I just faxed the following letter to the CPC:

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Conservative Party of Canada
Fax: (613) 755-2001

June 19, 2008

To whom it may concern:

Re: My Membership - No. C6303796

The party that I worked hard to build would not have:

1. appointed a non-elected Senator,
2. appointed a floor-crosser to the Cabinet,
3. broken its promise not to raise taxes (1% added to lowest rate)
4. broken its promise to eliminate the tax on capital gains
5. broken its promise to eliminate the GST on gas once the price hit 85 cents per litre,
6. broken its promise not to tax income trusts
7. taken full advantage of undemocratic Liberal election financing laws rather than repeal them,
8. increased the power of the PMO contrary to Justice Gomery’s strong recommendation,
9. broken its promise to allow free votes on all but the main financial measures,
10. broken its promise to hold a free vote on the definition of marriage,
11. broken its promise to repeal the long-arm gun registry and use the savings to finance additional police services,
12. failed to respect, adhere to, and implement the policies endorsed by its membership,
13. generally failed to distinguish itself in any significant manner from its Liberal and Red-Tory predecessors.

The party I supported would have kept its promises and remained true to its principles. It would also have stood up to a leader who acted like a dictator and reaffirmed its commitment to grassroots democracy in its own administration. By selling out its principles for the sake of political expediency my party has ceased to exist, making my resignation moot. Nevertheless, to make it official - I resign.

Sincerely,
Howard MacKinnon

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So that’s that. Next? My application for membership in the Libertarian Party of Canada is in the envelope ready to mail tomorrow. Check it out: www.Libertarian.ca

The latest atrocity committed by this increasingly authoritarian government is Bill C-51. It amends the Canada Health Act to bring natural “medicines” under the same regulatory regime as drugs. In other words, herbs which people have used for centuries, and are available for next to no cost compared to drugs, now will be subjprect to clinical trials and government approval before they can be promoted for therapeutic purposes.

Before you think for a minute that this may be a good thing, consider that there can be no patents on such items and therefore no incentive for any company to pay for such trials. Therefore, this measure effectively denies Canadians the freedom to choose natural therapies by denying them information about such possible uses.

I am not into natural remedies. Occasionally using echenasia to ward of a cold is probably the extent of it for me. But I am into choice, freedom and reducing government intrusion. The Conservative government is into force, regulations and increasing government intrusiveness. This is all consistent with the CRTC’s recent signal of its intention to wage war against the relatively unregulated Internet.

So, this may be the final straw for me. I have said I would support the Conservatives for so long as they were moving Canada toward greater freedom and less government. I don’t believe that is true. I am fully aware that defeating the Conservatives means electing a party which is even worse (Liberal or NDP). However, it would be worse to perpetuate the hoax that the Conservatives are the defenders of freedom, liberty and individual rights while they are nothing more than political opportunists. If they believe the quest for Liberal voters is more important than holding onto the support of those who value freedom and democracy than that’s their choice. My choice, one I am still allowed to make, is to withdraw my support.

In the 1980s Brian Mulroney presided over enormous increases in government spending and taxation. The national debt ballooned as each year’s deficit was piled onto the one before it. Only when the Liberals came to power did this change.

But the Liberals deserved absolutely no credit. It simply wasn’t possible to spend any more or raise taxes any higher - the Mulroney Tories had maxed out both these options. The Liberals did what they do best. They jettisoned their usual tax and spend predisposition to steal the thunder from their only effective political opponents - the Reform Party.

The fiscal mismanagement of the Mulroney Conservatives created the need for the Reform Party whose credible threat to the Liberals then forced them to make what progress they did in cleaning up the mess.

Now, after years of balanced budgets and even some very modest tax cuts, Canadians still find themselves the most overtaxed people in the developed world. Why? Because we have another gutless Conservative government.

Now this pejorative is intended as a double-entendre denoting cowardice while also alluding to the practice that could create the fiscal freedom to indulge in tax reductions - broadly and deeply. That is, by “gutting” the many and varied wasteful government programs that simply rob the tax payer to pander to special interest groups.

The recent auditor general’s report details overspending on the fisheries, the gun registry, computer equipment and infrastructure grants and many other items. Here’s one particularly egregious example. Almost half a billion dollars was spend last year on foster homes for 8,000 Native children on reserves. That’s $56,000 per child with no accounting for how the money was used or whether the children were any better of as a result. Sounds to me like an excuse to funnel more money and/or power to Native elites. Who else determines where this money goes?

How about the 41,000 illegal immigrants who have been already ordered deported from the country but whose whereabout are unknown? Why are we spending money on a system to screen immigrants when those who fail to meet the test stay here anyway? Why not save ourselves the money and scrap the whole thing?

Because gutting wasteful programs creates political enemies and doing that takes guts. From its actions to date it looks like we have just one more gutless Conservative government.

The latest CROP poll shows support for the Conservatives in Quebec just 1 point lower than the Bloc. In terms of seats this still means the CPC and Liberals will tie at about 20 with the other 35 going to the BQ.

However, there are at least 3 things to keep in mind that make this better for the Conservatives:

1. Momentum is definitely with the Conservatives. Not over the past 2 polls - as I said, they are consistent, but overall and when looking at a longer range. Dion continues to fall.

2. The Conservatives are likely to out-campaign the Liberals and BQ during the election. Funding is part of the issue but Harper is simply a better, smarter politician than Dion.

3. The 1,700 members of the 5th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group based at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier, Quebec will be coming home soon. With high spirits and very few casualties their return will effectively remove the Afghanistan issue as a problem for the Conservatives.

Quebecois, having all but rejected separatism, may be in the process of disengaging from the Bloc as well. The once “scary” Conservatives having given Quebec nation status and redirected billions of dollars to redress the fiscal imbalance might be soon rewarded with enough new Quebec MPs to form a majority government.

In a recent editorial the Toronto Sun is advocating the virtues of a flat tax system. I’m all for it for all the reasons they cite. But I believe income calculation should be by household thereby allowing for income splitting. Check it out.

This article entitled “Stephen Harper’s Red Populist Nationalist Alliance” gives all the reasons why my Red Tory acquaintances are wrong when they blithely assume that as a former-Reformer I am necessarily a keen Harper supporter.

Here’s the first line of a story on the new Crop poll taken in Quebec:

“A new poll paints devastating picture of a Liberal party completely reduced to a rump in Quebec if an election were held today.”

Reduced to a rump? In 2006 the Liberals got 21% of the vote and now they are at 20% support. Doing the actual seat projections shows that they stand to actually gain 5 seats compared to 2006 due to the erosion of support from the Bloq and the greater equity in support among all parties.

So, the lesson is that the opinions expressed in our national media are often nothing but ill-informed water cooler chatter. The full seat projections based on the Crop results would be as follows:

BQ = 36
CPC = 20
LIB = 18

I like to take note of good pieces attacking environmentalist orthodoxy, mostly because they are unorthodox. Any scientific theory whose advocates vilify their opponents just for opposing them deserves to be placed under the greatest scrutiny and not permitted the slightest benefit of the doubt. The hyperbole of today’s climate crusaders positively demands that someone cry out, “the Emperor’s  got no clothes.”

That’s what Lorrie Goldstein does in Cool the Climate Hysteria. Take care enviro-fascists. Beware Luddites. The pseudo-scientific trappings of your self-serving assertions are being stripped away.

Sorry Greens, you had a nice run, made garbage day more complicated, wasted a ton of tax dollars, and made your leaders rich, but now its all over. As this story,”Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling” shows, global cooling this winter has wiped out a century’s worth of global warming. And apparently its all due to solar activity - nothing whatsoever to do with human activity.

So, can we finally put all this psuedo-scientific enviromania to rest and let the private sector turn its R&D attention to bio-med, nanotech, and AI? Please?

For more of the same read: A big blow to Al Gore

The Liberals persist in the pretense that you can rebuild Afghanistan without first securing it. They want our troops to sit on the sideline while others (who? the Americans?) do the fighting. That might be the Liberal way, but it isn’t the Canadian way.

The Conservative government is doing all it can to provide our excellent troops with the equipment, training, manpower and support they need to do their job. They aren’t a bunch of engineers - they are soldiers. There job is to protect us from terrorists. If they need to fight to do that, let them fight.

The Taliban would like nothing more than for the Liberals to win the next election. So bring it on, let’s fight the Liberals and the Taliban at the same time.

Read: Motion on Afghan mission hits snag