Category: Other

Student entitlement tour coming to a city near you

Looks like the Quebec student protesters want to reach out and disrupt a class near you. From rabble.ca, we learn of a cross-country speaking tour featuring CLASSE activists. Yes, here comes the whine and the fanciful marxist bleatings.

rabble.ca is very pleased to announce a cross-Canada speaking tour which will start at the end of this month and continue into the first week of October. We’re also incredibly thankful to the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union (CEP), Ryerson’s Social Justice Week and LeadNow for their support.
 
It will feature Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the former spokesperson for CLASSE. The most public and visible representative of a leaderless movement, Nadeau-Dubois has been at the eye of the hurricane since the beginning of the strike. He will be joined by Cloé Zawadzki-Turcotte, a former member of CLASSE’s Executive and a key organizer behind the strike who is in fact currently on a tour in the Maritimes, and yours truly.
 
We’ll be talking about what happened in Quebec, but also how the hard-earned lessons of the longest student strike in Canadian history can be applied to organizing across the country. We hope to be able to build bridges of solidarity with movements in other parts of Canada, ties that are critical to mounting a truly national movement against Stephen Harper and austerity.
 
The dates which have been confirmed are as follows — with likely at least a couple more locations to confirm in the next few days — but it will depend on local partners and our ability to raise funds.
September 29th – London, ON
 
September 30th – Toronto
 
October 1st – Ryerson (Toronto) – Nadeau-Dubois will be joining the closing panel of Social Justice Week
 
October 2nd – Saskatoon and Regina
 
October 3rd – Winnipeg
 
October 4th – Victoria and Vancouver Island
 
October 5th – Vancouver
 
We hope you’ll join us at one of these locations, to hear war stories and learn about CLASSE’s tactics and strategies, to understand the real story behind the media spin that came out of Quebec this year, and to meet these two incredible young people who I truly believe represent some of the best and brightest their generation has to offer.

Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy

I note that Kai Nagata of “I’m-not-a-CTV-corporate-whore” fame has released a new video this morning on behalf of The Tyee and the Tides Foundation accusing Ezra Levant and Kathryn Marshall of “pimping” Canada out for money as it sells oil to the US and China.

Here it is:

Whatever you think of the video, Kai is being an activist for his organization, and he’s raising awareness for his arguments. The pimp charge is quite something, as Kai himself is “pimping” (by his own definition) for the interests on the other side of the development/environment debate.

Cue media “pimping” from Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen who promotes the video:

McGregor, according to a deep Infomart search, has never written about the Tides Foundation and their connection to the Tyee.

Meanwhile, McGregor took interest in another video made by those “pimps” for smaller government over at the National Citizens Coalition:

He didn’t exactly gush over our video though. Instead, he went on the attack, focusing his attention on the messenger who would dare hold Bob Rae to account for his record (we didn’t call him a pimp or a ho — perhaps this was the problem?). McGregor wrote,

While there is amazing synchronicity between the NCC and the CPC, the notion that the Tories would fund a home-made YouTube clip does not compute, given that the NCC has no trouble raising money on its own.
 
During the spring election campaign, the NCC raised $168,960 in contributions to advertisements, according to its third-party advertising return filed with Elections Canada.
 
But the NCC appears to have held on to the bulk of this money for, uh, later use. The return shows the NCC spent only about 29 per cent of the money it took in. So, Election 41 was something of a cash bonanza for the NCC.

Now, I actually like Nagata and McGregor well enough personally. However, if advocacy is pimping… declare it up front.

Conservatives insist Liberals must ban scofflaw candidates

The Liberal Party of Canada has formally announced its rules for their upcoming leadership contest today. Yesterday, I was given a preview of what we should expect regarding the convention and voting while Jane Taber revealed some details regarding the Liberal Party’s rules on candidates and debt — a problem many of them faced during the 2006 leadership race.

I noted yesterday,

Also, regarding Hall-Finley’s debt and ability to accumulate future debt, I’m told that there’s no provision in law or by any Liberal rule that prevents her from seeking the Liberal leadership.

The Conservative Party disagrees with my Liberal source. They are calling on the Liberal Party to ban candidates that are in violation of the law. Here’s what they have communicated to reporters today,

It is outrageous that six years after their 2006 leadership campaign, four senior Liberals remain in violation of the law for refusing to pay back large donations disguised as loans.

After nearly six years of leniency from Elections Canada, the Ontario Superior Court ruled in July that these Liberals broke the law when they failed to repay their loans.

Liberals in violation of the law include sitting Member of Parliament Hedy Fry and rumoured leadership candidate Martha Hall Findlay.

If the Liberals are really serious about staying on the right side of the law this time, they will ban the candidacy of the four senior Liberals who have been in violation of the law these past six years.