Occupy Vancouver's Run of the Mill Protest

Well, Metro Vancouver's professional agitator and activist class has another pet project to fill its time. There never seems to be a shortage of people to protest....everything. Stanley cup playoffs, safe-injection site Supreme Court rulings, beginnings of Pickton inquiries, and now corporate greed, or whatever it is they are protesting against.

And that is the big problem with the "Occupy" protests. Despite the Left's attempts to compare the protests with the Tea Party movement, there are few discernible objectives or goals of this uprising. Look at the Occupy Vancouver group's mantras: "we are the 99%," and "end corporate greed." What do those slogans mean? Nothing. Like most of these protests, Occupy Vancouver is made up of bored old hippies, entitled college kids, and aggrieved minorities and their demands run the gamut of more organic farming, less war, lower housing costs, higher taxes, arrest George Bush, Free Mark Emery, and you can guess the rest. This is typical left-wing whining about everything under the sun.

Where the Tea Party in the US took real legislative concerns (government spending and debt) and turned that into legislative accomplishments (the biggest wave election--2010's midterms--in decades), Occupy Vancouver likely won't accomplish much. And the question remains why there would be an "occupation" in Vancouver. The American protests are a result of rampant and record-high unemployment, huge government debt, record-busting deficits, and a left-wing President who has failed and crushed the expectations of his liberal supporters. I don't quite see what the parallels are in Vancouver for all these iPhone clad, Arts Degree-holding, Save-the-Whale-chanting complainers.

There are real problems facing us, what with our economy weakening and our housing market bubbling, but these occupations, whether on Wall Street or in Vancouver, are't going to do anything to move us forward.

Amateur NDP and the Dick Cheney Protests

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's book tour was interrupted yesterday by protesters who argue Cheney is a war criminal who's admitted to torture. The protesters went on to attack police officers and choke on of the employees of the Vancouver Club venue.

Now, I expect the left-wing zealots to argue that interrogating 3 terrorists using water boarding, a process signed off by the US Justice Department as legal and which yielded tons of actionable intelligence is "torture". However, what surprised me is that Don Davies, the Immigration Critic in the NDP Royal Opposition (-shudder-) agrees and thinks Canada should have barred Cheney from entering the country.

The idea that "government in waiting" NDP would take such a stance regarding an American Vice President is preposterous and underscores the fact that the NDP is not ready for prime time. This isn't a government in waiting or a royal opposition, its a group of activists and partisans who've found themselves fortuitously on the brink of power.

Conservatives Restore Royal Candian Navy

Today, Defense Minister Peter McKay announced that the Canadian Navy and Canadian Air Force, which were stripped of their "royal" heritage back in 1968 by the revisionist and meddling Liberal federal government, would again be named the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force.

As McKay points out, this would correct a historical mistake committed by a party that has committed to removing whatever links to Canada's colonial and British past it could, from renaming our armed forces to renaming our national day (eliminating Dominion Day in favour of the pedestrian-sounding Canada Day). This is a great decision, and an honour to the countless who served and died under the banners of the RCAF and RCN.

Of course, the NDP, ironically now the Royal Opposition, came out against this move, claiming its a step back to the 1950's. In fact, the NDP's Jack Harris even called it a divisive move! If honouring our past, knowing our own history and acknowledging the role the British crown has played in our country is divisive, then that would be a sad commentary on the shallowness of the Canadian story. For me, however, it's a honourable and wise move and just the first step along the way towards reclaiming our shared history and culture that has been whitewashed and ignored for too long.

HST Vote Deadline Today

It's been 2 years. TWO YEARS of fighting over the harmonized sales tax (HST) in BC. But today hopefully marks the end, as referendum ballots are due in today by 4:30pm. I have voted to keep the HST and I hope my fellow British Columbians have joined me.

The HST is more efficient, raises more money, is easier to apply, is more broadly applied, saves the government and business billions in administrative costs, makes business more competitive, fosters investment and job creation and eliminates the cascading PST, where tax is applied on tax.

The HST was and continues to be sound economic policy. It was implemented in a foolish and insulting way, but the people's distaste over that has cost a premier his job, and for a while at least, his legacy. It's time to end this. A vote to kill the HST would only serve to drag this sideshow on for months and year longer, as we untangle the existing system. I'm tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of debating it. Let's move on to other, more pressing priorities, and let this go.

I've voted to keep the HST. Here's hoping enough of you did too.

Gingrich Offers Advice on Mosque and Qur'an Burning

Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker who led the Republican Revolution in 1994 and a likely future presidential candidate, offered some sage advice for President Obama regarding the Ground Zero Mosque and the cancelled (for now) Qur'an burning.

Obama came out early in support of the Ground Zero mosque. In front of a Muslim crowd, and resulting in rounds of applause the once-exalted Obama likely misses, he clearly made the case for the mosque being built where it was planned and argued that no one should try to stop the Imam from exercising his right to practice his religion. Of course, Obama missed the point that no one questions the right the build a mosque there, only the sense of doing so.

However, when a man in Florida proposed a Qur'an burning, the President had no problem coming out clearly against this act, and he argued against the Pastor's right to express his views in this way. The President was right to speak out against the Qur'an burning. It was insulting, incendiary and insensitive. Quite like the 9/11 mosque. And this is where Mr. Gingrich had some words for the President. "It's wrong to burn the Quran and it's wrong to build the mosque at ground zero, and both should be stopped," said the former-Speaker. The President should have been as straight forward with the Imam as he was with the pastor and oppose both efforts on the grounds of good taste, sensitivity and common sense.

Advice the President should have heeded.