Report from Parliament's Hill - August 6th, 2010 - Opinion 250 - News for Northern and Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada

Report from Parliament's Hill - August 6th, 2010

By Prince George - Peace River M.P. Jay Hill

Friday, August 06, 2010 03:44 AM

“Boosting Confidence in Our Justice System, Parliament and the Economy”

It has been far from a “slow summer” in terms of news from Ottawa. New initiatives and programs to benefit Canadians and enhance confidence in our justice and parliamentary systems, among others, continue to be rolled out by my Cabinet colleagues.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced this week new regulations that will strengthen the ability of law enforcement agencies to fight organized crime.
It is estimated that there are 750 organized crime groups operating across Canada and, through new legislation and regulations, our Conservative Government is working to close the legal loopholes these organizations use to escape prosecution.

As it currently stands, there are a number of criminal acts perpetrated by organized crime groups that are not legally considered “serious offences” under the Criminal Code. Minister Nicholson has acted to ensure that ‘signature’ activities by organized crime, such as large-scale illegal gambling, specific prostitution and drug-related crimes are clearly identified as “serious crimes”. Criminal gangs depend heavily on the
revenue they receive from these crimes to fund their vast and violent criminal operations.

Offenders convicted of these specific organized crime offences must serve their sentences consecutively to any other punishment imposed. Supported by all provincial and territorial justice ministers, this new action will give police and prosecutors stronger tools to target organized crime activity, and help keep more dangerous criminals behind bars.

And later this week, my colleague, Treasury Board President Stockwell Day, announced our Government is taking further action to increase transparency and accountability of Canada’s Parliament by proposing to expand the scope of the Lobbying Act to ensure that MPs, Senators and exempt staff in the offices of the Leaders of the Opposition in the House and Senate are subject to the same requirements already placed on ministers, their exempt staff and senior public servants.

By broadening the definition of designated public office holders covered under the Lobbying Act, we are continuing our Government’s action to ensure Parliament is accountable to Canadians and not to special interest groups.

Minister Day, as Minister responsible for British Columbia, also announced the launch of the $100-million Investments in Forest Industry Transformation (IFIT) program in Vancouver and made a call for proposals that could receive IFIT funding.

IFIT was introduced in Canada’s Jobs and Growth Budget 2010 and is designed to demonstrate and deploy new and advanced technologies in the forest sector through investments in innovative processes. The goal is to encourage the development of a wider range of technologies that can help secure a more prosperous future for Canada’s forest industry and the communities, like many in Prince George-Peace River, that depend upon it.

To learn more about the program and how you can apply for funding, go to www.forest-transformation.nrcan.gc.ca<http://www.forest-transformation.nrcan.gc.ca/>.

And on a final note, Statistics Canada reported yet another increase in Canada’s GDP. This represents economic growth in ten of the past twelve months.
Our Conservative Government will continue to implement our Economic Action Plan to protect incomes, create jobs, ease credit markets, and help workers and communities get back on their feet while returning to balanced budgets and keeping a lid on overall government spending.

For the latest economic news go to www.actionplan.gc.ca.

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Posted on Friday, August 06, 2010 03:44 AM in Views by Prince George - Peace River M.P. Jay Hill

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Comments

Posted by: SummerSoul on August 6 2010 6:41 AM

He wants to increase "transparency and accountability". That will be an easy task as Harper's crew will be starting from near zero.

Posted by: PrinceGeorge on August 6 2010 6:56 AM

The unemployment rate is up again! The economy is stalled (CBC News). Will Mr. Hill's government take credit for that?

Of course not.

Posted by: Headshake on August 6 2010 8:09 AM

I cannot wait to see the end of the conservatives doing their best to destroy my country.

Posted by: govsux on August 6 2010 10:58 AM

When Mr Hill retires, will invisible Dick start a weekly post here? I won't hold my breath.

Posted by: gimmeabreak on August 6 2010 3:15 PM

Why on earth would Harris want to give you "dippers" a stage to spew your left wing nonesense and insults. If any of you were capable of even ONE comment that wasn't tainted by your political bent this would be a much better site.

Posted by: PrinceGeorge on August 6 2010 3:47 PM

"...while returning to balanced budgets and keeping a lid on overall government spending."

No kidding! The "left wing dippers" passed on a record of seven consecutive surplus budgets with overall government spending nicely under control.

Look how fast Harper and his financial wizards frittered it all away...

Shouldn't be so proud of the mismanagement!
G.W.Bush voodoo economics at work!

"I cannot wait to see the end of the conservatives doing their best to destroy my country."

Hear, hear!

Posted by: PrinceGeorge on August 6 2010 3:47 PM

Posted by: Eagleone on August 6 2010 9:34 PM

GDP is a meaningless statistic. It is overly represented by the financial industry that has gone purely ponzi scheme in its over leveraged with new debt nature. Its a political tool for the financial industry and that is about it.

While GDP goes up, our industrial capacity disappears, and our cost of living relative to our income is increasing faster then GDP.

Furthermore GDP is a flawed statistic because in countries like Japan and Europe where they have declining populations actual per-capita growth can be hidden by a static GDP. A country with a higher population work force growth rate will naturally have a higher GDP growth rate and vice versa... add in the financial fix and the stat is essentially meaningless for any form of real analysis.

Posted by: Eagleone on August 6 2010 9:47 PM

Broadening the Lobbying Act is a good move, but the danger is that it puts a wall between smaller organizations and individuals from accessing government... while simultaneously allowing the major corporations (foreign and domestic) and unions to own the political parties through their contributions that determine the policy from the party on down to its members.

For 'free enterprise' to work everyone needs to have equal opportunity in access to power... and access to power can't be dominated by the monopoly capitalists or the public sector unions through their control of the party organization of our political system.

The easy fix is to broaden the Lobbying Act, as well as ban corporate and union donations to political parties... we need to see politics funded by citizens through popular will that translates to both public funding, as well as individual donations by Canadian citizens to a limit of maybe $200 per individual.

If I ran for politics I would likely loose for the fact that I would take no donations from either a union or corporation. DBA, or a partnership, or sole proprietorship... maybe in the name of free enterprise small business... but for the most part if one only collects donations from individuals then they thus have a sovereign mandate and not a hidden constraint on who is to be represented (ie all citizens especially the working middle class majority).

Time Will Tell

Posted by: govsux on August 6 2010 10:55 PM

Not a left wing"dipper". fiscal conservative, centre right, tired of B.S. , big government, deficit spending, etc,etc,etc.

Posted by: PrinceGeorge on August 7 2010 7:14 AM

"... as well as ban corporate and union donations to political parties... "

If my party had more than enough corporate donations in its coffers to pay for an election I would try to ban corporate and union donations too!

I can always do an unbanning later on, when my resources have been somewhat depleted after winning yet another close contest.

It's manipulative political gamesmanship and some politicians are better at it than others.

That does not mean that it is fair, democratic or respectful of the voters - it's just another way to massage and scheme in order to achieve victory.

Posted by: govsux on August 7 2010 7:49 AM

"political bent", "left wing dippers" give US a break!

Posted by: socredible on August 7 2010 8:25 AM

To self-describe oneself as a "fiscal conservative" today, so far as governments and balanced budgets are concerned, is usually indicative of a complete inability to understand the realities of modern financial processes.

That national governments, unlike the citizens they're supposed to represent, are, and always have been, "self-financing". They have the actual power to CREATE 'money', in other words ~ even if they have assigned it to a central bank, like the Bank of Canada, for instance, ostensibly under their control.

They are, of course, limited in the way in which this 'money' can be introduced into the economy. By the simple fact that new credit issue ~ new 'money' ~ has an alter ego, and that is PRICES. Simply 'printing money' to buy things on public account invariably causes inflation, a diminishment of the purchasing power of all existing money. Despite the obvious drawbacks to most of us, this, however, is what the current governments are all doing when they run deficits through 'stimulus spending'.

The current alternative would be equally, if not more, unacceptable. A deepening recession, more widespread business failures, higher unemployment, and a great deal more social upheaval.

A 'deflationary' spiral is more feared than an 'inflationary' one, for the simple fact that, pschycolgically, there's no way out. Why would anyone buy anything, except the bare essentials, today, if they felt the price would be lower tomorrow?

To have a 'balanced' budget for a national government under the current financial set-up means that the personal and corporate budgets of those within the country are going to be 'unbalanced' in that same fiscal period. Unbalanced by the overall difference between the collective price values of goods and services for sale in the country and the collective quantity of money in the hands of the general public capable of meeting those prices.

It is an arithmetical impossibility to have a balanced national budget and balanced budgets of all within the country simultaneously under the current rules and conventions of national, (some would say, 'international') finance.

If you doubt what I say, just listen to the recent calls for more 'stimulus spending' on behalf of the Federal government to try to boost an economy which is not showing any full time job growth.

Ask yourselves just "where" is that money going to come from? From increased exports? Of what, to whom?
From taxes recoverable in the future? On what? If they tax any deeper the very spending on which any recovery must be based is further impaired, and it can't occur.

Isn't it high time we took a look at the whole issue of 'finance', and learned what we need to do to make it serve us properly?

Posted by: PrinceGeorge on August 7 2010 10:01 AM

"...Isn't it high time we took a look at the whole issue of 'finance', and learned what we need to do to make it serve us properly?"

"We" I suppose means us, not including You, since you already are in the know!

How about passing your knowledge along to us in few brief comments?

Keep it brief, please. Just a few key points, indicating what the thrust of the matter is, as long as it is practicable and reasonable.

Thank you.

Posted by: Eagleone on August 7 2010 4:40 PM

Prince George wrote, "That does not mean that it is fair, democratic or respectful of the voters - it's just another way to massage and scheme in order to achieve victory."

I'm thinking you wouldn't ever get elected for different reasons then me.

Posted by: PrinceGeorge on August 7 2010 8:11 PM

If I would run (no chance of that happening) and win (no chance of that happening) I would have to travel in an armored limo! :-)

Posted by: socredible on August 7 2010 10:31 PM

Prince George, what's needed is to restore and maintain a proper nexus between 'prices' expressed in 'money', and 'money' itself. Funds available in the hands of the public and capable of always fully meeting those prices, considered collectively,
over TIME.

That isn't particularly difficult to do. But explaining it briefly understandably
is next to impossible to do. Even full length books, even multiple volumes of books, have failed to do that. I started, but if there's a way to do it 'briefly', I
sure haven't found it

Posted by: Eagleone on August 8 2010 3:44 AM

lol That's what any politicians would say.

Posted by: PrinceGeorge on August 8 2010 1:11 PM

Thank you for commenting! Surely, if there ever was a proper nexus (you say that it must be restored - restoring assumes a previous existence!) then why would it be so difficult to find it and establish what it was and how it worked, n'est pas?

Can't it be expressed as the Ten Commandments of Prices and Money?

Money. It is everywhere. In banks, stashed away by people. Some was earned by Canadians and stashed away in foreign banks...removed from the equation mentioned by you in your first paragraph. Some of our money is spent for goods produced elsewhere and the prices are NOT set by us. We don't have any control about what policies are set in other countries, even other provinces, etc. etc.

Demand and supply change. Prices change. There are bankruptcies and liquidations, currency fluctuations, political upheavals, natural catastrophes, famines and epidemics, global warming, over population, wars, shipwrecks, oil spills...and so forth.

Your equation is doomed. Everything is always changing, nothing stays put, the targets are moving. Both sides of the equation are too unpredictable.

It's a great idealistic concept but it doesn't fly in the real imperfect greedy world.

Posted by: Eagleone on August 9 2010 12:18 AM

Not really... the supply of gold doesn't change in any great significant volume as it has a set quantity in reserves and a limited supply that can be mined... better yet silver is a mining bi-product and has an industrial use that consumes it as a valuable commodity to where in theory its supply can shrink.

Those are two concrete examples of a form of currency that can provide a real valuation on something.

A Paper based currency can be manipulated to change when the wind changes through interest rate manipulation for debt based currency creation, or in the modern era through derivative contracts that make casino profits out of leveraged gambling in private transaction on virtually every kind of transaction, financial instrument, or commodity that man can think of. Essentially private contracts and market manipulations can privately create currency that in effect lowers the value of all the legitimate currency already in circulation.

In addition a stimulus program isn't free it's paid for at a later date through a devaluation in the real value of ones savings.

Socred is worried about the cost of interest drowning out the ability to repay the principal. The folly is he fails to see the wealth transfer that keeps the loop in tact. The real tragedy is the debasement of our currency for political and financial interests at the expense of the real industrial and service economies that pay the price for the currency corruption that is inevitable as long as a currency of paper is based on no real backing other than fraudulent GDP numbers.

A currency based on the value of labor in the economy and past savings, as well as the creation of currency consistent with the creation of real profits in society... would go a long way to securing the real value of ones savings over time, and that it can be argued is something that everyone will one day recognize as something that is of value to all in society... and that is something that zionists would kill through war on a grand scale to prevent.