What is clear is that the last government put space between the The justice system and the Office of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister sets who is the Attorney General, the Attorney General selects the person who interfaces with the justice system, meaning that the Prime Minister can't direct what is happening in the justice system or put pressure on the person who does.
The controversy was that the Attorney General felt like the Prime Minister wanted to control the situation but the Attorney General was not having any of it and everyone was unhappy. Then he shuffled his Cabinet and she moved positions to veterans affairs, he wanted to give her Native affairs, but she did not want it because she was a Native and thought that there was a conflict. She later resigned and said that she thought that she was being punished because of the conflict as Attorney General.
Mostly, the entire 'scandal' has a different feel. I think that the entire Parlimentary system, built by men, has a very aggressive feel to it, and some people will never adjust to the oppositional nature of the setting. There have been three women who have resigned because of this affair. A veteran politician and a woman said as much, these are not my words. She thought that the women were not used to the way politics was done in the Capitol. The real question is, is Politics being done corrrectly. Something that has worked with men for hundreds of years, might not work with all women. It might not work with the majority of women. It mig mean that to be inclusive in politics, politics will have to change.
We have spent months on this scandal so far and the Concervative Party wont let it go. Mostly they wont let it go because there is going to be an election in half a year and they don't want people to be focused on their links to White Supremicist organizations. As Natural20's husband said recently, "It is not clear that Sheer is a bigot himself, but it is clear that Bigots are people whose votes he wants".
The complication is that at the same time that the discussions were occurring in Ottawa, there was a Chinese National being held in custody waiting for deportation to the USA, for breaking a US law. The Chinese government tried to pressure Canada to release the national and even arrested two canadians for reasons, but mostly a tit for tat ploy. The canadian government said that the rule of law would prevail and there was nothing that they could do. The scandal suggested to the Chinese that Canadian Law was in fact exactly like Chinese law and flexible, which it was not. The Chinese will probably sentence the Canadians to life in prison or death. Which is a lesson, China and many other nations on the path to Democracy are really far away from true democracy. They are so used to doing business their way that they assume that everyone does business the same way.
A week ago a lone gunman entered a mosque in New Zealand after issuing and manifesto on the Internet, praising Donlad Trump and White Supremists, logged on to Facebook and streamed a shooting spree to the platform. In this shooting spree he shot numerous people in one mosque, and went back to his car to reload and returned to 'double tap' his victims to make sure they were dead. Then he drove to another mosque to repeat his atrocity and he shot another group of praying people. This time someone from that mosque ran after him and attacked him with one of the shooters abandoned guns shattering his windsheild and causing him to flee for his life. I am sure he felt like a victim after that. He killed 51 people and wounded an equal number. New Zealand and the world condemned the incident and the country quickly went into action to prevent future similar crimes.
Meanwhile, people were offering Thoughts and Prayers. Again. Except someone suggested that Thoughts and Prayers for the first mass shooting did nothing to stop the second or subsequent mass shootings, so maybe thoughts and prayers do nothing. And Right in America, shit on her for suggesting that. There will be another Mass Shooting in the world soon, it will most likely be in the United States, where thoughts and prayers are offered to victims of mass shootings.
Provincial politics is heating up. The Ontario Concervatives, fighting off their links to White Supremacy groups themselves are constantly harping that the Carbon Tax will suck money from people's pockets and saying that their environmental program will be better, except they don't have one. They are saying there is no problem. Oil companies have come forward to say that the carbon tax is a good tax. But no, the liberals have imposed it so it must be bad. In Alberta, they have a carbon tax for years. There the tax has been used to fund transit systems. Imagine that, a tax that funds programs that reduce carbon emmissions.
The way is works is companies and households are taxed according to the pollution they produce, because pollution must be cleaned up and that costs money. If the household or e company reduces the pollution it produces, it pays less tax. Simple.
The federal tax works the same way, but has a carrot too. The government will give every resident a rebate to cover some of the tax that they will pay over a year. If they reduce their carbon footprint they recieve the same rebate and pay less taxes. Simple. The tax is supposed to scale, so at the largest producers are insentivized to reduce pollution sooner, before the tax increases the next year. It is getting easier for people to reduce their footprint. For example more and more car manufactures are producing electric cars. Electric cars will not pay any tax on gasoline, and in Ontario, none of the electricity is produced with fossil fuels, so instant lower footprint. Lower the heating costs of your home, turn the thermostat down, get better insulation, switch to natural gas, switch to electricity switch to solar heating. Lower your footprint, pay less taxes. Simple
The US senate passed a bill to end Donald Trump's false emergency. It passed with a 59-41 margin. Donald Trump vetoed it. They need to pass the bill 67-33 to make it unstoppable, but getting 12 republicans to vote for the first bill must have been a nearly impossible task, getting another eight to switch sides nearly impossible, but I just realized what the emergency powers would allow him, Trump, to do. He can take the money from any program and use it to build his useless wall. He could take it from the Affordable Care Act that gives millions of Americans health insurance. He could take it from NASA, he could take it from any place in the government. He could take it from disaster relief funds, he could take it from Education. He could doc the pay of every federal employee. He could say the Parks get no money this year. What is clear is at the wall will be more expensive than $10 billion and Mexico will not be paying for it. So given that list of places Trump could take the money from, it is unlikely the democrats will ever get the 2/3 necessary to prevent a future bill from being vetoed.
On the other hand, there are a number of states that have passed laws that prevent voters college votes from going to anyone that does not receive most of the popular vote. Washington has also passed a law that prevents a name from appearing on the ballot who has not released their tax records to the public.
Politics. It has been nasty all round. Yet still I hope and participate.
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