War on Women, vol 2

Teen dating violence is no joke!

Apparently, it was supposed to be funny. In an effort to capitalize on the celebrity of Chris Brown, the hip hop artist who was convicted of assaulting his former girlfriend Rihanna, a Georgia restaurant recently created a new sandwich: “The Caribbean Black and Bleu.”

The restaurant slyly tweeted: “Chris Brown won’t beat you up for eating this unless your name starts with R and ends with A.” After a public outcry, the sandwich was pulled from the menu. That’s the good news. The bad news? This is not an isolated incident.

Belvedere Vodka recently launched an online campaign that showed a grinning young man who seems to be trying to force sexual contact on a frightened young woman. The tag line: “Unlike some people, Belvedere always goes down smoothly.” The company pulled the ad, but many suspect the whole thing was simply a PR campaign.

Last year, men’s clothing retailer Topman was forced to withdraw T-shirts that read: “I’m so sorry, but,” followed by excuses: “You provoked me . . . I was drunk . . . I didn’t mean it . . . ”

It seems violence against women has graduated from social crisis to trendy marketing campaign. The cultural zeitgeist is in motion and businesses have noticed.

So have your kids. Following Brown’s controversial appearance at this year’s Grammy awards, dozens of young women tweeted: “. . . he can beat me anytime.” Last summer, #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend and #rapistsongs trended big on Twitter. And despite attempts to get them removed, Facebook pages like: “You know she’s playing hard to get when she tries to break out of your van,” and “You know she’s playing hard to get when you use another roll of tape,” remain live.

Every day, in dozens of subtle and not-so-subtle ways, our sons and daughters are learning it’s okay to treat sexual and physical violence against women as a joke. This mindset is helping to create an epidemic of teen dating violence, with one in three teens in Canada experiencing some form of abuse in their romantic relationships.

Societies with the strictest gender roles have the highest rates of violence against women, and Canada isn’t as far ahead as we assume. If you think gender doesn’t matter anymore, you haven’t been in a high-school classroom lately. Teachers who deliver Healthy Relationship programs funded by the Canadian Women’s Foundation tell us they’re often shocked at how fiercely some teens defend creaky old gender stereotypes.

This month, a U.S. study of Grade 7 students found that 63 per cent strongly agreed with sentiments like: “When dating, the boy should be smarter than the girl.”

Young people may joke about violence, but those who experience it are usually silent. They don’t tell their teachers and they certainly don’t tell their parents. They’re most likely to tell their friends, who are least likely to understand the issue and least able to help. Although teens may be wizards when it comes to technology, their relationship skills can be rudimentary.

A teen who is abused by their date has a much greater chance of being abused later in life. Once learned, abusive behaviour is extremely difficult to change. That’s why dating violence is one of the strongest predictors of future violence. Prevention is key, and the earlier in life the better.

Research clearly shows Healthy Relationship programs work. Girls and boys alike learn to recognize the warning signs of an abusive relationship and how to get help. They learn how to create a respectful relationship — romantic or otherwise — a skill they will use for the rest of their life. As one teen said after participating: “It’s like you see the world differently. You see the value of the people around you.”

However, the message that violence is normal has become so loud, it’s going to take a massive, collective effort to be heard above the din.

You can help. Be a positive role model, and talk to your children about relationships. Ask them what their friends are saying, what they’re watching online, and what they see in movies and video games. If your local high school doesn’t offer a Healthy Relationship program, ask them to start one.

If we work together, we can help our kids beat the odds, and stay safe in their relationships.

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       (dear readers, I have provided this TorStar article of Tuesday, April 17, 2012 word for word as it may be helpful for those parents who are raising our adults of the future. Written by Anuradha Dugal, the Director of Violence Prevention Programs at the Canadian Women’s Foundation, I found her article informative and worthy of further distribution. The Foundation’s annual campaign to end violence against women, Shelter from the Storm, runs from April 14 to May 13, 2012. Check them out at......
www.canadianwomen.org

Will NYMBYism take over the Toronto Crime/Drug debate?

The Crime from Drugs discussion is already taking place at coffee shops and bars as Ford's Toronto is left to consider the set-up of supervised injection sites for the mentally ill to inject drugs like heroin in a clean, supervised environment.

While an injection study tries to avoid a scenario of angry residents; considering that in Lucerne, Switzerland, one site had to be shuttered after six months because of the uproar, it’s clear that no neighbourhood wants the crime that follows drug use, although some Parkdale residents were mixed in their reactions, with some offering support for the idea and others, abject disapproval.

Parkdale, while full of young professionals is also home to a plethora of shelters, soup kitchens and low-income housing. In addition to the methadone clinic, the local community health centre runs a weekday needle exchange program. The neighbourhood is also home to CAMH and an activity centre that operates a drop-in for the mentally ill and homeless. 

Jayme Poisson, Staff Reporter for the Toronto Star interviewed seven stakeholders for their comments.

Jürgen Rehm, director of social and epidemiological research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, said a site should be close to where there’s already a lot of injection drug use. “For example, Parkdale. But not only there,” he said, adding that "drug use in Toronto is more spread out than in other cities, such as Vancouver, where it’s concentrated in the Downtown Eastside and finding a community that will accept a drug injection site is another critical factor." While Rehm said he didn’t want to single out the gritty west-end neighbourhood, that Parkdale is a contender comes as no surprise to most.

Sheryl, 39, a former addict who didn’t want to give her last name said,“There’s a large community of drug users here and I think it would probably be one of the more ideal and necessary locations.”

Rob Dee, 52, has lived in Parkdale for 50 years. The truck driver believes a supervised site is a good idea, even it moves in next door. “I’ve seen more bodies lying in lane ways than you can imagine,” he said, adding it could save lives and prevent disease transmission.

But for Roula Kyrou, it’s a different story. “We get dumped with everything,” she said of Parkdale’s reputation for being a hub of social services. Just last year, Kyrou tried to get a local methadone clinic ousted from her street. And while she says the methadone clinic isn’t as bad as she had anticipated, “I’ve got kids. I don’t want people on drugs loitering.”

Robert Maynard, 41, “Parkdale’s a special place in that it does have to care for a lot of people,” said this Parkdale resident. But while the filmmaker thinks the community would ultimately accept a supervised injection site, he questioned if it would make it too depressing, or further segregate it from the rest of the city. “I think Parkdale will take it, but do we want to give it to (Parkdale) because it will take it?”

For Dennis Long, executive director of Breakaway Addiction Services, which runs the methadone clinic in Parkdale, the bottom line is that sites in Toronto are long overdue. “We lose a number of people in Toronto every year to overdoses as a direct result of injecting in places where there’s nobody available to help them,” he said, adding that while deciding where a site could go will be tricky, it’s also solvable.

It should come as no surprise that Parkdale’s city councillor, left-leaning Gord Perks said that setting up safe injection sites is “good sound public health policy.”

On the other side of the debate, Mayor Rob Ford has said he does not support injection sites as a form of drug treatment. Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair is not in favour of supervised injection sites. “My concern is there needs to be sufficient assurances within the community that the quality of life will not be put in jeopardy,” Blair said. “They have been doing it in Vancouver for some years and there have been issues that have arisen there. I don’t know of any place in Toronto where that couldn’t have a significant negative impact on the communities.”

Some have suggested the Toronto Islands would be a good site while others even suggested providing bus fare to Vancouver as an option but don't these suggestions seem like cruel solutions to those saddled with mental illness? Then again, isn't providing drugs instead of treatment options to the mentally ill just as cruel?


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Is community policing an important tool to reduce violence?

Some children from Community Housing Unit 10 - Spadina/Downtown went on a trip to the Metro Toronto Zoo organized by Toronto Police Services 52 Division as part of their ProAction Cops and Kids program!

                 (dear readers, I have provided the following article, word for word by Patty Winsa and Jim Rankinare, TorStar staff reporters to highlight the wide gulf between those who agree that community policing is 'an important tool intended to reduce the violence that has victimized blacks and Hispanics in their communities', according to New York police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and......those who don't. I'm sure that some locally and their brethren in NY and London will be following the decision of our Police Board very closely!)

Police Service Board decision on ‘carding’ stuns activists!

April 14, 2012

Patty Winsa and Jim Rankin,

Monitor the controversial police practice of stopping citizens on the street, particularly minority youth, and “carding” them. Make officers give a copy of the gathered information to those they stop. Open police data for review by the city’s auditor general.

That’s what the Toronto Police Services Board is ordering, stunning even the activists who fought for more oversight of carding, which sees hundreds of thousands of people stopped, questioned and documented each year.

The Toronto board’s decision, made earlier this month, is “pretty amazing,” says former mayor John Sewell, a member of the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition, a group of concerned citizens who led the drumbeat for change.

Toronto police defend the practice as good police work in high crime areas. But a Star investigation found that police stop and document minorities at much higher rates across the city. And only a small percentage of the people in their massive electronic database have been arrested or charged in Toronto in the past decade.

The practice is also a front-page debate in New York and London.

Police stops have been under scrutiny in all three cities. But the type of oversight that may limit the practice can only be found here, thanks to the ruling.

The motions that passed included a request that police chief Bill Blair report carding statistics every three months, as well as monitor and address discriminatory practices.

In addition, officers will be required to give copies of the document card — stating the reason for the stop — to each individual.

The board also unanimously approved chair Alok Mukherjee’s call for the city’s auditor general to conduct an independent review of the race-based statistics kept by police, who record skin colour — black, brown, white or “other” — each time they stop and document a resident. The review would create a benchmark to judge the effectiveness of carding.

The service, and the police board that oversees it, haven’t always been as receptive to the suggestion that some police practices may target minorities.

In 2003, Toronto Police Association launched an unsuccessful $2.7-billion class-action libel suit against the Star after it published data that suggested a pattern of racial profiling.

The data showed blacks were more likely than whites to be detained and held for a bail hearing on a charge of simple drug possession. And that more were ticketed for offenses that would only come to light following a traffic stop. Civil libertarians and criminologists said it was a pattern of racial profiling, whether conscious or not.

In the Star’s latest analysis, blacks were more likely than whites to be stopped and documented in each of the city’s 72 patrol zones. The ratios for black youth were even higher.

So, as Sewell sat in the darkened police board room earlier this month along with a chorus of groups — the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Urban Alliance on Race Relations and the Black Action Defense Committee — all calling for an investigation into carding, he still couldn’t believe much was going to happen.
The board vice-chair, Councillor Michael Thompson, said afterward that many people in the room felt the same way, telling him later, “Oh my God. You guys actually did something. We didn’t think anything was going to happen.”

But the councillor said it was time to draw a line in the sand. “I read the (Star) series years ago. And I read the series again,” he said, referring to “Known to police”, which ran in March. “I know 10 years ago how controversial it was.”

“At the end of the day the police board is there to act on behalf of the citizens. And to implement measures to help make sure policing is safe for everyone,” said Thompson. Simply “referring the matter back to the auditor general with a report wasn’t sufficient.”

Many of the groups at the board meeting didn’t need the Star series to alert them to a frustrating imbalance between minority youth and police. They included front-line youth workers who had heard the stories before.

“Sadly, the results described in the Toronto Star series come as no surprise,” said Noa Mendelsohn Aviv of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which is facilitating a project on youth rights and policing.

Sewell’s recommendations were also supported by the provincial advocate Irwin Elman, who wrote in an email that young people have “highlighted the need for better relationships with community members, including Toronto police” since he took office in 2008.

Chief Blair has never defended racial profiling, calling it “abhorrent.” But he has supported carding, stressing that police target violent-crime areas of the city and that it has worked to reduce crime.

New York police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has also called his force’s “stop and frisk” practice an “important policing tool intended to reduce the violence that has victimized blacks and Hispanics,” according to a New York Times article in March. Statistics show 96 per cent of the city’s shooting victims and 90 per cent of murder victims in 2011 were minorities.

Police continue to “stop and search” there in record numbers, despite legislative changes made two years ago, when anger against the practice boiled over.

“People were pretty outraged that hundreds of thousands of innocent people were all of sudden in a police department database,” says Darius Charney, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has monitored the police data for nine years.

Police are now prohibited from maintaining an electronic file of names unless the stop ends in an arrest. But Charney says police interpreted the legislation as a limit only to maintaining electronic files and police still fill out the forms and keep paper copies. “Somewhere in the police department are a huge stack of handwritten forms,” he says.

Despite the legislation, statistics show police stopped nearly 700,000 people in 2011, 85 per cent of whom were black or Hispanic. Only 1 per cent of the stops led to recovery of a weapon and only one in 10 to an arrest or summons.

Charney’s non-profit organization is part of a class-action lawsuit against the police department, alleging the stop and frisk practice violates the U.S. Constitution’s fourth amendment, which prohibits search and seizure.

New York senators and city councillors, who say they’ve been stereotyped by police, are also trying to bring in legislation that would limit the practice.

In England, police “stop and search” powers used to uncover weapons or crime are also “hugely disproportionate. And yet also hugely ineffective,” says Rebekah Delsol, a member of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which studies ethnic profiling worldwide.

A leaked Scotland Yard memo made news when it revealed that police thought a federal “stop and search” power that disproportionately targets blacks could be toppled by a court challenge.

Section 60, as it’s called, allows police to intensively search areas in response to knife crimes. But “nationally, black people are more than 30 times likely to be stopped under Section 60 powers and Asian people are seven times more likely to be stopped,” says Delsol. “Only 2 per cent of those stops actually lead to an arrest. And it’s something like 0.5 of those for possession of a weapon, which is the ostensible reason for the power in the first place.”

Activists are calling for the kind of oversight that was introduced in Toronto. “There needs to be much tighter internal management that actually takes action on officer practice and does something about the culture of institutional racism,” says Delsol, whose organization is part of a court challenge to the Section 60 powers.

“And on the other side, I think there’s a lot of work to be done on using the statistics in a very clever way and working with communities so that they can really monitor the police and hold them to account.”

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Is this the end for those who, without shame wasted our tax dollars?

 

 

Funding cuts could unshackle Canadian civil society!

April 14, 2012
Howard Ramos and James Ron,
as published in the Toronto Star....... 

The 2012 federal budget has put Canada’s social justice groups on notice: the era of government-supported good deeds is over. Over the short term, many state-funded groups will shrink or disappear, while those that survive will lose their autonomy. If you care about critical thinking and social justice, this is bad news.

Over the long term, however, the Conservatives may have done Canada a favour. Deprived of federal funding, independently-minded activists will have to learn new ways of ethically raising money from individuals, communities, and businesses.

By multiplying their revenue sources, social justice groups will reduce their vulnerability to single-source arm-twisting. By going private, they will no longer have to worry about offending government ministers.
This new, American-style approach to promoting social justice could be a good thing. Canadian activists have long relied on federal money, and this has rendered them acutely vulnerable to official pressure.
Early on, the federal government’s intentions were pure. In the 1970s, Canada was suffering economically, and politicians hoped to dampen unrest by funding progressive civic groups. Keen to make the world a better place, they also supported organizations engaged in cutting-edge international thinking.
On the home front, these groups included indigenous rights bodies such as the Native Council of Canada (now the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples), or women’s groups such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC). To advance justice abroad, they included the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), an innovative, independently-minded Canadian Crown corporation with a multinational governing board.

Until recently, federal support for these and other groups distinguished Canada from its southern neighbour, where critically oriented social justice is privately funded. Under the old rules, Canadian groups were able to maintain their autonomy while taking federal money.

The generous notion underlying this remarkable approach was that a vociferous Canadian social justice sector was a public good worth supporting, irrespective of policy disagreements.

The problem, of course, was that this system created structural dependency. Canadian social justice groups attracted staff who knew how to secure government aid, but who had little ability to raise money from private individuals, communities and businesses.

This weakness became glaringly apparent when Harper’s Conservatives signalled their distaste for the old rules. If his government was going to pay, criticism would not be tolerated.

Harper began by cutting funding to domestic social justice programs such as Status of Women, a federal agency charged with issues of gender equity, and the Court Challenges Program, which had helped aggrieved groups seek legal redress.

Then, the Conservatives began slashing support to internationally oriented groups, such as the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, an independent policy group, and to KAIROS, a faith-based development organization.

More insidiously, officials let it be known that any organization still getting federal money must fall in line. With few safeguards to protect their independence, no state-supported entity was safe.

Understandably, many organizations scrambled to curry favour. At the Ottawa-based IDRC, for example, a jittery board of governors installed a government official as their new director, hoping he would keep the Conservatives happy. That official did his best, slashing programs and projects that might attract Conservative ire, and browbeating his staff into quiescence.

Things worked out similarly at Rights & Democracy, the Montreal-based Crown corporation that supported progressive groups abroad. There, Conservative-installed board members forced the organization’s directors to change course.

The same held true at the North-South Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank, where another new director has proved reluctant to publish findings critical of Canadian businesses and government.

Some groups are limping along in the new environment, while others have expired. The government has just eliminated Rights & Democracy, for example, while at the IDRC and North-South, staff have resigned, been removed, or are searching for new jobs.

And you have only to try and access the NAC’s former website to see how this once proud Canadian women’s group has fared; visitors are redirected to another website offering the domain name for sale.
Other restrictive moves are in the offing. The 2012 budget, for example, introduced new penalties for charities devoting more than 10 per cent of their money to “political advocacy,” meaning that charities supporting Greenpeace could face legal sanction.

Environmental groups seem to have attracted particular government ire. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, for example, recently attacked Tides Canada, a Vancouver based charity, for its opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline.

In other cases, officials have labelled civic groups unpatriotic. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, for example, attacked activists defending migrant workers as “anti-Canadian extremists.”
Harper’s crackdown has attracted substantial media attention, but few Canadian voters care. After all, many cutbacks were publicized long before the Conservatives’ 2011 electoral victory, and 80 per cent of polled Canadians have just voiced support for new restrictions on charities’ political activities.

The writing is on the wall for Canadians still interested in independently-minded social justice: develop new, non-federal sources of funding, or face defeat.

Over the past decade, Conservatives have learned much from their colleagues down south. If left-leaning Canadians want their own causes to survive, they must do the same.

The era of public funding for independently conceived good deeds is over. To keep their dreams alive, activists must develop new sources of support, while sympathetic citizens must dig deep into their own pockets.

(dear readers, I have included this mea culpa, word for word as published in the Toronto Star in my blog so that you could witness the end of the end for those who, without shame wasted our tax dollars until the tax dollars dried up!)

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Howard Ramos is associate professor of sociology at Dalhousie University.
James Ron is Stassen Chair of International Affairs at the University of Minnesota, and this year is a visiting professor at CIDE, a Mexico City research institute.

Is Ontario's Energy system being operated without a plan?

On the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, how appropriate is it that the Ontario renewable Energy ship is taking on water, too and yet, like Captain Edward Smith snoozing and leaving a junior officer in charge, one would never know the dangers that lurk ahead from how the Liberals are talking. On March 22, the minority provincial Liberal government announced the results of their highly anticipated feed-in tariff (FIT) review and the message from the bridge was “Full speed ahead and stay the course.”

Supporting this message, our present Captain/Minister of Energy, Chris Bentley made reference to how renewable energy accounts for only about 5% of the increase in electricity bills. The problem with such a definitive statement is that it leads to scrutiny, like 5% of what, and for how long?

A recent electricity price-increase forecast for 2012-16, filed with the Ontario Energy Board, helpfully provides some answers, with wind and solar energy forecast to directly add $3.05-billion to annual provincial energy bills. By estimating the costs required to integrate wind and solar, the added annual cost rises another $850-million. Does this really mean that the additional annual cost for wind and solar will reach $3.9-billion by 2016, resulting in a residential bill increase of 3.17¢ per kilowatt hour or an annual $319 per household by 2016? Yikes! In contrast to the present captain’s recent statement, this represents 54% of the total increase expected for 2012-16.

This is a lot higher than 5%, so who has the story wrong?

Could this disparity have something to do with decisions made by our Energy ship’s first captain, who long ago bailed out but allowed an external and somewhat self-interested group to recommend a course that set Ontario electricity into an ice field? At the time, our Captain promised everyone that his 'Green Energy and Economy Act' would increase taxpayer bills by only 1% per year, while acknowledging that unit prices would rise significantly, so the only way for consumers to limit their increase would be to conserve. The problem is that in a business such as electricity, where most of the costs are fixed, uniformly reducing consumption leads to higher unit rates and largely unchanged bills. The only hope for conservationists is that no one else will conserve and that they will be in the small minority.

Consider that Ontario's power rates will be the highest of any jurisdiction in North America by 2013. While rates in the U.S. are flat, Ontario's residential rates are rising at a pace of about 8 to 9% per year until at least 2016. The Liberal government's continuously repeated message is that thousands of new jobs have been created from renewable energy already, and that wind power is replacing coal and slashing health costs. Too bad there isn't a whiff of truth about any of those claims despite the Liberal's vast network of government-funded lobbyist and non-independent agencies in place to sustain this deceitful message.

Which brings me to the question...is it possible that Ontario's Energy system is being operated without a plan?

Ontario Auditor General Jim McCarter reported last December in his review of McGuinty’s renewable energy policies that “no independent, objective, expert investigation had been done to examine the potential effects of renewable energy policies on prices, job creation, and greenhouse gas emissions.” As a result, “billions of dollars were committed to renewable energy without fully evaluating the impact, the trade-offs, and the alternatives through a comprehensive business-case analysis.” This leads to the question of what type of jobs McGuinty was talking about in 2009 when he made the claim 50,000 would be created by the end of 2012.

McCarter concluded: “A majority of the jobs will be temporary. The (energy) ministry projected that of the 50,000 jobs, about 40,000 would be related to renewable energy. A local media review of this projection suggests 30,000, or 75% of these jobs, would be construction jobs and would last only from one to three years. The high proportion of short-term jobs was not apparent from the ministry’s announcement.”

Finally, when McGuinty claimed in 2009 that 50,000 jobs would be created, did he mean net new jobs? In other words, would his green energy program actually create 50,000 more jobs for Ontarians than existed in 2009?

McCarter found the government’s 50,000 estimate did not factor in “jobs that would be lost as a result of promoting renewable energy” and “experience in other jurisdictions suggests that jobs created in the renewable energy sector are often offset by jobs lost as a result of the impact of higher renewable energy electricity prices on business, industry and consumers.” McCarter noted that since Ontario modelled its Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program on renewable energy pricing on FIT programs in Spain and Germany, their experiences could well be relevant to Ontario .

He cited a 2009 Spanish study which found “for each job created through renewable energy programs, about two jobs were lost in other sectors of the economy” and a 2009 German study which found, “the cost of creating renewable-energy- related jobs was up to US$240,000 per job per year, far exceeding average wages in other sectors.”

As a side note, it is interesting to observe the hypocrisy in the partisan media, especially considering the release of the federal AG report has certain commentators in hysterics over waste in government operations while the Ont AG report raises little curiosity over flagrant waste of taxpayers dollars despite a plethora of taxpayer interest in decisions made by this minority government. A related story 'Wind wastes water'.. covers the fiasco of dumping exported wind generated electricity, while spilling water over hydro dams. Surely this issue would be of interest to some experienced investigative reporters in the partisan media, but so far this has not been the case. Maybe this is a story for another day?

But getting back to the issue at hand, let's add a little salt to the energy wound, shall we? The Ontario Electricity Financial Corp annual report....
http://www.oefc.on.ca/pdf/oefc...
details on page 5 the current situation regarding the stranded debt. Prior to 2005, the Liberals were not paying down the stranded debt, even though the line item on taxpayer bills claimed it was. After that, when the Global Adjustment started to get large, did the Liberals start to pay down that debt. What are the prospects of any of these thieves going to jail over this? Why is it only in government can one break the law and get away with it?

The Ontario Liberal Energy fiasco, that has given us uncompetitive power rates is miserably failing to create an industry which will never be competitive and once again is saddling the Ontario taxpayer with another mess to pay for. Germany, that has very few natural resources and imports most of its energy is backing off on wind and solar!

Even the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers' released a paper on the stresses wind is putting on the system, to wit, "Based on findings from an independent engineering review, OSPE's report expresses concern that the present electrical grid is not well equipped to integrate a large, rapid increase in intermittent renewable generation. Without policy changes, Ontario will see a significant rise in both electricity rates and greenhouse gas emissions."

Do we have a reasonable option to consider? Well, we do!

Natural Gas is plentiful, very clean and very cheap, in fact, recent improvements in extraction have reduced the consumer cost from Enbridge as follows...
2012 - 8.06c/m3
2011 - 13.3c/m3
2010 - 14.7c/m3
2009 - 21.7c/m3
2008 - 27.4c/m3
2007 - 25.9c/m3
2006 - 35c/m3

In the end, due to Liberal intransigence, Ontario may have expensive renewable energy that does not replace coal, may not deliver health savings, may cause a net job loss and that also contribute to a costly supply glut. And who pays for all of this, you ask? Why, Ontario electricity consumers in steerage. Those in first class, which includes offshore suppliers, far-flung and local project developers and investors, are all making out like bandits while those setting Ontario’s myopic course seem strangely indifferent to what’s happening to the rest of us in third class.

Is it time for a new Energy direction?




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“Some parents are violent. Some parents are rapists.”

April, 12, 2012,


On Tuesday, March 27, a House Judiciary Committee meeting produced these statements from Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.): that said.....“Some parents are violent. Some parents are rapists.”

In consequence, Nadler believes a new bill that requires parental notification for minor females who cross state lines to secure an abortion is “fundamentally flawed,” because it assumes that parents have their children’s best interests at heart. This is an old argument routinely used by the state to usurp the parental role, and it has been thoroughly refuted by The New American’s William F. Jasper in the article linked to in this sentence. In a testy exchange with Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) Rep. Nadler also said “We’re not dealing with human beings at this point.” Nadler needs to know that there are bypass laws on the books to protect minors in hard cases involving abuse or neglect.

Also at the committee meeting Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) tried in vain to create an exemption that would allow grandparents or older siblings to take minors across state lines for abortions in lieu of parents, but that failed. In her plea she stated “Doctors, not congress members, should be the judge when it comes to deciding the best care for women.” (Yes, she voted for Obama Care.) She cited “medical emergencies” in minors as the reason for her concern, another old refuted argument.

For the first half of the 20th century, it was well recognized and supported by U.S court cases that parents have complete authority -- God-given -- over their children.  It wasn’t until the latter half of that modern century up to the present time that we have seen representatives in government uninvitedly assuming parental roles. The strong tone of objections to something as simple as the Child Interstate Abortion Nullification Act, H.R 2299 is proof positive that it’s vitally needed legislation.

House Resolution 2299 would make it illegal to transport a minor across a State line with the intent that such a minor obtain an abortion without parental notification. This bill also would make it illegal, and punishable, to circumvent the over 30 state-level laws currently in place that require abortion notification for parents of minors by transporting a minor across a State line. These laws are in place to protect minor children. Abortion is not a simple ear-piercing, nor does it have the effect of an aspirin, both actions that need parental approval in certain situations. Abortion is a potentially dangerous medical procedure, whether it be a surgical or chemical abortion, with life-long emotional and psychological consequences.

If a minor was assaulted, raped, sexually abused, etc., surely our representatives in Congress would acknowledge that parents have a right to know about such situations. Without this bill male predators who use secret abortions to cover up their heinous crimes with minor girls would be protected, as would the huge profits of blood money that abortion providers continue to collect for the killing of the unborn.

Some of the bill’s summarized provisions are:

• Amends the federal criminal code to prohibit transporting a minor child across a state line to obtain an abortion with the intent to evade the right of a parent under any law in the minor’s state of residence that requires parental involvement in the minor’s abortion decision. Makes an exception for an abortion necessary to save the life of the minor.
• Imposes a fine and/or prison term of up to one year on a physician who performs or induces an abortion on an out-of-state minor in violation of the parental notification requirements in this bill. Requires such physician to give 24-hour actual or constructive notice to a parent of the minor seeking an abortion, subject to certain exceptions.

In essence, anyone who objects to this bill supports the ongoing law-breaking that is carried out by many who intentionally cross state lines from a parental-notification state to one that is not.

The Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act protects the fundamental rights of parents. With 161 co-sponsors, it has a more than a fair chance of being passed in the House. The Senate has a companion bill, S. 1241 S. with 32 co-sponsors.

Has your Rep. already been contacted on the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security?


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Rick Santorum has dropped out of the Presidential race today!

April 11, 2012,

Something of historic proportions is happening in America. I can sense it, feel it, smell it, I know what it looks like, and can see how Americans are reacting to it. Yes, a perfect storm is brewing. There is something happening within America that has been evolving for the last couple of years and now that Rick Santorum has dropped out of the Presidential race today, the pace has dramatically quickened.

It doesn't seem that long ago when 'Government Sachs' left Lehman Bros. to twist in the breeze only to get tripped up by the fallout...like AIG, GM, GE and Chrysler, just to name a few! Absurd when you consider that the entire mortgage mess was created by a Democrat-led congress that demanded and then codified into law the requirement that banks must make massive loans to people they knew, or ought to have known could not or would not ever pay back! Why? We still do not have an answer! The only explanation came from Obama when he said that, "there is enough blame to go around!" We learned awhile ago that the Federal Reserve, which seems to have little or no real oversight by anyone, has loaned trillions of dollars over the past few years, but will not divulge to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is your money. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? And I always thought America was 'a government of the people and for the people'! All this time, I thought elected leaders took an oath to uphold the Constitution. Your government has intentionally down-sized industry by turning their backs on your manufacturing machine.....the Golden Goose who kept on laying golden eggs, creating jobs and prosperity for those who chose to work hard and take risks!

From a Canadian perspective, the beginning of the end came when Clinton disposed of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999; granting bankers unfettered control over your economy after that control was taken away from them during the Great Depression, and the result has been devastating! Many changes occurred after that, too but there was no need to intentionally degrade your school system, ignore your history, and ignore your founding documents. Your way of life is exceptional, sought after and is worth preserving! Now, too many students cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate what they believe in. It's beyond us why parents are not revolting and teachers picketing. Why do School Boards continue to back mediocrity? After all, Americans have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) Congress has corrupted a sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change a civil way of life. And why did Congress support mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others with your tax dollars to turn your voting system into a banana republic. Moral hazard has been staggering in its length, breadth, and depth.

Thankfully, the mortgage industry is now in slow recovery after a terminal collapse but housing prices in some states, like Florida are still in free fall. Major industries are stabilizing, but with 33% fewer jobs. A reduced banking system is hanging in after being on the verge of collapse. Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare, Fannie and Freddie. Confidence, like credit are precious commodities....proving beyond a reasonable doubt that if you don't know what they mean, you'll have a hard time attracting either! Yes, the house has passed a budget the last 2 years and a multitude of other bills, however, the Democrats control the senate and nothing is being passed or discussed or makes it to committee where they could iron out an agreement.  To put it quite simply, under Harry Reid, the senate is not doing their job, so yes, the house is impotent but not because they have not been working because they have. 

The big question from north of the border is that we all see what is happening in America but we don't see enough folks doing anything about it!  It is almost like too many in America are just sitting back and watching a horror story unfold!  It's like too many of our friends to the south are transfixed by rhetoric.  Many Canadians see it, so surely Americans see it, too, but why aren't more doing something about it??? We just do not get it. Are Americans hoping that someone else will change things?  I have never been so concerned for America as I am now.

I'm confident that change is indeed coming in November but it will take time to undo this mess. The good news is that, at least this will be the end of a wayward beginning so that our American friends...and Canadians, too can begin to rebuild trade and prosperity between the two most trusting trading partners on earth.

Americans have a choice this November! Our fingers are crossed!

                                  -30-