TARIFFS - CLIMATE CHANGE- AND PIPELINES .... WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON IN CANADA ?

(August 11, 2025):     Since Donald Trump became President in January of this year, the big story has been 'tariffs'.  And Canada's reactions to those tariffs.  And that reaction has mainly been ... We need More Pipelines.  We need more Oil and Gas and Fracking and LNG and Mining and Logging and Chemicals and Steel and etc. 

So because of the Trump tariffs, we are told the only way forward is ... 'more stuff'.   And all the top politicians and all the corporate owned media seem to agree that we need more.  And fast.  So we can all drive Electric Vehicles  -  and so our natural resources can be sold off around the world as fast as possible. 

But one big problem is that all this stuff is costly, dangerous, and poisonous.  The Forest Fires are burning and they're not going to stop unless we reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and stop putting so many Greenhouse Gas Chemicals into the air.  And we also seem to be having more cancer and disease, and we all have plastic in our brains as well.   

Choices?    So do we really want more Gas and Oil and Pipelines and Chemicals?  Or do we at least want to have a look at this stuff and have a real 'discussion' about what we Canadians want.    But we are told there is no time for any of that.  The plan is MORE, and fast,  and there is no time to even think if our plan for more oil and gas is rational.   -  as the fires burn. 

We also have A Cancer and Chronic Disease Epidemic.  Could that have anything to do with the fact that the giant corporations are allowed to poison us and poison our families and our planet so they can make even more money.  Why do our politicians and our governments always let the corporations poison us so they can make more money?   And why do the media which the corporations own  never care about that?   Why is it so accepted that our food and air and water and soils can be poisoned.  We somehow made it through the whole of human history without the vast majority of these poisons ... but now we need them and if you get cancer ... too bad for you.  The banks will sponsor a Run For The Cure, and we can all join that.  But there is never a 'Run For Prevention'.  We aren't allowed to prevent cancer - because it's not really 'good for business'.  

And that is the reality of Canada these days:   We have an incredibly expensive Health Care System, but people can't get doctors and can't get into an Emergency Room.   That was unheard of before, but we have been trained to accept it as normal now.  "Yeah I had to wait 8 months for an operation and I almost died while waiting; but 'that's just the way it is' ".    But it isn't that way in many other countries where doctors are plentiful and waits are short, like a few days. 

Why doesn't our health care system work?  Where is our money going?  We are never told.  Nobody ever gets fired.  None of the politicians do anything.   But Billions of Dollars of corporate profit are pulled out of our health care system every year.  And there is no 'corporate interest' in making our health care system work.  All they want is the money.  

And meanwhile, we have The Homeless and The Mentally Ill roaming our streets - and no one asks why we NEVER had this problem before, but suddenly over the past 20 years we have the problem now?  While the banks make record profits.  We don't have long-term care homes for old people, or any affordable homes for young families, but we DO have more billionaires than ever.   

We were never asked if we wanted millions of Canadians to pay high rents and mortgages so the banks and investors and others could make fortunes.  And that's the level of democracy we have in Canada today.  They don't ask us.  And they don't care what we think or want.  They just DO it to us, and they make fortunes while millions pay the price. 

What Do We Want?  Do we want record bank and oil company profits, or do we want to take some of those profits, like they do more of in Europe ..... do we want to take some of those corporate profits and use them for maybe some good long-term care for elderly seniors.  And even more so, do we want to invest in keeping ourselves HEALTHY so we don't need so much long-term care?  But instead of us having some 'right' to good health, the corporations instead have a right to poison us so they can maximize their profits.  Many many workers in all kinds of jobs are poisoned  at work because 'that's the cost of doing business'.  And .... that's the way it is.       Is that what WE want?  Who knows, because we are never asked about what we want.  And believe me, those at the top don't care what we want.  What they care about is maintaining their power and maximizing their profit and wealth. And that's what Canada is really all about these days, in my opinion.  (But of course I could be wrong.)

Corrupt Governments:   And sadly, the job of our governments these days seems to be to manage us for big business.  The federal government.  Our provincial governments.  And even many of our city governments.   I would certainly say that my own city government here in Victoria is absolutely useless in terms of 'democracy'.  They are simply not capable of protecting the interests of the citizens who live here and who elect them and pay them.  But I don't fault most of our city councilors; they are in way over their heads.   They often simply do what they are told to do by their senior staff and others and our city councilors probably think they are doing the best they can.  But it's just not good enough. We need better.  And we citizens have to fight for that, but we need help in the fight or things just won't change.

The Political Party Leadership Gangs are very dangerous:     At the Provincial and Federal levels, our big political parties are (in my opinion) completely undemocratic.  The party members are powerless and irrelevant and everything is run by 'the little gang'.  I was just in the BC NDP party for about two years.   And believe me, that party, which is our government here in BC, is run the way we might think North Korea is run.  It is absolutely and totally undemocratic.  (In my opinion.)

I ran for a vice-presidency of the party, and I have NEVER seen an election like that before.  The way the party leadership of the BC NDP is elected is unbelievable.  For example, I as a candidate, as far as I know, was never allowed to contact the party members and tell them that a small group was running on a Pro-Democracy Platform to try and democratize our party.  Actually, maybe I was allowed to tell them   --   but only AFTER they had voted. 

The Party Leadership would not allow us candidates to talk to the party members.  How's that for a democratic election?   And of course, there is really NO public oversight of our political parties, except via BC Supreme Court, which I as an average citizen was completely unable to do.   So once the gang takes over the party, they can be vitrually impossible to remove.  They make the rules, they run 'the appeals', and they seem to have total control of the party.  In complete violation of the Constitution of the BC NDP which says that the party members shall control the party.  But they don't.

And if you want to be a candidate for a major political party in a provincial or federal election, I think you have to guarantee the bosses that you will work for them and you will do what they tell you to do.  And it's 'to hell' with the citizens.    And the party bosses can enforce that because they, The Party Leaders, seem to have the right in Canadian Law to 'sign' the nomination form for all the candidates in their party.  If the party leader will not sign your nomination papers, you cannot run for the party. (As far as I know, that is true right across the board, but I could be wrong.  Please let me know if I am.) How can ANY democracy come out of a system like that? 

Does Mark Carney work for us - or does he work for Big Business?    I think he works for Big Business.  And so do all our Premiers.  Because in my opinion you are NOT going to become a senior politician in Canada if you do not have the approval of Corporate Canada.   

So back to the title of this story, Tariffs, Climate Change, and More Pipelines.   Do we Canadians want more of the same Corporate Industrial Society that we've had for the past fifty years?  If so then let's continue with the plan Mr. Carney and our Premiers have for us.     But if we want to maybe save an economic and environmental  future for the young people of today and their children, and if we'd like to solve the homeless problem and get rid of maybe 90% of the cancers and a lot of other diseases as well, then We Need A Different Plan.   And how come a different plan never gets talked about as a possible alternative. And if we want to have reasonably priced homes, why can't we have that?  Well we can.   But instead we have record bank and investor profits while more and more Canadians can barely afford to eat.  And the root problem is our lack of democracy in Canada.  And that is the problem we really have to fix.  

Canadians need to have a voice in our own governance.  If we want things to be better for us, then we need more democracy and we need the free and independent 'press' that a democratic nation needs.  We can get these things.  But only when we realize they are important and only when we start to do the work needed to get them.