Outsourcing Ad Jobs To Avoid Responsible Accountability

Here are my notes for followup and research.  Soon to come are who to contact with a complaint.

ShakeTheTree

10:27 PM on January 19, 2012

What a laugh.

With this type of Harper Government logic, we can see how they will shrink the size of Canada's Federal Government. Get rid of everything except the Ministry of Finance and the PMO. Take all the revenue and give it to for profit companies to run our country.

There, reduced government to almost nothing.

Have these clowns ever looked into the business of advertisement? Do they truly think that it is an industry that doesn't charge huge sums of money or thrive on hidden perks? Do they honestly believe that it is an industry that promotes honest and reliable content?

Nick the Centrist

10:45 PM on January 19, 2012

If the EAP program has concluded, why are we still seeing ads on TV and in print?

If Murcdoch can go down, so can Harper.

Stealthiest

8:26 PM on January 19, 2012

Or as Doug Ford so eloquently put it...

"Gravy train! Gravy train!"

No doubt Paul Rhodes will be high on the list as recipient of taxpayers largesse

Loon-A-Tick

9:05 PM on January 19, 2012

If the Harper Government is going to start hiring their Marketing as outsource, at least fire all the communications people (Torie Animators) who you hired into the Civil Service over the last 5 years.

JohnBook

9:39 PM on January 19, 2012

Government ads and websites feature heavy splashes of blue – the colour of the Conservative Party – and press releases promote the accomplishments of the “Harper government.” At times, these changes have riled the bureaucracy.

That's the job of the civil servants. They are paid by the people of Canada, through the House of Commons, and not by the Executive Council.

When the executive Council steps outside their authorities they are to inform and caution and to be available to inform the House of Commons.

No PR firm dependent on their employment to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet has no such restraints and would see the House of Commons no different than someone to be convinced by spin.

We have seen how Harper "informs" the public now, imagine what he could do if he could lock the Professional Civil Service out of policy formation.

Harperland!!

CIDA Used for Whitewashing Mining Interests in Foreign Aid

MONEY IN MINING

WUSC-Rio Tinto Alcan project
Total budget: $928,000 over 3 years
CIDA: $500,000
WUSC/Rio Tinto Alcan: $428,000
Rio Tinto net profit in 2010: $726,000,000

Plan Canada-IAMGOLD project
Total budget: $7.6 million over 5.5 years
CIDA: $5.7 million
Plan Canada: $0.9 million
IAMGOLD: $1 million
IAMGOLD gross profit in 2010: $597,000,000

World Vision-Barrick Gold project
Total budget: $1 million over 3.5 years
CIDA: $500,000
World Vision/Barrick Gold: $500,000
Barrick Gold net profit in 2010: $3,279,000,000
Source: Canadian International Development Agency, Sedar.com

 selective aid sent to developing countries which has been shown to serve two purposes.  Both to greenwash, that is to give environmental rehabilitation projects and to give cash greenbacks which serve Canadian mining companies highly invested in those countries.
Canadian International Development Agency has less money to spread around now that we are in recessionary times.  Nevertheless, we cannot abdicate our humanitarian aid.  To this end, the Conservative government has pledged "more transparency, timeliness and predictability" in the expenditures.

 University of Ottawa professor and CIDA critic Stephen Brown terms a blatant effort to "whitewash the negative effects of their resource extraction."

Oda announced four CIDA projects - totalling $26.7 million - in September that will "help developing countries in Africa and South America manage their natural resources to ensure they are the source of long-term sustainable benefits to their people."

Perhaps. But these projects also help highly profitable Canadian mining companies. CIDA will provide money to help Canadian companies Rio Tinto Alcan, Barrick Gold and Iamgold create corporate social responsibility projects with aid agencies near mining projects.

More criticism of a similar nature is found here:

“CIDA has always worked government-to-government,” said Coumans. “Now what CIDA is doing is channeling Canadian taxpayer money directly to the mine site and basically paying for (CSR) corporate social responsibility projects, and that is very bizarre.”

“The Canadian government is using aid to support the expansion of Canadian mining...[and] to determine development paths inside countries according to the logic of mining companies,” Yao Graham of Third World Network Africa, a research and advocacy organization based in Ghana, told The Dominion. Graham has seen many communities in Africa ravaged by the exploitative labour practices and lax environmental practices that often accompany mining megaprojects.

Companies Involved:

Plan Canada Plan Canada will receive $5.7 million from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to fund activities relating to IAMGOLD’s mining activities in 13 communities in Burkina Faso. 

 Other extracting operations.   The Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability documented how government initiatives in Colombia and Tanzania have translated into weaker environmental and social safeguards, reduced royalties for the host countries and new tax holidays.

Last May, IAMGOLD had to close down operations at its Essakane mine in Burkina Faso due to labour unrest.  See here:  Pambazuka News -Pan African Voices for Freedom and Justice

The projects include one run by Plan Canada in partnership with Iamgold to provide training in Burkina Faso and another by the World University Service of Canada to provide training in Ghana, in partnership with Rio Tinto Alcan.

CIDA has set aside nearly half a million dollars for a third project - in which World Vision Canada will work with Barrick Gold in Peru to "increase the income and standard of living of 1,000 families affected by mining operations." Barrick Gold says it also contributed $500,000 to the project.

Brown calls it "scandalous" that some of the most profitable companies in Canada are, in effect, supported by foreign aid dollars to set up programs that compensate for the negative effects of mining.

In a time of shrinking foreign aid dollars, taxpayers should not be on the hook for corporate social responsibility projects. The programs might be welcome and worthwhile, but they should be paid for by the companies that are reaping the profits and getting much of the credit. CIDA's involvement in the partnerships potentially tars all Canadians, by default, for any bad corporate behaviour, or environmental damage, that results from those mining operations.

  Last year the Canadian mining sector led a successful lobby effort to defeat Bill C-300, the Bill that would have seen the introduction of minor controls on the unregulated overseas activities of Canada’s mining industry.

See how Mining Weekly manages to astroturf the bill.

"Canada's competitors would have used the passage of Bill C-300 as a tool to undermine the competitiveness of Canadian firms in the highly competitive global extraction industry. Frivolous or vexatious claims (like dangerous working conditions, pollution, unethical practices) would have been filed against Canadian firms by competitive interests at no cost or risk to themselves (except that the countries are poor and jobs are scarce and therefore necessary to feed their families), tying up important projects and putting well paying local jobs (that's why they are having strikes) and community development projects (paid for and subsidized by Canadian tax payers under CIDA)in developing countries at risk."

GM Agri-Business and Food Safety

Monsanto GM Foods are bad for the earth and humans

Monsanto threatens the food security of developed and developing countries and doesn't play fair with its incursions into the marketplace.


GM foods are marketed as the means to productivity in low yielding regions and as a solution to global food shortages due to higher yielding capacities.

Factor in the fact that farmers become dependent on purchasing new seeds each year, are hugely invested in fertilizers and pesticides to control the growth and that monoculture dominates the landscape instead of using natural farming practices - the result is costly and burdensome instead of productive.

This economic model profits only agribusiness and uses none of the age old techniques of scale, natural regeneration, leaving the land fallow for a season, using cattle as a fertilizer source, aiding small scale farmers to subsist on the land.

A favorite winter excursion used to be to pick up a huge sack of potatoes from a Hillsburgh farmer, just north of highway 7 in Halton Hills.  They were white potatoes that made fine greasy potato pancakes or latkes.  Filling and flavorful for the cold winter days.

Check your local supermarket when buying potatoes and notice the origin and kinds.  So much is from the States, especially in the low end stores like Food Basics.  Support your local farmers.

Join a petition on Care2Action or visit this community blog.

Liberals and Green Energy Initiative

Wind Farms are the norm in all of Europe.  Why not here?

Dalton McGuinty ran on a platform of renewable energy, among many other initiatives.  But it cost him a majority by some very strident opposition towards the end of his campaign.  I'm looking again at the issue, because of all the options to power we might have in our neighborhoods, fracking, gas power plants, oil pipelines, I for one, am back the clean and renewables.  So let's have a second look at the issue.  Just today, there is a challenge to Wind Concerns Ontario for improper spending on negative attack ads that impacted negatively on the McGuinty campaign.

Green Energy Act Introduction Testimonials - February 2009 Read what's being said about the tabling of the Green Energy Act by the Government of Ontario.

Hermann Scheer "The Green Energy Act proposed by the Ontario Green Energy Act Alliance will put Ontario in a leadership position on par with Germany. The proposed tariff system will no doubt result in 25,000 MW of renewable energy installed in Ontario by 2025. Ontario, indeed Canada as a whole, has huge potential for renewables and conservation, equal to or better than Germany's; all you need is a Green Energy Act like we have in Germany to make Ontario the leading jurisdiction in North America."

A prominent anti-wind-power group is under fire amid accusations it broke election financing by running a negative advertising campaign against Liberal candidates last fall.
Toronto resident Jude MacDonald and her lawyer Clayton Ruby have made a formal complaint to Elections Ontario, the non-partisan agency that runs and polices provincial elections.
They say Wind Concerns Ontario failed to comply with the Election Finance Act by allegedly spending over the $500 threshold on political advertising during the provincial campaign without registering as a third party.

Why would people oppose wind power?  Well, there was an outcry over the amount of money paid to have a Samsung contract.

Conservatives Are Climate Deniers

There's nothing conservative in the Harper (Greek) government.  Ok, may conservation of power for themselves.  Wasting resources on photo ops, that sort of thing.

Here's a thoroughly researched article on Climate Change from the Guardian.  Read it thoroughly to be informed and ready to inoculate yourself against propaganda that global warming and our destruction of the environment is attributable to anything other than fools like the above.  For update Twitter info, see @RTCCnewswire

Statscan is Out of Date and Why I Can't Find Energy or Environment

Here's what the Statscan website looked like using the Wayback Machine, an internet screen capture tool.

Just a screencapture

 If I wanted to get the latest indicators of water usage, environmental CO2 levels or to compare from year to year the variations in our country's usage of resources, I'd look to the tables as above and they'd be updated regularly.  The Wayback machine shows how often they were accessed and when. 

useful graph last dated 2006.

I'd really like to see how much the dark green section has changed by 2012.  Or, maybe even have a special graph just for the province of Alberta, showing a similar breakdown of tar sands and forested area.

water yields.  Quickly dropping.

Nothing here about tar sands.  Looks to me as though only people who use appliances or drive cars are driving the emissions up.  There are not other graphs to show CO2 per energy sector.  Don't you think there should be?  Write Peter Kent immediately and ask him where these graphs are.

Whitewashing from Conference Board of Canada

The only way to get unfiltered information on how Canada is doing economically and environmentally is to go directly to primary sources like the Conference Board of Canada.  The documents are free but you'll have to fill out a form with minimal private information necessary.  At any rate, I was looking to get the facts about which sectors were profitable, what were the job losses in regions and what our environmental situation was like based upon CO2  emissions and water consumption.

Is Canada making progress in its environmental performance? Canada’s environmental performance has improved in some areas and deteriorated in others. Some progress has been achieved in the areas of air quality, natural resources management, and energy efficiency. But Canada must do more to lower greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), to use its freshwater resources more wisely, and to reduce waste—all in an economically feasible way.

Total annual GHG emissions in Canada rose 24 per cent between 1990 and 2008. Although total annual GHG emissions have stabilized in the last few years, emissions continue to rise in some key sectors, including road transportation, mining, and oil and gas extraction.

Notice how the tar sands aren't even mentioned.

Water consumption is also a key environmental issue. Sustainable water management helps maintain adequate water supplies for people and ecosystems. Canada’s water use per capita is over eight times higher than that of Denmark, the top performer for this indicator. Why?
Two major reasons for Canada’s excessive use of water are inadequate water conservation practices and prices that are too low to encourage efficiency.

 A good portion of water is used by agriculture, and fortunately for Denmark, their land formation and water resources are quite advantageous.  So, Ontario produces 40% of our food and we need to reserve as much arable land and clean water close to urban areas.  All the more reason not to add to water misuse by granting permits for mining where watersheds are quite immense.  The MacKenzie River, The Athabasca River both will be soon compromised by the massive bitumen push to the west and the Arctic.

No mention is made of the realities in Canada.  Soft peddling again.  Looking for examples to Sweden and Denmark, blaming our recycling on the home front, our cheap water and plenty of it being the excuse not to take the water crime seriously.

How much free water is used by the tar sands industry?  If you know, please comment below as I can't seem to find that report.

Fact:  The increase in income inequality has been more rapid in Canada than in the U.S. since the mid-1990s.  For more see here.  Even Mexico and Japan are amongst the countries in which income inequality is growing less.  These statistics are evident but what we make of them is open for discussion.  Some may argue that immigration is costing people the opportunity to find jobs when they have to compete against an even more educated and fully skills ready influx of workers that can locate to Alberta's tar sands or B.C.'s shipbuilding.  I wonder how it feels to be robbed of a living and put on the welfare.  Sure the skills initiative is out there as a plan.  From the reality, why is the government outsourcing jobs instead of training Canadians here?  This is from the Irish Independent:

Canada is seeking tens of thousands of Irish worker to fill a wide range of jobs, the Canadian Ambassador to Ireland announced last week.

The country is seeking to fill a labor shortage caused by a strong economy, massive infrastructure projects and booming fisheries, mining, oil and natural gas industries.

"I'm hearing numbers like between 30,000 and 40,000 in construction alone," Ambassador Loyola Hearn told the Irish Independent.

Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Canada-seeks-thousands-of-Irish-immigrants-urgently-134201468.html#ixzz1jks6EiM0

I know personally of an Irish couple who were here temporarily but due to a post error had to leave and re-apply.  They may never get back in.  They were well settled, both working, their paperwork got lost in the Alberta Immigration office and no one was going to help them out. The only option would be to pay 18K to some third party immigration specialist (aka robber).  Welcome to the world of sloppy.  Flows from the top.