Everyone in the Soapbox family has or is on the verge of a horrible cold; nevertheless we’d like to wish everyone a Happy Canada Day.
Canada Day is a day to celebrate all the things we’ve gotten right. Yes, there are things we got wrong and need to fix, but today let’s take a moment and (in the words of Naheed Nenshi, the new leader of the NDP) “celebrate the most successful example of pluralism in the history of the world.”
I’m good with that.
Happy Canada Day everyone!
PS. Let’s take a moment to share some Canadian memories. As part of the hoopla around the design of the new Canadian flag, my elementary school ran a contest for the best new flag design. I was very proud of my entry which, I thought, evoked the spirit of Canada very well. Later I realized it was a knock off of the back of the Canadian nickle. (Hey, I was just a kid!)
Susan on the Soapbox 
Happy New Year Canadians!
And a Happy Canada day/week to you too Mike.
I celebrate your Art work! And yes to being a kid and being a free thinker…. I also celebrated and appreciate every time I get something in my in box from you. Thank you for all you do.
tylaraduncan: thank you. To my teacher’s credit she didn;t point out that I’d ripped off the nickle for my design. I guess you can’t blame someone for creating derivative art when they’re just a kid. :_
Susan: I hope you and your family have a Happy Canada Day and recover from the cold. I’ll share some more good and fitting music. This is a composition from Gordon Lightfoot, and is from 1967. It is Canadian Railroad Trilogy. This was penned for Canada’s centennial and the CBC. I saw Gordon Lightfoot live, front row center, and I met him and his band after the show. He is in my music collection.
Dwayne, you are a lucky son of a gun aren’t you. Fantastic choice. Lightfoot is the quintessential Canadian and this song, simple and yet complex, demonstrates that. Thanks!
Susan: Here is my next song pick. This is a song that was written by Gordie Johnson and (the late) Gary Lowe, from the Canadian blues/rock/reggae band, Big Sugar. It is Turn The Lights On. This was recorded and released in 1998. I saw Gordie Jonson 5 times live, with his bands Big Sugar and Sit Down Servant. This is in my music collection.
Dwayne, I must admit I’ve never heard of this group. So much music, so little time. Thanks.
Susan: I also met Gordie Johnson. It’s a great song for summer.
Susan: Here is my next song pick. This is from Tom Cochrane and Red Rider, and it was recorded live with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, in 1989, and was released that same year. It is White Hot. This was written by Tom Cochrane and Ken Greer. I saw Tom Cochrane a few times live and met him. This is also in my music collection.
Dwayne, this was an intriguing piece, perfect for the symphony. I googled it and discovered Cochrane wrote most of the lyrics in a dusty corner of Guelph’s Porter Hall library. He said naivete is one of the mothers of invention. Another very interesting choice. https://www.tomcochranesite.com/ss-whitehot.html
Happy Canada Day and I hope you all get better soon.
Rose, that makes two of us. This is one of the worst colds I’ve had in years. We’ve been doing covid tests every second day, still negative, but wow.
Susan: Here is my final song pick. This was written by Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings. It is from The Guess Who, and the song is American Woman. This was recorded and released in 1970. I saw Randy Bachman 8 times live and met him. I saw Burton Cummings 4 times live and met him. I also have The Guess Who in my music collection.
Dwayne, this one took me way, way back to my youth. When I read your comment that you’d seen Bachman 8 times and Cummings 4 times I couldn’t help but think that you could write an amazing memoir of your experiences.
Thanks!
All the best to you and your symptomatic family. I hate to tell you, but based on figures from AHS Public Health, there is a significant probability that your “horrible colds” are the ‘rona. Of course, you can’t really know for sure, since there’s no testing anymore, but it’s statistically likely. Take care of yourselves.
jerrymacgp: As I remember reading, you are a medical professional, so you would know about these things. Danielle Smith and the UCP don’t care, because there was some type of “conference” about these shots for corona recently in Alberta, which included UCP MLAs in attendance, and Danielle Smith didn’t condemn it. Take Back Alberta is controlling her, which isn’t helpful.
Jerrymacgp: I must admit the thought had crossed my mind. As you said we’re flying blind because the Smith government has decided in its infinite wisdom that what we don’t know can’t hurt us. It’s an insane way to govern.
Indeed. I saw in another post that you were home testing every other day, but from what I’ve heard from colleagues who know about these things, most of the extant batch of home COVID tests have expired, and those that haven’t may not detect current circulating strains anyway.
And for healthcare provider testing, the stand-alone COVID test can’t even be ordered by providers anymore; now they can only order a respiratory virus panel.
Jerrymacgp: we did find a batch of home COVID tests which hadn’t expired, however I’m beginning to think they may not detect the current strains because I find it hard to believe that we could get this sick for this long from the “common cold/flu”. There’s something more going on.
Canada Day came and is gone and we are just going too fast.
I hope that ast least you are doing better.
A friend of mine got the current cold and I think it is the latest version of Covid and apparently a pain in the neck.
It felt like a normal day here in Edmonton. I was at the St. Albert Botanic Park and we had music and some lemonade and it was great.
Thanks Carlos, while I’m feeling a touch better, my husband is a whole lot worse. As far as I can tell this so-called cold is running rampant in the population. The fact the government has chosen to ignore it means people are running risks they wouldn’t otherwise run if they were better informed.
It’s inexcusable that in this age of science and high tech communication we’re still fumbling around in the dark.
Finally we are looking at the real problem instead of excusing the political class and their silly questions WHY? and have research after research to ask the obvious questions. Our political system is dying along with democracy because they refuse to look at themselves in the mirror.
Our political system needs profound reforms and fast before we become completely useless and an autocracy.
How much longer do we need to realize the system is corrupt, useless and captured by big money and corporations?
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2024/07/03/Young-Voters-Backing-Populist-Parties/
Carlos thanks for the link to the Tyee article. Lots of good stuff there.
Over the weekend I read an article in the G&M about whether Trudeau should step aside as leader. Former MP Lloyd Axworthy said the Liberals need to think big and that this would be a good time to reopen the discussion about electoral reform. This was part of Trudeau’s platform back in 2015 and it died in 2016. It came back this February as Motion 86 and was killed on a 220 against/101 for vote. It’s a shame really, because it might be the kind of thing that would give the voters feeling disenfranchised a reason to reengage.
What’s even more shameful is that notwithstanding all the press coverage about how disenchanted the public is, not one major newspaper covered this vote.
Here’s the link: https://www.uncommons.ca/p/we-killed-electoral-reform-again
Despite the fact that I try to be on this subject, I was not aware of this vote.
Not a surprise that it was voted down and not talked about. Exactly the reasons that have caused us to be where we are now.
Politicians very confortable in getting away with mischief and corruption do not want to change anything, even if it means destroying the system.
Well so be it. We will see what the consequences are. We are already very unstable but nothing compared to where will be in the near future when the world crisis put more pressure on us.
Unfortunately many Canadians believe we are very safe.
Carlos, I’m disappointed in the politicians and I’m even more disappointed in the Globe and Mail and other newspapers and media that profess to be professional but fail to report on something this significant. We should have been told the motion was before the House. If we’d known we could have hammered our MPs to push it through. It wasn’t binding, it was simply to set up a citizens advisory committee to look at the issue. The only reason I became aware of it was it was mentioned at the end of an article on whether Trudeau should resign.
Susan I am not surprised with your disappointment. I have felt that way for a long time.
It is frustrating that an entire woderful nation is not allowed to progress because its political class is incapable of getting off their addiction to power, greed and their corrupted relationship with the economic power.
Justin Trudeau promised to study a reform when he had no objective of changing anything. He did it just to win the elections. That is just how serious they think of it. When asked about why he gave up on it he had the guts to say that Canadians were not interested in it, just to hide the fact that he just did not want Proportional Representation and so the whole nation could not have something he did not want. A clear understanding of democracy is it not?
We are now governed by people that live in an environment that makes them believe they are above the citizens of a nation. A problem that exists around the world and that we think we are immune to.
Unfortunately this disease is now in full bloom in our great neighbour to the South where a fellon ex-president is even capable of controlling the Supreme Court and we are getting used as if this is what should be happening in a rule of law nation.
Susan, Happy Canada Day from one of 30% (ipsos poll) grrrrrgh!! who are proud and happy to be Canadian.
However, not at all happy with some of our elected so called representatives. I’m not even going to go there with PP and his bring Canada home BS.
Closer to home, I’d really appreciate you weighing in on DJC’s latest post on alberta politics- re the cuts to Legal Aid funding for Albertans.
As someone who had to use their services, I’m beyond appalled.
randi-lee: I just posted a reply to you but it disappeared. So I’ll redraft it and hopefully it won’t appear twice.
DJC did an excellent job in covering the impact of ripping up the LAA’s Agreement. The kerfuffle that ensued (over the long weekend no less) resulted in the government backing away from its original hardline position. Justice Minister Amery issued another press release in which he says:
– LAA’s budget went from $66M in 2015 to $110M in 2024 with no explanation of why. I haven’t seen the original Agreement but I’d be surprised that an agreement that’s been around for 50 years doesn’t have a mechanism to ensure accountability. I suspect under the guise of increasing transparency, the government was trying to grab control over the LAA. .
– The Law Society of Alberta’s role as regulator of the legal profession remains unchanged. This may be true now, but this wasn’t the case earlier in the week when the LAA said the government’s new agreement would curtail LAA’s independence, sever any involvement with the Law Society of Alberta, and give the government greater discretion over how the society uses its funds. This is unacceptable meddling by the government in the justice system.
Seems to me the Smith government wanted to hamstring the LAA by drastically cutting its budget and curtailing its independence and thanks to the diligent reporting by DJC, the CBC, and the lawyers who were issuing press releases and talking to the media, the government got caught and is now backtracking.
They came after the vulnerable and their lawyers, it’s absolutely disgraceful.
Susan, Thanks You !
From the latest (?) Report
Legal Aid in Canada 2021-22
http://www.justice.gc.ca
March 8th 2024
Justice Canada contributed over $196 million to the provinces for the delivery of criminal legal aid…..
Federal support for civil legal aid is covered under the Canada Social Transfer (CST) which is a block transfer payment provided to each province and territory for healthcare, post secondary education, social assistance and social services. Civil legal aid is a eligible expenditure under the CST.
Alot of the reading is probably more in your wheelhouse, but from what I could garner from the information, it seems to me that Danielle is trying to pull the same stunt she did with the $10@day; daycare funding. Ie- withhold federal funds, until the daycare operators were making noise in the media. Then getting called out by the federal government about “the funds were available, why aren’t you dispersing them?”
Since this was a typical gop Friday(?) announcement ,(long weekend even better) no one will notice, right? On the surface it seems like an
A. Try to own the feds move— except I’m guessing the majority of the population doesn’t know about federal funding, with the exception being the lawyers themselves and a few of us that have to deal with inter jurisdictional issues.
B. She’s using the funding for “anything ” except for what it was intended.
C. Another of her, take federal money, and spend it how she sees fit ” for the good ” of all Albertans.
D. Or if I was being really cynical, she’s following the lead in the other “states ” and undermining & retooling the legal system in Alberta. It’s working with the covid cases prosecutions, conflict of interest issues and whatever else that is hiding behind the ” NO” to freedom of information “.
Or as Lisa says, Danny doing Danny things, go figure!
I got the “cold/ flu” …(tests were negative ) in Jan=3wks. My Doctor had it for 10 wks, …..my sister has been sick since mid April.
So here’s hoping that you & hubby both recover soon. Sending best regards.
Randi-Lee. Thanks for the additional resources. And thanks also (I think) for the information about this cold/flu thing that’s going around. I’m beginning to think this is something that’s going to stick around for a while.
This is what’s going on in Montana. I hope the youth in our neighboring state still have their concerns respected, and that their Republican governor isn’t going to get what they want. These youth know what is best for their future, and are interested in having a good life for themselves and their own children.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna161167
Dwayne: sadly if Trump is elected, this reversal will be the tip of the ice berg. Tough times ahead.