Conservatives, get a grip!

Here is a list of some of the things I would like to see the Tories them get done. Let me know if there are any problems with it, and if there is anything I left off! I know there are several things I didn't even cover, but this is a start!

This post was originally a comment on the self styled "Conservative Blog of Canada". Its not worth the read, normally, but it had a list of things the guy would like to see. Like "a job for everybody" and "Jean Cretien should be in jail". Yeah, pretty lame. I think I can do better.
Actually, this is a repeat of a blog entry I made about a year ago. And you know, I don't think there has been much change, or progress on these issues.


1) Give farmers an even playing field.

2) Increase the number and training of food testing inspectors, and create a Canadian FDA.

3) Demand that contractors have a federal license and that they post a bond to ensure responsibility.

4) Create a regulatory board which works WITH the unions to ensure that homeowners don't have to call in Mike Holms to fix their deck. (They do that now with electrical and gas...) It should be the same for anything which requires a permit to build. Which is of course, anything.

5) Change the building code to require better insulation, site orientation, ventilation and fire resistance. (U of Manitoba standards, the R2000 house at a minimum!)

6) Build a better and more complete Codis, Afis, and firearms data base with serious safeguards against unauthorized hacking. If you can't use the firearms registry to prevent crimes, than scrap it. (Well, they DID that...the discovery that the firearms registry cost more than the police budget of Montreal, Toronto and Vancover combined seems to have sunk home. This is a very contentious issue, read the above statement again carefully...IF you CAN'T use it to PREVENT crimes, then scrap it. If you just want it for SOLVING crimes, then put the money into Codis and Afis data bases and a decent reward for information system....basically more police officers, and less computer crap. I have an awesome story around here somewhere about an abducted child found after fifteen years due to a random fingerprint check...how many more good news stories would there be if we had a better AFIS system. Then there is the chronically underfunded Criminal Profile Data Base....
Then we would need to deal with some human rights issues regarding all those fingerprints....it can be resolved, again, without spending a billion dollars on a failed data base.

(Personally I would like to see the banning and destruction of all short arms, yes including including patrol police. Then arm the patrolmen with seriously good shotguns, not cheap modified hunting guns. Then anybody with a pistol is "automatically" charged with carrying a prohibited weapon. Contentious idea, I know but stats don't lie, other countries have done this surprising thing with excellent results. Again, I didn't say disarm our police, rather I am saying, arm them with better stuff than pistols. And even WITH the uproar about tasers, tasers are STILL better than shooting a raving crackhead dead in the street! But I don't expect this idea to fly very far! Grin! In my previous blog entry, a reader asked me if I was on crack to think of such an idea...in reality, it would solve a lot of problems (10% of police injured with firearms are injured with their own guns, 30% of school shootings are done with daddys guns...you don't think that is significant? And I have the studies to back up a really whacko idea like this!)

7) Bring in federal initiatives to get cookie cutter (read economy of scale cheaper) environmentally sound small scale ethanol plants spaced all around the country. Owned and operated by municipalities who will get the profits that they can use for local initiatives. Use the same model as water purification plants.
I think it is too draconian to pass laws demanding oil companies MUST install 70% ethanol pumps, the way Brazil did, however if they drop the federal tax on such fuel, market demand will do the rest.

8) Re-vitalize the railroads. Increase ridership. Use a fraction of the money we spend on building roads to create more light rail. Better advertising, better marketing. Less corporate welfare, smarter rides (say, smaller trains similar to subway trains running more often between cities? Just an idea. How about high speed trains across the prairies? I know...we would all like to see moving sidewalks between Toronto and Montreal, but I am trying to keep these suggestions in the real world. (If you can call the Concervative caucus the "real world"....ha ha!) But there is no reason why you could not have a roll on-roll off train which would ferry you in your car from Toronto to Vancover departing every hour on the hour. Or your company's tractor trailer! Oh heck, how about roll on roll off from Orleans to centre of Ottawa? The subsidy to provide such a service would be a lot less than creating an extra lane on the queensway! Note the savings potential on greenhouse gas, improved traffic on existing roads, gasoline savings, and wear and tear on automobiles. And if that doesn't work, then make all other downtown roads into toll roads. Hey, they did it in Trondheim and London!

9) Reduce the tax burden on small business, and make grants and subsidies available for small business to start up, and more importantly, suceed against the drag of paperwork, taxes, and municipal bureaucracy.

10) Demand to all provinces that they issue driver's licences that have a box to be checked if the owner does NOT want his organs to be used in a transplant in the event of a death. In this day and age of the internet, I would love to see a web site where a doctor could key in your driver's license number, and read the living will you left on file back when you got your licence. This would probably be a provincial thing but it could be driven by federal funding. I mean, really, a searchable web page? How expensive is that?

11) Increased border patroling, particularly on the East Coast to stop drug smuggling. There is so much of it going on, and so much getting through, that it is a national disgrace. The North has the "Canadian Rangers". A good initiative, but hardly professionals. There are barely enough of them to be listening posts. We need bases up there. Now! There are 6 bases in Ottawa (why? anybody going to attack Ottawa?) , and none on Baffin Island. Well, its cold up there, so why put a base up there? Well, as global warming takes its course, the North will become a more viable route for people, drugs, and foreign nationals looking to stake claims in the arctic. Right now, we have a dispute with Denmark over territory they claim which belongs to us. France is claiming the bulk of the offshore oil fields on the strength of two little islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The US is claiming that they can hammer through our sea ice with great "Manhattan" ice breakers carrying oil.
Its time we started caring about our territory, or we will simply lose it. Is there any way to prevent China from buying up ALL of our iron, lumber, sulphur, nickel and hardwood?

12) Speaking of national disgrace....is there some way to get rid of that seal hunt? It takes in, what, the same as a medium sized MacDonalds'restaurant every year? Can we not find some gainful employment for seal hunters besides risking their lives on the ice for f-all? I know...none of anybody's business but our own, but still, it makes us look bad We sped hundreds of times moree than what the seal fishery is worth to "improve our image abroad". How about doing it for real instead of doing it with hype?


13) A national federally funded mental health facility to
a) take the pressure off the provinces, and
b) to come up with ways to treat mental illnesses effectively. A centralized data base where medical records can be kept (again, with serious controls against unauthorized access or tampering) to deal with footloose street people. Associated with that would be doubling the number of mental health case workers on the "front lines". Don't think we need it? Drop into your local court house Monday morning around 7AM, and tell me again we don't need more case workers. We really need laws to demand that people who are precribed psychoactive drugs MUST take them under supervision, and we need to provide the supervision, no matter what the cost. In other words, you go off your meds, you go back to jail. (We could call it the Brian Smith law, or maybe the female astronaut law!) There MUST be some way to ensure a pschychotic will take his meds, even if he decides to move to Calgary or Vancover. An RFID comes to mind, but I know that conjures up images of 1984,.

14) Federal laws against phishing and identity theft. You know, there are none right now! And it is getting to be a problem. There is a good reason why Montreal is the world centre for telemarketing fraud.

15) Federal monitoring and licencing of pharmaceudical products and drug marketing agencies to ensure that inferior product is not shipped to other countries. Not that there is any, but THEY say there is. ("They" being protectionist regimes who are scared of the low prices of our quality meds!).

16)Increase the number of inspectors at container ports to watch for contraband. If Canada customs has to go through my socks when I come back from Columbia, then they should go through a container I have delivered to my house! Yet the VAST majority never get xrayed, or inspected. But Mr. Jones comes across with an extra bottle of whisky...OMG!

17) Require all auto manufacturers to add armour plates to the inside of doors of cars to prevent theft. Also, required anti theft devices to be built into all vehicles. There are too many to list here, but I rather like LoJack. Too many vehicles are stolen, broken up, or shipped off shore to ignore, yet as long as the insurance agencies are allowed to increase their premiums to cover their losses, then why should they care. And how about that five mile an hour bumber which used to be on every car during the 90's? Did they HAVE to cave into the auto body repair lobby? Have you seen what a 5mph bump into the back of a minivan costs to repair, and how much your insurance will rise as a result? Its disgusting!

18) Insurance reform....see above....but apply it to everything from auto body repair to roofers. Doctors have to get malpractice insurance, and contractors are merely "encouraged" to take out insurance against shoddy workmanship.

There. This is a start. Conservatives are in power right now. Want to bet how many of these initiatives will be even started a year from now?