Weekend Reading: Summer & Protests Edition

It’s summer, the air’s warm, the nights are cool, protests are going on… it’s a Canadian summer. 🙂 Up here in the Great White North, we just passed a huge omnibus budget bill.

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Stand up, sit down, repeat: What to expect from budget all-nighter

In an act of protest against the Conservative government’s omnibus budget bill, the Opposition tabled over 800 votes and stayed up all night voting against the measures, in defiance against the bill.

I personally haven’t looked at everything, but here are some of my controversial thoughts; I could be wrong, I could be misinformed, so please take with several grains of salt: 🙂

Lifting restrictions to foreign ownership in the telecom sector

Companies with less than 10% market share will now be allowed to be fully-owned by foreign interests. While this is a good step forward, in my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough. There’s a reason why Canadians get ripped off so massively by the local telecom sector, and that is because they are protected by regulations, like the foreign ownership restriction.

OAS Increased to age 67

Canada’s Old Age Security program has been increased to age 67. While this change makes sense for the longer term, it doesn’t make as much sense as other changes could have. Instead, benefits for people making $60,000+ could have been reduced. The welfare state in Canada needs to shrink, and it’s better to do that by reducing benefits to people who clearly don’t need welfare.

Gun Control

The Conservative government wants to allow gun shops to sell shotguns and rifles to anyone who wants to buy them, without recording their information or doing any real verification. I don’t really agree with this. Why not? Because hand guns and concealed carry are still illegal in Canada. This law just makes it easier for any psycho to buy a shotgun and start shooting people up, without worrying about getting shot back. If you want to have a reasonable gun climate, you need to be balanced. This means:

• Legal concealed carry.
• Full background checks and police interviews of would-be buyers.

I’m all for freedom and the right to self-defence, but with that freedom comes responsibility. Unfortunately, the current government mandate makes it hard for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves (it’s not too practical to carry around a shotgun as self-defence, and it’s not legal in most cities in any case), while making it easier for the loonies and psychos to go postal on society.

Repealing the Fair Wages Act

I’m not sure what the details of this are; would anyone like to inform me? I am against both discrimination and affirmative action programs, and I hate any program that forces someone to hire a minority (speaking as a 1/2 minority myself) over the most qualified employee, just because of that person’s skin colour. That’s still racism.

This is a massive bill

I haven’t had the time to really review everything, and maybe it’s not good for the democratic process to be shoving such large bills down Parliament. The Americans down south haven’t had such a great experience with the same kind of stuff, eh? Overall there seems to be some good stuff, and some bad stuff. You can check out the monster bill here: http://parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=5524772.

Here’s some stuff I would like to see addressed by the government:

Full sovereignty for Native Americans

Why don’t Native Americans have full sovereignty over their own land? The current government approach seems to make them dependent on government aid, causing southerners to hate them for using their tax dollars, and causing a vicious cycle of dependence and alcoholism. If the government wants to make these people weak, they seem to be doing their jobs. Personally, I think it’s a disgrace… these people were free before outsiders came in, and while it may be too late for them to regain all of that freedom, they certainly deserve full authority and self-determination over their own land and affairs.

Increased protection, personal freedom, and privacy

I don’t want to see drones flying over my head. I don’t want Americans to have authority on Canadian soil. I don’t want government stooges nosing around my emails and internet usage. Furthermore, I don’t like the massive waste of resources on a war on drugs, and I think that the government should cease and desist the continued Prohibition that we have to this day. Shockingly enough, even top health officials in Canada are starting to recognize the immense human toll of today’s form of Prohibition, and police are growing more lenient, at least when it comes to marijuana if not for other drugs. I’m a lot more concerned about rapists and murderers than I am about potheads, and I don’t see the value in chasing after and jailing the latter.

Imagine if the government started jailing people for drinking coffee or having a beer? It’s not that much of a logical stretch, given that both coffee and beer also contain psychoactive compounds.

CMHC Insurance limits

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is approaching its $600 billion limit, which amounts to about 38% of Canada’s current GDP. As we near this limit, this implies a tightening up of credit and a slowdown or decline in the housing market. I haven’t seen policy makers do much aside from ignoring the implications that a Canadian housing market slowdown or crash will have on our economy. These aren’t peanut sums we’re talking about, here.

Anyways, sorry for getting so political on you guys. Let’s go on to the weekend reading. 🙂

Weekend Reading

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Carnivals

• Best of Money Carnival at One Cent At A Time
• Carnival of Financial Planning at Cult of Money
• Carnival of MoneyPros at Finance Product Reviews
• Carnival of Retirement at Simple Finance Blog
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• Fin. Carn. for Young Adults at 20s Finances
• Totally Money Carnival at Financial Success for Young Adults
• Wealth Artisan’s FinCarn at Wealth Artisan
• Yakezie Carnival at Free Ticket to Japan

Have a good weekend, all!