Ignatieff's webteam has done a complete overhaul of the site. Gone is the Joomla install in favour of Active Server Page (.asp)
Clean, professional looking and appealing. The menu is straight forward and simple. French/English available. About the only page that seems to be still under development is the 'Get Involved' page and this isn't a big issue at this stage as the well designed site offers numerous other opportunities to 'Get Involved'.
Mi Community is still there, but greatly revamped. The Mi Community Home Page is the Union Station of the campaign, connecting users to features. Based on Community Server 2.0 , the section will keep users active and engaged. MI Blogs, Forums, Photo Gallery, Multimedia Centre and Upcoming Events. Every feature execpt the calendar allow comments in one form or another. The blogs have permalinks and comments, no trackbacks. The new forums feature focused policy debates, an opportunity to debate on subjects of the users choosing and a breakdown by Province. (What about the Territories?). Emails went out to all the users from the previous site with a new password and login. There were 412 users when I first looked, 414 when I just checked the site again.
RSS is available for all of the sites content. No autodiscover on the home page, the RSS icon is in the bottom right corner. Clicking on it will take you to a page listing three feeds. The forums also offers feeds for topics and comments and I found another feed, 'Speeches' tucked away on the site. I think this one has the possibility of being a podcast.
Donations, Joining and Volunteering are easy to do. With the exception of the MI Community section, the options to donate, volunteer and join are easily available on every page. The Ignatieff campaign remains the only one with their own eCommerce section allowing for online donations. The reworked donations page is easy to understand and use. Pre-set donation amounts, user entered and monthly contributions are available. Standard phone, fax and mail donations are also available along with a form.
As with the previous site, policy is not really evident. This seems to be more a campaign decision/strategy than any function of the website.
Privacy Statement opens in a javascript window.
Significant improvement over the last site. Ignatieff's site now represents the gold standard for others to reach for. There are still many features that can and may be added to the site but in it's current for Ignatieff's site is head and shoulders above the rest.
8.5/10
Note: Ken Dryden's site has reverted to a placeholder page again. Expecting some changes and updates there after the weekend.
A public moderated forum that will dress down stupifyingly self interested sycophants especially those of the liberal humanist faction that know all the answers, but none of the questions and know what's good for everyone else, never having asked what others want.
Update: my apologies - I forgot to change the link title. It's been updated to reflect Canadian Blue Lemons as site of the week.
Sara at Choice for Childcare has a good post on the funding of daycare lobbyists. I thought I would follow through on one of the links and take a look at what value for money Canadian taxpayers were getting for this.
Minding our Ps and Qs: Pedagogy, Policy and Quality
The Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada is a pan-Canadian, non-profit membership-based organization dedicated to promoting quality child care which is accessible to all.
The project's objectives are:
to increase knowledge of curriculum issues in national policy making through dissemination of research findings and current issues;
to increase collaboration between sectors involved in early learning and child care through public consultation to identify and implement common values and early childhood educational goals; and,
to create a national curriculum/pedagogical framework that will provide a common foundation on which to build programs that enhance children's early learning and development.
So were giving them over a quarter million dollars to lobby the government on 'curriculum issues and network with other like-minded advocacy groups. The third point is supposed to provide the justification for the funding. If the federal government wants to develop a 'national curriculum/pedagogical (teaching) framework' they have the appropriate public servants to do so, in conjunction with their provincial counterparts.
The Canadian taxpayers should not be funding advocacy/lobbyist groups to develop policies and programs or to conduct research. If the government wants to fund research on these issues, then direct the funds to the appropriate accredited university.
If these organizations wish to continue advocating specific issues, they are free to do so with their members money, not the taxpayers.
If you want my money than ask me up front and convince me to support your cause. Stop picking my pocket through the government.
Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 3 (en francais)
Ken Dryden Big Red enters the race, and I do mean BIG. No entry page, French offered, although it might be a little hard to find at first. Another Joomla Open Source Content Management System(CMS) installation with a custom template. Professional look and feel. The front page contains Ken's slogan "A Big Canada" with a link to his vision. One problem though, is many people won't find that link. With the very red front page and the small little arrow underneath, it kind of blends in.
Menus are straight forward, broken up into two sections - Get Informed and Get Involved. The Get Informed section works well. It also includes an actual real live blog. A Wordpress Joomla mod complete with permalinks, moderated comments and trackbacks. You must register with the site in order to comment. News Centre is very well done. If you register with the site, you can comment on the posted news stories using a Joomla component called AKOcomment. Almost like a blog.
The Get Involved section starts off with Join Team Dryden. Filling out this form also registers you with the website, providing a Username and Password. You will receive an email shortly after registering with links to donate, info on how to be a delegate, and a (insert link here) link to the Liberal party join page.
Join the Liberal Party is a confusing page. Info on why to join and what the process for delegate selection is, just no info or links on exactly how to join the Liberal party. The very bottom of the page provides a link to the Become a Delegate page, where if you are very diligent, you can find a link to the Liberal Party online membership form. There is a "Join Now" bar on the front page, but it kind of blends in with everything else red.
Two big 'Get Informed' and 'Get Involved' sections on the front page with nice pictures but what do they do other than take up space? Considering their prominent placement, I tried mousing over them, expecting a link to take me some where.
When you surf to other pages, the big header is replaced with a smaller one. In the top right there is a small form for Email, name and a subscribe button, but what are you subscribing for? The site, emails, newsletters, 12 issues of Liberal Life magazine?
Donating is impossible unless you register with the site. I could find no link or menu item to a donation page other than the link I received in the registration email. Not sure if this is by design or by omission..
Volunteering - Join Team Dryden, register for the site. Lots of opportunities to do so. Makes for good email/name collection.
No RSS feeds - should be a no brainer for both the Blog and the site. Joomla itself is feed enabled by default.
Policy (Issues) - easy to find and lots of it.
Privacy Policy - extensive policy available, although it opens a new instance of the site in a window in order to view it.
Overall a good start. Obviously the site's goal is to inform and engage with it's users.
At least as things stand now, this rounds out all the candidates currently declared for the race. (I'm not going to bother with Ashley). So here is my final ranking for the first round.
Bob Rae 7/10
Scott Brison 6.5/10
Ken Dryden 6.5/10
Gerard Kennedy 6.5/10
Michael Ignatieff 6.5/10
Maurizio Bevilacqua 6/10
Joe Volpe 5/10
Stephane Dion 4/10
Carolyn Bennett 3/10
Martha Hall Findlay 0/10 - Donation Page still not fixed.
Next up will be an Accessibility test on each site along with freshness reviews every few days. All ten reviews are now included on the original review page.
Blogads recently completed a survey of 56,000 bloggers in the US. ClickZ reported they found that bloggers broke up in the following groups:
Political Blogger
read five blogs per day
18% spend 10 hours each week reading blogs over the last 6 months:
70% contributed to a cause of campaign online
41% spent $100 or more
60% bought software or clothes
87% bought books, of those 52% spent more than $100
72% percent of political blog readers are male;
77% have a college degree;
over 20% have a household income between $60K and $90K.
Music Blogger
72% male
4 percent are ages 31-40
86% have bought music online in the last six months
47% spent over $100;
70% bought books online
63% bought clothes.
25 %are students, over 58 percent have college degrees
Gossip Blogger
77% of gossip blog readers are women,
50% are age 22-30;
60% plus have a college degree;
68 percent purchased clothing online,
48% plus spent more than $100.
15% of gossip blog fans read three blogs daily
15 % spend two hours each week
Motherhood/Parenting-related Blogger
90% percent female;
12% plus read five blogs daily;
17% pend two hours a week reading blogs;
72% bought clothes online in the last six months, and
46% spent over $100;
83% purchased books;
46% contributed to a cause or campaign;
23% bought toys.
45% of mom blog readers are 22-30 years old;
73% have a college degree;
21% + have household income between $60K and $90K.
You can't beat free research. Something for political strategists to think about when targeting groups. Many online ads are no cost or low cost compared to traditional media.
Welcome to the world’s first full-service conservative Internet broadcast network!
Internet video is booming. Apple’s iTunes store has sold a gazillion videos since its debut. YouTube gets more traffic than the New York Times web site. And politically-oriented video is on the rise:
Google teamed up with Al Gore’s Current TV network to provide Google Current.
Amazon.com broadcasts Fishbowl featuring left-wing comedian Bill Maher.
iTunes offers a discount price for Comedy Central’s liberal Daily Show.
AOL joined with the Huffington Post to provide Contagious Festival, a collection of conservative-bashing short movies.
These efforts have one thing in common: they are all produced by liberals for liberals.
I formed Hot Air Network, LLC, to bring ideological diversity—because we all love diversity–to the videoblogging world. And because it looked like a lot of fun. Two of the most cutting-edge bloggers on the Right have joined me in my cyberquest: video editing whiz Bryan Preston and the almighty Allah Pundit. Allah likes to think of us as a little Internet garage band. Only we’re playing in three separate home offices and a basement. But you get the idea.
We want you to spend more time reading submissions and writing your carnival, and much less time on carnival administration.
You can run all your carnival administration from Blog Carnival, or mix and match with your own stuff. The service is free (we cover our costs through advertising).
Blog Carnival makes your life easier by
simplifying collection and arrangement of submissions (with complete source information) for each edition of your carnival,
coordinating activities with the other people hosting your carnival, and
keeping your readers in the loop and developing your carnival community: readers, contributors, hosts, and organizers.
Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 2 (en francais)
Three new sites for review today. I'll amend the original post so that all the initial reviews are on one page. My apologies to Maurizio Bevilacqua for missing his site in the first round. I could have swore that I searched under his first name, but I must have been fumble fingered that night and spelled his name wrong.
Maurizio Bevilacqua Entry page with English/French option. Header area and menu is clean and simple if a little over "Maurizio'ed". (all Maurizio, all the time). I'm not sure if I care for the main page layout. 3 equal columns. In my mind the left and right sidebars take up too much space, distracting from the main, centre real estate, and limiting what can be done in that space. The menu bar looks good but the traditional 'Home' location is replaced by 'Maurizio Links'. The link page itself is of dubious value, so it's placement here is strange. The header is clickable to the home page, but I'm not sure how many people recognize this as a standard. The links would be better off in one of the sidebars, replaced by a 'Home' page. The 'Media' link could go to the sidebar as well. The three things that campaigns need to do is get people to Join, Volunteer and Donate. These three make such a nice combo together. Maurizio Fans? Not sure if this is just a place filler or if there will be some purpose to this section later.
Online donations not available. Phone number and a promise of a link to the National donation page later.
Volunteer is easily found on the top menu, sidebar and bottom of page. Good duplication
Become a member takes you directly to the Liberal Party's online form.
Media Centre - lots of 'click here's' and external links. No RSS here or anywhere else on the site. Great photo gallery with lots of pictures, you just don't know what the pictures are. Always try to caption pictures by identifying people and places and event. People like seeing their name on a candidate's site. Enhances the value of being on the team.
There is a so called 'blog', but no comments enabled, no trackbacks, has sort of a permalink on the side. Is it a blog or isn't it? There are certainly differing opinions on this. Personally I think these are more like static pages than a blog.
Policy (MaurizioViews) - easy to find on main menu. I would take the fourth paragraph, bullet it and move it up. Check out Brison's site for an example. Would make the page more readable and get the policy highlights across quickly.
No Privacy Policy
Overall a good start. Some tweaks will improve navigation and usability. As with many others though, the site falls down on the interactive part. None.
Google Search - unable to find maurizio.ca with just a first name
Gerard Kennedy No entry page. French option available in the top right corner. Professional looking and quick loading. Best 'Action Centre' I've seen of all the sites. Volunteer, Donate and Join all there along with a yet to be ready "Share the message" feature. The icon row in the top right corner seems to be a strange placement to me. This eats up about 1 inch of valuable front page real estate for questionable value. The Menu bar initially looks easy to use, but the tabbed format is confusing because the tabs do not change colour as you navigate. You're never really sure which tab you're on. For some reason I didn't even notice the sub-menus until my third or fourth time through the menu bar. I think I was so focused on trying to figure out where I was on the tabs, that the sub-menus escaped notice. I'm assuming that as the campaign goes on he'll have more than one speech and one media release so we'll be able to do away with each of those opening a .pdf unexpectedly.
Breaking News - this isn't CTV Newsnet or CNN Headline news. Unless the Candidate falls down and breaks something, there really isn't a lot of "breaking" news on a leadership campaign. Takes up more valuable front page real estate. Usually these end up being nothing more than stale distractions.
Huge flash area for such a small page template. The calendar is well done. Most of the other features are still 'under development', but certainly show a lot of promise. The online community looks to be a chat feature. Share the Message has some interesting potential. There is a placeholder for a blog in the multimedia centre, but it's not active yet. One video and one .mp3 there. Hint - it's not a podcast unless you're actually casting it. Requires RSS of which there is none.
National Networks - I thought I was actually going to find something interesting here, but alas, no. Some good ideas but the site doesn't give people the tools to follow through. "Organize a coffee party or a pub night to raise funds for Gerard. Follow the instructions on this website on how to donate." Give your volunteers the tools to do this through your site. Integrate social networking tools into your site and the people will really help build a national network.
Policy - link is on the menu, but it opens up another one of those surprise .pdf files. I'll assume that this too is still under development.
Privacy Policy - link is there, but not the page. Mailto link for Contact the Webmaster is broken. (missing the l in mail)
Overall a good professional looking site, with tons of potential if all the features are developed.
Bob Rae Splash entry page with French/English choices. I guess waiting to launch paid off for Bob. This is my pick for best of the bunch so far. Simple, clean, fast and easy to use. The only issue I have with the front page is with no 'Home' button, the entire header needs to link back to the home page. Currently only the far right panel does (at least in Firefox - haven't tested in IE yet)
All the right elements are there (Policy, Join, Donate, Volunteer etc) . The media centre is kind of thin and the font rather small leading to readability issues on pages like the Issues, but these are minor points.
Killer Feature - phase one of the campaign is all about signing up members. Click on Bob's join page and you get a form, but it's not just any type of form. I was beginning to wonder if anyone would figure this out. The form requires at least a name and email for contact purposes before sending you directly to the Liberal Party's online signup page. They now have a name and contact method to see if you actually joined the party. Someone had their thinking cap on here and it's the little things like this that will pay off in the long run.
Bob's Virtual Community is still under development, but I'm assuming this is going to be some sort of board or messaging feature.
Donation link is there, but not active yet. Join, Donate and Get Involved are always front and centre.
No RSS or other interactive features
No Privacy Policy
Overall a very good job. As mentioned above, the leader of the pack so far, but not by much.
Google Search - site not listed. (Google Adwords would probably help here) You can find it on the #1 Wikipedia entry for Bob if you scroll way down.
So that gives us 9 of the 10 so far with just Ken Dryden to come. His campaign launch is today, so I would expect his site to go live some time soon.
A couple of random thoughts that may inspire a campaign or two:
Little or no front end/back end volunteer resources on most sites. Web banners, buttons, desk top wall paper, email templates. Blogrolls - Blogs for Brison? Mi Blogs? Bennett Bloggers? Maurizio Fans? Bob's Bloggers? eCards, Message forum - coordinate letter writing, phone call in campaign, motivation, rally organization etc. Meetup
Online donation - with only the Ignatieff campaign having their own ecommerce solution, I'm starting to wonder if the party is offering to collect for all the candidates. That would allow them to take a rake off the top and supposedly the candidates then don't have to worry about it. It's the only reason I can think of why all the rest of the campaigns have just a form or a notice saying that a secure donation link will be forthcoming from the party.
I found a limited link to Belinda Stronach's last leadership site. Many of the pictures are missing, but it gives you the general idea. Considering this site was built almost 3 years ago, it would still be head of the class in this group of leadership sites. I believe the only thing it was missing was RSS feeds, but I could be wrong. (RSS wasn't really big then). Some of the most powerful features were in the backend, which unfortunately can't be accessed.
The top four are very close. Anyone in the top six right now could easily vault ahead with some work. Should be interesting to watch things develop. Once all the sites are up I'll run them through some accessability checks.
Liberal Leadership Website Review - Update 1 (en francais)
I'm going to try and maintain an ongoing review and comment of each of the leadership candidate's websites.
I'll make note of any new features and improvements found, rate the freshness of content and highlight any significant errors.
Freshness Scale:
Piping Hot! - less than 12 hours old
Fresh - new within last 24 hours
Day old - new within last 48 hours
Stale - no new content for more than 48 hours
Mouldy - no new content for more than 5 days
Putrid - no new content for more than a week
(Note: Freshness relates to original content on site, not external links to MSM stories)
Carolyn Bennett - Fresh Photo Website still lives as the default option. Standard site has a much improved entry page. Fast load and clean look. I missed an interactive feature in my initial review. 'Words of Encouragement' and 'View Testimonials' work as a tandem. You can submit your support for Carolyn and then view all the testimonials in a sequential order. Nice little feature as long as it's not allowed to get stale.
Scott Brison - Stale Still stuck at the campaign launch. Two upcoming dates in the calendar. Still wondering what the price is for campaign information sold from one volunteer to another.
Ken Dryden - not yet declared Election website is gone now, new placeholder page in place.
Martha Hall Findlay - Mouldy Dangerous Credit Card Page still live. Page looks like an online donation page, but is actually nothing more than a form. Clicking submit launches your email program with all your personal and Credit Card information ready to be sent via unsecure email. One upcoming event listed on calendar
Michael Ignatieff - Piping Hot! (latest post on policy board from 7:34 am) 370 Posts in 46 Topics by 410 Members, and that doesn't include all those coming by to just look. Even if it's the opposition visiting, they're still visiting your site, seeing your policy and discussing/debating on your terms. What does it say about your campaign when your people spend more time on your opponents site than yours? Without the discussion forum, site content would rank as Mouldy.
Gerard Kennedy - not yet declared. Still looking for a website.
Bob Rae - Campaign launched but website must be stuck in Committee. "Call me Bob" (but don't call me slow off the mark). New placeholder page. Different colour and a dash of flash.
Joe Volpe - Mouldy RSS Feeds added (RSS 1.0 and ATOM), unfortunately, they're broken. Google Translate removed. Hopefully this feature will return, just better identified and displayed. Media Materials section added to Media Centre. We all realize that Joe likes to be larger than life (with the lunch bills as well) but is it really necessary for all the photos on the site to be the same way. The huge photos hide and distract from the site's content.
For a little bit of perspective, I'll offer up a website that I'm working on for the Windsor-Tecumseh EDA. If you're interested in joining the Conservative Party or Donating money to the EDA, I'll bet you can find a way to do it in under 3 seconds. You'll have to take my word that the site has interactive features as they are private, for EDA members only. I welcome all comments and critiques. That's how you improve. Liberal Leadership Candidates Website Review - Original Review Rob Cottingham - another review on the various candidate's websites.
Re-Elect David Miller Mayor of Toronto (en francais)
Short term pain for long term gain. As Bob Rae immunized Ontario from ever having to worry about another Provinical NDP government this century, Mayor Miller can accomplish the same for Toronto. (At least Rae can point to a recession as part of his woes. )
One more three year term should provide the final nail in the coffin for Mayor Miller and his socialist hordes. By that time Toronto should be hovering on the brink of bankruptcy with crushing debt, crumbling services and an irate electorate.
Only a sharp dose of reality will make the citizens of Toronto realize that platitudes and promises don't equal substance and action. Grandiose programs and slogans abound while Toronto smoulders, tinder and dry.
Ignorance may be bliss, but it is also costly and the bill is fast coming due.
I think Mayor David Miller's new "Building a Great City" website should be renamed "How to Destroy Toronto the Good in Six Easy Socialist Steps."
With the demise this week of the $150-million deal to revitalize Union Station, His Blondness has done little on the key promises he made when he came to power three years ago (to clean up the city, cut crime, renew the Waterfront, etc.)
Now he can add to his list of so-called accomplishments the scuttling of a deal that would have restored a 77-year-old transportation landmark using the kind of bold public-private partnership that is popular in many North American cities -- except socialist, union-friendly Toronto.
Last word from me on the Flag debate (en francais)
No half-mast for every death - Good decision
Media ban of arriving coffins - about as stupid a decision as they get.
This may fade away over the next several days, but it will be resurrected every time there is a returning flight of fallen soldiers. Let a pool camera in for joint coverage and put the issue to bed. If individual familys request privacy, then give it to them.
I'll let Lorrie Goldstein have the last word. He sums up the whole deal perfectly.
The "flag flap" over how to honour our soldiers killed in Afghanistan says so much about our country, none of it good.
As military historian Jack Granatstein wrote in Who Killed the Canadian Military?: "There is, unfortunately, a soft-headedness about Canadians and their politicians. An unwillingness to focus on the essentials."
And that's all this flag flap is. A non-essential, with the chorus of "support" for our soldiers being led by hypocritical Liberal and New Democrat MPs -- all of whom should be ashamed of their parties' records when it comes to our military.
Another myth put to rest. Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice is taking things one step at a time, moving in accordance with the agreement.
Various native groups have been sounding alarms and raising all sorts of speculation about the "impending doom" sure to befall them if the Conservative government ever assumed the reins of power.
In Minister Prentice I believe we have someone with the potential to effect the most far reaching changes ever on this complex issue of native affairs. The question native leaders must ask themselves now is whether they want to engage in a constructive environment of improvement or continue to hold on to their fantasies of Conservative boogey men.
OTTAWA (CP) - A final deal has been reached that will offer about $2 billion in compensation and healing programs for former students of native residential schools.
"The government will now immediately consider the settlement agreement and the interim payments and the timing of those payments," Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice said Tuesday in the Commons. The deal must be cleared by cabinet, a formality that's expected within days. It must then be approved by courts in several provinces.
Liberal Leadership Candidates Website Review (en francais)
As a political and web junkie, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at the various Liberal Leadership sites. It never hurts to see what the competition is doing and most often you can learn a new trick or two.
I'm not a designer or programmer in any sense of the word, rather more of a power user. I like to learn as much as possible from the best on the web and try and apply it in the most cost effective ways to my own efforts.
Considering someone went to a great deal of expense to bring Joe Trippi to Toronto, it looks like they didn't get a lot of value for their money. I think most of the candidates must have been sleeping. Some sites show potential and as a wiser gentleman than me said, they will probably not start hitting their stride until a month or so into the campaign.
Regardless, if I was working on any of these campaigns I would run as fast as possible to Belinda Stronach and find out if someone is available from her previous web team. Her site from the CPC Leadership campaign would leave all of these in the dust.
Carolyn Bennett Nice entry page with French/English choice. But then everything goes crazy! What the hell is a photo blog doing in a Leadership race? While this may be appealing for artistic purposes, it's functionality is useless, especially as the default choice. There is an option to use a "more traditional or accessible website", but the link is buried in small text at the bottom of the page. That's about all I'll say about the photo site.
Once you finally find the "traditional" website, things improve somewhat. The site has a left hand menu but many of the terms are confusing and much clicking will ensue until you figure everything out. The whole site is crammed into the upper half with a newsroom sidebar on the right hand side.
If you want to donate, you'll need to be persistent and maybe a bit of a detective. Donating online is not possible, but a form is available for submission.
You'll need to drill down a level in order to volunteer (form) or join (form). No link to the new Liberal online membership page.
The navigation leaves much to be desired.
No RSS feeds. There is a blog, but not comments are possible. Carolyn states that she will be alternating blog posts between french and english. The closest thing to an interactive feature is more form filling and the opportunity to email using the "Tell a Friend" tool.
If you want to find Carolyn's policy ideas or positions, they're there, just not where you might think. (Personally, I tried the Policy link first - go figure. )
The site has a Privacy Policy, but again it's certainly not where you think it might be and is not labelled as such.
Newest content - Monday, April 24th
Overall a fairly confusing experience. Some of the basics are there but a great deal of organization and housecleaning is required to get things in order.
Google Web Search - # 1 Maurizio Bevilacqua Entry page with English/French option. Header area and menu is clean and simple if a little over "Maurizio'ed". (all Maurizio, all the time). I'm not sure if I care for the main page layout. 3 equal columns. In my mind the left and right sidebars take up too much space, distracting from the main, centre real estate, and limiting what can be done in that space. The menu bar looks good but the traditional 'Home' location is replaced by 'Maurizio Links'. The link page itself is of dubious value, so it's placement here is strange. The header is clickable to the home page, but I'm not sure how many people recognize this as a standard. The links would be better off in one of the sidebars, replaced by a 'Home' page. The 'Media' link could go to the sidebar as well. The three things that campaigns need to do is get people to Join, Volunteer and Donate. These three make such a nice combo together. Maurizio Fans? Not sure if this is just a place filler or if there will be some purpose to this section later.
Online donations not available. Phone number and a promise of a link to the National donation page later.
Volunteer is easily found on the top menu, sidebar and bottom of page. Good duplication
Become a member takes you directly to the Liberal Party's online form.
Media Centre - lots of 'click here's' and external links. No RSS here or anywhere else on the site. Great photo gallery with lots of pictures, you just don't know what the pictures are. Always try to caption pictures by identifying people and places and event. People like seeing their name on a candidate's site. Enhances the value of being on the team.
There is a so called 'blog', but no comments enabled, no trackbacks, has sort of a permalink on the side. Is it a blog or isn't it? There are certainly differing opinions on this. Personally I think these are more like static pages than a blog.
Policy (MaurizioViews) - easy to find on main menu. I would take the fourth paragraph, bullet it and move it up. Check out Brison's site for an example. Would make the page more readable and get the policy highlights across quickly.
No Privacy Policy
Overall a good start. Some tweaks will improve navigation and usability. As with many others though, the site falls down on the interactive part. None.
Google Search - unable to find maurizio.ca with just a first name
Scott Brison The most polished and professional looking of all the candidates sites so far. I don't care much for flash entry pages, but it does look nice. English/French entry choice. Site navigation is simple and easy to use. The "Get Involved" icon follows as you travel the site.
No online donations available, but there is a link to the Liberal Party's online membership form if you hunt a little.
Volunteering is front and centre on the main page and follows via the "Get involved" page.
There are 3 different RSS feeds available, although not on the front page and there is no overall feed. Feeds do not autodetect from the frontpage.
Unfortunately, this is the closest the site gets to any sort of interactivity. There is no blog, volunteer tools, downloads, videos, podcasts, volunteer back end, discussion opportunities etc. This is where the site falls down and leaves it as nothing more than an internet postcard, albeit a very professional one.
Policy (Vision) is easy to find and readable.
Site Privacy Policy is present, although very brief. (I hope Scott's volunteers don't have to pay too much for your information that might be sold to them!)
Newest content - Sunday, April 23rd.
Overall, very sharp and professional looking, just not very engaging. All sizzle but no steak.
Stephane Dion Simple entry page with English/French choice. The whole site screams retro 1990s. Site navigation is simple because there isn't much of it.
No online donations or link to Liberal Party online membership. Joining, donating and volunteering are all lumped under one "Get Involved" form.
No RSS feeds or any hint of interactivity for visitors.
Policy is sort of available on the front page and spread throughout the site in various speeches and papers. One redeeming point is some excellent quality videos found in the newsroom.
No Privacy Policy
Newest content - Saturday, April 8th
Overall a very simple and functional site, but it's certainly not going to cut it in 2006.
4/10
2nd Website Dion becomes the latest leadership candidate to bring his website in for a complete overhaul. The difference is profound. The new site is a Joomla Content Management System (CMS) install, utilizing what looks to be a heavily customized Rhuk Solar Flare II template. Entry page with English/French choices as well as English and French direct links to items on the site such as 'Why I'm running' and 'Get Involved'. Works well, but that picture ? !
The new site represents a leap forward for Mr. Dion. The header looks professional. Included is a search feature. If you want to see the power of CMS, try entering something like 'environment' in the search box (one of the themes of Dion's campaign). Top right of the header contains a 'Quote of the Day' feature. Nice touch, as long as it's kept current. This shouldn't be hard in Joomla as there are numerous 'Quote of the Day' plugin modules that will automatically rotate the quote based on a database that you load.
The menu is straight forward, easy to use and understand. The only thing missing is a 'Join' and 'Donate' option. The 'Get Involved' menu item takes you to a page with a catch-all form for volunteering, joining and donating.
The main page is clean, crisp and well organized.
The 'Highlights' section features 'Upcoming Events' and 'Latest News'.
The right hand side of the page is setup as a sort of action centre. The 'Get Involved' works here, but again, the site could use a Join and Donate link. Still no link to the Liberal Party's online membership form. Some graphics to highlight the section would also help. Approach the front page as if you only have 10 seconds to get a user to do something.
RSS - no RSS feeds present. As with all the other Joomla installs of candidates, this is puzzling. Joomla installs with RSS turned on by default, and is quite simple to manage for various site categories. RSS is an effective content distribution tool. No blogs or other interactive features.
Policy: I guess the 'Why I'm Running' section qualifies as the Policy section. After spending over half an hour on the site, I couldn't really point to any set of issues that define Stephane's campaign. It's there, just not presented in a way that I would remember it when I left the site.
Privacy Policy - no privacy policy
Overall a much needed improvement. The site now has a much more professional look and feel. The content presentation is greatly improved. The only thing remaining now is to take that final step to turn the site into an active tool instead of an internet postcard.
Google Web Search - #6 (Stephen Harper gets #1) Ken Dryden Big Red enters the race, and I do mean BIG. No entry page, French offered, although it might be a little hard to find at first. Another Joomla Open Source Content Management System(CMS) installation with a custom template. Professional look and feel. The front page contains Ken's slogan "A Big Canada" with a link to his vision. One problem though, is many people won't find that link. With the very red front page and the small little arrow underneath, it kind of blends in.
Menus are straight forward, broken up into two sections - Get Informed and Get Involved. The Get Informed section works well. It also includes an actual real live blog. A Wordpress Joomla mod complete with permalinks, moderated comments and trackbacks. You must register with the site in order to comment. News Centre is very well done. If you register with the site, you can comment on the posted news stories using a Joomla component called AKOcomment. Almost like a blog.
The Get Involved section starts off with Join Team Dryden. Filling out this form also registers you with the website, providing a Username and Password. You will receive an email shortly after registering with links to donate, info on how to be a delegate, and a (insert link here) link to the Liberal party join page.
Join the Liberal Party is a confusing page. Info on why to join and what the process for delegate selection is, just no info or links on exactly how to join the Liberal party. The very bottom of the page provides a link to the Become a Delegate page, where if you are very diligent, you can find a link to the Liberal Party online membership form. There is a "Join Now" bar on the front page, but it kind of blends in with everything else red.
Two big 'Get Informed' and 'Get Involved' sections on the front page with nice pictures but what do they do other than take up space? Considering their prominent placement, I tried mousing over them, expecting a link to take me some where.
When you surf to other pages, the big header is replaced with a smaller one. In the top right there is a small form for Email, name and a subscribe button, but what are you subscribing for? The site, emails, newsletters, 12 issues of Liberal Life magazine?
Donating is impossible unless you register with the site. I could find no link or menu item to a donation page other than the link I received in the registration email. Not sure if this is by design or by omission..
Volunteering - Join Team Dryden, register for the site. Lots of opportunities to do so. Makes for good email/name collection.
No RSS feeds - should be a no brainer for both the Blog and the site. Joomla itself is feed enabled by default.
Policy (Issues) - easy to find and lots of it.
Privacy Policy - extensive policy available, although it opens a new instance of the site in a window in order to view it.
Overall a good start. Obviously the site's goal is to inform and engage with it's users.
Martha Hall Findlay No entry page. French is available on a small tab on the side of the site. Site navigation is simple and straight forward. Martha wins the award for the quickest direct link to a membership form - on the front right side of the page. The problem is, it's not very prominent and it's placed with an unmarked .pdf link to some sort of strategy document.
The front page is not very readable. There is an action centre, but it's only partially visible on the bottom right. I actually thought I'd found my first online donation form, but in actual fact discovered a very dangerous little item. First clue that something is wrong is the supposed online donation form is not a secure page. Second clue is hitting the submit button launches your email program with all that nifty Credit Card information ready to send. A VERY BAD IDEA!
Volunteering, joining etc, is easy through either the menu or the action centre.
No RSS feeds, blog, discussion....
Policy is easy to find (Issues) but not very readable. The bolding, italics and colour send your eyes all over the place.
No Privacy Policy Correction - a Privacy Policy exists. It's actually both detailed and bilingual.
Newest content - Friday, April 21st
Overall another internet postcard with slim possibilities. The Credit Card problem is an immediate problem and must be rectified. I'm sending an email to the campaign to inform them.
Michael Ignatieff No entry page. French is available via link in the top right corner. At first glance the site holds promise. This is the first Content Management System (CMS) site that I've seen so far. The site is a Joomla Open Source installation with a custom CSS template. I may be prejudiced towards Joomla, but CMS's should be a no brainer in Canadian political campaigns today, especially with so many good Open Source candidates available. (Mambo, Joomla, Drupal etc).
Navigation is front and centre although a little confusing. "Run to Leadership"? "Jump in"? JOIN, VOLUNTEER, DONATE usually work pretty well. The front page contains a blog of sorts with Michael and various team members posting. No direct commenting is available but their is a link after each post to another area. (I'll cover this later)
Eureka! Someone in the Liberal Party has discovered e-commerce! Online donations can be made on the site through a secure e-commerce system. (VirtueMart) This is one of the strengths of CMS sites. Numerous features can be added to the site as a simple component or module plug-in.
After finding an actual online donation form, I was surprised not to find even a link to the Liberal membership page. The Joomla site even has the capability of placing the page in a "wrapper" the same way they implement another feature I'll discuss later. Doing it this way allows you to signup using the parent Liberal site without leaving the candidate site.
Volunteering is available once you "Jump In". The action centre on the front page is far too wordy and denies the opportunity to volunteer directly from the front page.
There is 1 RSS feed on the site, but you have to search very hard to find it. Again this is surprising as Joomla comes RSS enabled and is very simple to implement. (It's actually turned on by default)
"Mi Community" - an actual dyed-in-the-wool, real, live discussion board. (Simple Machine Forums). Congratulations to Mr. Iganatieff for being the only candidate to include a live, interactive feature on his site. While many may debate the virtues of discussion boards or blogs, they can be a powerful tool, and at the very least a continuing draw for the site. (for example, Mr. Ignatieff wins for freshest content with the latest post being 6:49 this morning. ) The only problem with the forum is that it is implemented in a wrapper and the narrow template really squishes things. Even those familiar with boards may find it a little off when they first start using it. The forum contains an RSS feed, but the only way you will find it is if you search the source code or try auto-detecting feeds with a reader. Signup for the forum is simple, but the login takes you to the French side of the site. The forum is still English, just the menus change to French.
Policy is not really evident on the site. Another one of those click the Policy links but find something else. I left the site without really knowing what policy or vision Ignatieff wants to project.
Site has a Privacy Policy but be prepared to scroll. It's worth it as you'll also find another handy little link hidden away - A site map! The only one found so far. This is such a handy thing for so many people - why hide it?
Overall a good first effort. I'd spend a few bucks on a professional template. Scott Brison's site looks flashier, but this one has the engagement and the capability to easily add other features.
6.5/10
2nd Website: Ignatieff's webteam has done a complete overhaul of the site. Gone is the Joomla install in favour of Active Server Page (.asp)
Clean, professional looking and appealing. The menu is straight forward and simple. French/English available. About the only page that seems to be still under development is the 'Get Involved' page and this isn't a big issue at this stage as the well designed site offers numerous other opportunities to 'Get Involved'.
Mi Community is still there, but greatly revamped. The Mi Community Home Page is the Union Station of the campaign, connecting users to features. Based on Community Server 2.0 , the section will keep users active and engaged. MI Blogs, Forums, Photo Gallery, Multimedia Centre and Upcoming Events. Every feature execpt the calendar allow comments in one form or another. The blogs have permalinks and comments, no trackbacks. The new forums feature focused policy debates, an opportunity to debate on subjects of the users choosing and a breakdown by Province. (What about the Territories?). Emails went out to all the users from the previous site with a new password and login. There were 412 users when I first looked, 414 when I just checked the site again.
RSS is available for all of the sites content. No autodiscover on the home page, the RSS icon is in the bottom right corner. Clicking on it will take you to a page listing three feeds. The forums also offers feeds for topics and comments and I found another feed, 'Speeches' tucked away on the site. I think this one has the possibility of being a podcast.
Donations, Joining and Volunteering are easy to do. With the exception of the MI Community section, the options to donate, volunteer and join are easily available on every page. The Ignatieff campaign remains the only one with their own eCommerce section allowing for online donations. The reworked donations page is easy to understand and use. Pre-set donation amounts, user entered and monthly contributions are available. Standard phone, fax and mail donations are also available along with a form.
As with the previous site, policy is not really evident. This seems to be more a campaign decision/strategy than any function of the website.
Privacy Statement opens in a javascript window.
Significant improvement over the last site. Ignatieff's site now represents the gold standard for others to reach for. There are still many features that can and may be added to the site but in it's current for Ignatieff's site is head and shoulders above the rest.
Google Web Search - #3 Gerard Kennedy No entry page. French option available in the top right corner. Professional looking and quick loading. Best 'Action Centre' I've seen of all the sites. Volunteer, Donate and Join all there along with a yet to be ready "Share the message" feature. The icon row in the top right corner seems to be a strange placement to me. This eats up about 1 inch of valuable front page real estate for questionable value. The Menu bar initially looks easy to use, but the tabbed format is confusing because the tabs do not change colour as you navigate. You're never really sure which tab you're on. For some reason I didn't even notice the sub-menus until my third or fourth time through the menu bar. I think I was so focused on trying to figure out where I was on the tabs, that the sub-menus escaped notice. I'm assuming that as the campaign goes on he'll have more than one speech and one media release so we'll be able to do away with each of those opening a .pdf unexpectedly.
Breaking News - this isn't CTV Newsnet or CNN Headline news. Unless the Candidate falls down and breaks something, there really isn't a lot of "breaking" news on a leadership campaign. Takes up more valuable front page real estate. Usually these end up being nothing more than stale distractions.
Huge flash area for such a small page template. The calendar is well done. Most of the other features are still 'under development', but certainly show a lot of promise. The online community looks to be a chat feature. Share the Message has some interesting potential. There is a placeholder for a blog in the multimedia centre, but it's not active yet. One video and one .mp3 there. Hint - it's not a podcast unless you're actually casting it. Requires RSS of which there is none.
National Networks - I thought I was actually going to find something interesting here, but alas, no. Some good ideas but the site doesn't give people the tools to follow through. "Organize a coffee party or a pub night to raise funds for Gerard. Follow the instructions on this website on how to donate." Give your volunteers the tools to do this through your site. Integrate social networking tools into your site and the people will really help build a national network.
Policy - link is on the menu, but it opens up another one of those surprise .pdf files. I'll assume that this too is still under development.
Privacy Policy - link is there, but not the page. Mailto link for Contact the Webmaster is broken. (missing the l in mail)
Overall a good professional looking site, with tons of potential if all the features are developed.
Google Search - #1 spot Bob Rae Splash entry page with French/English choices. I guess waiting to launch paid off for Bob. This is my pick for best of the bunch so far. Simple, clean, fast and easy to use. The only issue I have with the front page is with no 'Home' button, the entire header needs to link back to the home page. Currently only the far right panel does (at least in Firefox - haven't tested in IE yet)
All the right elements are there (Policy, Join, Donate, Volunteer etc) . The media centre is kind of thin and the font rather small leading to readability issues on pages like the Issues, but these are minor points.
Killer Feature - phase one of the campaign is all about signing up members. Click on Bob's join page and you get a form, but it's not just any type of form. I was beginning to wonder if anyone would figure this out. The form requires at least a name and email for contact purposes before sending you directly to the Liberal Party's online signup page. They now have a name and contact method to see if you actually joined the party. Someone had their thinking cap on here and it's the little things like this that will pay off in the long run.
Bob's Virtual Community is still under development, but I'm assuming this is going to be some sort of board or messaging feature.
Donation link is there, but not active yet. Join, Donate and Get Involved are always front and centre.
No RSS or other interactive features
No Privacy Policy
Overall a very good job. As mentioned above, the leader of the pack so far, but not by much.
Google Search - site not listed. (Google Adwords would probably help here) You can find it on the #1 Wikipedia entry for Bob if you scroll way down.
Joe Volpe No entry page. Another Joomla install, using a stock template, modified. (rhuk solarflare II) French is available in the top right corner.
Navigation is simple and easy, although the Action Centre is probably too small. This is a common fault of many stock Joomla templates. The rotating image banner will interest some, but others will not care for it. I don't mind one way or another, but one problem is where's my city? I think Windsor has a Liberal or two left.
The front page isn't there. The page is overwhelmed by the photo on it, forcing the visitor to scroll down to find the content. This is a common problem throughout the site. The size of the photos makes it difficult to find content, links etc.
The Volunteer link in the Action Centre takes you directly to the signup form, but the Get Involved link takes you to another one of those gigantic photos. No online donations, just another form.
No RSS feed, no blog, etc....
Policy is there (Joe's views) and easy to find but not very readable.
The site contains one of the best uses of Google Translate that I've ever seen, it's just a shame most people will probably never find it. For campaigns reaching out to ethnic communities this can be a powerful feature. Although Google translations leave something to be desired, they will at least convey the general idea and may bring the person to your campaign looking for further info.
No Privacy Policy
Newest content - Sunday, April 23rd.
Overall a shaky start, but in Joomla the site has a strong platform that is easily modified and built on. As with Ignatieff's site, invest in a professional template and go interactive.
5/10
Google Link Search - 0 Google Web Search - #1 (3rd Entry actually registers as 'LPOC Leadership Candidate Home") Final ranking for the first round.
Bob Rae 7/10
Scott Brison 6.5/10
Ken Dryden 6.5/10
Gerard Kennedy 6.5/10
Michael Ignatieff 6.5/10
Maurizio Bevilacqua 6/10
Joe Volpe 5/10
Stephane Dion 4/10
Carolyn Bennett 3/10
Martha Hall Findlay 0/10 - Donation Page still not fixed.
If you've actually struggled through my ramblings and are interested in someone else's review, check out Rob Cottingham's site.
For what it's worth - that's my opinion. Like it, hate it -who cares. That's what blogging's for.
As in, congratulations for finally getting the finger out and figuring out how to get the Membership page working.
Welcome to the 21st century web! With one bold, albeit extremely slow, stroke they've finally managed to make the five pages of rules regarding membership applications a moot point. Leadership candidates rejoice!
Now if they could only figure out how to get rid of Paul Martin.
Oh well, we're used to 13 years of do nothing so I guess we can't expect too much all at once.
Public fleecing ending, special interest groups rage (en francais)
Academic research is a valuable asset in the realm of public policy debate.
Special interest groups funded by the taxpayers are a completely different issue. Political parties of all stripes have increasingly been using these groups to support their own agendas.
We have a federal Public Service to assist governments in researching and drafting policy. If further research is desired or required, then academic institutions can be called upon.
If special interest groups wish to provide input, then they should derive their funding from those that share the same interests, not the public purse.
Lets stop funding the special interests and start funding the issues.
Alarm bells ring over Tory cuts Interest groups feel abandoned BY MIKE DE SOUZA CANWEST NEWS SERVICE
OTTAWA Child-care researchers, aboriginal communities, affordable housing advocates, environmental activists, artists and the CBC all have something in common these days.
For more than a decade they built bridges with the federal Liberal government to negotiate grants, funding and subsidies. Now they are at odds with Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Conservative promises to lower the GST and send out new family-allowance cheques to parents for child care could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding.
“There’s a preference (in government policy) for financial transfers to individuals, therefore directly to citizens,” said Christian Rouillard, the Canada research chair in governance and public management at the University of Ottawa. “As for everything that supports civil society, different community groups and the social movement, they are at risk of seeing their transfers diminished or in some cases, eliminated.”
The government has already confirmed it would eliminate 15 programs dedicated to the fight against climate change, prompting an outcry from the groups affected.
“I think it’s fine for a new government to come in and say we want to look at things a little bit. We want to rejig things a little bit, but that’s not what they’re doing. They’re cutting everything,” said Greenpeace spokesman Steven Guilbeault.
“So basically we’ll have bureaucrats sitting around doing absolutely nothing, because they have no budget. There will be no programs, there will be no incentives, there will be nothing.”
With a budget expected within weeks, the next likely targets are childcare advocacy groups, researchers and academics who have gotten hundreds of millions in research grants and subsidies over the years.
Human Resources Minister Diane Finley has said all programs are under review in her department.
Meantime, Harper complained last week about “the armies of academics, researchers and special interest groups” who are taking Ottawa’s childcare money away from parents.
Public child-care advocates are furious since they have not been able to meet with anyone in the Harper government, while Conservative-friendly interest groups are regularly consulted and invited to participate.
If you want to 'advocate' on a position or cause, do it on your own dime, not the taxpayer's.
After publishing my previous post, I came across this article which as far as I'm concerned reinforces my opinion that the correct decision was to return to the tradition as it was.
OTTAWA (CP) - Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor wrote this letter explaining the Harper government's protocol on national remembrance:
I would like to take this opportunity to explain the Government of Canada's policy regarding national remembrance; which has been critized by members of the Opposition.
For more than 80 years, our national tradition with respect to those who have died in the service of our country has been to honour all of them equally on November 11th, Remembrance Day. On this day the national flag is lowered to half-mast on all federal buildings and establishments throughout Canada, including the Peace Tower, from sunrise to sunset. This policy ensures that our nation equally and non-discriminately respects and honours our fallen service members.
In the event of a Canadian Forces' operational death, the Department of National Defence protocol ensures flags will be half-masted within the operational base, the home base of the member, and the National Defence Headquarters from the day of death until sunset the day of the funeral. Also, all flags within the service (Navy, Army, or Air Force) of the member will be half-masted from sunrise to sunset on the day of the funeral.
The previous Liberal government broke with this long-standing tradition that confidently brought Canada through its wartime history and instead decided on an ad-hoc basis to lowering the flag of the Peace Tower. As Minister of National Defence, I can tell you that this adhockery unfairly distinguished some of those who died in Afghanistan from those who have died in current and previous operations. Lowering the Peace Tower's flag on November 11th ensures that all of Canada's fallen heroes are justly honoured.
There is no greater loss to a family than that of a loved one and there is no greater loss to the Canadian Forces family than that of one of its own.
Their contributions and sacrifices in defence of Canada will never be forgotten.
I'll offer a little context to my thoughts and opinions on this issue before I actually comment.
I spent 8 1/2 years in the Navy and left as a Master Seaman Naval Signalman. One function 0f the Signalman is to be the Ceremonial expert of the Navy. For those that might think that this is a trivial subject, there could be nothing further than the truth. Any ship, squadron, battalion or other formation within the military has at it's very core the foundation of tradition. At every level of training for Signalmen, the MINIMUM standard for any subject was 95%, with the exception of Ceremonial Procedures, which required a pass of 98%. The keeping of Naval traditions, as with any service, is done with the utmost care and respect.
Military traditions are formed over decades if not centuries. Most are ignored at your peril and rarely if ever changed. If change is ever considered, it is done with the basis of the tradition in mind and only after serious study and contemplation.
With the above in mind, I would suggest that the decision to lower the Canadian flag every time a soldier died in Afghanistan was a purely political move designed to show the Liberal party's "support" for the troops. As with most political moves of this nature, the deeper ramifications of the decision are usually not considered. Here are a couple of examples:
1. An Hercules pilot has a heart attack and dies shortly after returning from an Afghanistan flight;
2. A Sgt. in Petawawa is killed in an off base traffic accident while returning home after a days work training pers prior to deployment;
3. A Naval Captain dies at home of natural causes while sleeping.
With each of the above situations, there are appropriate customs and tradtions to be followed. With the Liberal's change of tradition, we are now left with a new decision. Which one of the above situations would rate the lowering of flags at all National buildings? All, none, some?
Are their deaths any more or less important than the death of someone in the Afghanistan theatre of operations? What is the new criteria to determine whether or not you rate the honour of a National flag lowering? Who makes that decision?
Imagine yourself as the spouse or relative of someone in the examples given above. What would your reaction be if the decision is not to lower the flags?
Regardless of my partisan political leanings, I fully support the current government's decision to return to the previous tradition. Within the military there is a time, place and reason for virutally everything that they do. Many of these reasons are based on the customs and traditions of a particular service or the military as a whole. They are not meant to be changed on a partisan whim or used as a political football. Return the tradition to whence it came and leave well enough alone.
Trevor Wilhelm, Windsor Star Published: Saturday, April 22, 2006
Despite a controversial mission in Afghanistan and the highly publicized loss of Canadian lives, Canada's Armed Forces are exceeding recruitment targets as people come in search of high pay and big adventure, according to recruiters.
Capt. Holly Brown of the Canadian Forces Recruitment Group, headquartered at CFB Borden, said that success has come in the face of advertising embargoes on government agencies during the Gomery inquiry and federal election.
"We exceeded our targets this year and that was without being able to advertise," she said. "I think Canadians are patriotic people. The young people we're seeing come in have that patriotism and want to get there and change the world."
As of April 1, the Armed Forces had 63,000 regular forces and 23,000 people in primary reserves.
In the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2006 - the first of a five-year recruitment drive - Brown said more than 5,800 people signed up for full time regular service in Canada, surpassing the target of 5,500.
With recruitment for part-time primary reserves, a total of 11,400 people joined last year, she said.
The aim this year is to recruit at least 6,400 regular forces.
In Windsor, 86 people enrolled for full-time service and 124 people joined up part time with the reserves, said local recruitment officer Capt. Valerie George.
She said that's also an increase over past years, though she didn't have the previous numbers to compare.
"Recruitment is up from last year and it's anticipated that trend will continue," said George. "We tend to see more people come in for combat arms occupations on the army side of things."
She said the potential of being put in harm's way in hot spots like Afghanistan doesn't seem to be deterring people.
So far in Afghanistan, 11 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed. About 50 soldiers have been wounded.
If anything, the Afghanistan mission is actually attracting recruits, said George.
"People are just interested in the opportunity to deploy and help out," she said. Brown said the military's prominence in newspapers and on the airwaves because of the Afghan mission is raising awareness.
George said the economy is also likely contributing to strong recruitment in Windsor, with the auto and manufacturing sectors facing uncertain futures.
"People are looking for stability," she said.
It's also a good time of year for recruitment, George said, because young people are finishing school and exploring their options in the face of that uncertainty.
Brown said travel opportunities and good pay tend to be draws everywhere.
I suppose we're waiting for something important to happen (en francais)
Update to yesterday's post. Both men claim to have family in Toronto and one of the accused attended high school there.
While I'm certainly not paranoid, I am deeply concerned.
Living in Windsor, where between the Tunnel and Ambassador bridge 42% of Canada's trade with the US travels, failure to deal with these threats has grave implicatons for both countries.
Two Atlanta-area men met with Islamic extremists in Toronto, where they discussed "strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike," according to an FBI affidavit made public Friday.
Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee -- U.S. citizens from the Atlanta area -- met with at least three other targets of FBI terrorism investigations during a trip to Toronto last month, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit said the men discussed attacks against oil refineries and military bases. They also planned to travel to Pakistan for military training at a terrorist camp, which authorities said the 21-year-old Ahmed then attempted to do.
The question is, who are the "three other targets" that the accused met with? Both stories have very little comment from the RCMP and there has been no word of any arrests in Canada.
Friday, April 21, 2006; Posted: 6:10 p.m. EDT (22:10 GMT)
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Two Atlanta-area men in federal custody as part of a terrorism probe discussed possible locations for a U.S. attack, including military bases and oil refineries, according court documents unsealed Friday.
The U.S. attorney's office in Atlanta on Thursday unsealed an indictment against Georgia Tech student Syed Ahmed, 21.
Ahmed was arrested last month in Atlanta and pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of material support for terrorism.
...
An affidavit from FBI agent Michael Scherck says the duo traveled in March 2005 from Atlanta to Canada, where they met with three men who are the subject of an FBI international terrorism investigation.
Ahmed "explained that, during some of these meetings, he, Sadequee and the others discussed strategic locations in the United States suitable for a terrorist strike, to include oil refineries and military bases," the affidavit says.
"They also plotted how to disable the global positioning system in an effort to disrupt military and commercial communications and traffic."
The affidavit alleges the "assembled group developed a plan to receive military training at one of the several terrorist-sponsored training camps." It also says Ahmed traveled to Pakistan in an attempt to get such training.
The government says that Sadequee lied about the meetings when an FBI agent questioned him last year. He was traveling to Bangladesh to get married, according to his family.
At a news conference Thursday in Atlanta, U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said Ahmed was charged with providing material support for terrorism, not planning or carrying out terrorist acts.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said "no imminent threat" existed at any point during the investigation.
Court documents reveal the investigation included court-authorized wiretapping, recounting a conversation between Ahmed and Sadequee's sister.
The FBI affidavit also says agents found two CD-ROMs in the lining of Sadequee's suitcase when he was leaving the United States. One disc contained pornography and the other was encrypted with a code the FBI was unable to crack, according to the affidavit.
It also says Sadequee had maps of the Washington area with the discs.
Hopefully we'll be hearing about some arrests in Montreal shortly. (Correction - the city they travelled to is Toronto)
Ontario families are hard pressed to make ends meet and were looking to Dalton Mcguinty's 2006 budget for some relief from increasing taxes and user fees.
Unfortunately, for the third year in a row, that did not happen.
For the third year in a row, Dalton McGuinty broke his promise to balance the budget - despite having a $3 billion windfall for the 2005-06 year.
Nice clean looking, fast loading site. Several interactive features on the site. (ie. email to Dalton, Share your Story, Send to a Friend)
The Right Honourable Stephen Harper Prime Minister of Canada
Lowell, it’s Stephen calling from Ottawa. Thanks for taking my call.
Sorry I can’t be there with you in person, but for once you will have to listen to my comments without nailing me with one of your hardball questions.
I’m sure you can handle it. After all, it’s only fitting that after 50 years, you let others do the talking.
Lowell, you deserve everything you get tonight.
But you also deserve recognition as a giant of talk radio in Canada. I’m sure I speak for all your listeners in thanking you for your huge contributions to democratic debate in this great country.
All the best and enjoy the roast – you’ve earned it!
Congratulations Lowell. Hopefully we'll be listening to you for many more years to come.
Graeme Hamilton, National Post Published: Friday, April 21, 2006
Getting elected prime minister tends to increase public interest in one's pronouncements, but yesterday's speech before the Montreal Board of Trade drew far more than the curious. A Board of Trade official said the 1,900 tickets sold were the most for a Board event since Pierre Trudeau visited in 1980.
For a guy born and raised in Ontario, schooled in Alberta and currently living in Ottawa. Not bad!
Toronto Star declares childcare a "right" of working women (en francais)
Can't say I'm surprised. The Toronto Star and their quest to impose a socialist utopia on everyone. The editorial headline screams that Harper is doing all the distorting in the child-care debate.
With the budget just weeks away, supporters of child-care centres must throw themselves and their dedication to their children into the battle to persuade Canadians that access to quality child care is not a frill, but a right of working women and, more significantly, their children.
* only "child-care centres" have supporters dedicated to children
* only "child-care centres" provide quality child care
* only women are responsible for childcare
The issue is not about day care, a term based on the clock. It's about the proper care of infants and toddlers by trained, supervised professionals.
Someone should tell my two nieces what poor care they received over the years from their untrained grandmother and unsupervised Aunts and Uncles. The result of years of such shocking care:
* one niece in 3rd year university, the other in advance stream subjects - Grade 11 * both speak two languages * both have highly developed social skills (too developed if you ask my traditional leaning Italian brother-in-law) * both have a passion for reading passed on by the entire family of untrained people, in spite of suffering through the whole language learning concept while attending elementary school
Do we, as a society, not have an obligation and a vested interest in ensuring the children who do not spend the days with their mothers get the kind of care that will help them become well-adjusted, creative, productive adults?
I don't know how I'm going to break the news to my nieces that they're doomed to be un-creative, mal-adjusted, unproductive burdens on society. I think I'll be gentle and hold off until after graduation.
Good thing this editorial came out when it did. I now have time to run out and let my brother know he should cease the three day a week daycare provided by my untrained, unsupervised amateur sister before untold harm befalls his children.
Good interview. It's interesting to note that you see the private Stephen Harper wearing glasses but the 'on the job' Stephen wearing contacts. The glasses seem to define the public and private Stephen.
Amazing what a plan and priorities can do, eh Paul? (en francais)
I like Harper's approach on this file. Simple, small steps to begin with. No grand plans and announcements, just pragmatic progress.
To advance on these issues there will be much discussion, debate and compromise. It must start with the resolution of small issues and build on a sense of trust.
This isn't about one man's legacy, it's about the growth and evolution of our country.
Les Perreaux, The Canadian Press Published: Thursday, April 20, 2006
Liberal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Benoit Pelletier called Harper's plans "a very good start.''
"It's just the beginning,'' Pelletier said. "These elements are proving that we are going toward something that is new, and we have the historic responsibility to take this opportunity in order to make sure we advance the case of Quebec while strengthening the federation.''
Action democratique du Quebec Leader Mario Dumont said major changes are coming to the way Canada deals with Quebec.
"There is a healthy spirit of co-operation that is very different from what we've seen for years,'' Dumont said.
"We must take full profit from Mr. Harper's force of character, his desire to do things differently, the door he has opened wide to Quebec.''
Ralph Goodale, the Liberal House Leader, said yesterday that his party and the Conservatives are "on the same side" when it comes to the government's plan to give parents $1,200 annually for every pre-school child.
Latest Beta from Google Labs. Looks like it launched on the 23rd of February, but I've just noticed it now.
One of the handiest features, for those who don't have their own hosted account, is the 100 mb of storage/file upload for the account. Comes with a WYSIWYG editor and will accept standard HTML. I couldn't find any notices of bandwidth restrictions.
All you need is a Gmail account to sign up. (if anyone needs a Gmail invite - drop me an email)
It doesn't look like they're adding any advertising to the pages as yet, although that may change as time goes on. Here's a quick sample page that I tried.
Create your own web pages, quickly and easily.
Google Page Creator is a free online tool that makes it easy for anyone to create and publish useful, attractive web pages in just minutes.
No technical knowledge required. Build high-quality web pages without having to learn HTML or use complex software.
What you see is what you'll get. Edit your pages right in your browser, seeing exactly how your finished product will look every step along the way.
Don't worry about hosting. Your web pages will live on your own site at http://yourgmailusername.googlepages.com
Including the victims. If the justice system is supposed to be a balance of various factors, we've long since lost that balance in favour of the criminal. Time for some rebalancing.
I'll say one thing about the federal Conservative's bold plan to revamp Canada's beleaguered justice system -- they've got the public on their side.
At least that's my impression after years of listening to average, law-abiding citizens who are bewildered with some of the brainless sentences coming out of our courthouses these days.
Toronto Ontario - Toronto Maple Leafs pull off the greatest comeback in NHL playoff history with their fourth straight win, a 3-1 victory over Detroit Red Wings, winning the Stanley Cup 4 games to 3. Maple Leafs goalie Turk Broda lets in just seven goals in the final four games.
They're looking for help in Afghanistan to build a 'bureaucracy' . My first thought was that there are a lot of ex-Liberals looking for a job, but then reality kicked in.
We're trying to help them build a country. No need to teach them about Judicial commissions and investigations as yet.
Rosie Dimanno with yet another good article on the Canadian military's efforts there.
Canada is not in Afghanistan simply for nation-building. It's very much about preventing the country from collapsing into a terrorist-friendly environment once again, to say nothing of its ongoing status as a narco-state.
The "exit strategy" some Canadians are demanding of their military involvement here is an Americanism pilfered from misadventures in Vietnam, and applied more latterly — along with such other 'Nam buzzwords as "quagmire" — to the dilemma that is Iraq. But Afghanistan is no Iraq and making that comparison is idiotic.
It's a combination of bi-weekly live webchats and weekly "Sheila Cam" webcam recordings by Sheila.
Love her or hate her – Sheila Copps has been a passionate voice for a progressive Canada since 1984 and now she’s online with her own Live Web Event, Sheila Copps: The Good Fight. Join Sheila online as she gives her opinions, takes your questions and delivers her feisty, pugnacious take on Canada’s political scene.
One interesting aspect of this feature is the ability to upload your own video rants.
You may also upload your video and send it to Sheila. Allowable video formats: .avi .flv .mpg .mpeg .mp4 .swf .wmv (25mb Limit)
This brings a whole new dimension to the feature. Interactive features are a key aspect to drive traffic and this will certainly encourage many to take part. Rick Mercer has been doing his Photoshop contest for a while now and enjoys excellent participation.
Time to crank up the video cameras and webcams and have your say.
Congratulations to the Toronto Sun and Sheila Copps for giving this venture a try.
One minor note though. Surely the Sun can afford a decent streaming video camera and good quality microphone for Sheila. The current setup leaves much to be desired. While it gives the bit a homey authentic look, the quality really sucks.
"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." Ayn Rand
The BT's own sharp tongued vixen is back from a short hiatus.
There are many sides to the debate of embedded journalists. Personally, I'm in favour of them, especially for Canada. After decades of neglect the Canadian military is once again gaining the respect it deserves. Embedded journalism is one of the avenues to highlighting aspects of the military unknown to most.
"I would do it again because I think there is an undertold story here. We report on the military, we report on the Department of National Defence in Ottawa, Canada's role in peacekeeping. But we don't tell the story of these guys and their devotion to the mission," she said.
This represents a significant step forward for Afghani police and military forces. On their own initiative, the Afghanis planned and executed the recent operations in and around the town of Sangisar. While the Canadians assisted the Afghan forces near the end of the assault, the brunt of the attack and the casualties was borne by the Afghans.
This demonstrates a growing confidence and competence on the part of the Afghan forces.
A salute to the brave Afghanis who have paid the ultimate price in the fight to reclaim their country.
`Brave' attack frustrates Canadian Afghanistan | Post-mortem on firefight indicates that going it alone likely meant higher casualties for Afghan forces. By Rosie DiManno Apr. 16, 2006. 01:00 AM
"It was a difficult struggle for Afghan National Police forces and their leadership," a subdued Lt.-Col. Ian Hope, battalion group commander, said last night.
Earlier, the Kandahar governor declared that 41 Taliban were killed in a fight that migrated along a flat-terrain highway but was waged most intensely in a cluster of villages around Sangisar — the one-time spiritual headquarters of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar — about 40 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city.
"Acting on intelligence reports that Taliban have gathered in Sangisar to plan an attack in Kandahar, we launched this operation Friday and the fighting continued from morning to evening," Khalid told a news conference.
Hope could not confirm the number of Taliban killed but took no issue with the figure.
His men gave first aid to two injured Afghan police officers at the scene and arranged for them to be airlifted by helicopter to the multinational hospital at Kandahar Airfield.
The Canadian commander — who came upon the scene with his tactical headquarter unit just as attack helicopters had delivered strikes against a labyrinthine compound into which scores of Taliban fighters had fled — praised the willingness of the Afghans to take the fight to their enemy, pointing out that their forces have faced repeated deadly assaults over the past month.
"It shows an awful lot of grit and determination ... to take the fight to the Taliban when required.
"They actually organized this operation. They planned it, they executed it and they called us for support late in the game.
"I applaud their bravery — they're very, very brave — and their determination not to put up with these continuing attacks from the Taliban."
Last May, the NDP agreed to support Paul Martin's minority government in exchange for increased spending on social and environmental programs in the Liberal budget.
But Layton told a newspaper that during their last months in power, he realized the Liberals lacked vision.
The NDP eventually withdrew its support for the Liberals, triggering January's election that saw the Tories take power for the first time since 1993.
As opposed to the grand vision(s) that Paul Martin and his government exhibited since first being elected.
However, the environment is one area where respondents are distinctly unhappy.
Sixty-three per cent said they thought the Conservatives were doing a poor job on the environment, and that was before news came out about Tory cuts to climate change programs.
Decima pollster Bruce Anderson told CP that Harper's Tories should take note."It's important for them to position themselves as progressive advocates of environmental solutions domestically and internationally if they want to broaden their support base," Anderson said.
For a government that's been in power just under 3 months and with the budget yet to come, there certainly seems to be a lot of polling going on.
Makes you wonder if polling is starting to replace journalism. Makes for good fodder on the Sunday talk shows but what does it really accomplish?
As for Di Cocco, Ontario's new culture minister, it's much too soon to predict how she will fare. One point in her favour: As culture critic when the Liberals were in opposition, she knows the file. One disadvantage: She's from Sarnia, which is not exactly the centre of Ontario's cultural industries.
Tongue in cheek or not, this is insulting on so many levels.
I wonder how the "centre of Ontario's cultural industries" would fare if all of us hicks from the rest of the province spent our money elsewhere.
"Therefore, we do not support the current protest action on babble. We feel that babble is a very important part of the site, and that it cannot continue to be disrupted in the manner that it has been, and certainly not in the name of the workers at rabble. We would like the protest to end."
For Babble's Management Committee, an HR tip: firing a long time staff member by email is generally not a recommended practice.
I visited www.paulmartin.ca this morning to see if anyone had got around to working out a redirect to www.liberal.ca.
With the "I'm a Liberal Too!" leadership campaign well underway I figured that they would be attempting to drive as much traffic as possible to their website and at the very least to the long awaited online membership page.
Looks like the Liberal web team hasn't received the memo yet that Paul Martin and company no longer rule the roost.
I suppose someone in the Liberal party will eventually realize that Paul Martin is no longer Prime Minister
At the very least, they can't say I haven't been trying to help.
This happened in London, Ontario but I can certainly see it happening in almost any city or town in Canada. Where's the proverbial woodshed when you need it.
Terry Dollard had a grand idea. His idea was that the city should name half its new streets after the London men and women who died while serving with the military, city police or fire departments.
Dollard spent three years trying to sell the idea to city hall and he says that just about everyone he talked to seemed to agree this was a grand idea. And after three tireless years of effort, research, phone calls, letters, e-mails and meetings,
Dollard's grand idea was adopted as an official policy.
Then Dollard read the final version. And his heart sank.
Google's latest offering. Email notifications are good, but SMS notifications are a niced added touch. It's only setup for American cell providers right now, but I imagine that will change as time goes on.
Seeing the big picture With Google Calendar, you can see your friends' and family's schedules right next to your own; quickly add events mentioned in Gmail conversations or saved in other calendar applications; and add other interesting events that you find online.
Sharing events and calendars You decide who can see your calendar and which details they can view. Planning an event? You can create invitations, send reminders and keep track of RSVPs right inside Google Calendar. Organizations can promote events, too.
Staying on schedule You can set up automatic event reminders, including SMS notifications, and instantly bring up anything on your calendar with the built-in search tool.
Next up - Writely. Microsoft has to be sweating just a little bit.
If anyone has any Writely invites available, I would certainly appreciate one.
Beat the hydro price increase and save money (en francais)
After this mornings rant on hydro, here's a little something to help. These two calculators demonstrate how easy it is to reduce your energy usage and save money
Designed for use by large companies, this little calculator works just as well for home use. Two or three computers running at home? Plug the numbers in and see the difference.
Simply plug in the number and wattage of your current bulbs and hit the calculate button. Many people would be surprised at the savings. With the cost of CFL lights running between $10 to $15 for a package of 3, any money spent is quickly returned.
Using simple strategies like these two and others such as turning down the temperature on the water heater, fridge and freezer I was able to reduce our company's hydro bill by over 48%. We operate from 6 at night to 6 in the morning, so lighting played a large role in our costs.
The power of the internet and search engines like Google make exercises like this easy. I continue to look for simple, no-cost/low-cost ways to reduce costs.
* How about moving the fridge another inch or two away from the wall to ensure a good airflow and better operation? Clean coils twice a year.
* Live in Ottawa? - Hydro Ottawa customers can obtain a free powerWISE Power Pack that contains two compact fluorescent light bulbs, an energy efficient nightlight as well as tips and other information on how to conserve energy. ($20.00 value - valid until September 2006)
* Live in Toronto? - TAPS - up to two low flow showerheads, low flow kitchen and bathroom aerators, foam pipe insulation to and from hot water heater, 4 CFL lights - FREE
Hydro rate hike a good thing, rebate a waste (en francais)
Typical government. Take one good action and follow it up with a useless one, accompanied by barrels of taxpayers money.
The rate hike is long overdue. The subsidies cost us billions in tax dollars and leave everyone fat and happy with their energy use. Until we start realizing the true cost of our lifestyles, the situation will only get worse.
The article identifies 1.5 million low income people in Ontario that the government will spend $100 million on one time payments. With $120.00 going to families and $60.00 going to individuals, what is this payment going to accomplish? Nothing!
I'd rather see the government take the $100 million and purchase energy efficient light bulbs to give to the 1.5 million people. Even if you wasted half the payment on program delivery, the province and the people would be better off.
Outfit every Municipal and Provincial housing unit with these bulbs. Be creative for a change instead of just doling out money with no real purpose other than optics.
wishful thinking. The best we'll probably see is the Ontario government buy the rights to the one tonne challenge commercials and spend tens of millions more telling everyone what they should do. Certainly seems to be working well for the rest of the country.
Ontario families already grappling with $1-a-litre at the pumps and higher natural gas prices are about to get squeezed again, this time on their electricity bill.
Last year's blistering hot summer and the rising cost of powering the province means Toronto households will be paying an average of 5.8 per cent or $81 more over the next year to keep the lights on and air conditioners humming under new rates, effective May 1, unveiled yesterday by the Ontario Energy Board.
This deal is the poster child for strengthening victims rights, tougher proceeds of crime laws and most certainly an end to mandatory release.
One question. Where is the $2 million coming from to pay the settlement? How many other crimes had to be committed to amass that $2 million? The original crime was committed while trying to collect a $130,000 dollar gambling debt. There is no doubt that Louise Russo deserves both justice and compensation, but we must ask the question of who else is suffering to pay that compensation.
TORONTO (CP) - Victims of crime claimed victory amid cries of chequebook justice from critics Wednesday as an Ontario court endorsed a plea bargain that gives a woman $2 million from the men convicted of shattering her spine with a would-be assassin's bullet.
The secret plot to destroy the Liberals A party facing serious challenges, then, has little time for greasy kid stuff. Almost the only good news for the Liberals last week was the departure of Belinda Stronach, who would make a perfectly credible senior staffer in any minister's office but who seems to think she is owed the keys to 24 Sussex Drive. She could not have quit the embryonic leadership race in less graceful fashion if making an ass of herself had actually been her goal.
If Macleans isn't careful, Kinsella just might hire Paul to help with Dalton "Everyman" McGuinty's next campaign.
Winnipeg Sun columnist Tom Brodbeck continues with his challenge of the spin issued by daycare lobbyists.
Apparently University of Manitoba Professor Susan Prentice had an article published in yesterday's Winnipeg Sun, responding to a column Brodbeck wrote last Friday - Child-care lobby's numbers are a joke. I did a search, but was unable to find the article he mentions.
Phoney child-care stats If Prentice -- a PhD in sociology -- doesn't know how to do this kind of research, she should get somebody else who does. What I take exception to is academics shopping around shoddy studies and passing them off as real academic research.
It's intellectually dishonest.
Not only is Professor Prentice an academic, she is one of the founders of the Child Care Coaltion of Manitoba. Their goal?
Our goal is a fully accessible, publicly-funded, non-profit system of comprehensive and high quality child care, with worthy wages and good working conditions for childcare staff.
We want a coordinated and integrated system of services, including licensed full and part-time group and family child care, parent-child drop-in centres, nursery schools, resource and toylending libraries and other childcare supports for children and their parents.
If you want to see the danger of accepting research such as Professor Prentice's without question, take a look at some quotes from an April 6th Winnipeg article
Susan Prentice, spokeswoman for the Child Care Coalition of Manitoba and a professor at the University of Manitoba, said there's still a large unmet demand for quality day-care spots in the province.
"Most of the time when parents have real choice, they choose to use child care by trained professionals in a reliable, licensed child-care setting," said Prentice, noting the province still only has enough day-care spots for one in seven children.
There are about 26,000 licensed day-care spots in Manitoba. Prentice said the waiting list to get one of those spots exceeds the number of children currently in day care.
"We've got a long way to go," she said.
I'm sure if questioned, Professor Prentice would cite her recent research as qualification for her comments. Here's the original press release for that research, posted where else but the Child Care Coalition of Manitoba. One thing you never see in some of these stories is the 'background' noted at the bottom of the release:
BACKGROUND: 27 of Winnipeg’s 321 facilities (8.4 percent of the total) refused to answer questions about their wait lists. Centres were contacted between February 27 and March 3. The survey was not able to identify if any names were on more than one waiting list. Licensed family child care homes were not included in the study
I guess "licensed family child care homes" don't qualify as "child care by trained professionals in a reliable, licensed child-care setting".
Just to round things off from Winnipeg we have the report that the Province is looking to pay ex-childcare workers a $3,000 dollar bonus to lure them back into the industry. With the Province looking to fill 200 spots - that's $600,000 dollars for recruiting.
The province is hoping to fill about 200 vacant positions.
Last July, a significant increase in funding was promised to the child-care workforce to improve wages for child-care workers.
The minimum starting salary for early childhood educators was increased and now falls between $27,000 to $30,000 per year, the province confirmed.
Much of the money to support the increased wages was to flow from Ottawa, but this year's change in government in Ottawa has put future funding commitments in a state of flux.
Liberal Website joins the 21st century - kind of (en francais)
With the Liberal leadership race underway, I thought I'd drop by and see how they're making out with those memberships.
They've managed to put together an online membership application - but alas, like much of the Liberal party, it doesn't work. (Note: I tested it in Firefox, haven't tried IE as yet. If someone else wants to give it a whack in IE leave your results in the comments)
Surprisingly, not much luck with the donations page in Firefox either. I guess not too many people were paying attention to that seminar by American Democratic fundraiser Joe Trippi. If you want to collect money and memberships online, you might want to make sure it works.
Maybe if they post a picture of a plain brown envelope on the page, things will work better. It always worked for them in the past.
Update: tested membership page in IE as well - still no go. I suppose it still takes a special kind of person to join the Liberal party during a leadership race. Some things never change.
I can't wait for the Auditor General's first look at the $7 billion dollars sitting in unaccountable foundations created by the last thirteen years of Liberal administration.
I'm sure it's going to be very enlightening.
Best guess - it'll make Joe Volpe look like a frugal diner and David Dingwall will come across as a spendthrift - in comparison.
I bet this is one surprise a few people didn't see coming. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing the draft bill once it's tabled in the house this morning.
OTTAWA -- The Conservative government's proposed accountability act will include measures to merge ethics commissioners for the House of Commons and the Senate in a joint office with expanded powers, according to government sources -- a move that sets up a possible showdown with the Liberal-dominated appointed chamber.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President of the Treasury Board John Baird will be available in the Foyer of the House of Commons following the tabling of the Federal Accountability Act.
When: Tuesday, April 11 10:15 a.m. (EST)
Where: Foyer of the House of Commons Centre Block, Parliament Hill
Hopefully the House staff keep a defibrillator or two on standby - this could be rather traumatic for most Liberals.
Update: I think someone is getting pretty close to needing one of those defibrillators - Do not let Harper define us
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Richard Zednik scored the winning goal midway through the third period to give the Montreal Canadiens a 3-2 victory over the Ottawa Senators in National Hockey League play Monday in Montreal.
Zednik hadn't scored a goal in more than a month, but his goal at 9:27 of the third period turned out to be the game-winner as the Canadiens closed in on a playoff spot.
Montreal has 91 points to lie seventh in the Eastern Conference, and needs just one more win to clinch a playoff berth. The Canadiens have won nine of their last 10 games to tighten their grip on a post-season berth, with Zednik's goal helping the Habs defeat Ottawa for the second time in five days.
He mentioned two NDP MPs who were protesting out in front of Parliament - calling for the troops to pull out of Afghanistan. Should be interesting to find out who.
A grassroots child care lobby called "Code Blue"--named after the term for a medical emergency--has gained significant momentum in ridings, as labour unions, non-profit groups, municipalities, provincial ministers and volunteers get on board.
Campaigners have been actively organizing town hall meetings and writing letters in Conservative-held ridings, said Monica Lysack, director of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, a national organization leading much of the campaign.
One person's 'grassroots' is another's government funded lobby group.
For those who care to take some time and inform themselves prior to the debate, here are a series of links covering various issues. Extensive reading but worthwhile if you wish to get a better handle on the overall situation. I had a number of links from the CIDA website, but the site seems to be experiencing problems right now (at least for me)
Update: Despite all the public sources available, NDP Defence Critic Dawn Black continues to try and confuse the situation regarding command of the mission. (CTV Question Period) The sources below demonstrate that the mission was always to be a transition between Operation Enduring Freedom and ISAF. Initial timeframe for the change of operational control was to be spring of 2006, now estimated to be summer of 2006.
KABUL — Camp Julien, home to the majority of Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan over the past two years, will soon be gone. The camp, on the outskirts of the capital, Kabul, is being torn down, and will close in less than four months.
Originally built in early 2003, and opened in August of that year, it was designed to house up to 2,000 soldiers.
Now, roughly 700 Canadian soldiers and civilian support staff live at the base at any given time. In the coming months, they will complete the base closure, which is scheduled for Dec. 1.
The camp is also currently home to troops from Norway, Hungary, the United States, Turkey and Italy, who were given notice July 1 that they must vacate.
The decision to close the base was made in Ottawa in May, after the federal government decided to move Canada's military focus in Afghanistan to Kandahar, where a provincial reconstruction team is being established.
The team, made up of 250 soldiers, two RCMP officers and members of Canada's foreign affairs and international aid departments, will work with other NATO countries to secure the Kandahar region and attempt to rebuild some of its infrastructure.
By February, Canada also plans to send an additional 1,500 soldiers to set up a brigade headquarters and army task force in Kandahar. NATO in Afghanistan
From a man who struggles to speak English, and who was part of a government who saw the increase of greenhouse gas reach over 35 % instead of a decreae, we present:
But it's his long history as a vocal - some Quebec separatists might say obnoxious - defender of federalism that has earned the 50-year-old politician his biggest claim to fame.
Louis Massicotte, a University of Montreal professor and a former colleague of Dion, says the would-be prime minister's willingness to tackle sovereigntists head-on has meant he has never been popular in his home province.
"He has a direct style," said Massicotte, who taught with Dion for several years. "If you're wrong, he'll tell you. And not always gently."
Dion's announcement Friday that he wants to become Liberal leader in December came with a renewed commitment to the environment and sustainable development.
"Underlying our Liberal philosophy is a conciliation of two great human ideals: individual freedom and equal opportunity," Dion told supporters. "I propose we add another: a healthy environment."
Dion drew praise for his role at a recent United Nations conference for reaching an agreement among 157 countries to maintain commitments to cut greenhouse emissions beyond 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.
Pig in a poke.
I respect his conviction but I reject his big government approach and path. Canada can, and will be greener under a Conservative government. After 13 years of Liberal rhetoric on the environment, it's time for a change!
The chosen media label in recent days -- at least among the usual suspects at the CBC, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail -- is that Harper is pro-American or "George Bush Lite."
Trying to stereotype Harper as a suburban, chubby, serious and cerebral guy who watches his son at the rink and wears bad weekend clothes makes him seem too much like many Canadians.
But to suggest that he is a lapdog of America is a far more insulting label for Harper, at least if you believe the increasing number of stories about Afghanistan that imply this.
The mainstream media, especially the Liberal-friendly Toronto Star, are increasingly using the term "American-style" to describe even issues as remote as Harper's criminal justice policies.
Even the Globe and Mail's coverage of the throne speech mentioned the attendance of a war hero, a country singer and a famous artist as evidence that Harper was trying to "emulate the way the Americans deliver their state of nation address" by inviting distinguished people.
So, for your fun and pleasure in the Harper era I propose a new national drinking game. Every time the mainstream Left-Lib fawning media invoke America in the same breath as Stephen Harper, take a swig.It won't do much for you, except to help dull the annoying pain of what often passes for political journalism in Canada.
I think I'm going to head out tonight and give it a try. I'll let you know the results tomorrow. (late tomorrow!)
Jonathan Chevreau, Financial Post Published: Friday, April 07, 2006
The Conservative government yesterday invited Canadians to participate in Web-based consultation for the upcoming federal budget. It's asking citizens to email suggestions to budget2006consult@fin.gc.ca. But hurry, the April 19 deadline is less than two weeks away.
Boneheads 1. The person who authorized the untendered contract 2. The person who accepted the untendered contract 3. The government for continuing to hire "consultants" to advise the government on how to "sell" the governments own decisions to the people.
Hold a press conference, post it on the web, shout it from the street corner for all I care. We have a federal public service, start using it.
It's time for the government to get out of the advertising business and I would venture the polling business as well.
Kudos to Treasury Board President John Baird for putting a stop to this immediately.
Unfortunately, there will be more examples of this as the months and years go by. The government must remain vigilant and take the appropriate action immediately, even if it hurts. Evenutally, people will start getting the message.
Nice to know there are still some journalists out there with skeptical minds and willing hands. Winnipeg Sun columnist Tom Brodbeck decided not to accept at face value what was being presented to him and dug further. Good for him.
Make sure you bookmark this article. Print it out, email it to your family and friends.
There are more kids on waiting lists for licensed child care than there are child-care spots in Winnipeg, according to a recent study by a University of Manitoba professor.
It’s a great sound bite for the government child-care lobby that wants billions of dollars more poured into the not-for-profit, licensed child-care industry at the expense of all other child-care options.
And it’s one that was repeated again this week.
Unfortunately, the professor’s claims are completely bogus.
Mr. Brodbeck's diligence inspired me. Time to fire up Google and do a little bit more research. The University of Manitoba Professor he discusses in the article is Susan Prentice.
About the Author Dr. Susan Prentice is a professor of Sociology at the University of Manitoba.
Background The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba approached me in late 1999 with an invitation to write a report assessing the current state of Manitoba’s regulated child care system. Since there has been no comprehensive public overview of childcare in Manitoba since 1989, I welcomed the opportunity. I study and write about historical and contemporary childcare policy. I also participate in public education and childcare advocacy. From 1997 - 1999 I was the Manitoba representative to the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, and since 1994 I have been involved in the Child Care Coalition of Manitoba. Through these positions, as well as through my scholarship, my policy support for universally accessible, publicly-funded, high-quality, not-for-profit childcare has been a matter of public record.
This research report is unquestionably influenced by my values, but its substance is evidence about childcare in Manitoba over the past decade. These facts are observable and empirically verifiable, describing real phenomena. The data discussed in this report are matters for public concern and political action.
Acknowledgments Grateful thanks for various forms of assistance above and beyond the call to Pat Wege, Doug Martindale, Martha Friendly, Michelle Turiano, Gary Tomlinson, Glen Murray, Margaret Ferniuk, Kathy Reid, Gillian Doherty, the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, and two anonymous reviewers. I especially appreciate Marty Donkervoort’s generous fact- and number-checking and Claudia Scott’s outstanding childcare
Take a look at the names and organizations above and then check them against these two posts. A not so surprising amount of similarities occur between the two.
Further examples of taxpayer funded lobby groups using your tax dollars to lobby the government and influence public opinion.
One other thing to note as you read other articles in the future. Whenever you see the C.D. Howe Institute or the Fraser Institute mentioned you'll generally notice a qualifier - "right-wing". On the other hand, keep an eye out for every mention of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Every notice the qualifier - "left-wing" or government funded? Most often not.
Follow columnist Brodbeck's example and refuse to accept everything at face value. You'll be better off for it.
Unelected Liberal Senators invalidate election results (en francais)
What better way to bring Senate reform to the forefront? Whatever you can't accomplish in the House of Commons, use a bunch of unelected partisan hacks to do.
This may all turn out to be academic, as Flaherty has yet to table his budget, but the threat alone is very telling. The arrogance never ends. Liberals, elected or unelected, know what's best for Canada. Get used to it.
As more time goes on, I'm leaning towards the NDP's position of just scrap the damn thing altogether. One large blow for smaller government.
OTTAWA -- The federal Liberals are threatening to use their majority in the Senate to pressure Prime Minister Stephen Harper not to cancel income tax cuts brought in by the Grits before the election.
Funding research is necessary, though often enough controversial. Funding advocacy, lobbying or activism - whatever you want to call it - is not the governments job.
Mike De Souza, CanWest News Service Published: Thursday, April 06, 2006
OTTAWA -- Millions of dollars worth of research grants and subsidies to public daycare advocacy groups and researchers are under review, Human Resources and Social Development Minister Diane Finley indicated Wednesday.
"We're looking at all of the programs that are funded. Not just specific ones, but we're looking at all of them to make sure they're reasonable, and it's the responsible thing to do," she said in an interview. "I think that any new government needs to review and take an inventory of what programs it's providing and what funding it's providing and say: 'Are Canadians getting value for their taxpayer dollar?'"
Finley made the comments after Conservative government officials spent several hours behind closed doors with a parents group lobbying for grants and subsidies for daycare research to be slashed.
After obtaining figures from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office several weeks ago, the parents group has alleged advocates of public daycare are using money from government contracts to finance a campaign against the Conservatives' agenda. The Tories are trying to replace the national daycare program with a system of annual $1,200 allowances for children under six.
Helen Ward, president of the Vancouver-based Kids First Parent association of Canada, was optimistic the Conservatives had understood her concerns about funding the daycare groups.
"To me, it's part of their accountability concern," she said.
But advocacy groups and government-funded researchers were stunned by Ward's accusations.
"It's outrageous that they can make unfounded allegations -- put this stuff out there that's completely untrue, and have it appear that it's supported by the Prime Minister's Office," said Monica Lysack, executive director of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada. "This is really, really concerning to me as a Canadian."
After spending the last hour watching Belinda's press conference, reading all the various reports, I was all ready to hold forth in great detail. Then I read Joan Tintor's blog.
One thing that did strike me about Belinda's news conference. It's nice to see that she's so quickly adopted the Liberal mantra of arrogance - if it's good for the Liberal Party, it's good for Canada.
Today, with a conciliatory gesture, the PMO announced that there will be a Take Note debate on Afghanistan on April 10th. Both the Liberal Party and NDP have been asking to 'discuss' the current Canadian mission in Afghanistan.
In the CTV News report, we see Jack sticking with his most recent concerns - length of mission and cost.
Yet the CBC report sees a return to the practice of deliberately misleading statements:
"This is very important because things have changed," he said, referring to the mission.
"We were of course supposed to be operating under a NATO command. That has not happened. We are still a part of [U.S. President] George Bush's Operation Enduring Freedom.
"This is not what Canadians had imagined taking place. There are many issues to be discussed in the debate and we're glad it's taking place."
For those who haven't been following along, you might want to read through my last several posts on this issue.
Monday morning, the 10th, I'll post a comprehensive blog on all the publically available information from May of 2005 to present. Over the last several days I have been compiling a significant amount of information, some of which I have included in the posts above. I've drawn on a wide variety of public sources including Hansard, Department of Foreign Affairs, Department of Defence, NATO, United Nations, CTV news, CBC news and CIDA. I'll provide links in Monday's blog to all the various sources that I've drawn upon.
For those interested in watching the debate, keep a copy of Monday's blog post available. I'm curious to see how much information is and has been available versus what may come up in the debate.
Oh - for anyone who's interested. One question from the NDP on Afghanistan in today's Question Period, regarding the Prisoner Transfer Agreement. Apparently the NDP was under the impression that the Netherlands had negotiated a 'superior' transfer agreement. Minister of National Defence Gordon O'Connor promptly and clearly answered the question. (yet another unique Question Period quirk shown by the Conservatives today - they actually answered questions!)
Leave it to the Americans to pioneer a whole new genre. It's also a good example of how blogs are redefining how we live and interact with people, both online and offline. Cyber-bullying, Cyber-stalking, blogging at work, blogging about work are just some of the issues coming to the fore in the current digital world.
WASHINGTON — A judge Wednesday allowed a lawsuit to proceed against Jessica Cutler, the former Senate aide who posted details of her sex life on the Internet.
The case brought by Senator Mike DeWine's former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Robert Steinbuch, alleges that Cutler engaged in an invasion of his privacy in 2004 by publishing sexually explicit facts about a relationship with Steinbuch.
Cutler was fired from DeWine's staff after the web log -- which identified her purported sex partners by initials -- created a public sensation.
VENTURA, Calif. (AP) - A teacher who kept a 40-mm artillery shell on his desk as a paperweight blew off part of his hand when he apparently used the ammunition to try and squash a bug, authorities say.
The 13-centimetre-long shell exploded Monday while Robert Colla was teaching 20 to 25 students at an adult education class.
Part of Colla's right hand was severed and he suffered severe burns and minor shrapnel wounds to his forearms and torso, fire Capt. Tom Weinell said. No one else was injured. He was reported in stable condition at a hospital.
The teacher slammed the shell down in an attempt to kill something that was buzzing or crawling across the desk, said Fire Marshal Glen Albright.
Colla found the 40-mm round while hunting years ago and "obviously he didn't think the round was live," said Dennis Huston, who teaches computer design with Colla.
Welcome to the continuing saga of Jack Layton trying to justify his calls for an emergency debate on Afghanistan. The shame of this is that the MSM simply publishes his statements as fact and doesn't see fit to question anything. Has anyone in the MSM noticed his shifting justifications for the debate? I'll make it simple:
1. In the period from May to November 2005 there was not one call for debate on Afghanistan from Mr. Layton and the NDP. This period happens to coincide with the time that the NDP was propping up Paul Martin's minority government. A 'Take Note' debate held on Afghanistan was attended by two NDP MPs, neither of which was Jack Layton.
2. December 8th, 2005 - Jack Layton issues a statement during the election that infers that this is the first time the NDP has heard of a 'new' deployment to Afghanistan.
3. March 25th, 2006 - Jack Layton attempts to continue the myth that December 8th was news to the NDP and introduces another justification - the phantom "secret prisoner handover agreement".
4. March 31st, 2006 - a soldiers death in combat now seems to be justification for the debate.
"Canadians support our soldiers over there, and their bravery, and their commitment to this country, but they also want to know that their elected representatives have thought it through," Mr. Layton said.
Such a debate, he said, would give Canadians more information on issues such as the cost and nature of the mission and how long Canadians can expect to remain in the war-torn country.
"These are important matters, and really should be top of mind and the first items debated in the House," he said.
Now the issues are 'clarification' and 'cost'. No mention of the 'secret' prisoner transfer agreement, surprise deployment or combat deaths as justification.
Layton continues to try and reframe the issue to obtain a favourable image for his party. NDP Defence Critic Bill Blaikie was quite clear in the November debate:
This is certainly not peacekeeping. It might be called peace building, but it is more like war fighting. It is more like fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda and trying to maintain that state which has been established in the wake of the U.S. overthrow of the Taliban regime through the military activities of a coalition of the willing, of which Canada was a part. I do not think we have paid sufficient attention to the departure or the significance of the change in the role of the Canadian military that our activity in Afghanistan represents. Hon. Bill Blaikie (ElmwoodÂÂTranscona, NDP)
Quite simply, Jack Layton and the NDP dropped the ball in their opposition to the current Afghanistan deployment. From May to December of 2005 they remained virtually silent on the issue. There didn't seem to be an concerns of cost regarding the mission when the NDP was negotiating the extra $4.5 billion in spending from Paul Martin's minority government.
If there are any lingering issues regarding clarity about this mission, now would be a good time for Mr. Layton to step forward and acknowledge his part in fostering confusion.
The Conservative Party was on record as supporting this deployment. They focused their efforts during the last session on ensuring that the troops being deployed were doing so with the required equipment to fulfill their role.
The NDP's continuing calls for an 'emergency debate' on Afghanistan are nothing more than an attempt to cover up their own inaction on the issue during the past Parliament.
The first Question Period of the 39th Parliament begins tomorrow. If Jack Layton truly wants answers his two first questions should be regarding cost and time of deployment. They are valid questions and I would expect the Defence Minister to do his utmost to answer them. My guess is that his question will be something along the lines of "Why won't the government have a debate?". For once I hope I'm wrong, but I won't exactly be holding my breath.
An emergency debate is not required on Afghanistan, especially when the sole purpose seems to be to salve the conscience of the NDP for their past failings.
With the Liberal Party set to launch their Leadership race it looks like the battle of the membership forms will continue. Although they've expanded access to the forms, the process is still convoluted and ridiculous.
Should be interesting to see how long it takes the Liberal Party to get an online membership working. It's 2006 and you still have to go begging to join the Liberal party.
While the Liberals are off counting their forms and checking their opponents forms to ensure there are no counterfeits, why not take advantage of the time available.
With over 200,000 members at last report, the Conservative Party can continue their efforts at expanding their base.
What better answer to the Liberal Leadership hype than an announcement by the CPC that an additional 75 to 100 thousand people had joined the party. With 308 EDAs and a probable average of 25 directors per EDA, this should be an achievable goal.
Set a personal goal and go for it. I've set mine at 10 and sold my first membership yesterday.
Prime Minister needs to talk to Toronto Mayor about his salary (en francais)
Next time they review Parliamentary salaries, Stephen Harper might want to include "His Blondeness", Toronto Mayor David Miller on the committe. It's either that or Ottawa is going to start losing all it's best talent to Toronto. (until they go bankrupt that is).
In the wee hours before TTC fares rise across the board, the 2005 list of Toronto's top municipal earners -- released by the province last Friday -- shows the TTC's own $100,000-plus managers increased in number by 55% since 2003.
Toronto Public Library officials -- who regularly threaten at budget time to reduce library hours -- boosted their numer of six-figure managers 300% (from 13 to 39) since 2003.
It should also be comforting to city homeowners and transit commuters that Toronto city manager Shirley Hoy was paid $282,894 plus another $7,761.92 in taxable benefits last year -- totalling more than the $288,600 earned by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. TTC Chief General Manager Rick Ducharme came darn close at $260,480 in wages and $13,806.72 in taxable benefits.
The list of those who cashed in with six-figure salaries is 43 pages long. But here's a wee sample: William Falkiner, supervisor of the city-operated Don Valley Golf Course, made $105,051. The manager of the city's needle exchange program, Shaun Hopkins, earned $116,710.
H/T to Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy who continues to highlight the hypocrisy of the 'poor me' Toronto Mayor.
I wonder if Premier Dalton McGuinty and Finance Minister Dwight Duncan feel any better about that Toronto bailout now, knowing that some city employees are making more than them.
Every time the Province ponies up more cash for Toronto, we all pay for Mayor Miller's inaction.
Over the last several years I've noticed the supporters of the Gun Registry have consistently used figures such as those quoted in this article. Tony Cannavino, president of the police association claims over 5,000 requests are made to the registry every day.
My question is, how many of those 5,000 requests are accurate? This is a statistic that you NEVER hear. There was a brief article last summer stating that a couple hundred thousand registry renewals had been returned as undeliverable.
With billions of dollars being spent, what number do you think would be acceptable? 80%, 90% 95%?
Garbage in, garbage out. Bad data in the system can be just as dangerous as no data. For some people, it could be potentially even more dangerous. Have you moved into a new house in the last six months? Any idea if the previous owner had weapons registered?
I'm sure all of us, especially the Liberals, are looking forward to Auditor-General Sheila Fraser's report on the registry. Riveting stuff.
Harper gets praise, criticism from cops By JIM BROWN It was another story on the long-gun registry - the controversial Liberal creation that requires all shotgun and rifle owners to register their weapons.
Harper made only a passing mention of that issue, promising to use the money saved by abolishing the registry to hire more police.
But Tony Cannavino, president of the police association, later told reporters his group opposes the Tory plan to kill the registry and will fight for its retention.
"It's an important tool for our police officers," said Cannavino. "We have over 5,000 queries (to the registry) every day."
The association will try to persuade the Harper government to change its mind and will also lobby opposition MPs, said Cannavino.
"We'll see what's going to happen . . . I still have hope."
The police association, which represents rank-file officers, is not the only group to voice concerns. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has also promised to lobby against the dismantling of the registry.
Justice Minister Vic Toews was unmoved, insisting that "the gun registry has nothing to do with getting tough on gun crime."
"The way to get guns off the streets is putting people in prison who actually use guns for illegal purposes. The gun registry has been a dismal failure, a waste of taxpayers' money and a waste of peace officers' time."
The Conservatives have promised to retain the handgun registry that has existed for some 70 years. But they have long opposed the long-gun component, which has been plagued by cost overruns that drove its price tag to an estimated $2 billion over the last decade. (emphasis added)
I also wanted to note that it is only the long gun component of the registry that is being dismantled. Many Canadians don't realize this when they hear about the issue.
Parlvu - webcast of House of Commons and committee meetings. Mixture of audio and video. Good schedule of what/when anything will be broadcast
CPAC - streaming video of House and various other events. Several shows such as Prime Time Politics
How'd They Vote? - aims to be a non-partisan website which provides a variety of in-depth information on the operations of the Canadian Parliament, specifically, how our politicians vote and what they've said. We take the Hansards from the parliament website, and extract information on bills, members of parliament, votes, and speeches. The Hansards are an excellent resource, but it is not the mandate of the parliament website to fully index the Hansards and extract every nugget of interesting information from them. Government of Canada Newsroom - view releases online or subscribe with RSS
Canada Gazette - official newspaper of the Government of Canada My Government Account - quirky little feature. Once you're past the very annoying signup (Firefox users will get an error message - but the process still works), you have your own space to store links to various government websites/services.
It's always interesting to note who's sitting where when the new seating plan for a parliament is issued. Who gets camera time in the choice seats and who's relegated to the shadows of obscurity in the back corners.
While visiting my folks this weekend, my mom showed me a very interesting letter to the editor to the Saturday edition of the London Free Press that a school teacher in Seattle wrote.. interesting enough to me and I feel potentially of interest to the blogging community that I am posting it here... The letter is as follows:
I'm a 6th-grade social studies teacher from a public school district in Seattle, Wash. writing to request your assistance with a class project on Canada that I plan to introduce in April. Since 6th grade is the only year students in my district study Canada before graduating... I develop creative curricula that go beyond textbooks. I want students to become responsible global citizens with an appreciation for the complexities of the Canada-US relationship. My unit on Canada will provide traditional content about political and physical geography, culture, history, and climate. Students will also become 'reporters at large' assigned to follow regional news stories in Canada....
Through reader to reader, I'm hoping readers will write or email my class a 1 paragraph description about your community. A photograph, sketch, small artifact, magazine article or clipping would be greatly welcomed. My students would like to know how your community is culturally or geographically unique, what the economic or resource base is, what particular attributes it is known for, or what famous event or person is connected with your community.
I am making the same request of several newspapers throughout Canada and am hoping that most will participate. In emails, please use From Canada as the subject line so reply messages are not blocked. Let us know from which newspaper or publication you learned about our 'great learning conspiracy'. And please tell us how to pronounce the name of your comunity.
Thank You, Melinda Terry, Evergreen middle school 7621 Beverly Lane Everett, WA 98203 Melinda_Terry@everett.wednet.edu ----
Now I know she mentioned newspapers or publications is where she sent this letter to, but I dont think bloggers are restricted from sending stuff in to them, and saying you saw it on a blogging site would be perfectly fine (as well as making them aware about the political blogging community in Canada).
I hope some of you bloggers and/or readers will send something of interest to them. Its not often you get a US request for information on Canada every day, so here's your chance to do so and to help promote the community you live in.
I've sent my blurb on Windsor, Ontario - what about you?
Here's a good example of what I was talking about in my 'Letters to the Editor' post the other day:
Why childcare matters Most Western democracies including Australia, New Zealand, Britain and many other European countries have national child-care systems to support working parents, enhance child development and set the stage for lifelong learning. But in Canada, despite more than 30 years of grassroots activism and research pointing to the importance of investing in early childhood education, the federal government has not moved forward on the issue, she says.
Australia, New Zealand, Britian and the other European countries referred to in this piece all have various forms of public/private healthcare. Why is it we so dearly want to emulate these various countries national childcare systems but not their healthcare systems?
There is only one payer in all these discussions and the issues are all linked together. The more money we pour into the blackhole of bureaucratic, Soviet style rationed healthcare, the less money that is available for other initiatives.
Much wailing and moaning over this latest report on government programs. Makes me think of that old infomercial "Stop the Insanity". Hopefully this is the first step of a wide-ranging review of all government programs.
The Liberals have spent the last 13 years using your tax dollars to fund numerous advocacy groups who's main purpose is to lobby the government. Most times what these groups were advocating for was part of some phantom Liberal 'plan'.
The One Tonne Challenge was a dubious program at best. If we have committed $1.1 billion over the last 6 years to climate change, where are the results?
Environmentalists are worried that the new government, which they perceive as being hostile toward actions on climate change, is poised to slash global warming projects set up by the Liberals. The Liberals pledged about $1.1-billion to fight climate change from 2000 to early 2006.
Here are some good examples of the Liberal's past funding practices:
Case in point? Environment Canada gave the Sierra Club over $175,000 in "grants and contributions" to that lobby's British Columbia and Alberta branches in 2000 and 2001. According to ministry lists, much of the money Sierra received was "to support activities which contribute to the objectives of the Climate Change Action Fund." (The Sierra Club also received over $213,000 from the BC government when New Democrats were in charge.) In another example, the Alberta-based Pembina Institute, recently critical of Alberta Premier Ralph Klein for his Kyoto stance, received at least $230,000 in 2000 and 2001 from Ottawa to push the federal government's view of Kyoto.
But those two examples are the tip of the funding iceberg for green activists. Environment Canada's category dedicated just to pro-Kyoto activists (the "Climate Change Action Fund") disbursed $6.7 million in 2001. A complete accounting of how much money such groups receive from taxpayers is impossible to calculate; other federal ministries and every level of government in Canada also subsidize such activism. But Environment Canada itself handed out $51 million in grants and contributions last year. Some money probably goes to worthy environmental projects but much also goes to fund green activism. Thus, instead of federal politicians seeing a true indication of what Canadians think on environmental issues, the letters, faxes, e-mails and calls are driven in part by Environment Canada's agenda which just happens to support advocacy organizations which see issues in the same way as the federal bureaucracy.
Naturally, while such lobby groups receive government funds, it is of course easy for them to oppose and kill off development and the accompanying jobs in the country's mines, forests, and at the figs. But if forced to live in the real world and raise support there, many groups would wither up and die and lose their jobs Instead of being able to put others out of work. When governments fund lobby groups, it gives the public the mistaken sense that more Canadians support the views of such groups than might actually be the case. That is helpful to governments who may hold unpopular views or are themselves unpopular.
A provincial example of this occurred in British Columbia. Through out the 1990s, the New Democratic government funded the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), an organization with offices across the country who, not coincidentally, constantly press for higher taxes and more spending.
To say that a fair majority of Canadians would disagree with the Centre's heavily redistributionist policies is an understatement. The CCPA, which has tax-deductible status, is solidly in favour of higher taxes and more government intervention in the economy including, oddly, corporate welfare. (Curiously, its call for higher taxes, if implemented, would negatively affect high-income workers on the auto assembly line who are probably unaware their labour bosses at the Canadian Autoworkers Union also fund the group.)
In British Columbia, the New Democrat government in power between 1991 and 2001 funded the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives over the last decade to the tune of at least $410,231.10 And $200,000 of that was doled out in the last three months of the NDP's mandate in 2001. Freedom of Information requests to government reveal that in some cases the CCPA gave 25 copies of each study they produced to government ministries or Crowns in exchange for funding.
This enabled the Centre to argue that it performed contract work or sold goods and services to the government. What it did do, in fact, was charge several hundred dollars per report for 20-page opinion pieces produced by the Centre that were available free on its website.
These are just a few examples. I don't even want to think of the various advertising campaigns and polling conducted over the last 13 years. All of this activity created the sense that something was being done, when in actual fact the Liberals were simply playing a game of three card monte with taxpayers.
Sara at Choice for Childcare has some interesting numbers on the Childcare issue that demonstrates further examples of the government paying for advocacy:
How much do we really pay the daycare lobbyist? 1 -NOTE - some groups are listed more than once - do the math:
* Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada Ottawa Ont -- $204,526 * Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care Toronto Ont -- $110,000 * International Child Care Canada Inc Mississauga Ont -- $286,458 * Alberta Centre for Child, Family & Community Research Alberta Centre for Child, Family & Community Research -- $100,000 * BC Aboriginal Child Care Society West Vancouver BC -- $820,132 * Healthy Child Manitoba Winnipeg Man --$100,000 * Canadian Child Care Federation Ottawa --$310,000 * Canadian Institute of Child Health Ottawa Ont-- $110,695 * Our Children our Future Chelmsford Ont --$506,237 * Voices for Children Coalition Inc Montague PEI -- $212,286 * Canadian Child Care Federation Ottawa --$369,591 * Canadian Child Care Federation Ottawa --$750,000 * Child Welfare League of Canada Ottawa Ont --$200,000 * Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada Ottawa -- $160,251 * Child Care Connection - Nova Scotia Halifax NS -- $121,738 * Early Childhood Development Association of Prince Edward Island Charlottetown PEI -- $129,390 * Canadian Child Care Foundation Ottawa Ont --$199,969 ----------------------------- 2 This information was obtained by way of application under the Access to Information Act. Our request for information was made to the Women's Program at the Status of Women. I am not aware whether these child care lobbyists also received corporate or union funding. It is important to note, however, that these child care lobby groups have received funding from the Status of Women on a regular basis since 1983.
Ø Child Care lobby groups, such as the Canadian Child Care Federation, and the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, received $1,362,209 between 1992 and 2002. These organizations form the pressure group for a national child care plan as recently proposed and implemented by the former Liberal government.
In the fiscal year 2004 - 2005 these child care lobby groups received a further $483,753 from the Women's Program. This large grant was given during the time that the former Liberal government was negotiating with the provinces for a national child care program.
On February 16, 2006, the tax funded Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada launched a Canada wide campaign called "Code Blue" to lobby for and work with the provincial / territorial governments and parliamentarians to prevent the present Conservative government from cancelling the federal / provincial agreements on child care made last year by the former Liberal government.
It is significant that these child care lobby groups have the most to gain from a national child care plan since such a program would provide them with financial security by placing them on the government payroll with secure income and benefits.
I counted over $4.5 million dollars. They want to fund the spaces, $10,000 to $20,000 a year, open the center $40,000, subsidize the parents $14,000 a year and subsidize the workers first $$4,000 a year! The NDP want that plus the $1200 a year per child to go to every parent. That should shut up the stay at home parents. Well not this one!
Remember they say this is being built for every kid across Canada, even the ones who have stay at home parents. Why? Because they need to free the women! This information was given to me by Kids First REAL Woman of Canada
If you want to do some further research of your own, take a look at the amount of American money flowing into Canada from evironmental and animal rights groups. That's right - American money! The same greenbacks that various groups on the left raised a hue and cry about when the possible source of the money was the NRA or Christian advocacy groups. I guess some American millions are cleaner or better.
Another interesting avenue to look at is the number of non-profits and charities who have been contributing to the Liberal party, both National and at the EDA level, over the last 13 years.
If anyone's wondering just how all pervasive the "government will take care of us" mentality is becoming in Canada, this article represents a scary eye-opener. It's no wonder Canada's green house emissions have gone up since signing the Kyoto protocol, instead of going down. The average Canadian is waiting for the government to take care of things.
As long as we do things like heavily subsidize hydro (in Ontario) so that consumers don't see or feel the real costs, nothing will change.
VANCOUVER - Canadians care strongly about saving the planet, but wrongly believe that many of their fellow citizens don't, according to a new survey.
They blame inadequate information and a lack of government leadership for their own failure to behave sustainably while assuming that others are not really concerned, said James Hoggan, a public relations expert.
"They think, 'Well, why should I be the chump who behaves in a more environmentally friendly manner when no one else is?' But that's because they have this mistaken view that people outside their circle of friends really don't care. That's actually not true."
The survey shows that more than eight in 10 Canadians believe the government should enact stricter laws and regulations to support a more sustainable economy that protects and manages the country's resources for future generations.
They also want taxes shifted to those who pollute and deplete natural resources, and double GST slapped on gas guzzlers to fund tax rebates for fuel-efficient vehicles.
The findings were characterized by Hoggan as both a wake-up call and a leadership opportunity for government and business. He said advocates of sustainable business practices "are guilty of talking to themselves a lot" instead of reaching out to the public who drive public policy and consumer patterns.
"One of the key problems that we have in Canada is that Canadians do one thing and say another," Hoggan said in an interview. "Anybody who is trying to advocate sustainable behaviour should try to weave in the message that Canadians actually do care."
He said the survey demonstrates that the great majority of Canadians want the economy to be successful today while sustaining the country's environmental, economic and social resources for future generations.
Asked why Canadians don't behave more sustainably, 48 per cent blame government leadership first. More than seven in 10 Canadians surveyed agree with the statement: "If everyone in the world lived the consumer lifestyle we enjoy in North America, we would destroy the planet."
Hoggan also said companies and organizations need to do a better job of explaining the term "sustainability," which is defined as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
The survey is part of the Sustainability Research Initiative led by James Hoggan & Associates, a public relations agency extensively involved in environmental and sustainability issues, and the Globe Foundation, which promotes the $1.1 trillion international business of the environment.
Michael Ignatieff
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