Maple Spring Protests in Quebec - Protests Grow after the Government Passed Draconian Police-state Style Laws to prohibit Protests and Marches. Though the Quebec government is nominally Liberal it is anything but liberal as it pushes for austerity policies which will have a negative effect on a majority of Canadian Citizens while the well to do and the 1% and their circle of friends are left unscathed.
Guardian - pot banging in Jarry, Montreal against bill 78 #ggi Published on May 25, 2012 by TheGuardian Hundreds in the streets of Jarry, in Montreal, voice their disapproval with the government's introduction of bill 78 to quash tuition fees protests
Quebec lawyers join protesters in Montreal to protest against Quebec's Draconian Anti-protest Law - The law is an assault on the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms Protests Against Brutal Repression and Draconian Law in Quebec: The real News Network Published on May 30, 2012 by TheRealNews Lawyers join students in protest against Quebec Bill 78
Canadians revolt against anti-protest law
Published on May 29, 2012 by RTAmerica In Montreal, Quebec, Canada it's not just about tuition hikes anymore. In addition to the rising costs of education, a new ruling has outlawed the freedom of assembly and hundreds of thousands of people have joined the students in Quebec to demonstrate solidarity in the fight against injustice. Gayane Chichakyan brings us the latest from Montreal.
Maple Spring - protests hit Canada
Published on May 29, 2012 by RTAmerica Massive demonstrations in Canada continue over the rise of college tuition, but now the Canadian government has passed a law denying it citizens the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. The protest, now in its fourth month, has been dubbed the Maple Spring and was originally led by college students, but recently gained the attention of the everyday citizen. Michael Forian, political commentator, joins us with more.
This is awesome and phenomenal as we Canadians are often characterized as being boring , dull and a nation of conformists. Many Canadians including the government and the mainstream Media are dumbfounded or angry that Canadian citizens should act in such an unruly fashion.
The belief is that severe austerity measures must be imposed on the Canadian public thereby cuttin back on essential services including financing for education in general and including post-secondary education and on Health Care and social programs such as EI :employment Insurance in a time of increasing unemployment and increasing under employment . The new rules for EI is for the unemployed no matter what their training or educational level or the salary in their last job ie as a teacher or professor or nurse they must accept even minimum wage jobs in the service industry .
So the government's message at the federal and provincial levels of government is that in these tight financial times people must accept a job at MacDonalds or other fast food outlet even if their last job was being a public school teacher . Otherwise the individual will not receive government benefits such as Unemploymen benefits or welfare ie social assistance. Prime Minister Harper is a neoconservative who is only interested in beginning to dismantle big government to replace all programs from education and health care etc. by privatization.
Meanwhile the Harper government is involved embroiled that is with a scandal over the unnecessary extravagant spending on buying a number of fighter jets. Part of the scandal is over the low estimates on the cost for these airplanes as presented before the last election to the Canadian electorate as opposed to the real figures.
So we Canadians are being bullied by the Obama Regime and its Military National Security Industrial Complex to purchase 65 F-35 fighters for the sum of $29 billion at a time when the federal government under Prime Minister Haper is insiting on austerity measures to reduce various programs and services to Canadian citizens.
It appears the wishes of the American government and military trump the wishes of the Canadian electorate and citizenry. If anything Canada should be following a separate agenda to the USA. We should be lessening our ties to the USA. This is especially true given the made in America Global Economic Meltdown . We should also be distancing ourselves from America's hopeless pointless and dangerous and deadly adoption of a perpetual war policy which day by day makes the whole world less safe than it was prior to 9/11.
Instead Harper has convinced Canadians that America's agenda must be our agenda. So as members of the now wholly American controlled NATO we Canadians must agree to any efforts taken on under NATO's banner no matter how indefensible. So we help bomb the crap out of Libya and leave it in a mess ruled by warlords, thugs and religious fanatics. Libya is much worse off than it was under the sometimes thuggish Qadaffi . America has a habit of intervening in countries and in the end making things worse than what they were in the end this is no accident. America's main aim is to take down any nation that might some time in the future be a threat to America's military and to American Corporations. In other words all nations under the watchful eye of the American Empire must accept America's brand of deregulated monopolistic unfettered 19th century style capitalism.
When the USA intervened in Iran and Guatemala in 1953 they overthrew popular governments in favor of toadies who would do america's bidding without question . But America did the same thing in Chile, El Salvador , Honduras , Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Tunisia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Congo, Somalia and so on.
Concealing F-35 costs: A scandal at last BY DUNCAN CAMERON via rabble.ca, APRIL 10, 2012
Even its mainstream media supporters at Postmedia News, and CTVglobemedia are now angry with the Harper Conservatives for concealing the true costs of the F-35 fighter jet
The Harper government denounced the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) for claiming in March 2011 that F-35 fighter jet costs were about $10 billion more than announced by the Conservatives.
Media are swarming now because the Auditor General revealed last week that increased costs -- similar to what the PBO reported -- were known within the government, which chose not to share the information with parliament, or the public.
Catching the government with its pants down is certainly news. Note that it was the Auditor General, the PBO and the opposition parties that drew the media's attention to what had been known in Canada, and major news in the U.S. Cost over-runs, and mismanagement of the F-35 file were well covered in mainstream U.S. reporting on military issues.
The important questions remain unanswered. Why does Canada need to pay $29 billion or more for first-strike jet aircraft? Who do we intend to attack with our 65 F-35 fighters? Why would these target countries be considered a threat to Canada? A report by the Rideau Institute in 2010 questioned why Canada needed to acquire the F-35 received press attention at the time, but the issues it raised are still without a coherent response.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking in Ottawa last March 28, described the U.S. as "100 per cent committed" to development of the F-35 first-strike jet aircraft, saying it is "part of the defence strategy the United States went through and has put in place." As a junior partner to the U.S., Canada is preparing to go along, without asking too many questions about what it all means.
The new U.S. defence policy has been described as the Asia pivot, with the U.S. re-balancing its military forces and creating a so-called "ring of fire" around China. The fear that China represents a threat to U.S. global hegemony is thought by the Chinese to be behind the Asia pivot, announced by President Obama in a November 2011 speech to APEC.
Stephen Harper has discovered China as a market for Canadian bitumen. To get it to market, Harper wants the Northern Gateway pipeline built across the Great Bear rainforest, from Alberta to Kitimat on the B.C. coast, with as little delay as possible, and without the financial interference of "foreign" environmental groups.
and also see:
F-35 committee probe stalled, shutting down soon? Opposition MPs fight Conservative motion to stop hearing witnesses at public accounts committee
CBC News Posted: May 29, 2012
Opposition MPs are asking whether the government has something to hide, after a Conservative motion to wrap up the public accounts committee's investigation into the controversial F-35 fighter jets purchase.
The motion, introduced during a closed-door meeting of the Commons public accounts committee, would ensure the committee proceeded to write its report without hearing from any more witnesses.
"We'll do everything that we can to prevent it," Liberal MP Gerry Byrne told CBC News. "This is too substantive, this is too important... these are issues that need to be in the public domain."
During question period on both Monday and Tuesday, opposition MPs asked why the government wanted to stop the committee from getting to the bottom of the controversy.
"We have heard from the auditor general not once, not twice, but three times. We have heard from departmental officials not once but twice," Andrew Saxton, the parliamentary secretary to the president of the treasury board, told the House of Commons Monday. "It is time to get on with writing the report."
Saxton's Monday Commons statement, the essence of which he repeated on Tuesday, was the first public indication that the committee's work may be nearly over.
MPs are not supposed to discuss in-camera committee proceedings in public, although Byrne has begun to do so out of frustration with the government's now-frequent moves to remove House committee meetings from the public and the media's gaze.
The committee's study followed the auditor general's report on the cost discrepancies surrounding the procurement process for the fighter jets.
Auditor-General hits back at critics, defends scathing F-35 report Ottawa— The Canadian Press
via The Globe And Mail, May. 15, 2012
The auditor-general has released a scathing report over the government's planned purchase of new F35 stealth fighter jets. The report says the Defence Department failed to properly inform the public of the fleet's true cost.Tories defend shutting down probe into costly F-35 purchase by STEVEN CHASE Globe and Mail
, May. 28, 2012
Conservative Government Attempt To Shut Down F-35 Hearings Will Further Add to the Image of “Something To Hide” On the Program By David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen ,May 28, 2012
Defence Watch
There are some in the Canadian Forces who see the Harper government’s move to shut down House of Commons hearings into the auditor general’s report on the F-35 project as a public relations windfall for those opposing the jet purchase.
The Conservatives moved a motion during a recent closed-door public accounts committee meeting to end the panel’s inquiry into the auditor’s report on the F-35 procurement process, Postmedia has noted. The government’s manoeuvre, led by Conservative MP Andrew Saxton, comes after about seven hours of hearings and before opposition parties had their chance to grill ministers and Defence Department officials who have criticized Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s findings, the news service reported.
“To shut this committee down is a scandal,” said Gerry Byrne, a Liberal MP on the public accounts committee. “It means the government is desperate to hide something.”
Expect this to be the media strategy for the opposition parties for the foreseeable future. The strategy is to highlight the secrecy around the F-35 purchase and the lack of information about the cost and other issues.
At DND the talk is that the Conservatives have given the opposition MPs another PR windfall on the F-35 file. There has been widespread disbelief that the poor communications strategy has allowed the purchase to become a major political issue. This latest move will not help the situation at all, say NDHQ insiders.
#manifencours #montreal #22mai #ggi #berri #sherbrooke...
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