… with love from Adriana.

The main item on the G-20 agenda was whether to cut debts or invest in more financial stimulus, with Stephen Harper strongly advocating the need to cut debts.

We need to cut debts.  Large public debts leave governments at the mercy of interest rates.  Double the interest rates and suddenly the debt load becomes completely unmanageable and we’re worried about our credit rating, forcing us into all kinds of nasty measures like privatizing health care, education and even basic services like water.  So in the interest of securing high quality public services, we need to make sure we keep the debt down.   The problem is that Stephen Harper proposes to cut debts not by raising taxes or trimming perverse subsidies to favoured industries, but by attacking the very services I desperately want to protect.  I have no interest in cutting the debt to have more money to fork over to the oil industry while basic services get gutted.     Read more »

As Canada prepares to send a delegation to Copenhagen later this year to negotiate our position on the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, the future of Canada and all humanity depends on the resulting agreement.     Read more »

Apparently, Stephen Harper is once again contemplating removing the per-vote party funding which nearly brought down his government last year.  And this time, he might just succeed, since the Liberal Party at this stage relies less on the mechanism.  This would be a tremendous step backwards for democracy and needs to be fought tooth and nail.

I’m wary of fighting for policies that benefit the Green Party, because they open us up to charges of promoting only what’s best for us.  But in this case, it’s so obviously a toxic policy that I find it easy to fight.

PM Harper will undoubtedly suggest that this is needed as a cost-cutting measure.  But there are at least five ways that our government finances political parties.  Stephen Harper wants to get rid of only one – the one that is the most representative of democracy, and also the one that proportionally benefits him least.  If he really wants to save money, why doesn’t he instead get rid of one of the other, less democratic, methods?     Read more »

We thought it was bad enough that Prime Minister Harper planned only to achieve 2% emission reductions by 2020 below 1990 levels while the rest of the Kyoto signatories among developed countries were negotiating in the 25-40% range.  It was worse that a number of environmental organizations, economists, and even the government’s own Environmental Commissioner doubted that Prime Minister Harper’s plans could even achieve his own woefully inadequate goal.  Now Environment Minister Jim Prentice suggests we’re going to scrap any action for a few years.  We’re waiting for Obama, it seems.  Until our neighbours say “Jump!”, it’s apparently too difficult to implement the “Made in Canada” solution that our Prime Minister insisted on.     Read more »