Monthly Archives: April 2025

Ignorance & Stupidity vs Environmental Literacy

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Ignorance: 1. the condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uniformed;

2. willful neglect or refusal to acquire knowledge which one may acquire and it is their duty to have.

Stupidity: 1. the condition of being slow to learn or understand

2. a tendency to make poor decisions or careless mistakes;

3. describing actions or decisions marked by a lack of intelligence or care

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The five pillars of Environmental Literacy are:  Awareness, Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills, and Action. In order to be environmentally literate, one must be very well informed, able to see the patterns that connect, and able to ruthlessly fact-check. The sources used for assembling that knowledge must be legitimate practising, peer reviewed, and published – the 3Ps. Otherwise we will get garbage in, garbage out.

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Which begs the question, dear adult voters living in Dufferin-Caledon: Why would we re-elect Kyle Seeback? Why, after knowing that the last MP who actually did anything significant for us was when we were represented by farmer Murray Calder, a Liberal MP who held the position from 1993 to 2004 when our riding was rearranged to become Dufferin-Caledon. Then a conservative lawyer, David Tilson was elected. Tilson was a former Progressive Conservative MPP who had joined the anything but progressive Conservative Reform Alliance Party. David Tilson served as MP from 2004 to 20019, spending most of that decade warming his political briefs on the backbench. He did virtually nothing for Dufferin-Caledon.

Mr. Tilson was succeeded in 2019 by Kyle Seeback, another conservative lawyer who has also warmed the backbench, again doing nothing significant for Dufferin-Caledon and Canada as a member of a hostile, divisive opposition party.

Yes, Dufferin-Caledon needed a change all right. We are entering an era of economic and political threats from the USA President, we are entering an era when the old spectre of western separatism is being stoked by far right conservatives, and we are already immersed in an era of global social and environmental upheaval. We needed someone who would fight for our security and sovereignty, not another bench warming Conservative Reform Alliance Party lawyer.

The way I see it.

 

The Morning After the Night Before

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Dawn rose on a new Canada this morning. Instead of the Conservative majority predicted by pollsters at the start of the campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney wins his seat and the government of Canada will be Liberal. One of the greatest reversals of fortune in Canadian political history. To add insult to injury, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre loses his seat and a place in the House of Commons. Didn’t see that one coming.

New Democrats lose their Party Status, and Jagmeet Singh also loses his seat and graciously gives up his leadership as soon as a successor can be chosen. Elizabeth May, so-leader of the Green Party wins her seat and a place at the table. While votes in close races are still being tabulated it appears at this point that we have a Liberal minority that will need every vote from the few NDP, Green, and Bloc seats to advance their agenda.

We are going to need a united front to deal with the Trumpian threats from the south, yet it appears unlikely that a bitterly disappointed Conservative Party will be anything but the obfuscaters and obstructionists they have been for the last ten years. If you look closely enough you may see that the “lost decade” as Mr. Poilievre calls it, really had nothing to do with ten years of Liberal governance. There were global financial crises, global health pandemics, and the rise of far right politics that gave the stamp of approval to nasty, divisive behaviour.

The Conservatives frequently liked to state that because of Liberal policies, Canada was ranked last of the G7 countries in terms of GDP. True, but what they didn’t clarify was that Canada also has the smallest population of the G7 countries. When you look at the rankings, each country’s place in the list corresponds exactly with its population.

So, when we calculate how Canada is doing using GDP per capita as our guide, lo and behold, Canada comes out in #1 spot at $38,000 per person. The USA and UK are next at $35,000, Germany at $34,000, Japan at $33,000, France at $31,000. and Italy at $29,000. Gee whiz, Conservative Reform Alliance Party, you’ve been lying to us for the last ten years! Shame. Canada is actually #1 in the G7. Not last, NUMBER ONE.

And you never told us that the real reason that house prices and inflation went out of control was caused by a global financial crisis, and greedy developers, land speculators and real estate agents who all got richer while most us us got quite a bit poorer. Very little to do with our government. Dear Conservative Party, please tell all those young Gen Z people who flocked to the size of your rallies, your seductive sloganeering, and your rabble-rousing rhetoric that you’ve been pulling the proverbial wool over their eyes.

When the forces from the South come looking to plunder the richness of our lands, and when the next election comes, we are all going to need to see very clearly.

The way I see it.

WTF! They Resurrected Stephen Harper?

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The Conservative campaign must be in trouble. The Party has decided to resurrect their old, retired leader Stephen Harper to become the new voice and face of their media campaign. Poor Pierre Poilievre was even absent from the last few commercials, on the bench for a bit while Harper and two colonial golfers filled in for him.

The question is “Why would you bring back the most reviled leader in current Canadian history to lead you to victory in this 2025 election?”

Here are quotes from John Ibbitson who was Harper’s sympathetic biographer:

“There has never been a Prime Minister as utterly contemptuous of people outside his voting coalition as Stephen Harper.”

“Harper had so wanted to destroy the Liberal Party, to reshape Canadian politics along American or British or Australian lines, with a dominant party of the centre right.”

“Harper paid a political price for the robocalls affair, as he deserved to. His own secretive, suspicious nature and his relentless determination to do everything within the legal limit to discredit and defeat his opponents created the win-at-all-costs culture.”

 

 

“No prime minister in history and no political party have been loathed as intensely as Stephen Harper and the Conservative party.”

And the legacy continues … like father, like son

The way I see it.

Weaponizing Research by Pierre Poilievre

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This article is NOT by Pierre Poilievre. It is about how Poilievre took a Government of Canada research paper on predictions of possible changes in the course of our lives over the next few decades and turned it into a “create a crisis” moment, His weaponization of the Policy Horizons Canada Report proved once again why he is unfit to lead this country.

You may have seen the usual media suspects trumpet Poilievre’s panic about a “dystopian society” report released by the Liberal Government that proved everything little PP warned us about would be coming true by the year 2040. Unless, of course, we elect a Conservative Reform Alliance Party government in four days. “It’s the countdown to Armageddon,” squawked Chicken Little.

Except it isn’t. First, the Horizons Canada  Report is issued by the Canadian Government which is composed of Bloc, NDP, Conservative, and Liberal MPs. It is not a report issued by any particular political party. Secondly, The Report, Parts 1 and 2, is titled Future Lives: Exploring Life Course Transformations.

It clearly states in the preamble: “Policy Horizons Canada does not represent the views of the Government of Canada …. readers are encouraged to use this report to test their assumptions about the future.” Pierre, please read the report as an intellectual exercise in futures possibilities for your life course. And make sure your brain is informed before putting your mouth in gear.

The researchers who write the report use nine Forces of Change intersecting with six Life Course components and make a futures projection to the year 2040. The nine Forces of Change include categories like longer lifespans, data and AI systems influence, economic insecurity for most but economic security for few, and rising anxiety due to existential threats like accelerated climate change. They get meshed with Life Course components like education, living arrangements, reproduction and labour to create a possible future.

I’ll bet Pierre Poilievre didn’t see Donald Trump’s terrible tariffs attack derailing his Life Course plans, or the ascendancy of Mark Carney taking away his favourite Liberal target. When the Conservative Party recently replaced Poilievre in their commercials with former leader Stephen Harper, did Pierre suddenly see his own dystopian future unfolding?

 

Let’s hope that Canadians can see that their decisions in the upcoming federal election will transform everyone’s Life Course plans. We are living in interesting times. If we choose wisely on April 28, 2025, we could still be living in Canada the next day.

The way I see it.                                                             

 

Setting the Record Straight

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Driving home this morning in my holier than thou hybrid, I heard a CBC radio news item that stunned me. The anchor was broadcasting President Trump’s latest tariff musings about punishing Canada, and how Trump thought it would be easier to deal with Canada as the 51st State, and how (PM Justin) “Trudeau said that without the US, Canada would be a failed nation.” Then the President added that he didn’t want to interfere in the federal election. This is what my wife would call an “Oh Really?” moment.

But worse than Trump’s comments about his plans for Canada, “as a State, it works great … As a nation…it doesn’t make sense,” was CBC’s silence about the comment alleged to have been uttered by our then Prime Minister, They did not dispute the “failed nation” statement that Trump claimed was made by Prime Minister Trudeau, and didn’t clarify that PM Trudeau did not utter those words. CBC just let it play right into the next newsbyte.

It left the impression that our Prime Minister, a Liberal, the defender of Canadian sovereignty, had said that without the USA, Canada would be a failed nation. Had it been true, that would have been quite a smear to leave on the Liberal Party legacy at a time when the upcoming federal election is only days away. So let me do what the CBC should have done.

Prime Minister Trudeau  NEVER made that statement. I know because I was privileged to have a one on one interview with Justin Trudeau after he returned from that infamous Mar a Lago Thanksgiving dinner. I took detailed notes. Here is the summary.

Concerned over the initial tariff threats, Prime Minister Trudeau had flown to Florida November 29, 2024, to immediately begin discussions with President Trump. He pointed out that massive tariffs would do great harm to the Canadian economy, and how it would ease Trump’s “border concerns” if he had a prosperous,stable, equivalent partner on the northern border, unlike the problem Trump was having on his southern border.

Trudeau basically told Trump that it would be bad for the US economy and security to apply massive tariffs which could collapse the Canadian economy. That was when President Trump proposed that Canada simply become the 51st State. Our Prime Minister replied “That is not going to happen.”

Keep in mind this was not a closed door hardball negotiations meeting. This was an informal  discussion, frequently jovial, at an American Thanksgiving dinner party including many other guests. At this point, Governor Doug Bergum of North Dakota said: Maybe we just want the oil producing, conservative provinces – Alberta and Saskatchewan. An unidentified guest jokingly added: We’d trade you California for them. Prime Minister Trudeau replied, also jokingly, that we’d take California and Vermont for them.

During this trade jokes exchange, President Trump was silent, did not engage in the banter, and quickly changed the subject.

That is the end of the notes from my interview with Justin Trudeau. However, in looking back at my journals from that time, I noted that on November 30, 2024 in some of his tweets on X (formerly known as Twitter) President Trump began to refer to Prime Minister Trudeau as Governor Trudeau, and continued his musings publicly about Canada becoming the 51st State.

Clearly President Trump didn’t get the message about respecting a prosperous, stable, equivalent partner. Just as clearly, Prime Minister Trudeau simply pointed out to the President, as every politician in Canada has done since, that massive tariffs could collapse the Canadian economy. No talk of a failed state, no talk of dependence on America, simply a discussion about the impact of massive tariffs on Canada.

Next time CBC, when someone talks dirt about our leaders, wash out their mouths with some media literacy soap, and set the story straight. The way I see it.