After four-and-a-half years of governing with more seats than any other party, but less than half of the total available seats in the House of Commons, Prime Minister Stephen Harper may need to make a bold move in the next election to get the extra 11 seats he needs to have complete control of the federal government. The alternative? A government lead by a Canadian who lived outside the country for 34 years returning only to run for office, a socialistic who thinks terrorists are just misguided freedom fighters, and a man who hates Canada so much that he wants to pull the second biggest province out of confederation. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that Stephen Harper isn’t perfect. He’s passed some policies that I personally disagree with. However, he’s a heck of a lot better than the three stooges on the other side of the aisle. Actually, the two don’t even compare.

The Tea Party Movement in Canada is not a mouthpiece for the Conservative Party of Canada. In fact, it’s a mouthpiece for the citizens of Canada, and I sure hope that government will take the Tea Party values of limited government, greater liberty and individuality and start to insert that into policy. Some people fail to see that liberty is not a fringe value. Liberty is a God-given right shared by everyone. The government doesn’t give us freedom, government by nature limits freedom.

So, how can Harper get his majority? According to Tom Flanagan, former Harper aid, he needs to contrast him versus the opposition without ever uttering the word ‘majority.’ Oddly enough, where majority governments used to be common, Canadians seem to be scared of them now. In the two-party United States system, there’s a majority party and a minority party. Nothing else. In the recent British election, the voters had no idea what they would do when the winning party failed to win the majority of seats. As a response, the “conservatives” got into a coalition with the socialist Liberal Democrats. Critics of Prime Minister Harper assume that he’s only riding out the wave until he has a majority then this miraculously conservative hidden agenda will be implemented.

If he were prepared to hold out for almost five years before putting forth those policies, I imagine they wouldn’t be that important. Just as it’s time for Canadians to make a bold move, it’s time for Harper to. If the Prime Minister continues on this path, he’ll lose support from the right that he won’t gain from the Left. He needs to tell people he wants a majority, and tell them what he’ll do with it.

You can listen to this episode online or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

I’d sure say so! From Sun Media:

OTTAWA – Are Canadians getting fed up with government regulations, rules and taxes? The man behind an attempt to start a Tea Party movement in Canada hopes so.

This past weekend hundreds of thousands of Americans flocked to Washington for a rally about taking back their country. They came to hear speakers such as Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, and although not explicitly a Tea Party event, the crowd drew many from the movement that calls for government to get government off the backs of hard working people.

Andrew Lawton wants to bring that spirit to Canada.

Lawton, a conservative-leaning activist from London, Ont., is one of the organizers behind an online attempt to start a Tea Party movement in Canada.

Starting with a Facebook group, Lawton says there are plans for rallies this fall in Ottawa and Quebec City. Other cities may be added.

There are differences between the two countries Lawton acknowledges but adds the basis of the movement is the same.

“The issues differ but the ideology stays the same. Advocating for smaller government, freedom and letting people live their own lives.”

“One person came up to me recently and said that freedom is an American value,” said Lawton. “That’s not true. It’s an attitude I want to change.”

[Continued here].

People on both sides of the political spectrum have expressed skepticism about the idea of a Tea Party Movement in Canada. Those on the Left think that it’s an avenue for fascist, racist, right-wingers to spout their hatred. Even some on the right are too worried about the “optics” of utilizing an American concept to advocate for Canadian values. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, conservatism and liberty are not American concepts; they are basic, fundamental truths that people in any country should embrace.

A prominent Canadian Conservative Party blogger and I had an exchange this afternoon where he was suggesting it be called something else. Why? People know and understand what the Tea Party movements stands for. As Kathy Shaidle said, “I envision the usual Canadian ‘conserv.’ bores/wonks bickering about terminolgy as excuse to avoid action.”

Stay tuned for some big announcements in the coming weeks!!

Is Canada’s Reform Party of the 1990s a Tea Party model?

By Tom Cohen, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Before anyone ever heard of the Tea Party movement, there was a grass-roots conservative group from out West that shook up the political status quo.

It happened in Canada more than 20 years ago, and the rebel Reform Party’s rapid rise and eventual amalgamation into the political mainstream might offer some perspective on what is happening today on the U.S. political right.

In particular, the Reform Party’s rise split the so-called conservative vote in Canada, helping the Liberal Party win three straight elections to stay in power for 13 years.

Only when Canada’s conservatives came together under one banner, as the Conservative Party of Canada, did they wield the coast-to-coast clout to win enough seats in Parliament to take over the prime minister’s office.

“It’s hard to reconcile them all,” Reform Party founder Preston Manning told CNN in a telephone interview. “The argument we used is that you all need each other. You do agree on a whole bunch of other things.”

Canada’s parliamentary system differs from the U.S. system, with the party that holds the most seats in the House of Commons forming the government. Political labels such as conservative and liberal don’t always mean exactly the same thing in the two countries.

Still, a look at the Reform Party’s history and influence on the Canadian political system reveals some parallels with the relatively new Tea Party movement south of the border.

In the United States, the Tea Party movement has shaken up politics-as-usual with its anti-Washington sentiment that helped topple some Republican incumbents in primaries for the November congressional midterm election.

The latest could be Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who trailed her Tea Party-backed but little-known opponent, Joe Miller, in the Republican primary held Tuesday. Miller led by a hairsbreadth when polls closed, but there are thousands of absentee ballots left to be counted, and the race might not be decided until next week.

The success of far-right candidates such as Miller, Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada fostered hopes in the self-described grass-roots uprising that it could win power with its small-government, anti-deficit ideology.

“I’m very proud of my association with the Tea Party,” said Marco Rubio, a former Florida state representative who won Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary vote. “But people misunderstand what the Tea Party movement is in America. It is not a centralized organization or a political party. It’s the sentiment of everyday Americans who think that Washington has it wrong — they’re taking our country in the wrong direction. And they are looking for voices in American politics that will stand up to that and offer a clear alternative.”

However, an inherent social conservatism in the Tea Party movement has exposed rifts with more moderate Republicans, much to the delight of Democrats.

A main Tea Party spokesman, Mark Williams, was ousted last month after a controversial blog post about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Abraham Lincoln, and the emancipation of the slaves. He resigned, but defended his remarks as satire.

Tea Party protesters outside the U.S. Capitol were accused of using racist and anti-gay epithets against African-American and gay Democrats in March, and spitting on an African-American congressman.

Republican House leaders criticized the alleged incident but said it was an isolated case, and Andrew Langer, one of the organizers of the protest over health care reform, said his “Institute for Liberty roundly condemns the isolated incidents of intolerance that occurred. … As a core value, the Tea Party movement believes in the precept upon which our independence was declared and this nation was founded: that all men are created equal.”

In Nevada, Angle’s candidacy revived what was thought to be a deeply troubled re-election bid by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Now Reid and Angle are in a tight race, due in part to concerns over some of Angle’s policies and comments, such as a call to do away with the federal Department of Education.

Even while Alaskans waited for a final result in the state’s Senate Republican primary, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee derided Miller as “an extremist who intends to transition-out Social Security, phase-out Medicare, and end unemployment benefits for all Alaskan families.”

In Canada, Manning’s Reform Party faced similar challenges in the 1990s as he tried to unite it with the Progressive Conservative Party, the traditional home of fiscal conservatives.

Led by Manning, a politician’s son known as a shrewd pragmatist, the Canadian reformers emerged from the Western provinces in the 1980s as a protest movement against the federal government back east in Ottawa, Ontario.

In particular, they were angry at what they perceived as Ottawa’s reliance on oil revenues from Alberta, a Western province, to appease Quebecers threatening a separatist movement in the nation’s only francophone province.

Manning built on the Western anger, attracting support by calling for stronger provincial powers and a smaller federal government and emphasizing the needs of rural communities.

The Reform Party formed in 1987 and used the strength of its Western roots to win more seats than the Progressive Conservatives when the Liberal Party came to power in 1993.

However, Manning’s efforts to expand the party’s support were stymied by a diversity of interests and agendas within its base that ranged from political moderation to extremist vitriol.

In particular, issues such as gay rights and immigration caused public rifts among Reform Party members of Parliament.

In one of the most memorable, two Reform lawmakers were suspended for disparaging comments about homosexuals and immigrants, and two others who criticized them for the comments ended up quitting the party over the dispute.

James Harold Farney argued in his 2009 doctoral thesis at the University of Toronto that the rise of the Reform Party gave Canadian social conservatives their first political home. “It was only when the Reform Party upset both the institutions and ideology of Canadian conservatism that social conservatives began to gain prominence in Canadian politics,” Farney wrote.

In the 1997 election, the Reform Party finished second overall to become the official opposition party in Parliament, but failed to grow beyond its Western roots.

Manning realized it would never win control of Parliament, and therefore the prime minister’s office, without gaining support in Eastern provinces, particularly populous Ontario.

He launched an ambitious campaign to merge with the Progressive Conservatives, in a process that took years and left him on the sidelines when it finally occurred.

The effort led to creation of the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance in 2000, with Manning defeated by Alberta provincial official Stockwell Day for the group’s leadership.

Day’s fundamentalist Christian beliefs and lack of national political experience proved costly, and the Alliance — caught off guard by a snap election called by the Liberals — gained only six more seats in the next national election.

Only when a formal merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance occurred — creating the Conservative Party of Canada — did it achieve Manning’s goal of gaining significant support in the East.

The new Conservative Party forced the Liberals to form a minority government in 2004, and then defeated the Liberals to form its own minority government in 2006. Stephen Harper, a one-time Reform legislator who left the party in 1997, became prime minister.

Looking back, Manning said he stressed democratic principles within the Reform Party to try to achieve unity among its divided supporters. That meant getting fiscal conservatives, social conservatives and what he called democratic conservatives — dedicated to grassroots democracy — to accept a single platform.

“I argued they were not philosophically incompatible,” Manning said.

At caucus meetings and other party gatherings, he stressed open debate to ensure everyone had a voice. “Whatever your position is, you can get up and say it,” Manning explained. “When everyone has a say, you vote,” and the result stands.

The idea was to use the democratic process “to get people to disagree civilly,” he said.

“If we can’t apply democracy to reconcile these differences within the party,” he used to argue, “then why should the public believe we can do this on a larger scale?”

Could a similar process occur in the United States, driven by the Tea Party movement?

Manning sounded skeptical. “These people are trying to build a coalition in a political culture that tends to favor polarization,” he said. “That does make it difficult, because people want to go to their corners rather than come together in the center of the ring.”

Maybe Toronto City Councillor Rob Ford just needs to take it up the butt. And I’d love to be the one to give it to him.

[...]

Exploring anal intimacy could finally allow the man a new openness to others who are different from himself — and in a sense that is tangible instead of just metaphorical. Allowing someone else to pleasure themselves inside you involves a spirited abandonment of personal interest — it’s about giving, instead of always taking away. Maybe if he didn’t have such a tight ass, the noted penny pincher might not be such a tightwad.

Successfully taking it in the rear is the ultimate lesson in vulnerability and trust — two qualities that could go a long way toward improving Ford’s attitude toward the diverse and complex world around him.

As a warning, it only gets worse. Does Xtra represent the mainstream gay community? Perhaps, perhaps not. But one thing’s for sure, politicians should keep their backs to the wall we need to take a serious look at how we define organizations that supposedly enhance Canadian culture. If this represents cultural values that Canadians need to embrace (no pun intended, seriously,) then I think it’s time for those representing Judeo-Christian values to rise up again and say “hold up!” to the government.

H/T to Blazing Cat Fur

A Sault Ste. Marie woman is outraged after she witnessed a man masturbating in the bed across from her in a mixed-gender hospital ward last month while she was recovering from a heart attack.The man in the bed across from her masturbated and the man in the bed beside her gave her “the eye.”

Still, Karen Lowe, 61, was more upset by the laissez-faire attitude of hospital employees.

According to Lowe, the nurses found it too “hilarious” to do anything about it. Not gonna lie, I’d probably be laughing too if I were one of them. The issue at hand though isn’t that a pervert got his rocks off to a 61-year old, but rather that the only reason men and women share rooms at this hospital is because of government cutbacks. This isn’t the only hospital to do such a thing either. Public healthcare kills, and all things considered, this incident could well have given Karen Lowe another heart attack!

Had a doctor had time to take my case seriously; or, had I been able to get basic diagnostic testing done in a timely manner; or, had the triage nurse not been on lunch break when I needed her (she should go back to nursing school or take online nursing programs); or, had I been prescribed the simple medication that would have prevented by body from forming blood clots; or, had I been informed of risks and told of things I could do to change what lay ahead, this may never have happened. One things for sure, public healthcare failed me at every turn…and I almost died because of it.

——————————————————————————

Exactly one year ago, on August 8th, 2009, I was admitted into Ottawa General Hospital with an ischemic stroke, caused by a cardioembolism (blood clot) in my left anterior cerebral artery. The tiny little clot that changed my life was a by-product of a heart condition called atrial fibrillation (A-Fib, for short) that I had been diagnosed with about a month prior.

To this date, doctors are still dumbfounded about how someone in their 20′s who rarely drinks and has never done drugs acquired A-Fib in the first place, but I accept that flukes happen. I was having a quiet evening with a friend when I felt my heart racing, accompanied by serious chest pains and difficulty breathing. After several hours of attempting to convince myself that nothing was wrong, I called a public health service called Telehealth Ontario (possibly one of the most useless government services in existence) to see if I had a cause for concern. The official recommendation from Telehealth was go to the hospital by ambulance.

Upon arriving to the hospital, I was brought right into the emergency room and received in my care a level of quality that I have no complaints about. After several attempts to bring my heart back to ‘sinus’ rhythm, my doctors succeeded and I was discharged with follow-up. This was where the problems started. I was given an ‘urgent’ referral to a place called the Acute Cardiac Referral Clinic at the affiliated University of Ottawa Heart Institute.

No one was able to give me an accurate estimate on how long I’d be waiting. That being said, I wasn’t too worried, because I accepted the explanation of the doctor that, “this was probably just a one-off. You’re young, you’ll be fine.” I was going to be fine, no need to worry! For my own sake, I didn’t do much Googling of the affliction that I had been diagnosed with because I knew that I’d likely find some bizarre case of someone dying from it in some African village 50 years ago. The last thing I wanted was to be one of those patients who starts off a medical consultation with “I read on the internet somewhere that…” or anything similar.

I was a little disturbed that a heart issue with no identifiable randomly appeared, but I wasn’t worried. However, only four days later, I noticed the same symptoms as I was on my way to work. By the time I got to my office on Parliament Hill, I sunk into a couch, clutched my chest and called security to bring down an oxygen tank. I ended up having an ambulance bring me to the hospital yet again, less than a week after my most recent visit.

Once again, I received reasonable care according to my imminent needs, but was given little confidence that I’d be looked after in the long-term. Over a five-week period, I ended up in the emergency room four times with the same symptoms, each time being told that it was either a ‘fluke’ or ‘coincidence.’ One doctor’s brilliant advice was that it was ‘weird.’ Despite this issue only getting worse, my urgent referral to the Acute Cardiac Referral Clinic wasn’t available any quicker. I was able to get in during the first week of August. I wasn’t permitted to see a cardiologist, merely a technician who wasn’t permitted to tell me anything until a cardiologist had a chance to look at the tests “whenever he gets to it.”

Amusingly, on the last of these four visits, the doctor said to me, “If you were older we’d be worried about you having a stroke. But that’s not going to happen.”  Less than a week later, I proved him wrong.

This part is truly a comedy of errors. Feeling my heart condition start acting up, I decided that I would go to the hospital just to make sure. It was the sunny afternoon of Saturday August 8^th. Upon arrival to the Ottawa General Hospital (I should have been requesting frequent flier miles,) I proceeded to the emergency room and went to the reception desk. The rather miserable looking woman asked, “Are you here to see a doctor or a patient?” I was feeling a little dizzy at this point, and I didn’t notice that I had been dragging my right leg. I told her that I wanted to see a doctor, and she informed me that I needed to see a triage nurse first. The catch? The triage nurse was on lunch and wouldn’t be back for another 45-50 minutes. The clot had already made its way to my brain by this time. Every passing minute was leading to less and less strength on my right side. Unfortunately, my brain was too messed up to know that anything was happening.

The triage nurse arrived shortly before 2:00pm and motioned me in. By this point, I was barely able to use my right arm and was dragging my right leg from the waiting area to her chair. Every other time I had been sitting there, they had done routine questions that would rule out whether or not I was having a stroke. She didn’t ask those this time, I must have been fine then! I was then downgraded from emergent to the hospital’s clinic, inappropriately called the Urgent Care unit. When I got there and an electrocardiogram (ECG) was done, I was quickly brought into the emergency room, and from there I was quickly brought into the emergency room and treated for a stroke. To put things into perspective, with ischemic strokes there is a 4.5-hour window in which a miracle drug can be administered to break up the clot. I received this with 13 minutes to spare.

One mistake at one hospital is unfortunate. Two mistakes at two hospitals is a little fishy. However, a series of screw-ups and neglect that leads to a preventable tragedy raises enough cause to question the efficiency of the system itself. I’m not the only one who’s experienced this. This saga through the public healthcare system changed my life forever. I thank God it didn’t take my life away altogether.

In a recent interview with Epoch Times, an international newspaper founded by Falun Gong supporters, Mr. Anders suggested politicians and government officials from Canada and other countries are being wooed with extravagant gifts, beautiful young women and too-good-to-be-true business deals.

“The reach is deep, and it’s very unfortunate,” Mr. Anders told the newspaper.

“I would argue that I’ve seen things happen on a federal level as well in our own government. And so I think there’s a lot more than he has even mentioned,” the Calgary MP added, referring to Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Richard Fadden.

“I think that Mr. Fadden only gingerly scratched the surface. I feel for him that he was dragged before an investigative committee with Parliament to have to explain, and I think that this situation is far worse that what he let on.”

The plot thickens:

Shareef Abdelhaleem plotted to make money off a stock market crash that would have followed a terrorist attack in downtown Toronto.

He was jailed for his part in what became known as the Toronto 18 terror plot.

Now he is the basis for the lead character in a new play sure to be controversial for its sympathetic portrayal of a man who was convicted of planning to blow up Bay and Front Sts. with a truck bomb.

[...]

The play portrays Abdelhaleem, who was born in Egypt but has lived in Canada since he was 10, as an affable cat lover, who quotes Seinfeld and got caught up in something, almost unwittingly, without fully realizing the consequences.

“I think he’s a guy who showed bad judgment,” Frid says. “I don’t think he’s a terrorist at all.”

So, starting next week, Canada’s terrorist sympathizers (a.k.a. ‘the Left’) will be able to flock to Toronto to see Homegrown, the story of one man who likely was just misguided. Or, in the words of the playwright, happened to “[show] bad judgment.”

Tickets are available from the SummerWorks Theatre festival for only $10 (or the sacrifice of a small virgin goat to some dude named Muhammad.)

UPDATE: As I expected, the SummerWorks Theatre festival was the recipient of $90,000 in Arts & Culture funding from the government this past year.

Most of the time, we in the media focus on the activities of politicians and pay little or no attention the bureaucrats. That might be because an obscure name in the depths of the government bureaucracy doing something wrong doesn’t capture the interest of our readers, or because an elected politician in government offers a better target for the media and opposition.

But whatever the reason, this is wrong because most of the time it’s the bureaucrats who really call the shots on many important decisions, and they definitely have the power to shape most of the decisions made by governments at all levels. We always scrutinize and expose the activities of politicians and appointed officeholders, but I believe that often we are barking up the wrong tree.

H/T FFoF