Stephane Dion and the Liberals, listening to the Green Party knocking at their door in formerly safe seats such as Vancouver Quadra, finally capitulated and announced their support for a carbon tax! Way to go Greens, one down and only the Tories and NDP to go!

The Liberal's "Green Shift" even went so far as stealing the font and pantone colours off the Green Party brochures. We told voters the by-election was a referendum on the carbon tax and we succeeded.

The Liberal Carbon Tax Plan has now been released, on first glance I like it and also feel that their exclusion of the carbon tax from increasing gas prices for four years is the politically right way to implement this. From an environmental and economic point of view, it covers most of the plans and is leaps ahead of their wimpy carbon budget they released last year.

Today, as a volunteer with Fair Voting BC, I helped oversee the Vision Vancouver nomination mayoral contest. (We were commissioned because we were independent and Vision wanted to use an instant run off vote.)

It was an interesting experience, and I served as a deputy returning officer and was in charge of many of the poll clerks. My duties were basically to deal with problems on the floor, to verify a voters right to vote if there were any disputes, and to ensure the process went as smoothly as can be.

My day started at about 7:00 am, when we showed up to oversee the process. We had 30 polling stations setup as we expected anywhere between 6000 and 9000 people to vote. (It ended up being 6800, which was quite impressive since Vision's NPA rivals only pulled 2000 members for their nomination contests).

Dear Mr. Dion and Mr. Layton,

We know it must be hard on you. You both want to do the right thing and cut greenhouse gas emissions as well as wean people off of ever depleting gas supplies. You both would love to be able to announce to your supporters and to Canadians that you have a real plan to deal with climate change.

You know that over 10% of Canadians have already left your parties because you failed to provide real leadership and they are looking to other growing movements to be their voice, and that more and more of your core are on the verge of switching as we have seen from the recent by-elections. Stephane, you almost lost Quadra, mainly because you were unable to give even your strongest supporters a real reason to come out and vote for you. And Jack, you must realize that while Canadians like you, you are almost on the verge of being relegated to the fourth party in popular support because you are no longer seen as "new" and socially progressive people now have another option.

I know he did not orginally favour a carbon tax and even argued with Adriane Carr about it when he was in town during the campaign.

However, after almost losing the by-election in Quadra and repeatedly having to answer to Liberals why he opposed putting a real price on carbon, it sounds more and more like Stephane Dion will come out in favour of a broad based carbon tax any day now.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080508.CARBON08/TPSto...

Yay Greens! Now where is our fair voting!

When Gordon Campbell announced that his government would be bringing in a carbon tax, a collective cheer went through the ranks of the Green Party followed by a intermittent silence. On one hand, we felt proud that our long championed tax shift was finally accepted by a governing party, and yet we knew that the carbon tax proposal was far short of what we had proposed and would be open to attacks from commuters as well as rural British Columbian if revenues were not wisely alloted.

Instead of focussing on the challenges, most of us decided to congratulate the Premier for going against political convention and having the willingness to proudly introduce a new tax.

Well it was a support of eliminating the penny, but I was trying to figure out what a change stuffed cod piece would resemble.

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=443519

Desjardin has called for a whole revamping of the coin lineup and change department.

G & M Article / Desjardin Statements

I agree with much of what they say. Some of their recommendations may not be worth it, as I think for logistics, the quarter and looney will need to be kept the same size due to older vending machines, pool tables and pay phone systems.

I have questions about whether eliminating a 5c piece would be logistically practical only because rounding to the nearest 10 cent piece may be problematic. However, the nickle should be shrunk, perhaps to the size of a dime. Eliminate the dime altogether as a 5c and a 25c are adequate. Shrink the $2 piece to half its size (even smaller than a quarter) and just get rid of the $5 bills. No new coins please!

This was in regards to someone who mistakenly thought that NN advocates wanted to see everyone have unlimited internet usage (regardless of whether the bandwidth was there). And that these decisions were business right.

The problem is not regarding usage. Bell and Rogers have a right to charge more for high bandwidth users, or for those who go over their set limit on usage. That is not the problem. The problem is that telecommunications companies have determined that certain types of traffic do not belong on their service. The comparison with flash is dead on, or picture your company's VPN traffic being slowed. They are using advanced network routers to say that traffic using a certain port or protocol deserves to be blocked or slowed. This isn't the first time this has happened, telephone companies offering DSL service have tried blocking startup VOIP companies by limiting their traffic. Do you use SKYPE? All it takes is Shaw to change a setting and your SKYPE account becomes unusable while their digital phone service works clear as day.

Twice in a week, NDP MPs have touched on issues that I support. Earlier, Charlie Angus spoke about Network Neutrality and now Pat Martin is pushing to ban the penny.

While this is not nearly as important as saving the planet and removing poverty, it is something I fully agree with and I hope passes. Not only is the penny a waste of materials and costs tax payers about $35 million dollars a year to administer, but frankly what good is a penny.

I've rejected the penny for years when I could, but still probably have a bag of penny's around and usually find pile of the worthless coins by laundry machines or desks. They are useless for bus fare or parking meters, and as a guy who doesn't carry a change pouch or purse, I have never had a desire to touch a penny more than once. The last time I had use for a penny was at one of those Penny squishing machines at a carnival, and even then it took quarters to get the press running.