kar0ling

Dear Mr Carney While your desire to hear a variety of perspectives is commendable, perhaps there are certain people we've heard enough from, and whose perspective is not valuable enough for the leaders of our country to spend time on. May I draw your attention to a recent piece in The Tyee : “It's honestly mind-boggling why any Liberal government would invite a key figure involved in the horror show that is Project 2025,” Dwivedi told The Tyee over text. “The Carney government has not made clear what kind of particular insight or expertise this person would have had into active trade negotiations and Trump’s mindset within them, but what is clear is that Project 2025 seeks to erode basic norms of democracy, limit women’s access to reproductive health (including contraception), and to roll back rights for the LBGTQ+ community.” Read more:  https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/09/05/Liberal-Backlash-Carney-Invite-Project-2025/ Mr Carney, you promised Canadians “elbows up” and ...

Re “Temporary foreign workers taking jobs from young Canadians” This [wire service article reproduced in the FreeP] article is deeply troubling, in large part for the way it has been framed. You have a choice with a headline. The story is really about how the Conservatives accuse the Liberals have broken their promise to Canadians about limiting immigration numbers. The “stealing jobs” boogieman headline is clickbait, not actually elucidating the article. Equally irresponsible: nowhere in the article does anyone clearly and in simple language refute the obvious mendacity about temporary foreign workers stealing jobs from young people. Canada is a deeply racist country that maintains a temporary form worker program to obtain a workforce do the jobs Canadians won't do, certainly not for those wages nor under those conditions. In fact, immigrants create jobs. It takes an entrepreneurial spirit to leave the familiarity of home to strike out somewhere new. That courage and in...

 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/spruce-woods-byelection-1.7617699 “In a tight race, Robbins defeated NDP candidate Ray Berthelette by just 70 votes — 2,805 for Robbins to Berthelette's 2,735, with all polls reporting as of about 9:30 p.m.” When will we as citizens rise up en masse to say we are fed up First Past the Post and demand a voting system where our choices can be properly accounted for in the final numbers. My objection is not the candidate or party who won. It's that 70 votes isn't a decisive enough lead. What about the 2,735 votes for the runner up candidate? What about the 444 for the third place candidate? And why was there no Green candidate? (I know, I know, because the Green Party of MAnitoba is in absolute shambles, and because people don't view it as a viable choice,but as long as we have FPTP, it will be a self-defeating cycle of people voting other than Green because they don't think it's viable enough, which gaurantees it can ne...

“Marooned by Air Canada flight attendant strike? Here are your options”. A headline in the news. Biased framing right off the hop. Here’s the thing. It's not the flight attendants who marooned folks. It’s corporate greed.  It’s funny how frequently the general sentiment is to begrudge other people getting fairly compensated for their work. Yet each one of us would be unhappy to have our job demand hours of unpaid labour. Okay for thee and not for me? This is why I am troubled by this framing. Sure, it’s just a headline, but it directs the understandable frustration of disrupted travel plans at the folks who are just asking for fair wages instead of at the executives who would rather create travel chaos than pay their staff. It directs the blame for the strike at the workers who are exercising their right to strike when their reasonable demands are not met rather than at the executives who didn’t make any contingency plans for the strike because they expected the government to f...

 This letter comes from Kairos with additions from me. Sign your own version here Israel’s blockade is pushing Gazans deeper into famine. On May 20, you joined leaders from Britain and France in stating that “the level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable,” promising further action if Israel failed to halt its offensive and lift restrictions on aid. You have since made similar public statements and promises with other countries and allies, stating that you are prepared to take further action. We welcome your words and intentions. But where are the actions? An ultimatum means nothing when it is not followed up on. You cannot keep using “strong words” with no action and think history will absolve you of complicity in war crimes. The bombardment, displacement, blocked aid and the deaths of civilians – desperate for food and water – continues.  Now is the time for action, including the use of all  diplomatic, political, and economic measures to: Secure an imme...

I’m getting pretty tired of not being able to read the news without an urgent need to write a letter to at least one if not several levels of government regarding the wrongheadedness of their pursuits.  Today, at least, I got a little encouragement. PM Carney’s office replied to me regarding *one* of my messages, assuring me it had been read. Of course, it was the one where I thanked them for deciding to recognize Palestine and stayed mostly in the realm of positivity.  So *I* replied: