Month: March 2017

Eliminating STC is cold-hearted and mean-spirited cut: NDP

Eliminating STC is cold-hearted and mean-spirited cut: NDP:

allthecanadianpolitics:

With the elimination of the Saskatchewan Transportation Company, the Sask. Party sent a clear message that it does not care about the Saskatchewan people who rely on the busses to get them and their packages around and they care even less about the 224 workers who are now without a job.

“Across the province, Saskatchewan people woke up Wednesday morning to find out they had to change their travel plans and scramble to arrange transportation - including for medical appointments and business needs -   because the bus service they depend on was callously cut out of the blue. Meanwhile, 224 STC workers learned that their jobs were cut,” said NDP STC Critic Doyle Vermette. “The Premier and his cabinet seem to have forgotten that STC and the crowns belong to the people of the province and that Saskatchewan families should never be forced to pay the price for Sask. Party’s mismanagement, scandal and waste.”

Vermette said he was disappointed to see STC on the chopping block in the budget, especially when, in July, the then Minister said it was safe from privatization. He added that it does not make any sense to cut a service on which so many depend while also giving tax giveaways to large corporations and the province’s most wealthy.

In addition to scrapping the STC through this budget bill, the Sask. Party is also pushing a change in the law through the legislature to let them sell 49 per cent of all Crown Corporations, including SaskTel, without a mandate from the people of the province.

“The province’s crowns - from STC to SaskTel - deliver dependable and valued services to people all over the province,” said Vermette. “This plan by the Sask. Party is deceitful, it’s wrong, and it will hurt the people from all four corners of our province. Whether you’re from a rural, Northern, or urban community, the Sask. Party’s plans to scrap our Crowns will hurt us all.”

Public transit is not a discretionary choice, but a necessity, even without the added impetus of #ClimateChange.

Comment on Broken Promise Tour with Nathan Cullen by Laurel L. Russwurm

As mentioned, I did not come up with the name, and one name change is more than enough, thanks.

Every day that goes by more Canadians understand why we need Proportional Representation. I’m inclined to suspect Mr. Trudeau was in such a hurry to pull the plug because LPC’s own research shows Proportional Representation would prevail in a referendum that was at all fair.

Using the faulty phrase “ranked ballot” when what you mean the winner-take-all Alternative Vote (AV) system is unhelpful, and simply suggests your purpose is to confuse rather than illuminate. Electoral reform to a system worse than First Past The Post is not worth saving, as the UK AV-FPTP referendum demonstrated.

Although the NDP may succumb to the temptation of the One Ring when they find themselves in a majority government, (as we have seen happen with Liberal and Conservative governments before them) the rank and file understand the point of proportionality, better, perhaps, than supporters of the others. This renders the idea that party will ever support Alternative Vote inconceivable for the foreseeable future. That’s the thing about Proportional Representation: once citizens disfranchised by winner-take-all electoral systems understand PR, we support it.