in years but for sure, I'll go through the experience of buying some in complete legality just for the fun of it.
It'll be strange to be able to buy it legally. And we'll start to get some fairly consistent quality too. Stuff you buy from random people could be awesome or great (and everyone always said that theirs was the best, even if it wasn't).
I mean, it's not like it's been a big deal since high school was over, it's easy to get, and there's almost no enforcement about it, but it'll be strange to see it for sale in stores. I've got a friend who works in vice, and even he said that if you get caught with a bit of pot, 9 times out of 10 they'll just take it away and give you a lecture.
Probably be restricted to the LCBO, but I've heard shoppers drug mart wants to get in on the distribution game too. I haven't had the desire to smoke pot in quite a long time, but everyone I've talked to always said the medicinal plants were way more potent, and the legalisation could very easily lead to higher quality, so maybe I'll give it another go once it's legal.
Trump slaps 20% tariff on Canadian softwood lumber.
During 2014, 60 companies in Canada exported 58.4 terawatthours (TWh) of electricity into the United States, making up 1.6% of U.S. electricity retail sales.
Trudeau needs to hit back hard. No more cheap water and electricity to the US.
As an American living basically at the border, I want to personally apologize for how this shit is affecting you. I have many friends in the Toronto/Hamilton area who are looking at not coming down at all in the next 4 years just to avoid the additional problems going on at the border, and now there's this.
Please, PLEASE call this shit out and hit back against it. Canada is, I would say, our biggest ally and we need you guys to smack us back into shape.
We know it's temporary.
To be honest, I don't think you will see retaliation just yet. We know he's gunning for our dairy farmers next.
Problem is that if you hit back, you just don't know how the Trump administration is gonna react. Trump is a loose canon.
Trump is trying to renegotiate NAFTA piece by piece. This is the mistake Trudeau can't make. It's better to scrap the whole thing and negotiate a new trade deal from scratch.
trump stating trade war with Canada where will USC's go now? new Zealand? i suppose, American's to lazy to actually learn another language, or culture, I guess i better stock up on maple syrup
-Louie
sorry about that I'll try and be more concise next time
-Louie
Canadian revisionism
http://nationalpost.com/news/politic...hat-never-ends
^ That whole article is nonsense. "Conceptions of history", my ass!
Last edited by botley; 08-24-2017 at 11:12 PM.
Think so? I always found articles and opinion pieces from the Post to be mostly even keeled and centrist.
How about this one?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront...utes-1.4266983
Huge respect for Senator Sinclair. That article is a tiny excerpt from a sound-bite in a much longer interview, however. He said that we should be adding Indigenous peoples' names and history to our monuments and public buildings, which I completely agree with and support as an initiative to bring more awareness of their history. There's an event venue at a building where I used to work downtown, which is now named for Tom Longboat (a.k.a. Cowagee, in the Onondaga language), whose story is incredibly moving. He literally ran away to freedom from a residential school. I probably would never have found out about him or taken the time to research the history of Indigenous sports in Canada if they hadn't done that naming for him.
Last edited by botley; 08-30-2017 at 08:43 AM.
I find the whole thing to be absurd.
I work in a public institution, and every time there is an event, they start with someone aknowledging we are in the land of.... (name of a tribe) and how grateful we are for it... you know, the whole PC bs, and everyone feels so good about it... how progressive! Aknowledging First Nations...
... but that's the easy way. It requires zero effort, it doesn't make a difference, it doesn't improve anyone's lives, it doesn't change anything. The hypocrisy behind it blows my mind.
I don't have a solution for the conflict, I think it's damaged beyond repair.
If it's done with respect instead of by rote, it DOES make a difference. Any land acknowledgement should be an opportunity to re-frame our current role in history as one of stewardship, not ownership. Sure, that alone does nothing to actually improve the lot of people living with the lasting impact of genocide and ongoing racist policy. But we have to be AWARE of that history and its ongoing impact today, right?
But yeah, I agree to an extent in that most settler institutions do the bare minimum to make themselves feel good and then think that's enough.
Last edited by botley; 08-31-2017 at 12:11 PM.