At The Gods of the Copybook Headings:
Your tax dollars at work:
In the fall of 2012, the District of Mission undertook an integrated planning initiative for its Downtown which resulted in the Mission City Downtown Action Plan. The Plan, which was made possible through $150,000 provided under the federal Gas Tax Fund, provides policies and a list of priority actions organized as discrete capital projects intended to improve the public spaces. In addition, the plan provides practical tools and incentive opportunities intended to support existing businesses and attract future downtown investment....
This is how self-government erodes. In small and unnoticed ways for ostensibly worthy causes. While everyone else is worried about NSA surveillance, small town governments, once bastions of a free society, become steadily co-opted by the federal establishment. Whether Big Brother is listening may not matter very much if he's already doing everything else.
Do we worry about NSA surveillance in Canada?
We had better. The IRS is just a big sister to Revenue Canada.
I'm sure Cisis is good buddies with the NSA.
All the better to confiscate those guns you know. Legal or not. In Alberta they are now impounding & selling cars from"road Rage" persons before tier trial.
High River tells its own tale.
You beat me to it, Gary.
How there can be a connection between Mission, B.C. and the NSA is beyond my comprehension.
Guess that's how conspiracy theories are formed. Take two unrelated events and, voila, we's opressed.
Has anyone ever seen a politican pass on a blank cheque book? It never happens! Our regional district recently floated one of those APP (Alternate Approval Plans) to finance the local PAWS charity(animal shelter). 10% of the population has to hunt down a petition during August to register their 'no' ballot. You cannot get more cynical than that!
People are signing petitions in droves not because they are necessarily against animal welfare but because they fear what comes next. RUmours that PAWS is paying $1000 per month to maintain a 12 year old dog with cancer is not helping their cause. (No euthanasia policy)
Federal money for roads was an east of the Ottawa River thing until Harper came to power. Instead of cutting off the east, the west got in. Federal money for local issues is stupid. The federal gas tax is stupid.
Unless we starve the beast, it will devour us all.
Bureaucracy is a cancer that proliferates on tax dollars.
As it grows, society dies.
Parasites do not cultivate or promote a healthy host.
And somehow the current government wisdom is, that the voluntarily nonproductive can best decide how production will occur.
Having never produced a product or built a thing, somehow makes our bureaucrats the experts, as to how things shall be built and how people shall best use their own time.
Luckily for the 20 year olds I think its gonna grind to a halt soon. We are out of other peoples money and ignoring the irrelevant authorities.
Southpark, was not satire, more of an observation of our society. Respect my authority... indeed.
You folks just aren't familiar with the BC community charter which forces local governments to submit detailed community plans to Victoria if they wish to get any cash from the province. Of course the bureaucrats submitting the plans are drinking the same koolaid as their brethren on the island and you get the Stalinist 5 and 10 year plans we witnessing that are based on Agenda 21 BS.
Stephen Harper and his cult are the most nefarios enemies of freedom Canada has had since Trudeau and his cult.
While I may not go as far as LAS, there are legitimate concerns regarding the direction of this government. I believe, at the very least, its been taken over by the Red Tory faction. At the worst, Liberals are operating within the party, because the current LPC has veered much too far towards the NDP, and those Libs needed a home, no matter how temporary. In either case, the end game for the Tories right now is keeping Ontario, and we all know how nutty Morontario is. Giving up your soul to appease the indifferent is not a winning strategy
I GET that the Pony and Hairface are not alternatives. But, the conservatives have been anything but, since being elected.
The CBC isn't gone, let alone cut, with James Moore speaking whisically about the Ceeb (?!?!?!), government spending is up 18%, and the Tories have taken it upon themselves to attack various Canadian businesses and corporations, rather than unions.......shades of a late 80s conservative government that lost its way........
"Pleasing your enemies does make them your friends"
While I may not go as far as LAS, there are legitimate concerns regarding the direction of this government. I believe, at the very least, its been taken over by the Red Tory faction. At the worst, Liberals are operating within the party, because the current LPC has veered much too far towards the NDP, and those Libs needed a home, no matter how temporary. In either case, the end game for the Tories right now is keeping Ontario, and we all know how nutty Morontario is. Giving up your soul to appease the indifferent is not a winning strategy
I GET that the Pony and Hairface are not alternatives. But, the conservatives have been anything but, since being elected.
The CBC isn't gone, let alone cut, with James Moore speaking whisically about the Ceeb (?!?!?!), government spending is up 18%, and the Tories have taken it upon themselves to attack various Canadian businesses and corporations, rather than unions.......shades of a late 80s conservative government that lost its way........
"Pleasing your enemies does NOT make them your friends"
Here's a typical budget for one of these projects:
$20,000 .. Sign design, conceptualization, focus group
$110,000 .. Sign construction, deployment
$15,000 ... Sign removal
$5,000 ... Sign recycling
next step ... apply for grant for sign deployment evaluation
Typical sign:
THESE SIGNS WERE PLACED UNDER A GRANT FROM THE
MINISTRY OF SIGN DEPLOYMENT and will be removed
UNDER A GRANT FROM THE MINISTRY OF SIGN REMOVAL
Rufus Porkbarrel, M.P. -- Your government working for (unreadable)
"...Bureaucracy is a cancer that proliferates on tax dollars...
Let me finish that sentence for ya
...stolen, extorted or coerced from a complacent, cowardly and comfortable population."
Further to DanBC's comment, I was called a few days ago by a woman identifying herself as "The Conservative Party". (Call ID said she was "Unknown", but that's another matter.) Her message was simple and direct - "if we don't support Stephen Harper, we will get Justin Trudeau and MARIJUANA!!!!!". When I politely tried to explain to her that I felt that one reason Stephen Harper and the Conservatives were getting less favorable press than JT's crew might be because the Conservatives are being reactive rather than proactive, she simply hung up.
So if anyone reading this has connections to the Conservatives, pass along to the back room boys - the people who voted for you expected better than we are getting.
That is hilarious and completely totally predictable. The Tories have been rewarded for failure and now they are giving more of what they were rewarded for. I didn't expect them to embrace 'REEFER MADNESS' -levels of self-parody. Oh man, it's going to get worse and they are going to get pasted next election if JT is half-way competent. Which I'm pretty sure he is.
The blame lies with the global urban planning schemes that are a directive straight from the UN dictators. Right now the UN is investigating Canada's treatment of aboriginals. In March they produced a damming report in Geneva on the growing poor and hungry of Canada, shaming us before the entire world. It's these unelected global UN dictators that call the shots for the entire globe-submit or pay the price. The Prime Ministers and Presidents of the world are middle managers at best. National sovereignty died with the new millennium.
unjobs.org/items/367263076963205122
tinyurl.com/b6zl4dz
The gradual loss of the principle of subsidiarity (local governments as a subsidiary of the Provinces, as with Provinces to the Feds) has occurred in an environment of general ambivalence by the public. It has also occurred with the formation of organizations such as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities whose past presidents included the late Jack Layton. What we have now is local government politicians bored with what they should be concerned about (limiting their genius to sewer, water, garbage etc), acting as if they should be running provincial or federal areas of responsibility without expending the effort of being elected to such. The Provincial or Federal politicians feel the need to placate these folks, particularly the Liberals and NDP as local politicians provide much of their future gene pool. The Conservatives, having thrown a bone or two to their base, has to act like their slightly more progressive adversaries because you can't stay elected with 40% of the popular vote forever without playing in their pig pen and acting accordingly.
And yet you admire his son, knowing the nuts don't fall far from the tree
A number of people have claimed this borders on unconstitutional. Fine, but consider that the Constitution limits the ability of municipalities to raise funds. They cannot, for instance, impose civic sales taxes. This has been a bone of contention for years as civic infrastructure deteriorates and civic politicians have demanded assistance, noting that there is indeed just one taxpayer. So the feds committed some years ago to supporting municipal infrastructure through the gas tax - precisely what the mayors and councils have been asking for.
The author claims this is pork-barrel vote-buying to prop up a shaky Tory MP. Well, if less than $5 a head is enough to buy the vote of anybody here, speak up, will you?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Co-opting small town governments is the plan for Agenda 21 - when the national government is on line with agenda 21 and the small town governments come under its sphere of influence it's mission accomplished for the globalist kleptocrats.
Let me just observe that it is very difficult for "the federal Gas Tax Fund, provides policies and a list of priority actions organized as discrete capital projects intended to improve the public spaces"...
...if there is no federal gas tax.
Of course the reason the CPC has been less than conservative since getting in to power is because of the hundred or more people employed by the Gas Tax Fund trying to protect their six-figure salaries. Times all the other foot dragging, @$$covering apparatchiks in the biggest organization in Canada.
This does not -excuse- the CPC from their duty, but it does explain why they are going slow with it.
The final solution is a social movement that demands TAX CUTS. Not Laugher Curve kind of tax cuts, but real, burdensome, budget crushing, department ruining tax cuts that force the firing of employees in their thousands.
Currently there is no such social movement. Currently we have the opposite, the tail end of the I Love Big Brother So GIMME GIMME social movement. Even half the "conservatives" I talk to still want to use government power to make people do it the Conservative Way.
Until people are sick to death of their local town council building 5 million dollar hockey rinks under the figleaf that the kiddies "raised $100K from the community!" but not fixing the frickin' streets, this will continue and even accelerate.
I do not want a five million dollar hockey arena that my teeny tiny little town will still be paying for when the building falls down from old age. Its Canada. Flood a pond, you spendthrift cork suckers.
Phantom;
In our situation it was an indoor pool. Between the capital cost and the on going operating shortfall our little town blew at least $45 million. While after the fact this reality isn't even discussed publically.
I worked for Reform from the beginning and stuck around with the CPC until I realized all the riding level communication was top down. Someone suggested earlier that the CPC had been taken over by the 'Red Tories' or even infiltrated by the Liebels. I am sure it could be any combination. Throw in some career public servants who ant to stay on the gravy train.
PMSH does realize that CPC success resides in Ontario. I can understand the soft shoe approach but I see very little effort from the CPC to educate the electorate as to the real situation faced by the country. By all appearances the message coming from the CPC all originates from the PMO. The gamble Harper is taking is that a fiscal collapse does not occur during his watch. If it does voters will abandon whatever conservative thoughts they might have. Turdeau Jr. will be elected and the descent accelerated.
Fiscal conservativism is no more difficult than running a balanced budget. There is not a government in Canada at the municipal, provincial or federal level that are balancing their books. Instead of the CPC outlining the risks of this they have climbed on the wagon.
The final solution is a social movement that demands TAX CUTS. Not Laugher Curve kind of tax cuts, but real, burdensome, budget crushing, department ruining tax cuts that force the firing of employees in their thousands.
No. Spending cuts come first. They tried 'starve the beast' in the US and the beast just binged on cheap debt.
The author claims this is pork-barrel vote-buying to prop up a shaky Tory MP. Well, if less than $5 a head is enough to buy the vote of anybody here, speak up, will you?
I'm sure it will work for many many people. People are easy.
The Conservatives, having thrown a bone or two to their base, has to act like their slightly more progressive adversaries because you can't stay elected with 40% of the popular vote forever without playing in their pig pen and acting accordingly.
Yeah they should totally emulate winners like Hudak and Tory not losers like Thatcher and Reagan.
From the:
http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/researchpublications/bp276-e.pdf
CONCLUSION
Although constitutional recognition remains a goal, municipalities seem to have adopted a more flexible and diverse approach to the current constitutional circumstances. Perhaps this is related, in some ways, to the federal and provincial governments’ relative reluctance to reopen constitutional negotiations. Municipalities have chosen instead to lobby the federal government for greater fiscal support, and the provincial governments for legislative changes to the provincial-municipal relationship. However, it is not likely that calls for constitutional recognition of municipalities and guarantees of fiscal security are going to die down in the near future.
In short ... handouts from the federal bureaucrats are easy to get ... so they keep going back to the trough.
Is this Harper's doing?
No.
Is this Harper's doing?
Since he keeps handing out the money, yes. But don't let simple facts get in the way of dodging responsibility.
If you are applying for money anywhere, you have to submit plan and agree to terms, not much different than a bank. The problem is that voters don’t elect someone who promises to build nothing in their term. What I really find hilarious is the Association of municipalities have the gall to complain about Federal and Provincial “redtape” inhibiting them. I should get a copy of those letters to show the bylaw officer/inspector next time they come around and tell them to cut back on their regulations….
Fed government= Barely knows your alive, just pay taxes
Provincial government= They know you live somewhere in the Province and that you might camp for a week in their campground
Regional districts= They sort of know where you live, think they know what’s best for you and feel the need to regulate anything you might do or want to do.
Municipalities= They know where you live, how big your house is, your dog’s name, how much you poop and roughly how much water you use. They intend to regulate pretty much your entire life and everything you do, to make it sound nice they will promise you everything and blame every other level of government when things go wrong. For some reason they believe everything the whacko lady up the street says and will add a new bylaw just so she will go away for a couple of months.
Excellent summary.