Posted on 09/30/2006 12:53:23 AM PDT by goldstategop
The three federally funded agencies most responsible for turning Canada from a stolid conservative backwater into a raving feminist-gay backwater were cut off at the knees this week in a budget brought down by the Harper government.
Reducing federal spending for the first time in nine years, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty also reported a $13-billion surplus in last year's operations. The surplus, he said, would be directed to debt reduction. Liberal governments had been increasing spending by an average 8.2 percent annually, peaking in their final year with a whopping 14.4-percent increase. That had been done in a desperate attempt at bribing the electors to return them to office. It failed.
In spite of the surplus, the Tories nevertheless cut $2 billion off federal spending over the next two years. A whole range of questionable government programs took the hit, but none so great, or so gratifying to conservatives, as the fiscal evisceration of the Status of Women, the Law Commission of Canada and the Court Challenges Program, the notorious (to traditionalists) CCP.
These groups between them financed much of the feminist and gay revolutions. The "SOW," as the Status of Women is unkindly known, poured grants into scores of feminist lobby groups. The other two bankrolled legal challenges to the traditional family under Canada's 24-year-old Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
But the most lethal of the three was the CCP. In case after case it lavishly funded a massive assault on the ancient social fabric of the country by gay, feminist and anti-family lobby groups. The defense of the traditional before the courts was left to groups that had to finance themselves.
Equally grievous for defenders of the family was the fact that the judges before whom they appeared increasingly were appointed for their known sympathy with the lib-left side of these crucial cases. Moreover, all Canadian judges above the level of local magistrates are appointed by the prime minister without legislative approval or even review.
The latter provision ostensibly was modified last year when for the first time a Supreme Court appointee was required to appear briefly before a parliamentary committee – but on the strict understanding that the MPs would a) ask him no questions about his philosophy, past decisions, political leanings, or religion; and b) would understand that they had no power whatever to prevent his appointment. The whole exercise was, in short, preposterous.
The initial rationale for the CCP was to enable people "disadvantaged" by poverty to challenge Canadian laws and social norms which they considered discriminatory. The principal "disadvantaged groups" very soon turned out to be feminists and homosexuals.
The Conservative Mulroney government (1984-1993) abolished the program entirely. With the return of the Liberals under Jean Chretien, however, it was revived, but with a peculiar arrangement never coherently explained. Instead of reappearing as an agency of government, it was established as a private non-profit company fully funded by government. Thus its activity could be concealed. Not being subject to Canada's Access to Information Act, it was no longer obliged to disclose whom it paid to do what.
From court appearances, however, its zealous devotion to the fem-gay cause became blatantly plain. Between 1994 and 1997, for instance, it bankrolled 24 gay-lesbian cases and 23 feminist cases. More recently, it has expanded its activity to finance legal attacks on the parental right to spank children.
How much taxpayers' money it paid the lawyers involved was, of course, confidential. Two of them acting in a same-sex marriage case reportedly got $409,000 and $645,000, wrote columnist Lorne Gunter in the National Post. Nobody denied it. However indigent their clients, CCP lawyers are clearly not very "disadvantaged by poverty" themselves.
Whether the challenges program is gone for good is, of course, still in doubt. It survived its last demise under Mulroney, Gunter recalls, by kicking up such a squawk that even the Tories themselves promised to revive it if returned to office. But the Conservatives of those days were the so-called "Red Tories," a species to which Harper & Co. do not belong.
Moreover, the conservative lobby groups are now considerably better organized. The SOW had barely got started in its mass-mailing campaign against the Harper axe when Gwen Landolt of the conservative REAL Women organization, pounced on them for using government funds to influence government policy. Her swift response was typical. It has been REAL Women, totally self-financed by thousands of members, which more than any other group finally put the boots to these detestable agencies. May they stay dead.
One way would be to eliminate guaranteed scholarships for any leftist feminist studies type courses.
More importantly, these looney left groups will not have government money that they can use to influence the next election. It makes electing a Harper majority even more likely.
This is so great. Actually believe in conservative ideas and principles and enacting them. What a concept! Wish the same could be said here.
Good news bump...
Hurray for Canada! One small victory, one step at a time.
There is plenty that needs to be defunded in the USA, too. National Public Radio, Planned Parenthood, National Endowment of the Arts, corrupt teachers' groups, benefits for illegal immigrants--the list can go on and on.
When will we taxpapers have had enough?
Contact your members of Congress! That played a primary role in the defunding of catastrophic programs in Canada...the programs that got us gay marriage, anti-Christian bigotry and attempts to legalize polygamy, drugs, prostitution and euthanasia among others...
I agree with you wholeheartedly. We need to turn off the TV and start demanding our elected officials start doing their job.
We've been conditioned to stand by passively while special interest groups run amuck.
There's hope in Canada. I don't see any American lawmakers in power who have 1/100 of the courage just shown in Canada.
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