It’s a dismal state that must be corrected.

Canadians need choice. Canadians need freedom. Canadians need security. And most of all, when things get rough, Canadians need support. What they don’t need is a government that is so eager to put them in prison that they’re going to spend billions of dollars on new American-style superprisons. What Canadians don’t need is a government that seems hellbent on turning us into a warmongering nation, spending billions of dollars on jets without engines, and forgoing our previously well-known reputation for being peacekeepers. What Canada doesn’t need, or want, is to leave our neighbours and families out in the cold when they need our help the most.

It’s high time we stood up for the country we live in. Now is the time where we must look to the future and decide what we want this country to look like, to act like at home and around the world, and how we want to be seen amongst our peers. We have a very serious choice to make, and it can make or break this country.

In order to survive and thrive in the next 144 years, this nation has but one way forward. We need to invest in ourselves, in our communities,  and in the way of life we hold dear. That means making decisive, wise choices in how we spend our money, how we treat the future leaders of this land, and how we treat those that are suffering.

We need to invest in our children and grandchildren. Students need genuine help getting to and through school, and that’s why the Liberal Party’s platform introduced the Learning Passport, providing up to $1500 per year for students that get the grades, and deserve to get a post-secondary education.

That’s why the Liberal Party platform brings back the deal it signed with the provinces, that was killed by Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, ensuring each province has the ability to get the funding they need in order to train new early childhood educators, create more childcare spaces, and help parents out in the way they need to most.

Canadians should have the right to take the time off work you need to look after your parents without being penalized for it. That’s why they want to create a new Family Care Employment Insurance Benefit, so that caregivers take six months off work to care for gravely ill family members at home; and on top of that a new Family Care Tax Benefit worth up to $1,350 annually, to help low- and middle-income family caregivers manage the costs associated with looking after their parents.

And, of course, those who need the healthcare system should feel comfortable knowing that it will be there to take care of them thoroughly, efficiently, with the best care possible. The federal government has to continue to work with the provinces to make that a priority now and in the future.

We need to expand and enhance the Canada Pension Plan, before it starts having the same problems the U.S. Social Security Plan has. Canadians need to know the CPP will be there for them, and will make a meaningful impact on their retirement lifestyles. Canadians have also been clear that existing retirement saving methods aren’t enough. That’s why the Liberal Party has proposed a Secure Retirement Option – an enhancement to the CPP that’s voluntary, leaving you with the choice to participate or not, and not run by the banks.

We need to ensure that affordable housing is available, that we leave this country and planet cleaner than it was when we came into it, where service to your community is recognized and rewarded, and where the arts get just as much respect as our office workers, construction workers, and doctors do. Canadians need to know that the food on their table not only tastes great, but is good for them and won’t make them sick. And rural Canada, in all its forms, finally get the respect it deserves from the cities it feeds.

That’s the Canada you deserve. That’s the Canada I want to live in. Anything less is unacceptable.

And when we can afford it, we will reduce taxes. We will reduce personal income taxes. We will reduce business taxes. But we can’t go on running the country as if printing more money is the answer. This all has to be done responsibly and with a level head recognizing the situation for what it is, and the implications of where money comes from, and how it’s spent.

So join me in voting for a Canada we can all be proud of. Vote for your local Liberal candidate, and give them the mandate to turn this country around and into one that all Canadians can be proud of, and is once again respected on the world stage. Our livelihoods depend on it.

I want my $451,000 back. That’s right, every single penny of severance that was recently afforded to Diane Beattie after the LHSC Board of Directors forced her to resign.

When a scandal like this one breaks out, there is no reason whatsoever that such gross misconduct should result in such a comfortable severance. $451,000 is almost two years worth of Ms. Beattie’s annual pay ($250,000 – not bad, huh?).

This entire issue has been handled very poorly. The audit outing the $3.3 million untendered contract was produced 2 years ago, yet the public wasn’t made aware of it. Her friend Kelly Butt telling the London Free Press that what she did was right in the business world. That’s a load of bull seeing as the LHSC doesn’t belong to the normal business world – it’s a world where taxpayers foot the bill in an era where we very rarely see tax decreases even when promised… and those decreases usually lead to increases somewhere else.

Not to mention that if a CIO were caught mishandling $3.3 million at any other company when it can be proven someone else could do the work for cheaper, you can bet your ass they would be fired with no severance whatsoever. It’s gross misconduct and breaks every due diligence rule in the book. Why the LHSC Board of Directors didn’t just throw her out on her butt is beyond me.

I really like the way the Autopro at Wharncliffe & Riverside put it:

“Break Company Rules
Get $451000
Where Do I Sign Up?”

Indeed! Maybe it’s time we replaced the entire LHSC Board of Directors and C-level executives? If they’d like to keep their positions, I urge the Board to begin including all tenders, bidders (along with proposals) and winners into the annual report. It’s my hard earned money they’re spending and I have a right to know where it’s going and how it got there.

Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government really, really needs to clean up it’s act. This week was the first time I agreed with something Andrea Horwath and that, to me, is not a good thing. Lastly, CEO Cliff Nordal, stop looking for the source of the leak. They did the right thing and exposed something very, very serious. You’re only making yourself look like a jerk and that’s the last thing you need. If I were on the Board of Directors, I’d be asking for your head on a silver platter.

Recently it has become apparent that indeed, I am a centrist. I don’t tolerate overly polarizing views or people very well (though I do hear them out on the issue and give them their opportunity to explain their rationale) and would much prefer to see people get to the bottom of an issue, brainstorm all of the possible solutions and then pick the best. Sadly that doesn’t happen very often in this “democracy” of ours where few-to-no MPs actually listen to their constituents after gaining power.

The Liberals, however, seem to be mounting a new steed and marching forward under the leadership of an intellectual. Someone who is truly smart, creative even (he has written several fiction novels which, so I read, are actually good). And so I have begun breaking my ties with the NDP both in private and in public in favour of re-joining the Liberal party in the hopes that I may help push them in what I would consider to be the “right” direction.

So yesterday when I e-mailed the riding president for Sarnia-Lambton asking him to take me off his mailing list because of a newly realized difference of opinion, he replied stating that he was “sorry that you feel that way about the NDP’s support of Unions and Pensions. I guess there is only one Party that you would find favour with at the present time.”

Indeed, I’m sorry too.  I’m sorry that the NDP is such a staunch supporter of unions no matter if they misbehave and care little for the financial state of their employers and that the NDP is a staunch supporter of defined-benefit pension plans (as opposed to defined-contribution) that place such huge liabilities on the employer and the employee thinks poses no risk to them (which Stelco employees can tell you certainly isn’t the case in the long run). The NDP candidate also seems to infer that I support the Conservatives – hardly! They’re a polarizing party that cares about nothing more than winning and retaining power, not truly what’s right for the country. They follow a methodology of certain values which is dangerous to any country or economy.

This is the e-mail I sent back to the NDP candidate in question, slightly refined for the purposes of flow with this entry.

There’s nothing wrong with supporting pensions and unions. My problem is that lately unions tend to misbehave and act only in their own interest without regard to the business they work for – that’s a problem. Staging protests outside an arena and slowing down traffic is an absolute nuisance and unnecessary; especially when a good portion of the people arriving at the arena don’t even live in Windsor.

And the CAW seems to be delighted in single-handedly destroyed the auto industry in Canada recently! I used to work for a non-unionized auto plant and could not have been happier. Individuals were rewarded with increased pay and promotions, laggards were punished – exactly the way it should be. The CAW cares about nothing more than increasing the pay and benefits of it’s employees without giving a damn about what shape Ford, GM and Chrysler are in. That’s not a sustainable model! The plant I used to work for just made some changes to it’s pay structure and positions in order to remain viable and more realistic when you compare workloads of different positions – to me that makes sense, and in the end it rewards the people who work the hardest there.

The CAW and CUPE are doing nothing but alienating what little non-union support they have, even within Windsor. They do their best to maintain the status quo without innovating or taking into consideration that the companies they work for are doing so poorly. Why would Chrysler stay in Canada when someone like Ken Lewenza explicity blurts out that there’s no way they’ll concede $19 worth of compensation? It’s ridiculous.

If the banks can’t maintain defined-benefit plans and the CPP has to be extremely aggressive in their investments in order to do so, why must the auto companies be kept to theirs? Because heaven forbid the auto companies download a little bit of responsibility onto the workers and the financial advisors working the account, right? A defined-contribution plan puts the responsibility back into the worker’s hands, along with their financial advisor, giving them the ability to choose the right investments for them. Doesn’t that make more sense? Shouldn’t that be the way we always operate?

Government has its place, and looking back at history and moving forward, I think a very centrist approach is the only way to go. Find the best ideas, leave the partisanship out, and you end up with a better country in all manners. The Conservatives are a bunch of morons and a few candidates have recently jumped ship from the Green Party to the Liberals. Jack Layton is a great man, but in the end I can’t support unequivocal support for unions or the defined-benefit plans they adore so much. It’s unsustainable when they act the way that the CAW and CUPE have recently.

This goes hand-in-hand with my post on self-responsibility. You should be able to rely on government to provide health care, police protection and municipal services along with a small portion of your retirement income (but only because you pay into the CPP, and the money is invested by the CPPIB). People need to take more responsbility for their lives at home, at work and at play. You can’t always rely on government to protect you, let alone your employer. Ford, GM and Chrysler are in business to make money, not to make sure you have a nice retirement fund or that you have the best benefits possible. Those are perks and niceties, not necessities. In fact they cost so much they take away from the money you could be making hourly instead but it’s less expensive for a business to provide benefits instead of wage increases.

If you don’t like what your employer is doing, find a new job.

9:30PM UPDATE: And here again we see a great example of what I’m talking about. Local manufacturing firm Accuride wants to change their defined-benefit pension plan to a defined-contribution benefit plan for new employees. Reduce liability on the employee, put it back where it belongs on the employee and their financial advisor! Unfortunately the London Free Press article mistakenly states that the investments rely purely on how the stock market performs, which isn’t true at all. Most investment portfolios include some fixed-income investments, which are not traded on the stock market. This type of misinformation doesn’t help anyone but the union employees in their fight for better wages and benefits than the rest of us.

In fact, the only bright spot for me is that the NDP gained several seats. If you take a look at the CBC’s election map, the NDP painted large swaths of the country orange last night. While heartening, especially when you see seats that the NDP took from the Conservatives, it’s still a reality that the Conservatives are more powerful now than they have been in over a decade. The amalgamation of the majority of the right-wing vote has done them well, and I must say they’ve also done well courting centrists.

Another thing I’m displeased about is the Green Party further splintering the vote on the left. They were able to come out with 6.8% of the vote nationwide which, although lower than every poll I’ve seen predicted, certainly took away from both the Liberals and the NDP. With the environment clearly a focus of the Liberals and NDP these days, I don’t see why the Green Party couldn’t dissolve and join the ranks of the other, far more entrenched parties. It would probably do a lot of good in pushing an environmentally-focused and healthy lifestyle-focused approach to some of the problems we face. For example, I’m not a naysayer to a carbon tax, I just wish it was explained more clearly even before the election was called.

Stéphane Dion did a poor job of it and the Conservatives jumped down his throat about it. The true message was shut out, just like the NDP’s promise during the last federal election to cut everyone’s income tax by 1%. That would have made a much bigger difference to the majority of Canadians’ pocketbooks and bank accounts instead of cutting the GST by 2%. But we are where we are now, and the only way is forward.

And so I hope that the next 2 years can bring some renewed focus on winning the House of Commons and the PMO back from the Conservatives. If we don’t, I’m afraid we may end up like the USA is today, and that’s a far scarier premise than I care to imagine.