Tag Archives: Conservative Party of Canada

Canada’s Promise?

Posted on by
Reply
Share this post:

The Conservative Reform Alliance Party candidate in my riding, incumbent Kyle Seeback, has recently been touting a Party line about “Bringing Home Canada’s Promise” This Common Scents Party claims, and I quote from their online site, that Canada’s Promise is: “All who work hard get a great life in a beautiful home on a safe street protected by strong borders and military under our proud flag.“ Whoa! Did we just suddenly teleport to the land of make believe south of our previously unprotected border?

Fellow Canadians, old and new, you may want to read that “Promise” again. First, I can assure you it was never made to our First Nations. Secondly, I don’t ever recall that promise being recited in school, or taught in any citizenship class, or sung by Anne Murray or Celine Dion or Bruce Cockburn (still living), or Gord Downie or Leonard Cohen or Gordon Lightfoot (forever would not have been enough) in the verses of any song, I know a lot of people who worked hard their entire lives and ended up with a whole lot less that a “great life in a beautiful home, etc.” and still loved Canada. If Canada ever made a promise to any of us, it was this: “I will bring you long winters cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”

The promise that all who come to Canada to live and study and work and perhaps raise a family in a welcoming community was a hope really. A hope that we could live in a country where, if we worked hard and contributed our skills, we would be respected and cared for, be protected by the laws of the land applied fairly to everyone, and that our government would endeavour to act in our best interests in times of peace and war. If we studied hard, worked hard, and cared for our communities, we would find adequate shelter, sustenance, safety. And maybe, just maybe, time to express our creativity, and find love and friendship In our communities.

Dear Mr. Kyle Seeback, you claim that Canada is broken and needs to be fixed, You claim that you can bring home Canada’s Promise. I think that you need to stop parroting Mr. Poilievre, and that Mr. Poilievre needs to put his glasses back on for a reality check.

You see gentlemen, despite the hype of your “create a crisis” press releases, Canada is not broken. The promise of Canada is alive and well and living in Dufferin-Caledon, standing right beside you in the person of Malalai Halimi, the Liberal Party of Canada candidate running to be our next MP. That’s a promise.

The way I see it.

WTF Moments in Life

Posted on by
Reply
Share this post:

 

Prior to the April 21/25 release of my editorial on Pierre Poilievre, I felt compelled to insert a recent experience with a Caledon resident. I had been at a local clinic getting therapy for my knee (the joys of walking a border collie on icy sidewalks) when another client came to the front desk, She had apparently just finished a massage therapy session and was waxing eloquent about the health benefits of massage.

Standing beside her at the counter, I made a friendly observation that, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a government would include a once a month massage as a basic health benefit?”

To which she commented, “Yes, as long as it’s not a Liberal government!”

WTF!

To which I replied, “That’s not an answer. That’s an invitation to debate. I’ve done a fair bit of research on Pierre Poilievre, and do you think that the Party that has promised to kill Pharmacare, Dental Care, and School Lunch Programs is going to give us the benefit of a monthly massage therapy treatment?”

She grew agitated, took her receipt off the counter and left, muttering under her breath that “Carney is shady.”  What that comment had to do with our exchange about the benefits of massage therapy being included in basic health care,  I have no idea. But the facts remain the same. The government most likely to care for Canadian’s health benefits would be either New Democratic, Green, or Liberal. It sure wouldn’t be Conservative no matter how long you’ve voted for them in the past. Thems’s the facts.

The way I see it.

The Woman Who Would Not Give Up

Posted on by
3
Share this post:

I had fully intended that my first feature article of 2025 would be a continuing dissection of the Conservative Reform Alliance Party. It will have to wait until Easter Monday. I had an unexpected encounter with a political candidate and her community of supporters that completely changed my priorities list.

They had organized a volunteer celebration in Bolton at the Allan Drive Middle School park. I walk our dog around the perimeter twice a day (on leash and stoop and scoop), so I thought I’d check it out. When our district was Wellington-Grey-Dufferin-Simcoe, Liberal Murray Calder was MP from 1993 to 2004.  Then the boundaries were changed to create Dufferin Caledon and since then it has been considered one of the top ten safest CRAP seats in the country. Why would a neophyte candidate with an Afghan name even consider a run for the Liberal Party of Canada in such a difficult riding?

And then I met Malalai Halimi. And I understood why. This is her story.

In 2006, a young Malalai and her husband made the difficult decision to emigrate from Afghanistan. They arrived in Canada in November and were welcomed by winter, Over the next several years she coped with all the pressures of learning English through ESL classes, graduated from high school, found employment as an Office Administrator at an Aerospace company, and raised a growing family.

After her third child was born, Malalai found that her marriage had grown increasingly difficult to manage and was heading for divorce. She packed her three children into an old Honda Civic, loaded up some basic provisions and left her home in Vaughan. She had $95.00 in her pocket and no family support network. For months, they slept in the car, parking in empty lots for the night, moving around constantly. They used local Community Centres for showers, libraries for reading, and food banks for sustenance.

When their family home in Vaughan became vacant, Malalai and the children were finally able to return. Slowly her life began to come back into balance. She continued to work hard to protect her family. Her life became an endless cycle: get up at 5:00 am, drive the kids to daycare and school, drive to work, pick the kids up from daycare and school, and study. Repeat, every day. This takes a special kind of courage. Her only goals were to study and to care for her family.

She never stopped fighting to achieve those goals,

At Aerospace she continued to evolve, moving from Office Administrator to Production Coordinator, Production Manager, and now Business Manager. Her work ethic and abilities paid off, and her financial discipline finally enabled her to find a home in Orangeville She moved her family there in June 2022. She continues to work for the Aerospace company, and in 2024 started her own media network that now has 50,000,000 viewers  globally across all media platforms.

Now the unstoppable Malalai Halimi is running to become the Member of Parliament for Dufferin-Caledon. When we finished our interview, I asked Malalai one last question: “After everything you have been through, finally just having settled peacefully in beautiful Orangeville, what made you decide to run against an incumbent Conservative in this very conservative riding?”

She answered instantly and passionately. “Because a Conservative government would cancel all the programs that saved my life and the lives of my children. They would cancel School Food Programs, Pharmacare, and Dental Care. The Conservatives voted against the Bill that will provide food programs to every school by 2025. I want to make sure that no vulnerable families will be hurt. We need action from our side of the table. At present, there is no strong voice in Dufferin-Caledon.”

I came home after that interview and put up my Malalai Halimi lawn signs. If we have to go into battle with the MAGA’s to the South, I don’t want a maple syrup MAGA in charge of the country. And right here in Dufferin-Caledon, we will have a very real choice between a woman who knows how to fight with all her heart for the protection of our community and our children, or the same old lawyer politician.

The woman who would not give up looks like a very good choice. The way I see it.

(Note: Malalai is pronounced mah lah ligh) Her mother told her she was named after Malalai of Mariwand, one of the greatest folk heroes in Afghan history. She fought alongside Ayub Khan and rallied the Pashtun fighters to victory in The Battle of Mariwand July 27, 1880.)

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome Back

Posted on by
1
Share this post:

Dear Readers,

After taking a break for two years to focus on health and family, I have decided to come out of hibernation. From the annexation of Crimea to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, from the attacks of Hamas to the extermination of Palestine by Israel, from the humanitarian crises from Sudan to Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, Congo, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, South Sudan,  and Chad, we are witnessing koyaanisqatsi – a Hopi term signifying life out of balance.

Now we have the chaos south of our previously comfortable borders seeping into our mythologically polite Canadian lives. Truskland, as I have renamed the political real estate to our south (Google has not agreed, yet) is now a perfect example of what happens when you let the idiotes (check the original Greek) take over mission control. This new gargantuan political pandemic may turn out to be more dangerous than our recent battle with a tiny virus.

Canada faces a critical decision in the coming weeks. We can either elect the person who would be the next Prime Minister of Canada, or we can elect the person who would be the Governor of the 51st State.

My first official return blog will be published on April 13, two weeks before the election. It is titled: Beware the Pierre, the Man Who Would be Governor. And I quote: “Trump’s invitation to become the 51st State is like a blow to the head from a metal pipe is an invitation to nap.”  Thank you, CBC Debaters.

Elbows up. Canada Strong. The way I see it.

Earth Day, April 22, 2021

Posted on by
Reply
Share this post:

 This Monday I had the great pleasure of being interviewed by Patricia Ogura for the Retired Teachers of Ontario organization. Her brief article is about the quest for environmental literacy and the contribution that the retired educational “elders” can make for our communities and our planet. We spoke about my years of advocacy, and reflected on the need to keep this Earth Day message positive. The truth is, we’re all going to die.

I reflected back to my first Earth Day walk with my students in 1970. How much has changed in fifty-one years? Turns out, not a lot. The most significant impact for environmental improvement has been the arrival of a deadly virus that dramatically slowed manufacturing and transportation pollution. The COVID-19 pandemic also reduced air travel and ocean travel – atmospheric air quality improvement and whale population resurgence followed in the wake of human inactivity.

Fifty-one years later we are still talking about boomerang lunches and taking our own reusable mugs and shopping bags as if we had just discovered these personal actions. A TV show this morning showed children happily making art from recycling box items. Makes us feel personally good for one day, and then it’s back to the shopping mall to buy more “stuff” that will end up in  the recycling box or garage can.

Dear readers, think of this like the solutions for stopping the pandemic. You stop the opportunities for person-to-person transmission: mask, distance, wash hands, and keep to small family/personal bubbles. Period. The vaccines will only work if all those basic steps are followed. Do we want to save humanity and leave a healthy biosphere on the planet? Then humans need to stop consuming the planet’s resources like we have an additional six planets waiting in reserve. There is no vaccine for human stupidity.

Before it was disbanded by Stephen Harper, Canada had a wonderful Science Council made up of real practicing, published and peer reviewed scientists. They advocated for turning Canada from a Consumer to a Conserver Society. That is anathema to the Conservative mindset. Just recently the Conservative Party of Canada voted at their policy Convention NOT to acknowledge the reality of Climate Change. That is how far we have come in fifty years. One step forward, two steps back.

Wonderful groups from Students on Ice to Ontario Nature try their best to educate a concerned and passionate youth about using their voices to inspire change in their communities. In 1990, we had teen Severn Suzuki shaming adults on the world stage at Rio. In 2005, the Students on Ice delegation was included in the Montreal Biodiversity Convention – that UN agreement was shredded a year later by Stephen Harper. In 2020 we had teen Greta Thunberg shaming adults during her global protest tour. Good work children! Pat on the head and back to big business.

My conversation with Patricia was honest. We do these personal role modelling efforts – walk, cycle, electric car, reusable materials, sustainable renewable energy sources, doing business with ethical companies, living elegantly with less, so that we can look our children and our neighbours’ children in the eye and say, “I tried my best.”

In the meantime, in business and politics, the Economy trumps Ecology every time … until there is an overshoot and biological collapse of some major Earth system. That’s when the punch that was predicted thirty-one years ago by the World Meteorological Organization hits us right in the face: “Humankind is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, all-pervasive experiment on the atmosphere of Earth, the consequences of which will be second only to global nuclear war.” Unanimous concluding statement from WMO, Toronto, 1988

Happy Earth Day 2021. I’m taking my dog for a walk and smiling, behind my mask, at my good neighbours.

The way I see it.

***

Skid Crease, Caledon