The Lasso of Truth

Canada's Royal Class

Despite the fact that Canada is a parliamentary democracy which has (mostly) shed it's traditional monarchy, there are still an elite few in this country who have the benefit of privilege afforded by birth into a coddled class of royalty...

The federal government is set to give aboriginals a major concession on Ontario’s new harmonized sales tax, amid threats that protesters will “shut down the country” when it plays host to world leaders at the coming G8 and G20 summits.

Until this month, Ottawa had ignored natives’ pleas for a provincewide point-of-sale exemption from the HST after it takes effect on July 1. But with native leaders set to plan protests that could include outright blockades, federal and provincial officials engaged in a frantic round of negotiations.

Sources say that an 11th-hour deal to give aboriginals the exemption is now imminent, and that it was the spectre of major disruptions that forced Stephen Harper’s government to come to the table.

[..]

For 30 years, natives in Ontario have not had to pay provincial sales tax when making purchases anywhere in the province. By contrast, they receive exemptions from the federal goods and services tax for most goods bought off-reserve only after filing their income tax returns.

A silver tax-free spoon for every gas-huffing native sucking off the public welfare teet.  perhaps they wouldn't have time or energy to "shut down the country" over taxes if they were among the sorry pool of us who actually work and pay those taxes.

Whine

Not just served with dinner anymore...

Dozens of First Nations protestors gathered on Parliament Hill Wednesday to rally against the harmonized sales tax, saying it violates their treaty and constitutional rights.

The protestors marched from the Parliament buildings to the offices of the Finance Ministry a few blocks away.

"First Nations people and their communities are among the most marginalized and impoverished in Canada, and the HST will place an additional undue hardship on them", said Angus Toulouse, the Assembly of First Nations regional chief for Ontario.

Aboriginal residents of Ontario are concerned that when the HST does come into effect, it will be administered in the same way that the goods and services tax (GST) is now.

In Ontario, First Nations are currently exempt from the provincial sales tax (PST) and partially exempt from the GST.

Under current GST rules, goods and services purchased by status Indians on First Nations reserves are exempt, but items bought elsewhere must be delivered to a reserve to qualify for a GST exemption.

They don't pay income tax and are already exempt from most consumption taxes, as well as having most of their life subsidized by those of us who do pay taxes, yet still pitch and moan about marginalization and hardship..?  It's like the pack complaining to the mule that the ride is too slow.

For those who want to know just how stupid politics can get in Canada

Two days of media and government paralyzation because H1N1 pandemic preparedness kits shipped to Indian reserves included body bags...

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said yesterday the body bag shipment "sends a message – it simply says: `We expect aboriginal Canadians to die.'"

Lillian Dyck, a Liberal senator and First Nations member from Saskatchewan, was at Ignatieff's side as he lambasted the government.

"It's like someone had taken a knife and driven it into my heart," Dyck said.

"As a woman, how would you feel if you were worried about being infected with H1N1 and what you were sent was a body bag, indicating that your family was going to die?"

Because apparently, First Nations people would prefer to litter their own countryside with festering infected carcasses instead of safely containing any contagion, for the sake of survivors.

The government would do well to launch an initiative to have the Liberal caucus take charge of flu preparations for Native reserves.  Let Michael Ignatieff pack the kits himself and include whatever he thinks is culturally sensitive.  Then, when the bodies start piling up, send him in with a wheelbarrow for a photo op.

Hostage taking at Burntwood River

I can't imagine why we wouldn't want to hire more natives for this project...

A group of about a dozen Cree parked cars and downed logs at about 5 p.m. local time Thursday across the access road to the $1.6 billion, 200-megawatt Burntwood River dam project which has been under construction for two years.

Manitoba Hydro spokesman Glenn Schneider said the group allowed some workers on monthly shift changes to leave the work camp, but continues to block incoming traffic to the site.

[..]

Schneider said the group is demanding more aboriginals be hired to work at the site which currently employs about 800 people with about 44 from the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation.

Blocking traffic and holding workers hostage...I smell management material.

I see a "Healing Circle" in your future

The Leader of the Opposition waxes poetic about the eponymous "us".

And a newborn baby turns blue, face-down in a Walmart toilet, under a pile of discarded tissue...

Halkett, 22, admits to having the baby during a 14-minute visit to the Wal-Mart store in Prince Albert on May 21, 2007. But she has pleaded not guilty to abandoning the child in the toilet.

Court has heard a shopper in the next stall heard grunts and saw a pool of blood on the floor. She told staff she thought a woman was having a baby and needed help.

Two other women later saw a tiny, purple arm poking out of the toilet bowl, which was filled with blood and bathroom tissue. The store's manager plucked the baby out of the toilet and paramedics arrived to help him start breathing. He survived.

Halkett repeatedly testified that she didn't know she was eight months' pregnant. When she saw the baby in the toilet and believed he was dead, she became "scared."

Halkett said she tried to clean up the bloody mess with toilet paper, then threw the paper into the toilet, on top of the baby. She washed her hands and left the store without talking to anyone.

She said she felt faint and had trouble walking to the parking lot where a group of friends and family were waiting for her in a vehicle.

Someone should ask Iggy why Liberals hate native children so much, that they are happy to continue letting them live and die this way.