Protesters in Toronto COST over 1 million dollars to charities

By the numbers
An 'estimated' 10,000 protesters. Ontario minimum wage is $10.25. That's $102,500 for one hour.

The meeting is over 2 days, so let's say, conservatively, there is a total of 10 hours of 'protests' over the course of both days. That means had those attacking police officers and destroying small businesses 'worked' for those 10 hours at the MINIMUM wage, they would have been able to raise over ONE MILLION DOLLARS for charity. Instead the damage caused is almost certainly going to pass 1 million dollars.
But there's more to it than just that. The G20 will be over a 48 hour period. The cost is 1.1 billion dollars. That's an astounding  $22,916,666.66 PER HOUR!

Numbers can be tools of incredible enlightenment and perspective.

Any 'Liberal' (voter, member or MP) who would join the CPC because of a coalition/merger was never a Liberal

This isn't new, but after a few discussions with various people the title of this entry is something that needs to be said.

With stories like this and this, all we really need to know is that the Canada Stephen Harper envisions is one that has failed America. Anyone who seeks to remould Canada in the image of George W. Bush's America and shares views with 'the tea baggers,' isn't a Liberal, lower or upper case.

Coyne describes the Liberal Party as a big tent, but we're not, really. We're a party, a group of people, who support 'reality-based' policy that works. We don't want or seek to govern by ideology, but rather desire a stronger, better Canada. If that can be achieved by cutting spending and balancing budgets (fiscal conservatism), then that's what we do. If we need to fund day cares to allow for equality of women and better off children, then that's what we do.

Where Coyne has it right is that we have lost our sense of direction. We also seem to have lost this idea that we govern based on what works. And until we come to grips with this and start to rectify things, we may be only a stones throw away from the collapse that Coyne predicts is now inevitable.

Sun TV News---- But the real question is...

Who will be their first sunshine girl?

Glenn Beck and Bill O of the True North Strong and Free

With news that 'someone' is leaving their current job for Fox News North, I decided to do a quick search of the net to see what this new network would try to counter. Bloggers on the right elate in posting about CBC bias... but if you have to use the word 'bias' in your argument, you don't have an actual argument. Conservatives don't like the CBC because it isn't conservative. Sort of like they don't like people of colour because they aren't white, they don't like gays because they aren't straight etc.

From the political side of things I actually think this will be a HUGE boost to the Liberals. If we have the ability to point to the imbeciles that support the CPC every day and what their beliefs are, then we're gonna be winning some votes back.

On the social side of things is where this concerns me. My hope, honest to goodness hope, is that Canadians are too smart for this type of a network and for those that are dumb enough to watch and pay for it, I hope their numbers are so low that the network can't sustain itself. I can easily see this being as wildly popular as the Fox News 'answer' to the Daily Show, "the half-hour news hour."

But one look at the network that 'they' are trying to emulate leads to all kinds of questions. Is America 'better' because of Fox News? No. Has journalism improved since it hit the airwaves? No. Has their quality and accuracy of their reporting been repeatedly and routinely found to be lacking or inaccurate? Yes.

And if these are the answers, why do conservatives, big and small C, want this brought to Canada in any format? If it's about 'values' than one quick look at Fox News discussing whether Lady Gaga is a hermaphrodite shows that values and Fox News are contradictory ideas.

If the ideas of conservatives stood on merit, than a Fox News of the North wouldn't be necessary. One thing their vaunted 'free market' does is test ideas. And time after time the ideas of Fox News have been found to be two things in the US: inaccurate and popular with the ignorant.

I don't view any conservative news station as a threat to the Liberal Party, but I do believe it weakens and worsens Canada as a country.

Balancing the budget, one toke at a time

Canada's debt and deficit situation might not be quite as bad as other countries, but it's still a  major issue that we need to address. The interest payments alone eat in to the money we could be spending on health care, green technologies, pensions and almost literally countless other things.

So what if I told you there was we could cut potentially $5 billion from our deficit this year, next year, and every year to come?

Legalization of marijuana would do just that. And there's a good chance that it might actually be able to contribute more than that.

This article lays out a fair amount of useful information on the costs of marijuana being illegal. But it doesn't account for all sources for revenue. But to keep things simple I'll use some of the numbers found in that article. 

If we take the 400 tonnes mentioned in the article (almost certainly lower than the actual amount) and then use his price per gram estimate, we come up with a simple calculation using the numbers provided:

400 tonnes= 400,000,000 grams. 

each gram produces a total of $4.24 of taxable income.

Law enforcement costs= $400 million (rough number)

All social costs (lost productivity etc)= $400 million (rough number)

He estimates somewhere between 2 and 3 billion dollars being lost in revenue to the government.

But what also needs to be factored in is the way our tax system works, combined with market practices. It's not so much that X is lost in taxable income, but rather we have: growers, shippers/distributors, sellers, marketers, all with incomes that could be taxed if marijuana were legalized. Then on top of that there are sales taxes, and if those followed the model of tobacco taxes, then we're talking about millions, upon millions in additional revenue.

You then factor in what would likely be greater drops in law enforcement costs, since gangs and other criminals benefit from the sale of an illegal product (marijuana) and then use those profits toward other criminal activity.

We then factor in 'tourism'; and, yes, there would be tourism.

Even if we account for any cross border slow downs etc, the year-after-year benefit of legalizing marijuana would still be well above 4 billion dollars, and likely, as I said, above 5 billion dollars.

I am hardly the first person to argue this with these type of figures, but at a time when the world is facing almost unprecedented economic turmoil and never before seen debt and deficit levels, to ignore this kind of economic argument, especially when the social argument is even stronger for legalization, shows how broken our policy is in Canada.

To put it another way, in 10 years we could pay down 10% of our national debt. 

The Sarah Ferguson of Canadian politics

That's what the Liberal Party of Canada has become. These merger talks are a desperate attempt to regain what we once had. The video of 'us' smoking while pathetically trying to sell 'access to our ex/power' will soon be thrown up on youtube.

Abandoning 143 years of history and service for a quick fix, and I'm not sure 'fix' is the right word to use there, because we wont be fixing anything.

Placing our faith in our lord and saviour; a resurrected J.C.

I've now had multiple people send me this much circulated story.


Some of what is written is astute and some of it fails in its assessment.


Where Travers gets it right is his overall analysis of the Liberal Party:

a once dominant party in steep decline and startling disarray.

That might be the best one line summary of the state of the party that I have read yet. And he doesn't miss the mark later in the article, either:

But retreating to the future would be as risky a Liberal solution as abandoning its brand.

Their current agony is rooted in expedient leadership decisions that began with letting Paul Martin escape the necessary crucible of a testing campaign. Forgotten, too, is that parties shooting inwards become wounded prey for outside predators.

But where he misses the mark is where he assigns blame to our current leader. The Liberal Party was in a state of disarray long before Iggy took the reins and it will continue to be in disarray until certain things are addressed.


Talk of Jean Chretien returning to power is a symptom of the larger problems that we face. Rather than being a lack or failure of leadership, we have two other principal causes for what might be our demise. We have come to have a culture of entitlement and we believe, rightly or wrongly, that we are Canada's "natural governing party." 


Until we can get over, around, through or in any other sense abandon these two ideas, we will likely be sitting on the opposition benches. No coalition, no merger and no return of our once great leader will change that.