A View From The North

 By Cam Vallee  Monday, September 20, 2010 (Canada Free Press)

I am a huge fan of Governor Sarah Palin.  Because my Province of British Columbia borders the great state of Alaska it was always interesting to follow the going’s on up above my head.  She hit my radar about ten years ago and I celebrated her every success.  The biggest question asked by the left wing is ‘just who does she think she is going to take America back from' as she often says?  Who does she think she is?  Here is this Canadian's view: 

Palin wants to put control of America back into the hands of the people where (according to your constitution) it should have always been.  When you have elected officials mocking millions of people who are trying to tell them what they want and do not want and they ignore them – refuse to meet with them – call them names – shall I say “Houston, we have a problem!”

That is what took place and it is the central reason why millions of Americans are so angry at their elected reps.  They did not listen to them in spite of the warning that were sent and will indeed pay a price for their ignorance as they should.  These people are Republicans, Independants and even Democrats.  These people have put their party banners down and united for a cause that can be no greater for any mortal man.  The future of their own country.

Many try and make this an “Obama problem” but it is a festering American and world political problem that has been brewing for at least twenty years.  It is about progressive ideology which is socialism, and again, socialism is not a dirty word.  It is simply a system of governing that has been tried and has failed over and over again.  It makes people dependants of the government and robs them of individual freedoms and individuality.  Many try and label it a race problem but America has moved beyond that stop sign of ignorance.  Are there still racists?  You bet ON BOTH SIDES OF YOUR POLITICAL FENCE.

But not rampant among the regular every day American who has been rising up and reiterating those famous words “We are mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore.”  They are demanding honesty and fiscal responsibility from their government which is a good thing.  They want hand ups to take precedent over hand outs in their daily lives.  They want to keep their individual freedoms and that is something I predict they will not give up without a fight as they should.

The elite have taken control of all of our countries and just because some of them have a diploma from the likes of Harvard does not make them smart.  I say all the time even the Scarecrow went to Oz where the Wizard gave him a piece of paper saying he had a brain.  It did not mean he really had one and it certainly did not mean he was smart.  What it may have meant was he had a good ability to read the words other people wrote for him.  In my opinion life experience is worth far more and we need to knock our elites off the pedestals we have had them on.  Common sense is a great ability that enables those of us who decide to use it great decision makers.  Honesty and integrity are not things we are taught but things we either have or do not have.  Life experience is often our best teacher.

Our choice as citizens is to become part of those seeking a solution or stay with the status quo.  People in America have made the choice and are going after the elite who have driven our countries almost to their knees.  

They are a controlled voice in America and it is one that is starting to resound around the world that real change will only come in our governments if we the people stand up and demand it happen.  These people are moms and dads, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, grandma and grandpas.  These people are us.

This Canadian is relying on their drive and will to lead the way back to sanity in all of our countries.  I am viewing what is happening in America from my side of the fence and I like what I see.

Our choice is to become part of those seeking a solution or stay with the status quo.  One thing is for sure either way everyday Americans are coming after the elite who has driven your country almost to its knees.  Like a train they are heading to Washington state by state and those who do not want to support real change had better get the hell outta their way!

Cam Vallee ©

————————————————————————

How Did Jefferson Know??

John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the white House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement:

"This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe .

Thomas Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff109181.html> 

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. 

Thomas Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff122881.html> 

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world. 

Thomas Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff136389.html> 

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. 

Thomas Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff136410..html>  

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. 

Thomas Jefferson <http://www..brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff157220.html> 

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. 

Thomas Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff125076..html> 

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. 

Thomas Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff100991..html> 

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. 

Thomas Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff109180.html> 

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. 

Thomas Jefferson <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasjeff157246..html> 

Thomas  Jefferson said in 1802: 

'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property - until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.'

 Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this: 

 The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

 The fifth would pay $1.

 The sixth would pay $3.

 The seventh would pay $7.

 The eighth would pay $12.

 The ninth would pay $18.

 The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

 So, that's what they decided to do.

 The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20."Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

 The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'  They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

 So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so:

 The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

 The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).

 The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (29%savings).

 The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).

 The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

 The tenth now paid $50 instead of $59 (15% savings).

 Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

 "I only got a dollar out of the $20,"declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $9!"

 "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got nine times more than I!"

 "That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $9 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

 "Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"

 The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

 The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

 And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

 For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.     

Carbon dioxide plays no role whatever in “heating up” the Earth

Green Pillage and Plunder

By Alan Caruba  Wednesday, November 16, 2011 (Canada Free Press)

To understand what is behind all the talk, the legislation, the protests in support of “global warming”, now commonly called “climate change”, you have to understand the millions, if not billions, at stake for the liars who dreamed up this greatest hoax of the modern era.

There is no dramatic warming of the Earth. There never was though it has passed through periods of warming. The most recent mini-ice age lasted from around 1300 and ended around 1850; the Earth began to warm again to normal levels. Warming and cooling cycles, like Ice Ages, are well documented and warm is better because it produces greater crop yields, increased forest growth, whereas cooling endangers life.

The Earth entered a normal cooling cycle around 1998 and is still in that cycle. The Earth is at the end of an interglacial period between Ice Ages and it will enter a new one. The Earth is not heating up. It will get very cold and stay that way for thousands of years.

During the last Ice Age more than a third of the Earth was covered in ice and the air had less, not more, carbon dioxide (CO2). Carbon dioxide correlates with periods of warmth and the most recent such period saw the rise of human civilization and expansion of the human population during the current interglacial period.

Carbon dioxide plays no role whatever in “heating up” the Earth. In terms of the Earth’s atmosphere, it is a miniscule 0.038%. The rest is mostly water vapor. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is equivalent to one penny out of $100.00.

Volcanic eruptions produce more CO2 than human-related activity and there are at least twenty such eruptions from active volcanoes occurring as you read this.

If you shut down all the power plants, all the factories, all the bakeries, all commerce, the only result would be the destruction of the economy. Similarly, if you thwarted all coal, natural gas, and oil production, the agenda of the current administration, the only effect would be to render millions without jobs and without the capacity to turn on the lights or heat their homes.

Carbon dioxide is vital to all life on Earth because no vegetation can exist without it.

The UN and Green Organizations:

The global warming hoax is the creation of the United Nations and, in particular, its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the agency responsible for the Kyoto Protocols of December 11, 1997 intended to reduce CO2 production worldwide. What purpose is served by this? One answer is the weakening of the economies of industrialized nations. It is a little known fact that both China and India were exempt from the Protocols.

It has taken some nations a while to wake up to the suicidal effects of the IPCC program. In early November, Canada slashed the budget of its environmental program; in particular the ozone monitoring costs that were the result of the Montreal Protocol. If the U.S. was to follow suit, the savings would be billions. The EPA and NOAA budgets for 2010 were $10.3 billion and $5.5 billion dollars, respectively.

As recently as November 1st, the IPCC was claiming that weather events from the October snowstorm that hit northeastern U.S. and the record floods in Thailand were the result of—you guess it—global warming. It’s latest report asserts that it is “virtually certain” that the world would have more extreme spells of heat and fewer of cold. Thus, by this warped logic, warming causes blizzards.

The perpetrators of the “climate models” produced by the IPCC over the years were exposed in 2009 in what has since been called “Climategate.” Emails between them revealed the deliberate deception. It is estimated that the U.S. has spent over $50 billion on “climate research” since the late 1990s.

Support for the global warming hoax came from science journals and the mainstream media. The IPCC received a Nobel Prize. Al Gore’s documentary on global warming received an Oscars. It was all a lie, but the sale of bogus “carbon credits” reaped millions for those engaged until the exchanges offering them were forced to close their doors.

Much of the regulation being forced upon the American economy by the Environmental Protection Agency is predicated on the “control” of carbon dioxide and is directed at plants that generate fifty percent of all the electricity used daily and coal mines that provide that energy.

On November 8th, the Obama administration announced its intention to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants. On November 10th, it announced a delay in the authorization of a new oil pipeline from Canada. Environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth were jubilant despite the estimated 20,000 jobs that were lost from the delay. There are some 50,000 pipelines in the U.S. that provide the energy we use daily.

We are witnessing the strangulation of the American economy by the United Nations, the Obama administration, U.S. and international environmental organizations, and much of the mainstream media that continues to report on “greenhouse gas emissions.”

We are long since passed the time for U.S. withdrawal from the UN and the shutdown of the EPA. Every day that passes is a nail in the nation’s coffin.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Greens think you’re stupid

It’s Just a Heat Wave

 By Alan Caruba  Saturday, July 23, 2011  [Canada free Press, July 23, 2011]

The most surprising thing about the current heat wave affecting much of the United States is that no global warming charlatan is claiming that it is the result of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Since the late 1980s, Americans were assailed with the global warming hoax until, in November 2009, the release of emails between the trolls ginning up false “climate models” were exposed.

These days the term “climate change” is used as a substitute for “global warming”, but fewer of us are fooled by this. Al Gore is planning a last-ditch effort in September to revive the hoax, but that will fail. 

Even those in the mainstream media are too embarrassed to report the absurd notion that CO2, a trace gas in the Earth’s atmosphere (0.0380%) vital to all vegetation on the planet has anything to do with climate cycles. A new cooling cycle that kicked in around 1998 is the predictable result of less solar activity. 

This is not to say it’s not hot. Heat waves are as common to summer months as blizzards are to winter ones. For those who possess the memory of fungus, there was a heat wave that engulfed the East Coast from July 4 through 9th in 2010. Weather records reflect that heat waves are a natural event, often following or preceding record setting cold waves.

While Al Gore and the last holdouts of the global warming hoax continue to tell us that CO2 emissions (the use of fossil fuels for energy to produce electricity, drive anywhere, and manufacture anything) will destroy the world, the world’s most sophisticated particle study laboratory, CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, will soon announce a finding that will blow the CO2 nonsense to bits. 

Dennis T. Avery of the Hudson Institute, reports CERN has demonstrated “that more cosmic rays do, indeed, create more clouds in the earth’s atmosphere.” Cosmic rays are subatomic particles from outer space. More clouds means that less of the sun’s warmth reaches the Earth’s surface. 

This completely overturns the torrent of lies that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been churning out for decades. The IPCC’s scientists went into full panic mood as a new cooling cycle asserted itself in 1998. 

As Avery points out, the IPCC scientists had deliberately ignored “the Medieval Warming (950-1200 AD), the Roman Warming (200 BC-600AD) or the big Holocene Warmings centered on 6,000 and 8,000 BC.” There was also a Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850 to account for as well. 

While the global warming crowd has been telling everyone that they must stop burning coal, using oil or natural gas, and “reduce our carbon footprint”, a recent volcanic eruption in Iceland, in just four days, negated every government-mandated effort to control or reduce CO2 emissions worldwide for the past five years! When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it put so much smoke and other gases in the atmosphere that it cooled the Earth’s temperatures for a few years until they dissipated.

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is frantically issuing new rules and regulations to reduce the CO2 emissions from utilities and manufacturing facilities before the public realizes that its actual goal is to kill the U.S. economy by increasing the cost of electricity and everything else. It is insanely trying to shut down the mining of coal, while other elements of the Obama regime are trying to stop any drilling for oil.

Unable to scare everyone with the global warming hoax, new horrors are being invented, from ocean acidification to the claim that the atmosphere is being overloaded with nitrogen. Relax, there’s four times more nitrogen in the atmosphere than oxygen and it’s no big deal.

The Greens think you’re stupid

Americans need to be aware that major environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth are desperate to maintain the fictions required to deprive the U.S. of the energy it needs to function. 

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg just gave $50 million to the Sierra Club to support its “Beyond Coal” campaign. Bloomberg actually thinks it’s a good thing the Sierra Club has managed to stop 150 coal-burning plants from being built. Meanwhile, during the current heat wave, providers of electricity are worrying whether they can continue to meet the increased demand for it. Coal provides 50% of all the electricity we use in America.

How stupid or evil do you have to be to stop building the plants that provide electricity at a time when the population and the demand for it is rising? Must America become a third world nation with rolling blackouts and brownouts?

Friends of the Earth are in a panic that Republicans might actually get the U.S. government to cut back on the insane spending that has put the nation on the edge of sovereign default. Lately they’re claiming that Majority Leader, Eric Candor (R-VA) “is threatening to sink the American economy and undermine environmental protections so that his wealthy friends, including big oil corporations, can keep sitting on their cushions.” 

That’s the same Big Oil that hasn’t been able to build a single new refinery in the U.S. since the 1970s. That’s the same Big Oil that has seen ten oil rigs leave the Gulf of Mexico since the May 2010 Obama “moratorium” for drilling sites in Egypt, Congo, French Guiana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Brazil. They took a lot of jobs and revenue with them,

If you wanted to destroy America, all you have to do is make it impossible to access several century’s worth of its own huge reserves of coal and the billions of barrels of oil inland and offshore that would, indeed, make America more energy independent. 

The next time anyone speaks about “sustainability”, they are talking about turning out the lights and emptying the highways of America. The next time anyone talks about “the environment”, they mean the same thing.

So, remember, it’s just a heat wave. It will end just like all the others and, in a few months, we will all be talking about the blizzards.

© Alan Caruba, 2011 

A partial list of predictions over 117 years

Source: Press Release, "Earth Day 2008: Predictions of Environmental Disaster Were Wrong," Washington Policy Center, April 22, 2008. 

http://www.washingtonpolicy.org/pressroom/pressreleases/4_22_2008.html

"Is our climate changing? The succession of temperate summers and open winters through several years, culminating last winter in the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout the valley of the Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older inhabitants tell us that the winters are not as cold now as when they were young, and we have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in this last decade. – New York Times, June 23, 1890 

"The Oceanographic observations have, however, been even more interesting. Ice conditions were exceptional. In fact, so little ice has never been noted. The expedition all but established a record." – Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, January 1905 

[Note: Amundsen was the first to successfully navigate the entire northwest passage - in 1905. CWC]

********************************************************

“Fifth ice age is on the way…..Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.” – Los Angles Times, October 23, 1912 

*************************************************

"The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot…. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone… Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds." – Washington Post, 11/2/1922 

******************************************************

"Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada, Professor Gregory of Yale University stated that 'another world ice-epoch is due.' He was the American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress and warned that North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be 'wiped out'.” – Chicago Tribune, August 9, 1923 

"The discoveries of changes in the sun’s heat and southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to the conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age ."- Time Magazine, 9/10/1923 

*******************************************************

 “Gaffers who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right…weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.” – Time Magazine, Jan. 2 1939 

[The RCMP's motor vessel.- St. Roch – navigated the Northwest passage from west to east in summer 1943 and east to west in summer 1944. CWC]

"A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a “serious international problem.” – May 30, 1947 

"Greenland’s polar climate has moderated so consistently that communities of hunters have evolved into fishing villages. Sea mammals, vanishing from the west coast, have been replaced by codfish and other fish species in the area’s southern waters." – August 29, 1954 

*******************************************************

"After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder." – New York Times, January 30, 1961 

"Like an outrigger canoe riding before a huge comber, the earth with its inhabitants is caught on the downslope of an immense climatic wave that is plunging us toward another Ice Age." – Los Angeles Times, December 23, 1962 

"Get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters—the worst may be yet to come. That’s the long-long-range weather forecast being given out by 'climatologists' the people who study very long-term world weather trends." – Washington Post, January 11, 1970 

Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor "…the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." – Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970. 

 “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind. We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” – Barry Commoner, Washington University, Earth Day, 1970. 

By 1995, "…somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct." Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970. 

The world will be "…11 degrees colder in the year 2000 (this is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age)." – Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970. 

"The United States and the Soviet Union are mounting large-scale investigations to determine why the Arctic climate is becoming more frigid, why parts of the Arctic sea ice have recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of that ice cover contributes to the onset of ice ages." – New York Times, July 18, 1970 

"Convection in the Antarctic Ice Sheet Leading to a Surge of the Ice Sheet and Possibly to a New Ice Age." – Science,1970 

“In the next 50 years fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun’s rays that the Earth’s average temperature could fall by six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.” – Washington Post, July 9, 1971 

"New Ice Age Coming-—It’s Already Getting Colder. Some midsummer day, perhaps not too far in the future, a hard, killing frost will sweep down on the wheat fields of Saskatchewan, the Dakotas and the Russian steppes." – Los Angles Times, Oct 24, 1971 

“There is very important climatic change (Global Cooling) going on right now, and it’s not merely something of academic interest. It is something that, if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth – like a billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in a rather drastic way.” – Fortune Magazine February 1974 

“Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age” – Time Magazine June 24, 1974 

"A number of climatologists, whose job it is to keep an eye on long-term weather changes, have lately been predicting deterioration of the benign climate to which we have grown accustomed. Various climatologists issued a statement that “the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade,” If policy makers do not account for this oncoming doom, “mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence” will result." – New York Times, December 29, 1974.

"A recent flurry of papers has provided further evidence for the belief that the Earth is cooling. There now seems little doubt that changes over the past few years are more than a minor statistical fluctuation." – Nature, March 6, 1975 

"Scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century." – The Cooling World, Newsweek magazine, April 28, 1975 

“Scientist ponder why World’s Climate is changing; a major cooling is considered to be inevitable." – New York Times May 21, 1975 

""This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. — Lowell Ponte “The Cooling”, 1976 

"An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere." – New York Times, January 5, 1978 

"One of the questions that nags at climatologists asks when and how fast a new ice age might descend. A Belgian scientist suggests this could happen sooner and swifter than you might think." – Christian Science Monitor, Nov 14, 1979 

"Evidence has been presented and discussed to show a cooling trend over the Northern Hemisphere since around 1950, amounting to over 0.5°C, due primarily to cooling at mid- and high latitudes." – Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, November 1980 

********************************************************

"A global warming trend could bring heat waves, dust-dry farmland and disease, the experts said… Under this scenario, the resort town of Ocean City, Md., will lose 39 feet of shoreline by 2000 and a total of 85 feet within the next 25 years."- San Jose Mercury News, June 11, 1986 

"New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now." – St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 17, 1989 

"Some predictions for the next decade (1990’s) are not difficult to make… Americans may see the ‘80s migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest in cooler climates." – Dallas Morning News, December 5th 1989 

"By 2000, British and American oil will have diminished to a trickle……Ozone depletion and global warming threaten food shortages, but the wealthy North will enjoy a temporary reprieve by buying up the produce of the South. Unrest among the hungry and the ensuing political instability, will be contained by the North’s greater military might. A bleak future indeed, but an inevitable one unless we change the way we live…..At present rates of exploitation there may be no rainforest left in 10 years. If measures are not taken immediately, the greenhouse effect may be unstoppable in 12 to 15 years." – 5000 Days to Save the Planet, Edward Goldsmith, 1991 

‘’I think we’re in trouble. When you realize how little time we have left – we are now given not 10 years to save the rainforests, but in many cases five years. Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.’’ – ABC, 'The Miracle Planet', April 22, 1990 

"The planet could face an 'ecological and agricultural catastrophe' by the next decade if global warming trends continue." – Carl Sagan, Buffalo News, Oct. 15, 1990 

'Most of the great environmental struggles will be either won or lost in the 1990s and by the next century it will be too late." — Thomas E. Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution 'Real Goods Alternative Energy Sourcebook', Seventh Edition, February 1993 

"Today (in 1996) 25 million environmental refugees roam the globe, more than those pushed out for political, economic, or religious reasons. By 2010, this number will grow tenfold to 200 million." – 'The Heat is On -The High Stakes Battle Over Earth’s Threatened Climate' – Ross Gelbspan, 1996 

"In ten years time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels." CNN, Mar 29, 2001 

“Globally, 2002 is likely to be warmer than 2001 – it may even break the record set in 1998. – Daily Mirror, August 2, 2002 [Actually 1934 and it didn't. CWC]

"Next year (2003) may be warmest recorded: Global temperatures in 2003 are expected to exceed those in 1998 – the hottest year to date." The Scotsman, December 30, 2002 [See above and it wasn't. CWC]

"(The) extra energy, together with a weak El Nino, is expected to make 2005 warmer than 2003 and 2004 and perhaps even warmer than 1998." Reuters, February 11, 2005 [See above again and again it wasn't. CWC]

"NOAA announced its predictions for the 2006 hurricane season, saying it expects an “above normal” year with 13-16 named storms. Of these storms, the agency says it expects four to be hurricanes of category 3 or above, double the yearly average of prior seasons in recorded history. With experts calling the coming hurricane season potentially worse than last year’s, oil prices have jumped 70 cents per barrel in New York and made similar leaps elsewhere. Economists anticipate that demand for oil will rise sharply over the summer, when as many as four major hurricanes could hit the United States." — Seed Magazine, 5/19/06 [Hurricanes making landfall in the US = 0. CWC]

"This year (2007) is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998." – Science Daily, Jan. 5, 2007 

[See above, again! CWC]

_________________

The global average temperature stopped increasing in 1998  and began cooling again in 2002. By 2010, the average had dropped by 0.15 degrees Celsius – one quarter of the total warming increase in the entire 20^th century. Yet the Swindlers are still grotesquely promoting their lies, the media are still peddling them and governments are still squandering Billions of out tax dollars trying to counter a non-event. CWC

(Written in March 2000)

Health Insurance; Hospitals/Clinics/EMS/ Other Facilities; Colleges.

In healthcare, Canadians want no surprises. They want provision against ruinous loss of healthiness. They want "fairness" – equivalent treatment/timeliness/facilities for dollars paid. They want their health problems fixed if and when they occur.

The skill, the commitment, and the numbers of individuals practicing its delivery determine the quality of Canada's healthcare system. It does not depend on government management. We need to create an environment of enterprise that attracts, serves, and supports those people who are dedicated to the practice of the caring professions in a hassle‑free, stimulating, and collegial atmosphere that pays pretty well.

We need national funding of excellent personal health care, delivered by competitive, private, professional practitioners.

Canadians do want a national system. They do want it to be: universal ‑ leaving not one Canadian in uncovered vulnerability; portable – attached to the person/family, not any place; comprehensive ‑ covering a full range of reasonable procedures; and accessible ‑ they'd really like to experience diagnostic and treatment times that compared favourably with those in veterinary practices! Those are four of the five conditions that were supposed to have been delivered by the existing Canada Health Act, but were not. They need to be affirmed, and their practice absolutely guaranteed, in a rebuilt national healthcare system.

A renovated Canadian government would replace the fifth Canada Health Act condition ‑ Public administration/financing ‑ with a single‑payer insurance system. Government can't deliver the service and shouldn't micro‑manage its delivery as it does, so badly, now. (There are 10,000 bureaucrats for 100,000 doctors and nurses in Ontario ‑ one for ten!) Government just needs to ensure outcomes, not processes – that the systems, people, and dollars that deliver the service are in place and working.

The thundering argument about public versus private, or two‑tier, is bogus. Healthcare is already delivered by 750,000 private individual professionals ‑ some working alone, others working in co‑operative associations in partnerships or corporations. Hospitals and ambulance services are stand‑alone enterprises. All need to have some profit left after paying their expenses ‑ whether it's an individual who needs to feed his/her family, or a huge multi‑million dollar enterprise that needs to retain some earnings to repair or replace equipment.

All practitioners share the common fact that their revenue now comes from a provincial schedule of fees per procedure. Hospitals and clinics can also earn dollars from fund‑raising events and bequests. The fees in the system are remarkably low. For example, in Ontario, a G.P. gets $51.50 for doing a complete annual checkup and $26.00 for checking a specific complaint in‑office. An obstetrician gets $322.77 for delivering a baby and a surgeon gets $424.95 for removing a gall bladder. OHIP reported average gross billings in 1998‑99 for family physicians was $185,400. After deducting all their office, staff, and equipment expenses, the average family physician reported a taxable income of $93,476. After taxes, and insurance/pension/benefits premiums ‑ which they have to pay themselves ‑ the average take-home was $53,611. Hardly a fortune! This is not a get‑rich‑quick (or even slow) occupation for the average practitioner, particularly when one considers the time and cost required to qualify to practice and to keep up to date.

In 1994‑95, Canadians paid $52Billion for the healthcare spending of governments. That paid for all the bureaucrats and some of the health services that Canadians received. The $52Billion worked out to somewhat more than $4,000 per average‑income family and slightly less than $4,000 per 13,500,000 income tax filers that year. Whichever way one thinks of it, it amounted to about $1,800 for each man, woman and child in the country.

On a comparable‑year basis, a 9% tithe of all earned incomes (up to $150,000 per year) would have generated $45Billion. Considering that all provincial bureaucracies would disappear, not to be replaced at the national level, that scale of funding would put serious new dollars into the actual delivery of healthcare service, might even fund the homecare practitioners many regions are looking for, and would grow substantially as incomes grew in Canada's renovated governance. And, the price paid would be completely visible.

The system has to be de‑politicized. A renovated Canadian government would magnify the authority of professional colleges and associations to determine standards of practice, certify and de‑certify practitioners and facilities, and, in conjunction with practitioners, municipal boards, and the ministry in parliament, set fees for each specific procedure and service. The colleges/associations would each be national and ultimately accountable to parliament.

Bodies like the College of Physicians and Surgeons could do some soul‑searching and stop circling the wagons every time there is a criticism. Balance needs to be restored. No doubt the threat of U.S.‑style malpractice litigation has produced some gun‑shyness, but, perhaps if the College defended its patients as vigorously as it has been defending its malpractitioners, a rebuilt court system would be less tolerant of frivolous suits and/or lotto‑sized payouts.

A lean, super‑computerized, public enterprise "clearing house" would handle a simple billing and payments system. It would operate on the "Management By Exception" principle that assumed that the vast majority of practitioners would bill honestly. A small staff of forensic experts would investigate reports of, and ensure the ruinous punishment of, the inevitable tiny percentage who will try to rip off the system.

Under the current Canada Health Act, it is already possible for any qualified individual or enterprise to deliver insured services. (Yet another blow to the phony public versus private argument.) In a rebuilt, streamlined, national system, individuals and enterprises would be licenced by the Colleges/Associations and then would be free to organize any way they chose in order to earn the established fees, cover their costs, and pay themselves.

It's already being done all over the country now. There are hospitals and clinics that specialize in a variety of specific procedures. Some of them draw patients from all over the world, never mind the country. Doctors group themselves in neighbourhood centres that may house X‑Ray and testing facilities, specialists, and a pharmacy as well as family practitioners. There is no limit to the potential combinations, other than sensible practice. Why not have testing centres where X‑Ray, MRI, CATscan and other expensive diagnostic machines are grouped to give same‑day service? Why not build luxury suites in hospitals to keep the carriage trade at home and attract some significant numbers of international patients?

It is absurd to tolerate centralized dictatorship of the local terms and conditions of healthcare any longer. Why should a community's hospital be closed on the say-so of some outside "expert"? Surely the concerned citizens in each community are in a far better position to decide what parts of what facilities, staffed with how many of what kinds of professionals they need. If a local hospital is strapped for revenue, it should be able to try local initiatives. What about renting some rooms as seniors' residences? How about renting space to non‑staff doctors or other kinds of healthcare practitioners, selling meals or massages, hosting seminars, doing laundry? These things are not new ‑ they've already all been done somewhere.

A renovated Canadian government would empower municipal governments to establish their own integrated healthcare service boards or commissions to take "ownership" of their local healthcare resources. Municipalities would be free to act alone, or to join with other municipalities in regional or part‑regional groupings. Larger municipalities would be free to sub‑divide into neighbourhood boards/commissions if they chose to do so. Whatever the arrangements, local authorities would be free to, and have the responsibility to, muster the hospital, clinic, emergency service, ambulance service, family physician, specialist, nursing, home care, and all the other healthcare‑delivering professionals and facilities in their communities to the service of the people in their communities.

Municipal or regional boards or commissions could be composed of volunteers from municipal councils, and the business, academic, and healthcare communities ‑ not unlike present‑day hospital boards.

Some Canadians go through life needing only an occasional Band-Aid and an aspirin now and then. Most require a few major procedures to deal with a cranky appendix, or a broken limb, or a baby delivery. Tragically, some Canadians, by virtue of birth or accident, suffer agonizingly long and painful health problems requiring extensive and expensive care. A rebuilt national system would even out all circumstances into a manageable cost per individual or family.

As in so many human affairs, there are abusers ‑ those who keep visiting many doctors with the same imaginary complaint, or those who tie up an emergency room with a hangnail. Refusing service or charging for it have not gained general acceptance as ways of eliminating these particular cost burdens. Possibly a combination of a secure national health card, computerization, tougher‑minded gate‑keeping, and penalty pricing could be tested.

There have been some vigorous proposals for some form of rationing whether it be by "capitation" or "rostering" or "health accounts". All such notions are regressive in that they impose top‑down dictation by some body, and, all suffer from the drawback of requiring a seriously large, new, clerical bureaucracy to administer/control them.

Health: The healthiness of 30 million Canadians is in the hands of a mixed assortment of unidentifiable, faceless, officials (U.F.O.'s) in the provincial/territorial health bureaucracies. These U.F.O.'s have total control over the personnel, facilities, equipment, frequency, timeliness, procedures and products that are available in and paid for by their healthcare systems.

Canada's healthcare system was supposed to have had five characteristics. It was supposed to have been:

1. Universal ‑ Most Canadians would take "universal" to mean that the system would cover the same procedures and products for all Canadians in all parts of the nation. It does not, by a long shot. It's almost as if each province's health bureaucrats have arbitrarily decided that their role in life is to make sure that Canadians living in their province are covered differently than Canadians living in other provinces. What is an essential covered service to one bureaucracy will be a frivolous uncovered one to another. The rates paid for identical procedures and products can vary dramatically from province to province.

2. Portable ‑ Complementing the first characteristic, most Canadians would take "portability" to mean that if they moved to, or were on vacation in, another part of Canada, they would automatically have the same coverage if a health problem occurred. However, some provinces require newcomers to wait or visitors to pay C.O.D. thus forcing them to the additional discomfort of filing their own claims back in their previous/home province. Quebec's health bureaucrats won't pay the other provinces' rates, and, since all procedures and products are not covered in all provinces, the simple objective of national portability for a national healthcare system is not even close to realization.

3. Comprehensive ‑ Most Canadians would take this to mean that the system would cover most of the procedures and products needed to maintain healthiness. In the mid‑1990's, Canadians paid a total of about $72 Billion a year for healthcare. Governments spent about $52 Billion of that total. Canadians spent the remaining $20 Billion themselves. $52 Billion of $72 Billion is 72%. Is that "most"?

4. Accessible ‑ Most Canadians accept that access to facilities, personnel, and procedures will be better in a major city than in a small town or rural or wilderness location. Most Canadians would mentally insert "reasonable" in front of "accessibility".

What Canadians did not count on were the longer waiting periods for treatment, the shorter stays for recovery in hospital, the more crowded waiting rooms and the assembly‑line treatment that now define "accessible".

5. Publicly Financed ‑ The term has somehow become twisted to mean "free" in the mouths of those who praise Canada's healthcare system. In fact, governments' healthcare spending is all paid for by the Canadian people and it costs them a lot. In round numbers, all governments' takeout from the average annual family income of about $56,000 is about half, or $28,000, in taxes, duties, levies, licences, fees, etc. All governments' spending on healthcare is about one‑seventh of their total spending (more than $50 Billion out of more than $350 Billion or 50/350 = 1/7). Therefore, a family with a $56,000 income is paying $4,000 a year for governments' spending on healthcare.(1/7 of $28,000)

It might be more accurate to call it "prepaid''. It sure isn't "free".

Furthermore, Alberta and B.C. charge their residents a hefty extra monthly premium for their provincial health plans. Ontario soaks progressively higher extra health taxes out of its rich residents. ("Rich" starts at taxable incomes a little over $52,000!)

We also personally pay about 40% more, a total of over $20 Billion more, per year, for healthcare procedures and products that are not covered by our prepayments because provincial health bureaucrats say they won't be.

Surely every Canadian has a first‑ or second‑hand horror story about waiting periods, equipment and/or personnel shortages or decisions about "covered" procedures, products or frequencies. In 1998, southern Ontarians could watch television commercials advertising different same‑day‑service MRI clinics in Buffalo. One of them even advertised "Our MRI machines are the new, roomier kind that don't make you feel closed in." Meanwhile, there were no MRI machines in Mississauga's two hospitals because some Ontario health bureaucracy wizard had decided there were enough machines in Toronto to service the entire Greater Toronto Area. As a result, a Mississauga woman, immobilized by a heart attack, had to wait five days in hospital for a turn at the Toronto MRI machines. Another Ontario health bureaucracy bright light decided that covering one visit every two years to an eye doctor was often enough to check whether a person was going blind. Hey, if you're worried about it, you can always pay for a visit out of your own pocket, eh.

The gross mismanagement of Canada's provincially controlled and operated health care system has resulted in patchy coverage and declining patient care at the same time as it has caused per capita costs to explode to the second highest in the world. An obscene amount of the total that Canadians are paying for healthcare goes to the overhead burden of bureaucrats, consultants, advisors and other nonproductive leeches who've attached themselves to each provincial and territorial system. The professional healthcare workers who actually deliver the service/do the work have become so frustrated by the strangleholds the U.F.O.'s have on the systems they are resorting to the desperate measures of strikes or leaving the country.

Healthcare has become so badly politicized that, for example, one of Canada's most revered institutions, the Red Cross, has been crippled by a blood supply scandal caused by health bureaucrats.

A doctor barred from practicing in a Maritimes province due to gross professional misconduct/incompetence started a new practice in Ontario. The provincial health bureaucracies didn't share career information.

Counterfeiters do a brisk business in health cards, particularly Ontario's for people living in Quebec and U.S. border states. Thousands of people enjoy the coverage provided by Ontario's version of the healthcare system, so, Ontario's personnel and facilities face extra workload, lineup and cost pressures.

The Canadian government's healthcare ministry is handcuffed by the BNA Act (which says hospitals are a provincial responsibility) and, more importantly, by its unwillingness to take on the provinces who scream; "We'll sue!" any time the Canadian government seems about to act for the benefit of the Canadian people.

While the governing/establishment elites blare on about how great Canada's healthcare system is, a lot of them get cushy, no‑wait care in special private establishments or in the U.S. Almost half of all Canadians now think the system needs to be completely rebuilt.

One thing is absolutely clear ‑ provincialism has to be removed from the system. After all, doctors, nurses, workers, clinics, hospitals, emergency services, ambulances ‑ all the people, facilities and equipment in the system ‑ operate locally.

Learning; Apprenticing; Facilities; Colleges; Standards.

Amid the turbulence surrounding the critical task of helping Canada's young people learn in an era of rapidly expanding knowledge and technology, it is important to anchor on to some basic principles and to remember that all the solutions are already being successfully practiced somewhere in the world.

A renovated Canadian government would completely rebuild an education system characterized by national, public funding of personal learning. Among the system's keystone characteristics would be national standards for curricula, testing, professional assessment, and school accountability; decentralized local control of the process; and learner choice among competing options.

The provincial and territorial bureaucracies would disappear, not to be reconstituted at the national level. A useful precedent to use when considering the appropriate size of a national education bureaucracy comes from a comparison between the province of Quebec and the country of Denmark in 1993. Both had about one million students. However, Quebec had 90,000 teachers and 5,000 bureaucrats while Denmark had 180,000 teachers and 50 bureaucrats. On Denmark's scale, Canada could do with an education bureaucracy of about 350 people.

Unions must be barred from education. Teaching is a monopoly, publicly funded by all the citizens of the community. Teachers, like civil service and public enterprise employees, should have no right to withdraw their services. No tiny clutch of union bosses should be able to take that indispensable service away from the community. Union bosses have grossly abused their positional authority and have demonstrated a clear lack of concern for students. Teachers must be re‑professionalized and won back to their former appreciation of their importance to their students and to their communities.

Government must be removed from the process. It is just nuts for a government to descend to the level of legislating minutes of teaching time per day. Substituting "Canada"' for ''New Brunswick" and "national" for "provincial", a Globe & Mail editorial, April 29, 1998, said it: "…Canada needs to distinguish between the ends the schools must achieve, and the means chosen to achieve them. The nation must take responsibility for setting the outcomes that students and parents can expect the schools reliably to produce, such as a stock of shared basic knowledge embodied in a core curriculum, the ability to acquire new learning beyond the classroom, and an awareness of civic rights and duties in a democratic and multicultural society. It must establish demanding measures of school performance, such as nation‑wide testing, and publish the results.

What the nation should not do is to dictate how those ends are to be achieved. Here, local communities, parents and teachers must be free to create pedagogical and governance models that suit their needs.  Options should range from locally‑determined school missions and powerful school councils right up to charter schools, subject to the integrity of the non‑sectarian character of the public schools."

The world should be scoured for superior curricula and texts ‑ the instruments that are used by the students who regularly whomp Canadians in international competitions. In some subjects, foreign students are studying material three years earlier than their comparably‑aged Canadian counterparts. We need to stop underestimating our young people and start equipping them with the curricula and materials that will help them learn to be the best in the world. They can handle it. They are hungry for the challenge.

A multi‑location, national Teachers College system would become the centre for training, certification and recertification of teachers and schools, and ongoing teacher development. It would also coordinate the input and make the choices of curricula nationally. The Teachers College system would be accountable to the ministry in the Commons. It would assume a positional authority comparable to the medical, dental, legal, accounting and other professional systems. Like them, its legitimacy would be partly derived from the fact that its positions would be staffed by practicing professional teachers.

National testing at the completion of each course in each grade, and public reporting by school of the results, would provide fair and consistent measurement of real student performance and would enable constant improvement in personnel, methods and materials. Test performance would also be the major basis for continuing a school's voucher‑based funding certification.

Funding of the education system would be completely reversed. Instead of top‑down through multiple layers of educrats, funding would go directly to students in the form of vouchers. A voucher would be used like a coupon ‑ redeemed at one's chosen school. The voucher would turn to cash to the school when appropriately presented for redemption. Vouchers could be semestered.

Vouchers for 17 years of publicly funded support would be a birthright for all Canadians, and for landed immigrants according to the number of years of schooling they hadn't had. The first 13 years ‑ primary and secondary school ‑ would be compulsory. The final 4 years – tertiary ‑ would be an optional opportunity that could be taken non-consecutively and at a time of the student's choosing.

After completing the courses mandated for compulsory schooling, the normal expectation would be that a person would be intellectually, physically and civically fit to function successfully in the adult world and to enter whichever tertiary education program they chose.

                                                          Compulsory                                         Optional

Adding skilled‑trades apprenticing programs ‑ most likely conducted at industrial enterprises ‑ to the other voucher‑supported programs, would signal the importance to the nation of developing skilled Canadians in these areas.

In 1993‑94, total spending by all of Canada's education systems on themselves and their schools, universities, colleges and other institutes of learning was about $45Billion. There were about 7,150,000 students in all institutes of learning. The total budget of $33Billion used in this essay is about 25%, not 50%, less. That would have funded 7,150,000 vouchers averaging $4,500 each and left about $1Billion to pay for the Colleges system. Voucher values would vary from average ‑ less in primary, more in tertiary. Since available budget dollars would rise over the years of growing prosperity and takeout revenues, vouchers would be denominated in year terms rather than dollar terms. For example, in a $300Billion budget year, $41Billion could give 8,000,000 students an average $5,000 voucher each, and leave about $1Billion to run the Colleges system. Knowing births and planning immigration would make it possible to know the numbers entering schools five years ahead of the fact.

Vouchers would be printed under high security like bank notes, sequentially numbered, and issued to named bearers. A computerized redemption system would operate like a coupon clearing house. A small cadre of inspectors would investigate, identify and prosecute with maximum force the inevitable few who attempt to rip off the system.

It's important to think of the fact that a school attracting 200 students would attract $900,000 of voucher funding to pay for ten teachers, rent, utilities, services, and, if the school council was so inclined, to pay for former educrat's advice and/or share profits among the staff. A school that attracted 2,000 students would have $9,000,000 to work with.

There would no longer be any point in discriminating between private versus public or religious versus public schools. Students in all primary and secondary grades would get publicly funded vouchers, would be free and able to attend any institution of their choice, and would have to pass the same tests of the same material as all other Canadian students in the same grade in order to move on to the next grade or enter a tertiary program. In essence, since funding would be attached to a student, every school would be a private institution capable of competing for students (vouchers) on any basis including price. Published marks would determine the success and duration of their different marketing efforts. Some schools may elect to promise a "tough" approach. Others may stress academics or offer extra sports or arts or technical programs, whatever.  Only imagination, common sense decency and free choice would limit the options.

Eliminating all existing local school boards, with their encrustations of educrats, would be another essential step to restoring the primacy of the teacher/student/parent relationship. The process is learning, helped by a teacher and by supportive parents.

Principals would run their schools. Their authority would come from school councils whose members would represent local businesses, parents, municipal councillors, teachers and students. Operating authority would have to rest with the principals and their staffs if they are expected to be responsible for developing and executing the programs that produce learned individuals in their communities.

The curricula to be learned would be standard but the methods and materials used to help students master them would be open to the richest possible variation. Experiments that "work" would spread like wildfire and swiftly become standard practice. The uplifting joy of learning would again be a source of national pride and satisfaction.

Conditions would obviously vary between big cities, towns and rural townships. Nevertheless, decisions about facilities ‑ whether to merge schools in one building or merge school and community usage of the same facility or raise money for a pool ‑ would be local decisions, not hand‑downs from on high.

In some cases, particularly at the tertiary level, vouchers won't cover all the costs. Students wishing to attend these institutions would need more money. It could come from own earnings, family, bursaries, scholarships, and need‑based funding supports. Given the higher percentage of dollars that would be left in the economy by renovated governance, the community could reasonably expect an increase in student support from prospering foundations and individuals ‑ not just from a sense of payback obligation, but also from a self‑interested sense of helping to stimulate continued economic growth.

Wisdom: People learn everything they think, say and do. Learning is the single most important activity any human being ever does. It is not only the first priority for the individual person, learning by its young people is essential to the continued survival of every community. The physical facilities in education systems are called "Institutes of Learning", not "Institutes of Teaching".

After paying the interest on the debts their governors have run up, and paying for their healthcare and income security systems, the fourth largest governance system that Canadians have to pay for is education ‑ about $45 Billion per year. Most of this is spent by the provincial and territorial education systems. The balance is spent by individual persons and families. The national government transfers some "education" funds to the provinces that nobody audits, and is supposed to be funding some university scholarships. However, all the authority, power, control and responsibility for everything that has happened to Canada's education system can be laid directly at the feet of the provincial and territorial governments.

They have much to answer for.

Most of the time, in most provinces, the educrats (bureaucrats, consultants, advisors, staff specialists and other hangers‑on) have exploited the importance of education, and their self‑declared expertise, to bamboozle and noselead their elected legislators. As for the unfortunate persons assigned the titular responsibility of "Minister of Education", those who went along got along. Those who dared to attempt initiatives unsponsored or unsupported by their educrats were overwhelmed, or even destroyed, by the people who were supposed to be their support staff.

At the local/regional level, elected board members quickly learned from their educrats to do what they were told, draw their pay and shut up. It's an embarrassment to watch hired hands tell elected board members what they will and won't do.

In short, while elected provincial governments and local boards were supposed to control all aspects of education in Canada, educrats have been in total control of the systems for more than three decades.

Before the crazy years began, Canadians were justly proud of their education systems and held the teachers, principals and superintendents in them in the highest regard. The reason was simple – Canadian students were able to demonstrate high levels of learned knowledge compared to students from most other countries, particularly the U.S.A. While the evidence was more anecdotal than quantified, (there weren't nearly as many surveys or competitions as there are now), it was believed by an overwhelming majority of Canadians that our education systems were superior. Sure, every grade in every school had a normal bell curve distribution of performances from A+ to F, but, the means and the medians were such that the vast majority of both students and parents believed they were being exceptionally well‑served by their education systems.

Students, parents, and teachers and their leadership, had a natural, three‑sided relationship in the community based on mutual respect for the dedication required by all three parties. The task – learning, and the goal ‑ an educated person, were acknowledged by all to be supremely worthwhile and supremely hard work. All three parties had an instinctual understanding that the activity was student learning and that parents, teachers and facilities existed purely to help students learn.

By the late 1950's, Canadians had good reason to believe that universal literacy would soon be a fact of life in Canada.

In the 1960's, it was revealed that the generations that were inventing silicon chips and personal computers, advanced telecommunications, space travel, life‑saving medicines and operations ‑ all the amazing advances that were so benefiting the human condition in the decades following WWll ‑ had had terrible educations in systems based on such awful techniques as "rote", "discipline" and "grades".

Early in the crazy years, in the 1960's, a host of reports from California and other fellow‑travelling jurisdictions began to appear. In Ontario, the Hall‑Dennis report typified their conclusions that all the education systems had been all wrong and that it was necessary to radically change them to the brave new world of child‑centred systems.

Children should now be allowed to progress at their own pace, study what/when they wished, endure no discipline whatsoever, and never have their progress measured. Structure was to be abandoned. The child's self‑esteem was all that should matter. The goal of education should now be to make the child feel good, therefore, there could no longer be grades, discipline, challenge, criticism, guidance, penalties, curricula, goals or consequences.

Educratic psychobabble hit the community at the same time as the "progressive" intellectual establishment was hitting its stride with its sickhead notions and newspeak jargon. "Anything goes." "If it feels good, do it." ''There are no standards ‑ everything is relative." "Free sex, loose sex, sex without marriage." "Dope is good for you." "Responsibility is only for fools." And the all‑pervasive, signature, rallying cry of the crazy years ‑ "It's all their fault!"

No doubt some of the educrats, board members and teachers sincerely hoped that a new process would produce even better outcomes. But, those in the education establishments who seized control were much more likely to be guided by the socialist mantra; "Give me the schools and I'll control the country in 20 years." Furthermore, everybody in the education establishments was getting rich and powerful in their hermetically sealed, self‑contained, untouchable empires.

The assault by the education establishments, aided and abetted by the union bosses and the "progressive" intellectual establishment, was widespread, dramatic and quick. The sensible majority of value‑holding citizens in North America had no warning and were ill‑prepared for the invasive violence of the unexpected attack on the welfare and future of their children. It took a generation for the ammunition of outcomes to come to their aid.

Leaving the unformed minds of young people to their own devices had, predictably, produced illiteracy and innumeracy. Studies began to expose the horrifying outcomes of the child‑centred process in the mid‑1980's, and, by the mid‑1990's, a host of studies had categorically confirmed the feared ‑ our young people can't read, write or do arithmetic.

The sad statistics are overwhelming. In the mid‑1990's, an O.E.C.D. study found that 47.2% ‑ nearly half ‑ of all Canadian adults were illiterate. (So much for our hopeful expectations 30 years earlier.) Most grade 3 children can't read at all. Different studies in different provinces find that 30% to 40% of high school graduates can't read things like the information on an aspirin bottle, a phone book or a road map. Most of the rest ‑ another 40% ‑ have barely passable literary and numeracy skills. University business course students cannot do simple whole‑number math without a calculator. Universities have so many illiterates entering their hallowed halls of higher learning that they have to put on remedial English (and French) classes. Their new students can't read their textbooks and can't write a coherent sentence, never mind a paragraph or essay.

How could anyone have thought that not being able to read, write and do math would be good for a person's self‑esteem? Instead of acquiring the basic intellectual skills needed in the adult world, children are learning that young sex is okay ‑ as long as it's safe. Teachers are being paid to show our children how to put on the condoms they are being given free of charge. The average age our children start having sex in this brave new world is 15. At that age, many still don't even understand how babies are conceived. Folly!

Reaction began in the 1980's and by the 1990's was in full swing. It was led by parents alarmed at seeing so many of their bright, lively, alert little children turning into dull‑eyed, brain‑deadened teenagers. Some private educators responded by opening or expanding remedial learning clinics to supplement the public education systems. Their business boomed. In desperation, many parents are making huge financial sacrifices to send their children to private schools ‑ away from the grasp of the public systems. Charter schools have been enjoying tremendous success in the U.S. To date, with a few isolated exceptions, the provincial education establishments have managed to keep them away from Canadian students. A few schools have somehow secured the necessary approvals to operate as independents within their local systems. People line up overnight to try and get their children into these "tough" schools.

The charter and independent alternative schools are thought to be so desirable because they offer serious subjects in serious curricula. They have written contracts covering discipline, homework, behaviour and performance expectations and study requirements. Their methods (process) produce students who earn measurably better marks (outcomes) on objective tests of the material covered. Principals, vice‑principals, department heads and teachers run the schools and accept responsibility for the performances of their students. There is also heavy parental and student involvement in defining the process.

Alternative schools are still very new in Canada. Their survival is not certain. The provincial education establishments are fighting furiously to destroy them with expensive advertising, brain‑dirtying propaganda, strikes ‑ the whole bag of "progressive" dirty tricks.

They've "divided‑to‑rule" their systems into religion/language/level-based/union‑dictated kingdoms. According to some investigators, half the money Canadians pay for their education systems is spent on the non‑teaching overhead burden largely caused by these divisions.

For years, teachers and principals from all across Canada have met to try and establish common curricula for the country as a whole. After all, 2+2=4, H₂O is water, and Champlain founded Quebec City in 1608 are facts everywhere in the country. Performance and progress can't be measured if different curricula, textbooks and standards are used. But, the provincial education establishments adamantly refuse to give up power over and control of their systems.

Provincial legislators are very, very slowly reacting to the agony of their citizens. Predictably, reactions have varied in kind and force. One province has eliminated all local boards and taken direct control of its schools. Others have created fewer but bigger local boards. Most have already pulled, or are in the process of pulling, financing up to the provincial level away from the local level. (Local citizens still pay for everything of course.) To date, a rough generalization would be that provincial governments are responding to the crisis by eliminating or reducing the powers and pay of the ineffectual local boards. They have yet to effectively deal with the provincial and local educrats, and the union bosses.

Thirty years worth of young Canadians have been cheated of a decent education, and their parents robbed, by provincial education systems. For that malfeasance alone, Canada's provinces and provincial governments deserve to be wiped off the face of our land.