Mimas

I am outraged because Harper just proved that no matter who we vote for we get the same old, same old....cronyism and our friends are more important than Canadians. He never stopped blaming the Liberals for voter apathy because of cronyism, and then he gets elected and does the same the first day. Braking a major promise on the first day - there is no excuse for that.

No, that's not my point. Senators don't matter all that much anyway. My point is that he must NOT appoint cabinet ministers! Senior cabinet ministers are the dozen or so most powerful politicians in the country and they have control of hundreds of billions of our tax dollars. Cabinet ministers MUST be elected! There are 100 Conservative ELECTED MPs, he MUST choose from. Why isn't Diane Ablonczy in cabinet for example? She's been on the front benches of the Conservative caucus forever. He threw her in the backbenches to put a friend in cabinet? The optics of this are just terrible! He's enraged voters and his own caucus! This goes against everything he campaigned on.

Not really. He only appointed him to the senate up until the next election, when he will run for a house seat. So big deal. It's not like cabinet ministers have a record of actually telling anyone anything in the House. They make mouth noises and say nothing. And it's not like Fortier needed the job. He will take a huge pay cut for this. As opposed to a situation such as when Chretien appointed his loyal friend and ex speaker Gilbert Parent as "Ambassador to the Environment" at a quarter million a year - to do nothing but go to the occasional dinner party at 5 star hotels in Paris or Rome. Well, tonnes of people would take a huge pay cut. Harper had 100 Conservative MPs to choose from, people who Canadians voted for. Yet he goes off and appoints a friend to be a cabinet minister! If it is undemocratic to appoint senators (who really don't matter much), how is it democratic to appoint a SENIOR CABINET MINISTER who will be one of the most powerful people in this country and will be spending billions of our tax dollars? On top of that, Fortier said he just couldn't be bothered to run in the election. That's not only a slap in the face of all voters, but a slap in the face of all conservative backbenchers (who won their seats fair and square, while Fortier didn't even move a finger).

He seems pretty well versed in Canadian politics given the time he has spent hiding in caves in Afghanistan. Who knew? It may have been done a million times before, but Harper ran on a new clean age for Canadian politics, he promissed change. His top priority was to clean up government, have a democratically elected Senate because Senators should not be political friends appointed by the PM. Then the first thing he did as PM was appoint an unelected Senator and an unelected SENIOR CABINET MINISTER! That's not the kind of change Canadians voter for!

It's simple. First, your $1200 is not $1200 because it's taxible income. Second, this credit benefits stay at home parents the most - it encourages more people to stay home. Baby boomers are retiring and all experts are warning of huge labour shortages ahead. When you are expecting labour shortages, you want to encourage people to work, not to stay home. That is, you provide good quality daycare centers, so that people can drop they kids off and go to work. Without affordable, good quality daycare, people stay home to take care of their kids. The problem with labour shortages is the following: too few workers puts upward pressure on wages. High wages makes everything more expensive to produce in Canada and cheaper to produce overseas. In conclusion, this $1200 credit has to be paid for by working people and businesses, so it's a tax on the economy. This credit is a tax on the economy both in terms of pushing taxes up and pushing wages up. This means exodus of canadian businesses and capital to other cheaper places overseas. It also means that there are too few working age Canadians to support a large ageing population. As the Conservatives said "It's bad policy but it's great politics"

After campaigning to clean up government, put an end to cronyism, and for a democratically elected Senate, Harper appointed unelected friend and supporter Michal Fortier to the Senate and to Cabinet as a SENIOR CABINET MINISTER, who will be responsible for tens of billions of our tax dollars. Fortier has since said that he just didn't want to run in the election. Well, Mr. Harper, this is cronyism at its best. Here is a petition for Mr. Harper’s unelected friend, Michal Fortier, to resign his senior cabinet post until he runs and wins in a by-election for a seat in the House. http://www.petitiononline.com/RMF/ Please forward this link to as many Canadians as you can.