MMM Beer and Popcorn

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The other night, after putting my 10 month old daughter to bed I cracked open a nice refreshing Granville Island Gastown Amber Ale and put a bag of WalMart popcorn in the microwave! It was quite a pleasant evening. The beer was extra fizzy and popcorn more salty because I had just received $100 from the federal government - basically my snack was free.

The child care cheque that comes around once a month is getting a lot of attention now that tax time is coming around. People are upset to learn/realise that the money is taxable. This will be my first tax year with a kid, so I can't comment on the taxation aspect. Instead I want to loosely defend the cheque.

There are a lot of things in Canada's Social infrastructure that are good, but they tend to eliminate some aspect of choice from the lives of Canadians. Health Care, for instance is great but there are not many places to shop for the best health care - shopping is essentially illegal. It is also a large bureaucracy that concentrates on health care delivery. This may be the right model for health care in Canada, but I'm not sure it is the right model for child care. Parents have a lot of emotion invested in their children and want to make sure that they are doing the right thing for them. Part of that concern translates into ensuring that their children are left in the hands of the "right" daycare. Whatever that means - it might mean a religious daycare or perhaps one that serves organic soy beans for lunch.

I like the idea of giving parents the means to choose what is right for them and their children even if that means staying home. A monthly cheque in theory makes it easier to stay home because it doesn't discriminate between stay at home parents and those that work; by providing cash it can increase demand for child care that will create supply over the long term; it allows the market to create niches that cater to parent's demands; and finally because it is taxed by a progressive tax system the subsidy is progressive benefiting lower income Canadians more than higher income Canadians.

Now, all of the critics will point out that after taxes I can afford only 48 bottles of beer and a dozen bags of popcorn - probably true; I would also be able to afford 60 bottles of beer if I went with NDP approved and subsidised beer (Lucky?) and could likely get an extra six bags of popcorn if I went to Giant Tiger. But I prefer Granville Island and find WalMart convenient. And, as I am about to find out day care is more expensive than I would like to contemplate. I agree with these criticisms, which is simply why I say that in order to meet my need for quality beer (like Granville Island Beer) I need more money every month. I will let the bean counters in Ottawa figure it out, but individuals in the lower tax brackets must not see an increase in their child care bills because of a switch in how child care is subsidised. If that means a monthly cheque of $400 is required in order to ensure that the after tax cash infusion matches the subsidy that has been removed is required, then so be it.

No Tory child-care plan as parents face long waits, rising fees

there’s uncertainty mixed with alarm across Canada over looming fee increases
and program cuts since the Tories dropped the $5-billion Liberal plan to build a national early learning system.

In other words, the Tory plan is good and doesn't go far enough. One of the principles that underlies, to my mind, a liberal society, is that changes to the structure of society, and a redistribution of wealth for child care is part of that structure, says that such changes when they further inequality ought to improve the lot of the least well off.

Here is what others are saying:

A BCer in Toronto: Conservatives clawing back "day care" cheques

Conservatives clawing back "day care" cheques

As Liberals predicted at the time, the chickens are now coming home to roost on the Conservatives' $100/month “child care” plan. More evidence now that Harper is clawing back the tax on the cheques and that for many families that $100 will be closer to $65.

EXARO: can't say they weren't warned

The income tax consequences or the CPC’s $100/month childcare grants, which some of us wrote about during last year’s federal election, are becoming clear to Canadian families. As a fellow blogger writes, the government now is mailing notices of the tax liability to those who have been cashing the $100 cheques.

My Blahg » TIME TO PAY THE FIDDLER

This is going to upset and anger a lot of people over the next two months.

Here's what they said a year ago:

Tories promise new child-care allowance

Stephen Harper unveiled a Conservative plan on Monday that would give parents of young children $100 a month for child care.

The Tory leader made the announcement at a noisy day-care centre in Ottawa. "This is just like a caucus meeting," he said on a campaign stop for the Jan. 23 federal election.

Child care advocates alarmed at Conservative proposals

Ottawa (11 Jan. 2006) - The Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada says a Stephen Harper Conservative government will roll back the clock on hard won progress toward a national child care program.

Technorati Tags: Child Care, Benefit, Canadian Politics, Day Care, Conservative Party of Canada

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CFS and Tuition

With all of the hullabaloo from the Canadian Federation of Students this week regarding the costs of education:
CFS - Media

From St. John’s to Victoria, thousands of students and other Canadians are participating in rallies and events as part of the Canadian Federation of Students’ campaign for affordable, high-quality post-secondary education.

I would like to point out that a recent study conducted by Statistics Canada has pointed out that the cost of education is not the barrier that many people believe it is. It is more likely, according to the study

"school marks reported at age 15, parental influences, and high-school quality account for 84 per cent the gap"

Only 12 percent of the "gap" (between the prospects of lower and higher income high school student for university education) is attributable to income. So, this tells me that the "size of your wallet" as the national chairperson of the CFS calls it, is not really that much of a factor when it comes to ensuring equal access to university education. So, with this survey, it is now up to the CFS to argue why public dollars ought to spent on lowering tuition.

On the face of it, there would seem to be little marginal gain in investing money in lower tuition fees when that money could be spent on any number of the following things that would likely achieve the putative aims of the CFS more effectively than by reducing tuition:

• Educating lower income high school students about budgeting and the true costs of higher education,
• Ensuring that lower income high school students are more likely to succeed,
• Creating a national or uniform provincial standard of high school education regardless of neighbourhood,
• Educating middle and upper income families about the importance of trades and non-university post-secondary employment [I think a survey of lower and upper income families will show that the progeny of upper income families are under represented in non-university employment], and
  
• Educating parents of lower income families about the true possibilities of university education.

My suspicions are that the CFS will not respond to this survey by answering any of these questions. Instead I think it will try to discredit the survey in the hopes of lowering tuition to a point where demand far surpasses supply or the capacity of society to absorb all of the high expectations of university graduates. The CFS in my experience is predisposed to pointless political agitation and not at all concerned with practical public (and personal) parsimony.


Technorati Tags: Canadian Federation of Students, tuition, university, education, equality, politics, Canada

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Climate Change and The Decline of Reason

I want to start off by saying that I firmly believe that we need to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and pump less crap into the air, as well as cut down fewer trees, throw less garbage into the oceans and be cleaner better people. I don't think that the Canadian Government is doing enough, nor do I think the liberals will do enough.

Now, onto my main point:

Since the release of the IPCC report last week I have seen a form of zealotry normally associated with middle eastern politics. Headlines in my local weekly papers have read that "The debate is Over," "Global Warming Verdict is In" "Climate Change is a Fact". [I wish I still had the papers and could cite them properly. Alas, they have been recycled] Generally the past week has seen normally rational people call for an end to any discussion, debate or conversation regarding the science of climate change. Appeals to the "consensus" of scientists and the credentials of an international panel have all been designed to halt the debate. I understand that the good intention behind these headlines is to prod those people who wish to go on with their polluting lives as they have for decades, but the result of these headlines is to ignore the very roots of our great Western Civilization.

Undeniable Global Warming (washingtonpost.com)

Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It's time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.

My concern is the decline in the willingness of rational people to permit debate, doubt and scepticism. The ideas of human caused climate change (HCCC) are considered to be so sacrosanct that I worry that should someone find evidence against it that it would go completely unnoticed. The concern within the scientific climate-change "community" is not with empirical fact, but with coming to a formulation scientific data that will be sufficient to force political change. In this way it bears greater resemblance to a lobby or a political-religious movement than a group of dispassionate observers of the natural world.

There seems to be a general trend against funding scientists that are sceptical of HCCC. Sceptics are not given a voice further stifling debate and other theories are not explored.

Leading scientific journals 'are censoring debate on global warming': Telegraph

Two of the world's leading scientific journals have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming. A British authority on natural catastrophes who disputed whether
climatologists really agree that the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, says his work was rejected by the American publication, Science, on the flimsiest of grounds.

The ideas of deniers are often given little credence and dismissed. Take the example of Dinner Table Donts, who is often very rational and conscious of what makes a good or bad argument. In this post he dismisses a statistical argument with a list of facts that may or may not point towards HCCC. He should know that the fact of a pine beetle infestation has no bearing whatsoever on what constitutes a significant statistical sample. In fact they are just more small samples and do not address the thrust of the sceptics argument.

Dinner Table Donts: Denying Climate Change

"Whatever age of the earth you pick, data collected on weather patterns in 100 years is almost entirely meaningless and cannot be used to predict future patterns." [Source]

Never mind the fact that entire forests in British Columbia are being destroyed by the pine beetle, a direct result of warmer winters. Or the fact that the polar caps are melting, resulting in the destruction of natural habitat.

It seems odd that in Western Civilization with our experience of Galileo, Inquisitions, and Darwin that we would be so willing to shut-down debate.

Moreover Western enlightenment and the edifice of science has been build upon the ideas of people like Rene Descartes

• The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt. (The Discourse on Method)
• Doubt is the origin of wisdom. (Principles of First Philosophy)

David Hume (from WikiQuote):

• A wise man's kingdom is his own breast: or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of examining his work. Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude;
  
• In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

John Stuart Mill

• If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. (On Liberty)
  

Headlines you may have heard (if you were around):

• 1970: "The Earth is Cooling: Prepare for an Ice Age"
  
• prior to 1610: "Scientific consensus: The Sun Orbits the Earth"
• Circa 360 BC: "Leading Scientist Says Women by Nature Inferior"
  

Is HCCC of the same magnitude as the issues above - maybe. I am sceptical of the arguments, the data and spin; however, I do not believe that nothing should be done about our emissions of CO2. On the contrary, but stifling debate, and silencing sceptics is not the way to go. Our great traditions of science and analytic thought are based on scepticism and doubt. It would be a shame to see those traditions thrown out with the bathwater in an attempt achieve the political points.

Some good places to start learning about what the sceptics are saying:

Wikipedia:

• Some Arguments by Sceptics
• List of Sceptics
  

Sourcewatch

The National Post

UPDATE: Here's a good headline: Climate Change - From “Inconvenient” to Incontrovertible

Technorati Tags: climate change, politics, sceptics, deniers, environmentalism, global warming, deniers, science

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Remember Soldiers in the City

I would just like to recall, in fairness, that it was the unspoken implications that the add made that made them so offensive. It was the ominous drum beat that seemed to say "hide your children, their next game of street hockey will be played under the watchful eye of men in jackboots."

My Blahg » THE SOLDIERS, THE CITIES AND THE LIBERAL ADS

I’m surprised this isn’t making big waves in the Liberalsphere. Remember those ads by the Liberals accusing PMS of wanting to put soldiers, with guns in our cities? Well he is planning to do just that.

RT: Soldiers with guns. In our cities. In Canada. `

Today we learn that the Harper government plans to boost military presence across the country with new units in 14 cities. According to the Conservative government’s own “Canada First Defence Strategy” just leaked to the Ottawa Citizen, before 2016, the army will establish “territorial response battalions” in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Niagara-Windsor, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Saint John, N.B., Halifax and St. John's, N.L. So there you go… Soldiers with guns. In our cities. In Canada. The Liberals did not make that up.

The adds were offensive regardless of whether or not the Conservatives plan to deploy troops was true. If the Canadian Forces are deployed to more cities, there is nothing to fear in those cities. Winnipeg, Halifax or Edmonton are not less free than other Canadian Cities because they house significant numbers of Canadian Forces.


Technorati Tags: Canadian Forces, Conservative Party of Canada, Liberal Party of Canada, Politics, Canada, Election 2006, Advertising, Political Advertising, Canada

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