Tax Break for Greens
Comments (1) That’s right, starting this month OC Transpo users will be able to claim their bus passes on their taxes! Good news for those of us economically and environmentally minded riding public transportation regularly.
Posts tagged: politics
Comments (1) 
Ontario Attempts to Relieve Debt Stress
By Brian, June 2, 2006 3:38 pm
By putting restrictions on what collections agents are allowed to do, and setting the bar for what is considered harrasment. It’s a step in the right direction, but I wonder what exactly they will do to collection groups that misbehave?
Quandaries
By Brian, May 16, 2006 11:44 pm
Things in Canada where changing while I was a wee lad – too young and unawares to follow or care to perceive them. During this time Canada was declared bilingual and it was also declared multicultural. Enabling immigrants to preserve their cultural identity while creating a new culture made up as a mosaic.
On paper, this is a very altruistic concept – and truly Canadian, to be sure. A funny thing happened to Canada when this concept came out of the court house: The law of the land had changed, but the people had not. Perhaps it’s because the concept has only been around us for a few decades, but I see a country confused.
For example, in Ottawa, it has been deemed legal for women to go topless in public. It was never illegal for men to do so and therefore this is a fair law. Regardless of law, the people haven’t changed – seldom to women appear topless (I’ve actually never witnessed it first-hand) while men still do. Most people still believe it to be morally offensive, or have simply grown up with the taboo of bared breasts.
These things are the source of the confusion, I think. The law is idealistically correct and fair, but the people it governs do not necessarily all have the same altruistic viewpoint of it. Most have the same beliefs, ideals and prejudices they had before the law changed.
I wish that at this point I had a solution to propose, but sadly, I report I do not. These are just my observations. Having grown up during these changes, and being a rather unfocused child, I rarely took any time away from the computer screen, a book or building an elaborate (and ultimately unfinished) tree fort somewhere.
Besides that, the rural schools I went to in the ’80s where not exactly pictures of diversity due to the population of the region, so there likely was little change to see had I taken the time to notice. I guess the question I’m wondering now is if Canada’s flavor of Socialist Democracy will survive test of time, or will we ultimately fail in our idealism like communism did? Nice as a theory, but never in recorded history has anybody ever tried to govern over so many people as there are in the world today.
It’s rather sobering to consider that the luxuries, freedoms, and health-care we depend on is all part of an untried system.
Themocracy