Sun columns: February 2012 Archives

Ontario needs Alberta's oilsands

Three years ago, taxpayers were forced to loan $13.7 billion to General Motors and Chrysler because no banks were crazy enough. Some of that taxpayers' money has been repaid, but $5.5 billion will never be recovered.

Could you imagine if Alberta's premier had campaigned against that bailout? Or even spoke out against it now?

It's not like the bailout worked, after all.

There are 2,000 fewer jobs at GM today and 800 fewer at Chrysler. As economist Mark Milke points out, the jobs that were "saved" — at least for now, until the next bailout — cost $90,000 each at Chrysler, and $474,000 each at GM.

That's not a typo. Taxpayers spent $474,000 to "save" each job at Government Motors.

What if Alberta's premier had said: "If I had my preferences as to whether we prop up a failing, obsolete, over-unionized company in the East or lower taxes, I'll tell you where I stand: With lower taxes."

Such a premier would have been called an enemy of Canada. Such a premier would have been accused of being selfish, and money-grubbing, and un-Canadian and destructive of the economy.

But that's exactly what Dalton McGuinty said Monday about Canada's oilsands.

He says he's against them.

He says they're the cause of Ontario's manufacturing recession.

Here are his exact words: "If I had my preferences as to whether we had a rapidly growing oil and gas sector in the West or a lower dollar, I'll tell you where I stand: With the lower dollar."

He claims that the oilsands are responsible for Canada's high dollar — as if other commodities, such as Ontario gold, or Saskatchewan potash, or the relative strength of our economy compared to the U.S., weren't most responsible for the high dollar.

As if the auto workers' union's demand for $75/hour had nothing to do with GM and Chrysler's troubles.

But those explanations don't suit McGuinty. Especially now that he has beggared Ontario and turned it into a have-not province, for the first time in history. So an external scapegoat is needed.

So the West can go to hell.

The one industry in Canada that doesn't need a bailout, that's creating six-figure jobs, that doesn't need a "stimulus program" can go to hell. But we're all expected to bail out Dalton McGuinty's union friends.

Got it.

It's not even a case of "give me my bailout and I'll give you yours." The oilsands don't need a bailout. That's the whole point.

McGuintynomics is all about bailouts, and lobbyists getting subsidies for favoured companies, and government intervention.

Like McGuinty's master plan to build billions of dollars worth of windmills in Ontario. That's why Ontario manufacturing is uncompetitive: Electricity costs are up 65% since 1999 and are projected to go up another 46% in the next four years.

That's called energy poverty, and it's caused by premiers who build windmills.

Ironically, it's Alberta that will save Ontario. The oilsands are expected to create 65,000 new jobs over 25 years in Ontario — on top of all the heavy equipment manufacturing and financial sector jobs right now. And then there are all the taxes the oilsands pay.

But McGuinty can't take credit for any of that wealth, can he?

Once upon a time Ontario was the leader of the country.

McGuinty hasn't just made Ontario economically weaker. He's become national unity's small man now, too.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY

Possession of a dangerous crayon
Where's the liberal media when a child's hand drawing of a gun leads to strip searches?

When Jessie Sansone was picking up his kids from school last week in Kitchener, Ont., he was asked to go to the principal's office.

There were three cops waiting there who arrested him, handcuffed him and took him down to the police station, where he was strip searched.

Then more cops went to his home where his wife, while caring for a 15-month-old baby, was told to go down to the police station, too. And then they searched his house. Without a warrant. Why? What did Sansone do?

Nothing. They didn't find anything in the house when they searched it. They didn't find anything on him when they searched him.

A warrantless arrest and strip search and search of his house. Why?

Because at school, his four-year-old daughter drew a picture of a gun and, when asked about it, told her teacher her daddy uses it to shoot bad guys and monsters. Seriously.

So her kindergarten teacher called Family and Children's Services. Seriously.

And they called the cops. Seriously. And they arrested and searched him. Seriously.

Because a kid drew a picture of a gun. I hear rumours that some kids, especially boys, sometimes draw pictures of robots with lasers, too. And supersonic fighter planes. Maybe we should arrest their parents, too.

But the thing about guns is they're not illegal. Even under the Liberals. We didn't have a gun ban, just a gun registry.

What's the excuse given for the strip search by the Waterloo Regional Police? Inspector Kevin Thaler says it was done "for officer safety, because it's a firearms-related incident," the Waterloo Record reported.

Sorry. Did he just call a child's doodle a "firearms incident?" Is there so little crime in Kitchener that three policemen are dispatched to school because a kindergarten kid drew a gun, and more officers to the home?

The cops were stupid. We pay cops not to be stupid. We pay them not to be political, or bitchy, or to take sides in personal vendettas. They're supposed to be the grown-ups. They're supposed to use their discretion.

A child's drawing of a gun — which does not depict a crime, by the way — is not a public safety matter. It's not a police matter. We have come to expect this anti-family, snitch-style of justice from Family and Children's Services. They regularly abuse families with whom they simply disagree about things, like the style of parenting or religion.

Alison Scott, the executive director of Family and Children's Services, went even nuttier.

"From a public safety point of view, any child drawing a picture of guns and saying there's guns in a home would warrant some further conversation with the parents and child," she told the Record.

Really? So merely owning a firearm is a public safety matter, time for an intervention?

But Alison Scott didn't have a conversation with parents and child, did she? She didn't give the parents the courtesy of a phone call, or a casual inquiry. She didn't stay calm and normal. She went into nanny state mode. She went into KGB mode. She cut the family right out of it.

Question: Where is the liberal media? You know, the ones who freaked out a week ago when Public Safety Minister Vic Toews proposed a law to allow police to get basic information about their Internet use? Toews just wanted to let cops get your e-mail address, but they'd still have to get a search warrant for anything more. National freak-out.

Here we have a child's crayon drawing leading to a strip search, handcuffing and home invasion. Where's the reaction? Why doesn't the liberal media care about civil liberties when it's a property rights issue or a firearms issue or a family sovereignty issue?

 That's the thing about civil liberties. It can't just be for pornographers or Muslim terror suspects.

Civil liberties have to be there for lawful gun owners.

And parents of creative children who are dangerous enough to draw a crayon gun.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY

CBC wants censorship

The CBC is throwing a tantrum — using your tax dollars.

They had a lawyer send a letter to us here at the Sun, complaining because we criticize their wasteful spending, their lack of accountability, and their bizarre broadcasting decisions, like their big foray into Internet porn.

The CBC lawyer was really mad because on the Sun News Network, we showed a video of one of their senior executives, Kirstine Stewart, alongside a video of a France-produced porn show on CBC's new online channel.

Here's a quote from their letter: "Placing Ms. Stewart on the same screen as graphic sex scenes is indefensible morally and legally."

Just to be clear, the graphic sex scene their lawyer referred to was from a program on a CBC website. But to show that program, associated with a CBC executive, is apparently illegal and immoral in their eyes.

Uh, nope. It's called accountability. If the government broadcaster is going to get into the online porn business, they have to answer for it to taxpayers. Are they embarrassed?

The CBC's president, Hubert Lacroix, lost his temper and wrote to the entire board of directors of Quebecor, the company that owns the Sun.

Lacroix singled me out and said my show was "simply unacceptable, disgraceful, and intended only to tarnish the image and reputation of one of CBC/Radio-Canada's senior executives." He was also really mad that I called him a "wastrel" and "a money-burning, high-living, party-hard elitist."

Well, gentle reader, you tell me. Is a man who expenses $200 breakfasts to the taxpayer a wastrel? Is a man who throws a lavish five-star party during the Toronto Film Festival — even though the CBC had no film showing there — a "money-burning, high-living, party-hard elitist"?

I'd say he is. I wouldn't care if it was Lacroix's own money. But it's not.

It's taxpayers' money. Any cabinet minister who partied that way would be sacked.

But then Lacroix showed his real character. He told our corporate board that my show was "an act so low and so unworthy that it must be drawn to your attention" — and he clearly wanted them to rein me in.

So the president of the government broadcaster was writing to a private broadcaster and demanding that they censor one of their journalists.

Stop for a moment and think about that. Hubert Lacroix wants to censor the Sun. He expects the Sun's bosses to silence a particular journalist (me). He has his lawyer make threats implying a lawsuit. He sends a tear-stained letter to the board of directors.

What a bully. What a censor. What a man unfit to run a media company.

Could you imagine what it's like to work for him at the CBC?

Let me close by quoting the response to the CBC from Quebecor's v-p of legal affairs, Marc Tremblay:

"We do not know how things are done at CBC, but at (Quebecor) respect for journalistic independence is a sacred principle, one that is applied absolutely, and we cannot imagine by what right the Board of Directors could dictate how the news professionals at our media outlets should act with respect to either the form or the substance of their journalistic expression."

Bloody brilliant.

I work for a company that loves free speech, even if that free speech irritates a government bureaucrat.

The CBC is run by a thin-skinned censor.

Reason #462 they should be privatized.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY

Ready, aim, misfire
Liberals OK with guns if conservatives are the target

A left-wing freebie newspaper in Toronto, called NOW magazine, has published a photoshopped picture of the conservative mayor, Rob Ford, pointing a gun to his head.

This from a magazine that claims to be against guns and gun violence.

NOW magazine is unimportant to most people, but there is an important point buried amidst its smut: Liberals don't mind promiscuous suggestions of gun crime, if it's someone they hate in the crosshairs.

It's like when the movie, Death of a President, came to the Toronto International Film Festival. It wasn't about a historical assassination. It was a Hollywood liberal fantasy of George W. Bush, then the sitting president, being murdered.

Could you imagine if a conservative made a movie about the assassination of Obama? It would never have been produced; no one would have agreed to be associated with it; no actors would have played in it; no studios would have distributed it; no film festival would have screened it. No critics would have praised it.

Death of a President actually won six film awards, including the International Critics Prize at the Toronto festival, and another at the Banff festival.

Gun control? No. Hollywood doesn't mind when it's a Republican being murdered. They love Che Guevara and Mao. They even wear T-shirts of those mass murderers.

But the same violent crowd tries to tie any murders that they don't like to conservatives who use gun-like language or imagery. Take the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. A clinically insane man named Jared Loughner burst forth at a town hall-style meeting with her constituents, guns blazing. He killed six people and injured 13, including Giffords.

He was crazy. He was schizophrenic. He had been kicked out of school after five incidents involving campus police.

He wasn't political or right wing or left wing. He was just nuts. He believed in mind control, and something he called "lucid dreaming" — that everything in real life was just a dream, so you could kill anyone and it was just pretend.

But liberal media had made a decision: That this was the fault of conservatives. Because conservative politicians use military language, like all politicians do. The word campaign is a military term. So is the term "war room." For years, a popular debate show was called Crossfire. Politicians "target" certain voters. That's all metaphor. We all know that. But the liberal media couldn't help but hang this around the necks of the people they hate because Sarah Palin once used a campaign map with targets on it.

It was a blood libel against her by the very same people who had applauded the Death of a President movie. By the very same people who find the NOW magazine picture so amusing.

Liberals don't find guns offensive. If they did, they'd hate Castro and Mao and Lenin and Chavez and Ahmadinejad. They wouldn't have made a snuff movie about Bush, let alone given it six awards.

No. Liberals only find guns offensive when they're owned by law-abiding citizens who want to go duck hunting, or protect themselves from crime.

And liberals don't mind dramatizing and fantasizing about gun crimes or even suicide, as long as it's a conservative such as Rob Ford who's in the crosshairs.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY

Censoring Hitler — and the past
Laws that destroy our civil liberties are dangerous, no matter who passes them

If every Jew in Europe had a firearm, do you think Hitler could have killed six million of them so easily?

He might still have been able to kill them. But not without a fight. Not like lambs to the slaughter.

Lucky for Hitler, the Jews in Germany had been disarmed by do-gooders long before he took power. It actually was part of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War.

These same liberals brought in censorship laws, too — under which Hitler himself was prosecuted.

So when Hitler took power in 1933, much of his work was done for him — civil liberties had already been limited, by the "good guys."

According to the great journalist and historian George Jonas, when Hitler started limiting personal freedom, a left-wing legislator stood up in the Reichstag to complain about it.

And here's what Hitler said: "Late you come, but still you come. You should have recognized the value of criticism during the years we were in opposition (when) our press was forbidden, our meetings were forbidden, and we were forbidden to speak for years on end."

It's a terrifying reminder that laws that destroy our civil liberties are dangerous no matter who passes them, and no matter what good intentions accompanied them.

The lesson is, don't let the government take away your rights.

In a crisis, the only way to protect your rights is with your own gun. That's why gun control was so important to Hitler.

This month, the Conservative government is finally repealing the Canadian gun registry. It was a well-intentioned law, enacted by Liberals, for the most idealistic reasons. Just like Germany's gun laws were.

Larry Miller, an MP from Ontario, noted the authoritarian streak in those who enacted Canadian gun control, and compared it to a gun control quote from Hitler. The opposition clucked.

They don't have to agree with him. That's the point of Parliament. But not according to Parliament's would-be censor, an old Liberal hack named Irwin Cotler.

Cotler doesn't spend a lot of time giving speeches in Parliament these days — at least not in Canada's Parliament. He uses his government-funded office to carry on a public interest law practice for people in other countries.

He's always issuing press releases about clients of his in places like Egypt or Bahrain or Russia. Which is great, but he's supposed to represent his riding here in Canada.

Cotler took time out of his busy international law practice to come to Canada's Parliament last week to condemn Larry Miller for noting Hitler's views on gun control.

But Cotler didn't just want to oppose Miller's views, or debate them or disagree with them. Cotler wanted to censor them.

Seriously.

He stood up and whined to the Speaker of the House of Commons that Larry Miller shouldn't be allowed to compare anything to Hitler — or at least anything the dear Liberal Party has done. He wanted that comparison banned.

Miller did not call Cotler a Nazi, or compare him to Hitler. Miller noted that Hitler relied on gun control.

Are we seriously not allowed to remember that part of Hitler's plan? Because Irwin Cotler so loves gun control, we're not allowed to mention that a brutal dictator did, too?

What other parts of the Holocaust does Irwin Cotler not want us to be able to talk about? What other words does Cotler want us to ban?

Irwin Cotler is a doddering old fool. He's long past his best-before date. He clearly has lost interest in his parliamentary duties — he loves jet-setting around the world for photo ops, with him posing as a civil liberties hero in the Third World.

Funny, that. Because his love for gun control and censorship here in Canada is the stuff of authoritarian bullies, not civil liberties.

And, by trying to forbid Miller from talking about Hitler's odious works, Cotler is interfering with the proper remembrance of the Holocaust and the promise to never let it happen again.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY

Terror training camp?!
Ezra's just roasting marshmellows – and liberal views

Wednesday is the last day to sign up for my winter getaway called the Freedom Weekend. Or as John Miller calls it, a terrorist training camp.

But you decide which it really is.

As I wrote a few months ago, Sun News personalities from Charles Adler to Michael Coren to Krista Erickson will join me at a beautiful resort north of Toronto, for the weekend of Feb. 24-26, and I've invited enthusiastic Sun readers to join us for the fun.

We'll talk politics, dine together and go snowshoeing, have a campfire, the works. It will be like joining our newsroom for a weekend of great discussion, food and fun.

But to John Miller, a former editor of the Toronto Star and former chair of the Ryerson school of journalism, it doesn't sound like fun.

Miller checked out my website — FreedomWeekend.ca — and he literally compared the gathering to the Toronto 18 terrorists.

Here is an extended quote from his rant to show that I'm not taking this out of context one bit:

"Makes you wonder when was the last time a group of ideological warriors went north to train in the backwoods and plot to storm Parliament, blow up the CBC, seize the airwaves and spread terror across the land. Oh yeah, the Toronto 18 did that. Didn't police arrest the lot of them and call them the gravest threat to our democracy?

"I think a weekend with Ezra and friends could be something just like that.

"The only thing that sets them apart from the Muslim extremists is that Sun Media will be charging you admission."

Sorry, we're not planning to storm Parliament. Maybe we'll talk about writing some letters to our MPs. We're not planning to blow up the CBC. We just want to privatize it. And we don't believe in spreading terror across the land. In fact, we support our Canadian troops in the war against terror, and don't want that little terrorist Omar Khadr let back in from Guantanamo Bay.

Miller ended by saying "the only thing" that makes us different from those terrorists is that we charge admission.

What a disgusting man.

Why did he liken me, my fellow Sun personalities and Sun readers to terrorists? For one reason only: We're conservative, and we refuse to go along with him and the rest of the consensus media.

The fact that someone as vile as Miller has held senior posts at journalism schools and the largest newspaper in Canada is not surprising. Because both the Star and every j-school in the country believe in a uniform, official left-wing view.

They believe in every type of diversity — racial, sexual, ethnic — except for intellectual diversity. And instead of debating their opponents, they shun them or accuse them of crimes. Wrong. It's not criminal or terrorist to have a conservative point of view, to be skeptical of the gun registry or the Kyoto Protocol or the Wheat Board or David Suzuki.

Newspapers used to be places where various points of view grappled. But not anymore — is there anything as dreary as the conformity of the consensus media?

As long as we're alive, we'll be independent thinkers. By the way, if you want to join us in Muskoka, visit FreedomWeekend.ca now — registration closes Wednesday.

The only thing going up in flames will be roasted marshmallows — and the liberal monopoly on conversation.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY

Moore can't face Hard questions

Should the Canadian government use your tax dollars to get into the online pornography business?

There really is only one way to answer that question. Which is why the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation never asked permission — they just went ahead and did it.

With your money.

CBC has a French website called tou.tv. They paid French pornographers for a series, called Hard, that they are streaming over the Internet on overnight service.

Anyone born of a mother cannot object to people having sex. And being a French porn star is a more reputable occupation than many other jobs in France, such as being the ambassador to the United Nations.

And those who believe in personal freedom generally shouldn't censor pornography on the Internet. Legend has it, that's what motivated Al Gore to invent the Internet in the first place.

But there are millions of porn websites on the Internet already, according to a good friend of mine. Why is the government of Canada spending tax money to add one more?

We don't even know how much it costs, because the CBC says that's a "journalistic secret."

That's the CBC for you. It's like the Lord of the Flies over there — no grown-up supervision. They're a bunch of unionized, overpaid civil servants who like porn and don't want to tell the rest of us how much we're paying for it.

But what about James Moore? He's the heritage minister, who is supposed to be responsible for the CBC.

Sun Media's Kris Sims asked him about the porn series. But instead of taking responsibility for the CBC and the $1.1 billion a year in tax money he gives them, Moore turned on Sims for daring to ask him such a question, saying she was trying to drive up public anger against the CBC.

But it's the job of independent journalists to hold the government to account for spending — and that includes the black hole called the CBC.

If Internet porn is really what the state broadcaster has descended to then, yeah, it's an excellent question to ask the minister who's funding it.

Moore could have said, "I don't interfere with CBC decisions."

Which would respect their independence but fail to give taxpayers accountability. Or he could have said, "That's outrageous, I'll stop it." In which case he'd be accused of meddling.

That's the problem with having a government broadcaster, it doesn't really work.

So it's no wonder that Moore lashed out at Sims.

But then he went further — implying that the CBC pornography is no worse than bikini-clad SUNshine girls. That's nuts. SUNshine girls wear swimsuits.

They aren't photographed having X-rated sex. And even if they were, the Sun isn't propped up with tax dollars.

But then Moore really blew his stack. According to Sims, Moore implied the entire Sun News Network was not a real broadcaster, but a sham — just a tool used by our owner, Pierre Karl Peladeau, to attack his rivals.

That's not just a baseless personal attack on a great media entrepreneur like Peladeau. It's also a slap in the face of the 100 people who work at Sun News, and have made it the most successful TV news start-up in Canada in more than a decade. It's also a slap in the face to our countless viewers and supporters across Canada.

Not to mention our advertisers and other business partners.

If Moore was some nobody, his conspiracy theories and insults wouldn't matter. But he's the minister in charge of TV stations — for example, he appoints the government regulators, called the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. And he decides how much tax money will be lavished on the CBC. He controls the fate of TV stations, including Quebecor's.

Moore's defence of the CBC porn shows bad judgment. But his vicious, personal attack on the Sun and our president mean he must immediately resign — or at the very least, recuse himself from any decisions affecting Quebecor and the Sun News Network that he so passionately hates.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY

CBC taking bite out of ... Apple?!
Nope, not even a nibble — and why do we need a government music store in the first place?

The Canadian government has decided to start a new business, and go head-to-head with Apple's phenomenally successful iTunes online music store.

Others have tried to take on Apple. Canada's most successful hi-tech company, Research in Motion, which makes the BlackBerry, is having a tough time battling Apple's iPhone.

It's not surprising — Apple has a growing army of loyal customers and a constant stream of new products.

They made a $26 billion profit last year, and are sitting on $98 billion in cash. The only people more fanatic than Apple customers are Apple employees.

This is the market the Conservative government has set its sights on. The government's Crown corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, announced last week it's going to jump into the online music business.

Let's compare the two competitors. The CBC is creaking under the weight of no fewer than 10 different labour unions; its corporate culture is a toxic mix of entitlement and work-to-rule sullenness; it's run by political appointees, not real business executives. And they're going to take a run at Apple's iTunes, which has 88% of the legal online market for music sales. Apple has sold more than 10 billion songs online and now sells TV shows, movies and computer applications online.

That's sort of like a leaky canoe paddling out to take on an aircraft carrier.

There are other companies besides Apple selling online music. Good for them — good luck to them. May the best company win — and may the consumer win. But why the hell is the Canadian government getting into that business?

Does the CBC really attract the best business minds in the country? Is it a hothouse for entrepreneurial talent? Of course not. But they don't have to be. Because they don't have to convince any investor to put up money to take on iTunes, or any bank manager.

When they screw up, their CEO doesn't step down — as happened with BlackBerry's CEOs recently.

The CBC just has to go to the Bank of James Moore. He's the "Conservative" cabinet minister who keeps giving them corporate bailouts year after year — $1.1 billion in 2011.

Graham Henderson, a spokesman for the music industry, says it's an "entrepreneurial" deal. He says it's "good for creators, fans, investors and taxpayers."

If it's good for investors, why does it need government money? If it's good for taxpayers, why do we have to bail out the CBC every year?

Why can't we see the terms of the deal? Why is it a secret?

We're still paying for past government adventures in hi-tech businesses. The foolish "Conservative" government of Alberta once invested in a cellphone company called Novatel.

Oh, they were going to make a killing, and totally flatten Nokia, Motorola and the other private companies of the day. They even boasted their phones came with a free volume control button and a "function" button.

Taxpayers took a bath.

Politicians in France were even more audacious. They planned a government-run alternative to the Internet itself, called Minitel. You could only get it through the French government. It was going to be awesome.

Total blowout.

But James Moore thinks he and his CBC friends will succeed where these other government-funded boondoggles have failed.

The CBC is a failure at what it does now. It blows through $1.1 billion a year, and it has been made irrelevant by the 500-channel universe. It no longer has a rationale, other than inertia. It's less relevant than ever, but more arrogant than ever.

Sell the CBC. Set them free.

Let private investors take the risks. Go take on Apple. Go buy BlackBerry. Buy Minitel. Who cares! Just keep taxpayers out of it.

If James Moore thinks expanding the CBC into the Internet business is what being a conservative is about, then he ought to look the word up in the dictionary.

We don't need a government news channel, and we don't need a government music store, either.

EZRA LEVANT, QMI AGENCY