Weekly Bulletin #3

In the past few weeks the H1N1 issue has been heating up and it appears there is a shortage of vaccines. After seeing the auditor general's report, it appears both the past Liberals and the present Conservatives have not taken adequate action to deal with a pandemic. The other issue is athletes and CEO's jumping the queue. I have long supported allowing a parallel private system, however I believe in the idea of a separate parallel private system, I do not support people jumping the queue within the public system. It is one thing if one wants to use a private clinic, it is quite another thing to jump the line in the public system. Also, due to the fact this is a life-threatening issue for some, I think those who are not in priority groups should be prohibited from getting the vaccine until all priority groups are vaccinated irrespective or where they go, wealth, and personal connections. Only once the priority groups are vaccinated should non-priority groups be permitted to pay for the vaccine at a separate private clinic.

This week, after 14 years of one of the biggest boondoogles, it appears the gun registry is close to being dismantled. This time, with the Tories being only 9 seats shy of a majority (There are four vacant opposition seats where by-elections will be held tomorrow and the speaker is a Liberal and he only votes in the case of a tie). This issue has unnecessary divided rural and urban Canadians and looking at the vote amongst both the NDP and Liberals, it appears it largely split along rural/urban lines. 5 of the 8 Liberals were for Atlantic Canada which is the only stronghold in rural Canada they still have left, while 6 of the 12 NDP MPs voting for scrapping the gun registry were from Northern Ontario, where it is deeply unpopular despite the centre-left tilt of this region. I support gun control, but if a person is unfit to own one gun, it shouldn't make a difference whether they have one or many. Licencing will still continue to exist, only the registeration which requires you to register each gun will be scrapped. Also, most long gun owners are farmers or hunters and use it for hunting or protecting their livestock from predators. The reality is one couldn't walk down the middle of downtown Toronto with a rifle and not being noticed, while one can easily conceal a handgun so the problem is more with handguns rather than long-guns. Also the problem is not our gun laws, but those south of the border. 90% of guns used for crimes are smuggled in from the United States, so considering we have to face longer line-ups going to the US, I see no reason we cannot beef up our border and start checking more people for importing guns. Any non-Canadian citizen caught illegally importing one should be barred from entering Canada for at least five years while any Canadian caught illegally importing one would have their name entered into a database and would be searched each and everytime they re-enter Canada for the next five years. For the same cost, this would be far more effective.

The auditor general's report came out this week and as usual slammed the government on a few issues. I've already discussed their lack of prepardeness on the H1N1, but I haven't on the guest worker program. When the economy was hot a few years ago, especially in Alberta, a guest worker program was probably needed to fill in the shortages, unfortunately it appears to being abused. This should be only used when a Canadian worker cannot be found, not to substitute Canadian workers and since it appears some companies are using this as a form of cheap labour, I think they need to tighten the rules saying only jobs paying at or above the prevailing market wage for that industry can use this program. It is one thing to fill a job shortage where a Canadian cannot be found, it is quite another thing to use it so one can offer wages no Canadian would accept and therefore use it to drive down wages. It should be noted countries in Europe such as Germany that have used guest worker programs in the past have faced many problems. By contrast, Canadians point system has worked very well and should be the primary method for receiving immigrants. In fact Britain is doing away with the work permits and moving towards a point system much like Canada and Australia, just harder to qualify than in Canada. Tightening this program up would not only benefit Canadians, it would benefit the guest workers themselves in terms of better treatment and less abuse.

Here in Canada, Charles and Camilla are making a visit. While no offence to the royals, I don't believe our head of state should be a foreigner. I believe that would should dump the monarchy and replace the governor general as our head of state. We've been independent of Britain for 142 years so it seems silly to still maintain the monarchy. I support close cooperation with Britain and membership in the Commonwealth as the Commonwealth is a useful forum for different countries around the world to meet. After all India is still in the commonwealth, but does not have the Queen as the head of state and they have only been independent for 62 years.

South of the border, the Republicans won two state governorships in New Jersey and Virginia. While one should be careful about drawing too many conclusions, Virginia had been Republican since 1964 and Obama won it for the first time in 44 years, thus the loss by double digits there is not a good sign, however based on his approval rating in Virginia, I suspect the state would be a toss up. In the case of New Jersey much of this appears more due to the unpopularity of Corzine as I highly doubt Obama would lose New Jersey if an election were called today. Still the fact it went Republican at least shows the potential for it to go Republican under the right conditions. New York 23 however voted Democrat for the first time in over 100 years. In many ways this was due to the split on the right as the Conservative candidate was the more right wing of the two while the Republican one was quite moderate as she supported abortion and same sex marriage. This made her a frequent target of many of the more right wing Republicans eventually causing her to drop out and endorse the Democrat candidate, but her name still appeared on the ballot since she dropped out after the deadline. If anything this is a message to the Republicans to stop trying to push out moderates. Reagan was a conservative, yet he understood a successful big tent party required support from both, however many conservatives today are more interested in an ideologically pure Republican party than winning. Whatever mishaps Obama has faced, if the Republicans continue to swing to the right they will have a tough time making the gains they hope for in next year's midterms and winning back the White House in 2012. Also in Maine, unfortunately the vote to repeal same sex marriage passed. While a disappointment for some, it was fairly close much like in California, not by the massive margins typical in many other states. More importantly opposition is strongest amongst older Americans while support for SSM is strongest amongst young Americans, so this should bode well in the long-term as the older ones die off and more young ones become old enough to vote each election cycle.

Across the Atlantic, it will be the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This was a huge victory for freedom over tyranny and while the transition has had many difficulties, East Germany is undoubtedly better off in a re-united Germany under the market system rather than the communist one. I have actually been to Berlin myself and seen where the wall use to run. The city has changed a lot since, although you can still see a few signs separating East from West Berlin.

Finally here in Canada, we have four by-elections on Monday. By-elections normally have low turnouts and often produced unpredicted results. Anyways my predictions are as follows:

Conservatives win Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, NDP holds New Westminster-Coquitlam, and Bloc Quebecois holds both of the Quebec by-elections. This would create a final result of 144 seats for the Conservatives in the House of Commons while no change for the other parties relative to what they got last election. I will have more on the results in next week's bulletin.