Not quite fisticuffs as youth and veteran clash
06 June, 2009
Secret donations
Well this is disturbing. In defending his decision to keep the names of private donors to his campaign secret until after election day, Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil cited privacy concerns. Since provincial law requires the names and addresses of all donors, and the amounts of their donations, to be disclosed and published annually by Elections Nova Scotia, this looked like a feeble excuse to avoid drawing pre-election attention to any embarrassing donors on the Liberal list. Now it turns out that Chief Electoral Officer Christine McCulloch handed McNeil—and the other three party leaders—a fig leaf they could use to hide any sketchy contributors from voter scrutiny. Contrarian suspected as much when a candidate for the Green Party said they had intended to post their list of donors on the campaign website today, but were holding off because, "The Chief Electoral Officer apparently has concerns about compromising the privacy of individual donors by releasing their names." This sounded absurd, so we checked with the Chief Electoral Office, where spokesman Dana Philip Doiron responded:[T]he Chief electoral Officer has advised all registered political parties... that they should seek their own legal counsel before publishing the names and other personal information of contributors as they may be subject to the Protection of Privacy provisions of FOIPOP [the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act], while the reporting by Elections Nova Scotia is deemed to be in the public interest and not subject to FOIPOP.A quick read of the FOIPOP act confirms the obvious. It applies only to "records in the custody or under the control of a public body, including court administration records." It has no conceivable application to records held by a political party.
05 June, 2009
McNeil draws a specious distinction
[caption id="attachment_669" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Liberal Donor John Bragg"]
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Liberal leader Steven McNeil tries to draw a distinction between political contributions from unions and those from corporations on the grounds that the next premier will have to negotiate with unions.
In fact, the next government is far more likely to find itself negotiating with the companies owned by John Bragg, whose Oxford Seafoods Ltd. is one of McNeil's two largest donors, than with the Mainland Building and Construction Trades Council and its member unions.
Bragg's companies, including Eastlink, have multiple business dealings with the province, including bidding on contracts and receiving loans and other assistance. The Trades Council negotiates mainly with a parallel employers' council consisting of large construction companies. Its members are not public sector unions and would have little occasion to negotiate with government.
05 June, 2009
Leaders agree: punishment first, trial later (cont.)
Former CBC Radio host Ian McNeil elaborates:I am not normally moved to take such a stand in public, but the recent eviction of the man in Sydney Mines leaves me feeling shaken and concerned. Another friend wrote me yesterday, in support of the question I posed, and quoted CS Lewis:Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.
04 June, 2009
Old Jews telling jokes
The narrative joke is not dead. Old Jews Telling Jokes promises a new old joke every Tuesday and Thursday. Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan. Bonus joke after the jump.
03 June, 2009
Leaders agree: punishment first, trial later–feedback
Contrarian reader M. Larusic thinks the Alice-in-Wonderland justice dispensed under the Safer Communities and Neighborhoods Act is but the tip of an iceberg that includes the Tory plan for youth curfews. Both are part of a worrisome trend to right wing politics at its worst. Two of the three candidates answered that they had enough confidence in the legal system and policing that they were not concerned with any possible abuses. One would expect such confidence to make such policies redundant. This trend is all about policing and little about law...
03 June, 2009
Fight electile dysfunction—vote Green
… The Nova Scotia Green Party gets all double-entendre with this YouTube ad combating "Electoral Dysfunction." Given the craven, focus group-driven campaigns by the three biggies, it's tempting. Damn tempting....
03 June, 2009
Leaders agree: Punishment first, trial later—if ever (cont.)
Former CBC Radio host Ian McNeil was disappointed in the answers to his question. In a conversation with contrarian, he called the response of his own MLA, Premier Rodney MacDonald, patronizing.He said the point of the act was to make people like me feel safe in my home in Lake Ainslie. But it's precisely because this can happen to a guy in Sydney Mines that I don't feel safe in my home in Lake Ainslie.[Last week, CBC's Joan Weeks reported here and here that a Sydney Mines man with no drug convictions was living in his car after being evicted from a home after neighbors complained of drug activity in the house.]
03 June, 2009
Union tries end-run around election rules—dissent
Prior to the Mainland building trades meeting held on April 9, 2009, the Mainland council had made political contribution to all three main parties, Tories, Liberals, and NDP . A motion in the Council's books, which had been there for some time basically stated that if political contributions were to be made that all parties receive an equal amount. As a past Business Manager for the Mainland Building Trades Council, I have personally written out checks, signed by the signing officers, for payment to various candidates of all three parties, Tories, Liberals and NDP. No checks were ever returned durning my term with the council. So if the NDP is tainted so are the other two. With all this political bull in the air, I am thinking its a great time to plant my garden.
03 June, 2009
Leaders agree: Punishment first, trial later—if ever
How comfortable are you with a Safer Communities and Neighborhoods Act, which allows people to be evicted from their homes without being charged, or convicted of a criminal offence, or having an opportunity to face their peers?Darrell Dexter, who purports to be a New Democrat, led the charge:
Well there are always concerns, civil liberties concerns, around whether of not people are able to get a fair hearing with respect to these kinds of matters. But what the Safer Neighborhoods and Communities Act [sic] actually does, there is an evidentiary base for decisions that are made, and there are investigations that take place, and they are designed to protect neighborhoods from disruptive activity. It is a tool that is in the toolbox of the authorities and I haveYou have to wonder, is this guy inspired by the likes of Tommy Douglas and Stanley Knowles, or by Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day? The premier, too, stood squarely in the Harper-Day, law-and-order camp.faith not only in the authorities but in the courts of this province that they administer that law appropriately, and they will protect the civil liberties of the people of this province. Overriding all of this, of course, are the rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that is the overall safeguard for those mechanisms that exist in the Safer Communities and Neighborhoods Act [sic].
03 June, 2009