Election 2011: Now That The Dust Has Settled…

The Big Election is over and done… quickly disappearing in Canada’s rear-view mirror.

Conservatives won the day, which was written in the sand from the outset – but they made out like bandits and secured themselves four years of (what they hope to be) uninterrupted rule in which they can sell the country out to American interests and continue to ignore the real social issues like poverty and the environment.

What’s that? I was on their side during my last political blog?

Yes… I was – but that was in the face of a floundering Liberal leader who couldn’t have won a butt-kicking contest with his own two feet in field of one-legged contestants.

I also came to the conclusion that the NDP would pick up seats in the vacuum that the Liberals were leaving in their wake – but I wasn’t in any way ready for The Big Orange Machine that steamrolled Iggy’s Grits and made it all the way to a 100+ seat Opposition… though I was quite happily surprised since it turns our venerable parliament on it’s head.

As the news outlets have said over and over, the New Democratic Party has never been the official opposition in the history of Canada – always an ‘also ran’ behind the Liberals, Conservatives, and Bloc Quebecois… playing the role of spoiler/king-maker during the times we’ve had minority governments by placing their votes on bills and motions up for grabs in return for concessions from the ruling party.

However, on May 3rd, Jack Layton and his Merry Orange Band of NDPers woke up after the election and realized they were now Her Majesty’s Royal Opposition – which had turned out to be a both a boon and a curse: while they had gone from fourth place to second and boosted their national profile considerably, they had also lost any and all sway they had over the levers of power.

You see… being the Official Opposition comes with a set number of powers, and the only one that really matters is that they get the right to be the first ones to put the Government Of Canada (in this case, the Conservatives) on the hot seat during Question Period after Prime Minister Harper and his cronies prattle on about any given issue of the day.

While that may seem like a nice thing on paper, the fact that it means very little in practice is something that the inexperienced NDP caucus failed to calculate in their campaign: that they’ve gone from a place where the Harper minority government would listen to them and occasionally put items from the NDP wish list into the budget – to a position where they can scream/shout/bolster themselves up and needle the Conservatives all day long… only to have Harper blithely ignore them on all issues due to the Conservative’s 160+ seat majority that doesn’t need cooperative votes to pass legislation.

At the end of the day on May 2nd, it was clear that vote splitting had given the Conservatives their longed-for majority.

In a large number of ridings across the 9,984,670 square kilometers of Canadian territory, NDP and Liberal candidates were neck and neck in the polls – which would be exciting if it was a 2-player horse race, but effectively canceled each other out… leaving the inside lane free and clear for the Conservatives to storm their way to a commanding 1st place.

The fact that Michael Ignatieff – then leader of the Liberal party that had surged to power in 1993 and held on until 2005 – had failed to win even in his own riding was a bitter, bitter pill… one that the Liberal party executive council is still choking on this very minute.

Yet, even in his concession speech, Ignatieff seemed to be certain that he’d continue to lead the Liberals after he had torpedoed the party – clearly maintaining his lack of connection with reality that had hounded him and his closest lieutenant from the time he was named party leader in August of 2009 – before coming out the next day and telling the press that he was resigning the leadership effective immediately.

Since the Liberals have been mostly silent in the 6 days since the election, I’m forced to presume that as soon as Ignatieff had come down from the podium at party campaign headquarters in the early hours of May 3rd, he was promptly taken to a room far from the press’ omnipresent eyes and ears before being flogged/kicked/beaten by the Liberal executive for  killing “the natural ruling party” (a title foisted on the Liberals by opposing parties due to the arrogance that a string of back-to-back majorities had brought – and mostly assimilated by Liberal members over the years) and lacking the common decency to promptly fall on his sword during his concession.

Hell… even the leader of the Bloc Quebecois – a party determined to separate Quebec from Canada no matter what happened – had the sense to resign his post after securing only 4 seats out of 308, of which 75 are in Quebec.

As it is, only the Liberal party’s presumptive interim leader Bob Rae (himself once a provincial NDP member and 21st Premier Of Ontario before abandoning politics for a number of years in advance of joining the federal Liberals) has come out of seclusion to tell the party faithful that the party will rebuild and refocus in efforts to win the next election.

In fact, a strong case can be made for Rae to become the Liberal’s official leader come the next leadership convention – mainly because he’s the only guy in the Liberal camp who’s had political party leadership experience, and because Rae’s pretty much the only Liberal seat holder who has any sort of public persona that people could get behind – a born politician who can command a crowd with his oratory skills and an actual personality that can engage the Canadian population at large… which is precisely where Ignatieff failed since he was about as lively as watching grass grow.

The only problem with Bob Rae is optics… specifically how he’s seen in the province of Ontario – which is generally the area of the country that makes or breaks the Liberal campaign.

Rae had the unfortunate luck of being premier of Ontario during the early 90′s recession – an event not of his or his party’s making that bankrupted the province and forced Rae to create the unpopular “Rae Days” for employees of various governmental institutions that equaled forced, unpaid furloughs every so often… which was an act that greatly angered the public service unions and eventually led to Rae and his party being booted from office in the next election in favor of the provincial Progressive Conservatives who were promising the moon (and delivered deep public service cuts instead).

An acquaintance of mine says Rae could never be prime minister because he bankrupted Ontario – which is simply not true… and is something the Rae leadership camp needs to get out ahead of in the coming weeks and months: turning a generalist public opinion in Ontario from something unfairly negative into the actual reality that Rae did the best he could given the circumstances.

Once that problem is resolved, I seriously think the Liberals have a strong chance of rebuilding with Rae at the helm… or even one of the other candidates that are being bandied about like former federal finance minister Ralph Goodale – though I have to say the man lacks subtlety when interacting with the public, but that could in the end be a strength when running against the likes of Stephen Harper who never seems to get excited about anything.

But, for now anyway, we as Canadians are saddled with a brand-spanking-new parliament that – for better or for worse – we chose for ourselves.

It’s really hard to determine where the Government Of Canada is going to go from here on out since we haven’t seen an unconstrained Conservative party in power since the early 1990′s… and even back then, it was an entirely different party under the leadership of Brian Mulroney – a kinder, gentler group of politicians that was still known as the Progressive Conservative Party Of Canada which – by it’s very name -  seemed to imply an openness to outside ideas.

When Stephen Harper led the charge to reform the Conservatives (and in the process swallowing the Reform Party), he tossed out the “Progressive” name and moved the party from the right-of-center brand of politics to firm right wing entrenchment similar to their American Republican cousins – big on crime & punishment and friendly to big business interests through aggressive cuts to corporate taxes.

Since the Conservatives came to power in the 2006, they’ve always been kept in check due to their continual minority government status – having to rely on the Liberals, NDP, or Bloc Quebecois to achieve the number of votes necessary to pass legislation in the House Of Commons, which has kept the right wing agenda from dominating the Canadian landscape by continually adding more socially-minded items to budgets and other major governmental positions.

Now, heading into the middle of 2011, Harper & Co. have been given free rein to pass any legislation that tickles their fancy without any interference from other parties – a political blank cheque that will allow the Conservatives to implement laws, regulations, and spending cuts while swinging their arms akimbo if it suits them.

And while Prime Minister Harper came out fairly quickly after the election to say that he and his party weren’t going to change the way they did business from how they conducted themselves during minority government times, the average Canadian would have to be completely stupid/naïve to believe one word out of Harper’s mouth.

Harper has continually said his party has been chomping at the bit to implement the Conservative agenda since the 2006 campaign began… so how can we be expected to believe that, all of a sudden, Harper & Co. are going to learn the art of self constraint?

But… that’s how the war of politics is waged in a democratic system: the hopeful dependence on society’s short memory from election to election.

A democracy that we as Canadians just took part in… a democracy that we all voted for (well, at least more than 60% of eligible voters according to Elections Canada).

A democracy the Michael Ignatieff campaigned hard on – saying that it was time to fix democracy in Canada by voting Liberal and chasing the Conservatives from office that had been found to be in Contempt Of Parliament by the Speaker Of The House.

A democracy that turned on it’s supposed champions and made the Liberals a laughing stock.

Ah, well.

Democracy is great, isn’t it?

And now… a word on Usage Based Billing.

Let’s get something out of the way first, shall we?

Internet service is NOT like a utility service such as electricity or natural gas – and therefore can not be billed in the same fashion, nor should it be.

When your local utility service provider runs a meter on your electricity consumption or how much natural gas you use to heat your home, they do that for a very specific reason: it’s costs money to generate that electricity via power dams, windmill farms, solar power arrays, etcetera… and it costs money to develop that natural gas from the sources deep in the earth – you have to pay people to run the drills, process the elements, sail the natural gas tankers, or build the pipelines.

Now… I’m not saying that it doesn’t cost money to string wires and buy network switches – but in no way, shape, or form does it cost anything near what it costs to develop utility services.

In Canada, the largest internet service providers are trying to implement a “usage based billing” scheme upon their subscribers in the same way that you’d be billed for leaving your lights on at home all the time – except with the difference being that you’d have a flat rate up to a certain gigabyte level that you’ve agreed to in a package deal… and then, when you’ve passed that level – let’s say 60 gigabytes, you’d have to pay a steep overage charge of between $1 and $5 per GB.

The things that you should keep in mind going forward is that – according to network specialists that don’t represent Bell, Rogers, or Shaw – it costs anywhere between 0.0013 and 1.15 cents to send one gigabyte of data through Canada’s internet infrastructure – which is nowhere near the 100% to 500% markup that the large ISPs are demanding.

These ISPs had hoodwinked the Canadian Radio And Telecommunications Commission (the equivalent of the F.C.C. in the United States Of America) into agreeing to allowing these companies to charge their own customers these exorbitant fees PLUS forcing independent internet service providers (who purchase their internet backbone access wholesale from Bell Canada et al) to pass on UBB charges to their own customers as of the beginning of March 2011.

This would, in effect, remove all of the unlimited internet use packages available to subscribers of the smaller ISPs – which was, and has always been their major advantage in attracting internet customers away from the major ISPs who tend to offer firmly defined data caps (60GB, 125GB, 200GB, etc.).

By forcing the little guys to bill the same way that the big guys do, the CRTC had completely leveled the playing field – save for those few independent ISPs who had their own internet equipment that did not rely on Bell.

In Bell’s own words as they appeared before the government panel investigating UBB on February 10th, 2011: “…it (UBB) prevents them (independent ISPs) from differentiating their offers from our own.”

Gone would be the all you can eat internet buffet for $50… which an independent ISP could offer to attract new customers, which I’m sure pissed Bell Canada and it’s corporate allies off to no end because their corporate culture was based around screwing their customers any way they could through oppressive overage schemes.

In today’s world of ever-growing data bandwidth, a gigabyte doesn’t go as far as it did in days gone by… even in as little as five years ago.

In 2011, internet users have so many choices available to them online that are fairly data intensive: YouTube, Flickr, streaming Quicktime, Steam, and services like Netflix.

Even those people who like to haunt Facebook and Twitter are pulling down large chunks of data when playing Farmville or watching videos of their nephew’s little league game.

Bell Canada, Rogers Communications, Shaw Media, and the other large ISPs are entitled to make money… nobody is suggesting that they should give away internet service for free.

What has caused nearly half a million people to sign a petition, and what most people would agree to when asked on the street, is that the large ISPs should collect fees that reflect the actual costs of doing business – to have their billing practices be strongly rooted in reality.

Yes… there are an increasing number of Canadians using more than 200GB a month, but the problem is that Bell Canada and it’s friends don’t want to spend the money necessary to bolster their national infrastructure to accommodate this rising tide – and instead of doing the logical thing (building new and better data transmission networks), they want to stifle those 200GB+ users though harsh tariffs.

This is purely greed – nothing else.

The UBB pressure is aimed at maximizing profit.

Profit is good, yes… but obscene amounts of profit is simply evil – and the Canadian public is beginning to rise up against this unparalleled cash grab that isn’t replicated anywhere else in the world.

In a word, it’s uncompetitive – but that makes it too simple.

There are so many businesses in the Canadian marketplace that depend on a reliable, uninterrupted, and unlimited internet for everyone.

Do you think that places like internet cafes could remain in business if they’re forced to pay for their customer’s overages? I mean… I’m sure that you can’t offer internet to everybody who walks through the door and not blaze past 200GB in a month with little effort.

How about your local municipal library? Quite a few of them offer free internet access to their patrons… but would that concept still be viable when the library is being charged $5 for every gigabyte?

Don’t kid yourself: city hall would put a quick stop to that in very short order.

However, the biggest problem with UBB from an internet business standpoint – at least for those businesses that aren’t Bell & Co. – is that the UBB policy unfairly discriminates against companies like Netflix and YouTube that rely on their customers/visitors to be able to consume all the data they can put in front of their eyeballs.

This comes in direct competition to Bell & Co.’s own Media On Demand services – which generally have less content available than Netflix-type services – and results in lost revenue for the large ISPs.

So, again, instead of spending money to bolster their Media On Demand services, they want to quash those of you out their who would go to Netflix as a superior alternative by raping your wallets and bank accounts – forcing you to consume their paltry wares instead.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen such a clear-cut conflict of interest… such a blatant anti-competitive attack on consumers who dare to use anyone but the large ISPs and their various media holdings (CTV, Global Television, etc.).

Interestingly, the UBB provisions that the CRTC gave the okay to, are now in limbo as the federal government had told the CRTC to reconsider or be overruled point blank at the legislative level.

I say interesting because the Conservative Party Of Canada – the current party in power – is very, very friendly with Big Business.

To take a stand against the Big ISP lobby is contrary to party beliefs, and can only be interpreted as being responsive to public uproar – and a deft move to head off the opposition parties from gaining a political foothold that’s rooted in popular unrest.

Yes… it may be snide electioneering, but for the time being, the Government Of Canada is on the side of their electorate instead of giving away everything to Big Business.

How long this lasts is anyone’s guess… but I’d wager it will last as long as the Conservatives winning the next federal election – which is going to be sooner than later, after which time they won’t feel as threatened by the average Canadian citizen who uses the internet.

So, for now, do your part in trying to prevent Big ISPs from getting away with murder.

How?

Write a letter to your local MP… write a letter to your local newspaper’s editor… make a video about your views and post it on YouTube… call into a local radio show and tell them – and all the listeners – how you feel about the large ISPs trying to sodomize your cash flow.

Or… simply visit www.openmedia.ca and take advantage of their resources.

But, don’t take my word for it.

Go online – while you can afford it – and see what the average Canadian internet user thinks of UBB.

Is Marriage Obsolete?

In a word?

Yes.

Now… I’m not saying that people should stop getting married – it’s still a dream that’s impressed upon the youngsters of the world by various sources.

I’m here to talk about whether or not it’s a practical dream.

To really understand marriage, you have to examine it’s roots in history i.e. why weddings were invented in the first place.

Getting married was both a religious statement and a control point in social engineering when the human population was much, much, much smaller than it is now – designed to guarantee a steady line of baby breeding to bolster the local populace.

I know the above disregards the personal feeling involved, and that’s somewhat on purpose since I was only summing up the institution of marriage and not the per-person reasons.

The personal incentive for marriage was somewhat selfish: the odds of finding another compatible male/female was greatly reduced in the days of yore… and the amount of time you had in your life that you had to find that person was roughly half what it is today.

So you really felt the need to lock down that one suitable mate as soon as you found them or, otherwise,  your lot in life would be somewhat pointless and your social standing would be somewhat awkward (and we all know feeling awkward kind of sucks).

Also, marriage was born eons ago when the concept of sexual equality was non-existent: marrying ultimately was contract between a man and his bride’s father that transferred ownership and control of the woman in question – which still has an anachronistic throwback in today’s world in the form of more ‘romantic’ men asking their girlfriend’s father for permission to marry.

In fact, in certain populations today, marriage is still very much no different that buying a goat or a used car (in those areas of the world us Westerners deem to be less civilized i.e. much of the African continent, broad swaths of Asia, and various Pacific island nations) and love has nothing to do with it at all.

Which brings me to this: what does love have to do with it?

Is it impossible to love someone without wanting to marry them?

Of course not… and to say so is pure brain atrophy caused by religious brain washing.

Remember what I said about marriage facilitating breeding? Can you guess what parties benefited from there being more people in ancient times?

Churches and governments – and both for the exact same reasons, and those reasons are the same today as they were back then… and are why both priests and politicians still embrace marriage: taxes.

The more people there are in any given area, the more the local government makes in tax revenue.

The more people there are in any given church congregation, the more the church hierarchy makes in tithing fees e.g. 10% of your income going to church coffers.

How else are politicians supposed to pay for strippers and gay prostitutes?

How else is the Pope going to afford to wipe his geriatric ass with satin and velvet?

Blooming populations pay for those… at least in theory.

However, that theory is clearly broken in the Western world: 50% of first time marriages end in divorce (67% of second and 74% of third marriages).

Why?

Options.

There are more people alive on this planet than ever… more than the total number of people that have ever lived and died on Earth prior to 1900A.D.

7 billion choices for every man and woman – and given the rise of same-sex relationships, that is entirely accurate.

Sure… someone who lives in Seattle, Washington may not immediately have access to a relationship with someone in Brisbane, Australia when they’re born worlds apart – but now that the planet is largely wired and connected via the Internet, what’s stopping those two people from connecting in Second Life or on 4chan?

Also… marriage used to be the only place where you could legitimately have sex with another person without society condemning you as either a pervert or whore.

But in today’s age, the sexual revolution has done away with that almost completely in the Western world.

Hookups, booty calls, and ‘friends with benefits’ are increasingly the normal way of things in the population younger than 40 years old.

I’ve had sexual relations with upward of 35 women in my lifetime – and I’ve only married one of them (ended in divorce 8 months later), and got engaged to another (lasted 5 years on and off).

The rest of the women I’ve been with? Zero interest in marrying – and in fact, with each subsequent relationship, have had less and less interest in a formal relationship.

And this is generally the experience expressed by today’s generation: the overall softening of the relationship boundary.

Sure, kids today still want to have relationships, but the function of that relationship is rapidly changing.

In a wave of teens where ‘third base’ is now anal sex, relationships are increasingly less about emotional solidarity and more for exploring sexuality in a controlled environment.

What would marriage have that would interest these kids?

Being stuck with the same person for eternity is a notion frightening enough to give them an asthma attack.

In that world, marriage is an abhorrent concept – something antiquated… something that their parents and grandparents did, like talk on phones attached to a wall with a wire.

It’s not something that’s realistic – except in the minds of naive teen girls who have been spoon fed the marriage idea by a lifetime of Disney Princess programming and other ‘timeless’ cultural inputs that proclaim themselves to be the sole bastions of romance.

Is romance dead?

Honestly, no.

Romance is alive and well – but it’s upgraded itself for a new world.

However, romance has also been perverted by backwards thinking morons like Stephanie Meyer who are trying to enslave teen and ‘tween’ girls to a religious standard that no longer functions in the real world with antiquated sexual identities i.e. women are not complete without a man to control them.

Thankfully, the perversion of romance is a self-contained blip in the overall societal scope.

As romance evolves to veer away from the pre-programmed goal of marriage, various product vendors and cultural groups are forced to re-evaluate their stance – often in dramatically different ways and to varying levels of success.

Product vendors like Harlequin Romance have had to rethink their ‘literary’ platforms in efforts to snag new, young readers to replace the old and rapidly aging readers of yesteryear that got off on the sight of Fabio’s bare chest.

Many internet dating sites are seeing an increase in their ‘intimate encounters’ sections and less popularity in their traditional dating lines.

Wedding planners and other people associated with the marriage industry are pushing more and more elaborate packages to turn up the pressure on those people who would get hitched in an effort to mold the couple’s view into seeing getting married as a social event instead of a romantic ideal – especially focusing on young couples in hopes of selling the concept of wedding as a more personally tuned high school prom.

Changing the act of getting married from an act of devotion between two people to a dressy pageant that eeks out the couple’s position in their social circles.

Which begs that question again: what has love got to do with it?

Not a damn thing.

Love has nothing to do with marriage.

When you love somebody, and they love you, why complicate things?

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

If two people are in genuine love with each other, then they don’t really need an antique label that only advertises what their friends already know.

A marriage is only going to push couples toward debilitating amounts of debt – both on the front end marriage ceremony and the better than even odds of divorce lawyers.

Is marriage going to disappear?

I don’t know.

It’s hard to say, really – given the global scope of things.

Churches are struggling to stay relevant in Western society – but that doesn’t mean that countries like Canada, the United States, and the U.K. aren’t going to have a constant influx of immigrants from countries where religion is still a big influence on people… and therefore bringing scores of new people who will be interested in getting married by default belief.

My best guess is that marriage will never completely disappear.

However, I can say with absolute certainty that marriage will never again be as important to current and future generations than it was prior to the 1950′s.

Is that a bad thing?

Well… anything that keeps divorce lawyers from getting richer is a good thing, no?

Good News, Everybody! $100 For Just Being You!

Well… to be more precise, I have to specify that it’s $100 for just being from Ontario, Canada.

Also need to point out that if you make more than $82,000 a year, you won’t get a dime – so all you fat cats in banking and insurance will have to supply your own splurge funds!

Anyway…

A lot of you who are simple enough to buy into Tim Hudak’s message that the government is bribing you with your own money are more than welcome to rip up these nifty little cheques and go on about your business.

What’s that? You already cashed yours?

I see.

You must have done it under great protest… bitterly cussing out each and every single cent.

Regardless of those people who complain for the sake of complaining, these cheques are a nice shot in the arm when money has been thin due to the economy – and yes, I know some of the money being sent to your snail mail boxes or direct deposited in your bank accounts will be stolen back from you when the HST is fully implemented on July 1st, 2010.

However, I’ve done the math for myself, and have come to the conclusion that of the $300 dollars I will receive from the government through the Sales Tax Transition Benefit (S.T.T.R.), only $45 to $50 of it will go back to Queens Park in the form of HST a year – solely through a $4 and change increase on my telephone/internet bill.

Phone services have always had the PST added to them.

Same goes for my cable bill.

The only area of my regular finances that will be effected is my internet service.

Yes… there will no doubt be incidental HST taxation throughout the year – though I can only imagine it happening to me on the 2 or 3 taxi fares that I grudgingly throw money at a year.

It’s hard taking a new TV or office chair home on the bus!

Before you say it, let me beat you to the punch: I know a lot of you out there don’t have your finances in the same amount of control I do.

There are many of you who may be charged more HST than what you receive by the end of the S.T.T.B. cycle in July, 2011 – because you have a bigger set of financial liabilities and bills that you are responsible for.

But you must always bare in mind that your overall tax load has been reduced via both income tax reductions for more than 90% of the Ontario population, and the products/services you consume will become cheaper as corporations that operate in Ontario stop passing on to you parts of their taxation that have always been hidden in the prices you pay at the cash register.

Yes… you’ve been paying some of the taxes that Ontario companies (both large and small) are charged for doing business in Ontario.

Every case of Coca-Cola you buy in Ontario carries some of the taxes that will be charged to the local Coke bottling operation/Coke delivery operations/Coca-Cola Canada Ltd. head office – but it’s buried in the price tag that you see on the shelf.

Furthermore, the store you buy the Coke from also passes on some of their taxes as well in that price sticker.

In fact, every business that has had anything to do with that case of Coke Zero (aside from the manufacturer) passes on some of their taxes to you – think of the companies that print the cardboard carton the Coke cans come in, or the business that makes the cans that you drink The Real Thing from.

With the introduction of HST, all of those companies instantly save money through streamlining.

Some of them will save money when certain items they buy are cheaper – either through the removal of one tax layer, or because they will save money in the same way that you do through the removal of hidden taxes.

Companies like Walmart and Hewlett-Packard know that you – the person who buys the products they sell – ultimately choose whether they live or die when you vote with your wallet, so they can not continue to charge the same prices on the whole that they did before HST came into effect.

Yes, it may take anywhere between 6 months and a year for those passed on savings become tangible in comparison to what you pay now in June, 2010 – but by the time that happens, you probably won’t notice because the price decreases will be slow and incremental.

On July 1st, that case of Coke won’t all of a sudden be 10 cents cheaper – that’s completely unreasonable as all the people involved in getting that 12-pack to the grocery shelf still had to pay disharmonized taxes on everything that went into it.

Companies – both large and small – often sign yearly contracts to pay certain prices – and there’s a good chance that Coca-Cola might be locked into paying 3 cents for every aluminum can it fills until its contract with the aluminum supplier runs out in December, instead of 2.5 cents a can per a new contract come January 1st, 2011.

Until then, Coca-Cola still has to charge you that .5 of a cent per can to at least break even.

If it comes to be June 10th, 2011 and you’re still paying the same prices that you are on June 10, 2010 on your goods and services, then you know that the companies you’re dealing with are being dishonest – and you can then take the necessary steps to make them accountable.

Buy your services/products from another vendor who has dropped their prices a few dollars or a handful of pennies, nickels, and dimes.

You have the power.

As for the money that does go to Queen’s Park from the taxes that you can’t avoid?

It all comes back to you.

Maybe not in the form of a cheque – though some of you who make less than $15,000 dollars a year in taxable income will receive three cheques a year for $87 dollars.

All of you will see that money come back to you in the form of improved provincial services – better health care, improved education, and more infrastructure spending that this province desperately needs but can’t afford at the current tax level.

Are you aware that more than $0.50 of every dollar you spend in taxes goes to funding health care in Ontario?

That cost is only increasing as the Baby Boomer generation ages – and will continue to do so exponentially.

Where do you expect the government to get that money to pay for your sick grandparents – or hell, even you when you’re ill and laid up in a hospital?

Especially when you’re also demanding that there be better roads in Ontario to drive on.

When you want Ontario children to have superior education when compared to other areas of the country so they have a leg up on kids from Manitoba at job application time.

Many of you desire more police officers on the streets to make you feel safer.

Our environment requires funding to help us breathe cleaner air and to have lakes/rivers/streams that we can swim in without worrying about getting sick.

These are all valid things to want and desire from your government – the people you elected to represent you and your needs.

However, all those things come at a price… and the province needs the money to pay for these increased expenditures.

And that money comes from you.

Nowhere else.

Complaining about it doesn’t change the facts.

Like it or not, you’ll be better off in at least a dozen areas of your life through that Harmonized Sales Tax – probably more.

So accept your S.T.T.R. cheques happily and put the money to good use.

I know I will.