Politics in Canada –scandal at all levels!

Indeed. All levels. Not just PMO Harper.
I've been collecting stories. They tend to disappear over time, in cyberspace, as journalists have short attention spans, and move on to the next story.
It makes for thought-provoking discourse amongst our family. It keeps the brain cells firing, and encourages me to keep reading and watching.

 What is a legitimate expense?

Last night, former broadcaster Senator Pamela Wallin went on the offensive to address illegal expenses. She could have apologised, or explained, or taken questions. Instead, she blames the system. It is "fundamentally flawed and unfair."

Senator Pamela Wallin calls audit 'flawed and unfair' - Politics - CBC News

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/...

Senator Pamela Wallin described the Deloitte audit of her expenses as flawed and unfair, but said she will pay back every dollar she is ordered to by the Senate, with interest.

It seems fairly straightforward. If you are doing required Senate work - on a $135,000 salary a year, your expenses could be paid. On the other hand, my clients' PSWs drive from home and from client to client, making $12 an hour. They pay their own gas. My brother pays his own transportation to his work. Most of us do and on far smaller salaries. As a hospice volunteer I don't even get mileage any more, as we lack government funding. Do you perceive the disconnect and the sense of entitlement?

It appears that the Deloitte audit found unmatched events with claims for Senate business events. Isn't that what Senator Duffy's claims demonstrated? How, in their own minds - in this universe, does this make sense?

As I listened this morning, my local CBC Ottawa host interviews Hannah Thibedeau, an accredited journalist, didn't pull punches on her former colleague, Senator Wallin. The whole thing seems evil, wrong, deceitful and illegal. I was deeply shocked. Here is the interview:

Senate expense scandal: Wallin repayment could be six-digit figure

As she finished up her live spot, two more journalists entered for a live interview. Apparently, one of the two stuck their tongue out at Ms. Thibedeau, to throw her off. This is so typical of journalists. They are reporting on this serious issue. They are not taking it seriously. This is one of their own who appears to have deeply stuck it to taxpayers, most of whom make far less for far more work.

 “@acoyne: Aren’t we all fundamentally flawed, in a sense?” One flaw being the inability to see them in ourselves?”
Yes. Journalists need to step up and hold her accountable. She represents them all, and badly. She is demonstrating that naval-gazing sense of entitlement that Senator Duffy demonstrated. With their lifelong pensions and expense accounts.

Federal Politics

The Senators who make $135,000 a year, have been over compensated for expenses. Mind you, they are paid to sit on particular boards of directors (e.g., Senator Pamela Wallin quits Porter Airlines board), and earn a princely sum there, too. She bemoans the paperwork required that befuffled her, in a CBC Mansbridge interview.
Senator Duffy, Mounties open criminal probe into Mike Duffy scandal. He's been given $90,000 by former PM Harper's aide.

Then, Mac Harb, ordered to repay said claims, has taken his own revenge:

Former Liberal Senator files for judicial review after being ordered to repay more than $230,000

A question of judgment? Hit the road, Mac

OTTAWA — May 9, 2013 Mac Harb should resign from the Senate. He is either guilty of terrible judgment or motivated by an obscene sense of entitlement. It doesn’t matter what an accounting firm says. Mac Harb should resign from the Senate.He is...someone already making $132,000 annually. Harb claimed $43,000 in accommodation, mileage...on the public dime, so close together? Mac Harb was once a likable character with a sympathetic...
These same Senators charge amazing speaker's fees. In what seems like a volley in return, suddenly MP Trudeau's been cited as claiming speaker's fees by a non-profit group that lost money during this conference. "A communications officer in the Prime Minister's office sent an email to The Barrie Advance with details about a $10,000 speech Justin Trudeau gave in 2007 that left Georgian College with a $4,000 loss."

Provincial Politics

Our Premier McGuinty suddenly resigned. Many think it's due to the awful amount of money that had to be paid to businesses for canceled contracts in the power plant debacle. It cost $585 million, according to The Toronto Star. He prorogued parliament, shut her down completely, in the midst of complaints about the clean energy projects he's undertaken. Ontario Wind Farms and Hydro Projects, with energy surpluses resulting in more costs to the taxpayers.

Now, our local MPP, Randy Hiller, is calling for an emergency leadership review for the Conservative party.

Tim Hudak rejects calls for leadership review after Ontario ... Toronto Star-12 hours ago MPPs Frank Klees (Newmarket-Aurora) and Randy Hillier (Lanark-Frontenac-Lenox and Addington), runners-up to Hudak in the 2009 ...

His boss, Hudak, is out of the country on holiday. What a great time for an attack. Hillier has also been attacking Hydro One, calling for its dismemberment, with no alternative presented. Attack. Attack. Attack. There are many fine HydroOne employees, who dug us out of trouble during Ice Storm '98 and continue to do fine work, at great risk.

Hydro One woes Ottawa Citizen-Aug 2, 2013 His colleague Conservative MPP Randy Hillier has reported the same thing. As a long-suffering Hydro One ratepayer, who just received a hefty ...

Now, I risk my MPP accusing me, again, of bipartisan sniping, but it is a risk I take, since I have no allegiance to any party. I am deeply cynical. I am entitled to my opinion. As my elected representative, as all my friends have said, I am entitled to having my opinion registered. He represents all of us, whether we voted him in or not.

Municipal Politics

Both the Toronto and Montreal mayors have had some issues with the law.
One apparently has had intimate contact with drug dealers and cocaine. Rob Ford has his own section in the online Globe and Mail!
The other, appointed to replace a previous mayor involved in bribery issues, is himself involved between the years 2006 and 2011.

Let me contrast these stories of money, corruption and power, with this one:

Ontario's affordable housing crisis deepens

As rental housing disappears and incomes stagnate, more low- and middle-income people are finding it tough to afford a decent home.

Where is Canada headed now?

Harper and Layton share the railing

Our new Prime Minister, now with a majority of seats in the house (167/308), has run on a series of planks that scare me. Last time he ran (2008) and ended up with a minority of seats, he promised to reform our expensive Senate. It is stacked with party favourites, retirement age: 75, although Stephen Harper promised that this institution would be revised. NOT. The upper house continues, as appointed members, to influence laws created by elected House of Commons duly elected members. Large salaries, huge costs ($90 million), no accountability for attendance, and terrific pensions.

How the other half lives

His 2011 platform runs against my sensibilities:

• abandoning the gun registry

How police use the gun registry

'That adds up to a staggering 3,438,729 queries from police officers last year. It’s hard to imagine a federal database more intensively mined.'

• lowering taxes

life in the swamp

The middle class carry the bulk of the tax burdens. The rich get richer, the poor do not pay taxes. We'll have less money for universal healthcare, to support those who need our help. Big business, with lowered taxes (likely cut to 15% in 2012, the US rate is 35%), is theoretically supposed to improve our economy.


More was proposed in the last budget, likely to be resurrected...

• Additional or increased tax credits for family caregivers, volunteer firefighters, post-secondary education, children’s fitness and art programs and energy-efficient home improvements are probable. 

Road maintenance

Let's hope. Yet, the small tax credit for caring for failing parents, is less than meaningful. Many firefighters do not make enough money for their tax credit to be worthwhile. 

For middle class families putting kids into a fitness or arts program, what a drop in the bucket. 

A tax credit for improving our houses energy efficiency, might help the middle class, but not those living without the means to reduce heating and hydro bills by incorporating green solutions (especially fixed-income seniors). Many cannot afford repairs to their aging homes.

• Free trade agreements with the EU and India will be pursued. 
• The Canadian Wheat Board, the last major agricultural marketing monopoly in the world, will likely lose its exclusive hold over the buying and selling of Western Canada’s wheat and barley.

What worries me:

• little attention, understanding, or respect for the environment, 

Green energy sector not cheering Tory majority

May 03, 2011 – Industry executives say they don’t expect government to show leadership on renewables

It's an overgrown swamp

The previous owners of this house, while running on well and septic, have a large container of weed killer. Other neighbours and citizens shoot guns off-season, hunt protected wildlife, decimate habitat, and dump garbage on their land and in the ditches.

• media claims: universal healthcare is broken

Harper stares down the people

Articles in the media claim healthcare is broken. This is an excuse to go for private clinics, which drain the system of its doctors and nurses. Concierge healthcare is a scary proposition. We cannot aim for the US model. I predict they are hoping to create a two-tier system. In this way the poor will share its physicians, while the rich go to specialty Concierge clinics. The doctor/patient ratio will only get worse.

• getting 'tough on crime'

Ruffled Senate feathers

Crime rates are, in fact, are lowering. Getting tough on crime has resulted in crowded prison systems, the training of criminals, rather than their rehabilitation. Offenders more comfortable within the criminal system, rather than in the community, contributing to society and getting help for their psychosocial issues and addictions or finding work. The stories you read about criminal breaking out, running, are those who are not rehabilitated, and are destroyed by the crowded system. My contacts, where I volunteered in the prison system, assure me this is so. Those close to being able to be reached; minor drug offences, fraud, girlfriends who get caught doing something for a boyfriend...these people learn how to be hard core in prison. I believe more in rehabilitation and facing consequences, giving back to the communities they have exploited. 

• cutting back on the civil service work force

Public servants fear layoffs amid Tory majority  More than 150,000 public servants working in Ottawa awoke Tuesday to a new Conservative majority government, and new anxieties about what that will mean for their jobs.

Westport
expensive cottages, playground of the rich

Conservative John Baird, the re-elected member for Ottawa West-Nepean, had said the Conservative government would trim $4 billion in annual federal program spending if elected. They say, through attrition, but I am not convinced. Every time they cut jobs, it isn't the expensive managers. It's the people who work on behalf of those who have no voice.

• The Conservatives also support the elimination of mandatory retirement requirements at federally regulated employers such as banks. 

They are changing mandatory retirement age. Without workers to pay taxes, we'll have to find new jobs. There are many who must work at low-paying jobs who do not have pensions and cannot afford to retire. 
Why does our Senate have highly-paid senators who retire at age 75, if this is their philosophy?

This house is beyond redemption!

Another Conservative issue: 

• 'Back off government' rural Canadian attitude

Without environmental and safety legislation, we risk the land and our people. There are those who say not to fear, that our Conservatives are no where near the US Tea Party attitude, but I beg to differ. I've seen it here in Lanark County.

We shall see what happens!