One Transit Authority for the Greater Toronto, Hamilton Area is a Start in the Right Direction.

However without a meaningful annual financial and political commitment of  a minimum 25% from all existing fuel taxes for gas, diesel, oil, from the province and federal government's to this one GTHA area transit area system it shall never succeed.

Also qualified professionals not career politicians from within the worlds private mass transportation industry must be at the helm of a new Metrolinx for GTHA.

The Greater Toronto, Hamilton area (GTHA) presently represents over 47% of Ontario’s overall population and Ontario represents 38% of the entire population of Canada.  

Therefore our political parties of all stripes best understand that this area GTHA and its citizens demand and requires at a minimum 18% of all existing federal and provincial fuel taxes (gas, diesel etc.)  for the GTHA public transit system and roadways.

Further, the board of this the new one transit authority for a GTHA Metrolinx operated public transit authority, systems and operations of the existing Go, TTC, Halton, Peel, York, Durham and Hamilton Street Railway should be comprised as follows:

A new 11 member Board of Directors for this proposed one transit authority would replace the existing board of Metrolinx.

ONE elected representative from each region i.e. Halton, Peel, York, Durham, Hamilton for a total number of 5 and with TWO elected representatives from Toronto and the federal and provincial governments for a total of 6.

As such this new amalgamated transit authority of Metrolinx GTHA would have elected representatives from the main financial partners the provincial and federal governments’.

                                                                              

GTHA Metrolinx would be directly responsible for all public transportation operations, systems, financing and be under the control of the above-elected board members and the direction of both a CEO and COO who must have professional transportation qualifications from within the world’s private transportation industry who would be hired separately.

 

The citizen residents of Ontario and Canada all realize that nothing is Free especially when proposed by politicians seeking election or re-election.

And the commuters within the GTHA are very cognizant of the fact that Ontario represents over 38% of Canadian taxpayers and voters.

A 1 % New Sales Tax is a Non Solution that Leaves a 99 % Transit Funding Shortfall.

A 1 % ( one)sales tax increase would barley accomplish enough to pay for the administration of such a new Toronto sales tax and most likely a tax that would increase on annually until this new Transit Toronto Sales Tax reached 5 % or 8 %  on top of the existing harmonized GST of 13 %!

Thus realistically there is the possibility that not only Torontonians but all Ontario residents, tourists and a business could be paying 20% or more in a few short years for a combined new Toronto Transit Sales Tax and existing harmonized GST.

We do not need new taxes, rather better management of existing revenues and expenditures by our politicians and non-elected technocrats and bureaucrats.  

What is urgently required is a guaranteed lasting and meaningful funding commitment to Toronto Transit, the largest and most used public city transit system in Canada, from both the federal and provincial governments that annually transfers 25% (twenty five percent) from existing fuel taxes presently collected by these two levels of governments on GAS, DIESEL, and OIL and amend the current Gas Tax Fund Agreement between the provincial and federal governments.   

    NO NEW

Info Up Date

TABLE 2.12 Summary of Medium-Term Outlook ($ Billions)
Revenue	Interim 2011–12	Plan 2012–13	Outlook
			2013–14	2014–15
Taxation Revenue	75.2	78.8	81.1	84.7
Personal Income Tax	24.2	25.8	27.2	28.7
Sales Tax	20.9	21.1	22.1	23.3
Corporations Tax	9.4	10.8	10.2	10.5
Ontario Health Premium	2.9	3.1	3.3	3.4
Education Property Tax	5.6	5.6	5.7	5.7
All Other Taxes	12.2	12.4	12.6	13.1
Government of Canada	21.4	21.8	23.0	23.5
Income from Government Business Enterprises	4.4	4.1	4.4	5.3
Other Non-Tax Revenue	8.3	7.6	7.6	7.5
Total Revenue	109.3	112.2	116.1	121.

Proposed revenue possibilities are:

Revenue source	Nominal rate	GTHA annual revenue
Personal income tax increase	1%	$1.4 billion
Sales tax	1%	$1.3 billion
Property tax	1%	$90 million
Payroll tax	1%	$500 million
Highway tolls	10 cents/KM	$1.5 billion
Fuel tax	10 cents	$500 million
Vehicle tax	$100	$300 million
Parking levy	$365 per space	$1.08 billion
Land transfer tax	1%	$600 million
Development charges	$5,000 per unit	$200 million

PS. As you can see NO mention or thought of a 1% transit tax on banks, unions or corporation? 

Source:

http://taxpayer.com/sites/default/files/GTHD%20Report%202012.pdf

http://www.amo.on.ca/WCM/AMO/AMO_Content/Gas_Tax/Gas_Tax_Funds.aspx

http://stephenrees.wordpress.com/tag/gas-tax/






    

Political Parties an Asset or a Ruse to Democracy and Elections?

Less than one ( 1%) of a province's or federal election eligible voters is a member of one of the three major political parties.

Having less than 1% of eligible voters or of the population, just who, do these Political Parties truly and honestly represent?

Keep in mind that the primary goal, of all political parties, is to gain power for the party NOT the voter or the electorate who supports and elects the candidates running under a political party banner, be it NDP, Liberal or Conservative!

As it presently stands these power-hungry political members of a political party who represent less than 1% of eligible voters remain under a self-serving belief for power and present an illusion of power that they should never be entitled to them as such political party power Does Not represent a true and transparent democracy in any form when such a few numbers of eligible voters are participating in political parties as members.

Voter apathy and lack of civic duty and responsibility for voting and participating in provincial or federal elections have allowed these various political parties to assert their personal political ideology beliefs, that their political party knows what is the collective best for the majority of the electorate when it comes to setting not only their respective political party’s agenda but one for the 99% of citizens within the entire Country or a Province!

                                                                                      The  99% of voters who are not members of a political party should, at the very least immediately start asking and investigating who these politicians would be elite individuals, special interest groups and unions are and who continually seek political power for their respective political party members at the direct expense of the 99% of voters.

For example, Ontario has roughly 10.7 million eligible voters. 

Yet the liberal party of Ontario has fewer than 20,000 members which represents less than 1% of the eligible voters!

The NDP has an unconfirmed and estimated Ontario membership of fewer than 15,000 members!

Ontario Conservative party membership consists of approximately 30,000 members which also translates to less than 1% of eligible voters.

When compared to the total population of Ontario, do these members of any political party honestly represent a realistic percentage of the population when in honesty they seek elected office not for the voters but rather the political power of and for their respective political party?

Why is there no legislative jurisdiction over political parties under Canadian or Ontario privacy laws? Should there be?

Why are such party membership lists only available to MPPs and NOT the public, when such lists are gathered to accommodate democracy at election time so that those seeking elected office can openly solicit contributions, recruit members or votes and nothing more?

Why is it that in Canada the province of British Columbia is the only province that has legislation covering political parties under a provincial personal information protection Act? 

Are political parties just a ruse and deterrent to democracy and realistically or transparently not a true asset to democracy because in reality, all they do is a self-promoting of power for the political party and not the people?   

Up date http://ca.news.yahoo.com/cyprus-parliament-vote-savings-levy-000315775--business.html

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/11/23/graphic-canadas-national-debt/

Up Date http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/03/13/how_to_curb_bureaucratic_empirebuilding_goar.html

@ http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2012/03/ontarios-fiscal-history-it-is-not.html

Source

http://www.elections.on.ca/en-CA/CandidatesAndParties/PoliticalParties/

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1292687--ontario-liberal-leadership-race-to-replace-mcguinty-has-tripled-grit-ranks

Wishing All a Safe, Active and Healthy Canadian Up Coming Thanksgiving Weekend, Jour de l'Action de grâce !

Our Canadian parliament on January 31, 1957, made the following proclamation:

“ A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed, to be observed on the 2nd Monday in October. ”

Prior to this in 1879 our parliament had declared the 6^th day in November as Thanksgiving day.

While our motives for celebrating this holiday have changed over the years, the idea of giving thanks remains a strong value for many Canadians both new and old.

Canadian Thanksgiving weekend and Day is an occasion to get together with family, friends and associates to eat and perhaps drink joyously together and for many close the cottage for the coming winter.

It is also the least stressful national holiday and all about being thankful for the great benefits, rights and freedoms that we Canadians sometimes take for granted of having the privilege of residing in the best country in the World.


A Happy Thanksgiving Day and Weekend to all.

The Tax and Spend Theory is NOT a Solution for Running our Government or Managing Taxpayers Money across the GTHA.

$ GTHA BIG MOVE $            

The middle class and poor within the community and society CANNOT continue along with this ruse of a road for new money proposals.

Because in reality it simply represents additional, increased or new taxes on top of existing ones already carried on the backs of  societies overburden individual for property taxes, rents, home prices, income taxes, gas taxes, sales taxes, GST and HST.

More and increased revenue tools are NOT the answer nor realistically required.

This so-called big move is simply a ruse to raise new taxes so that our career politicians with their political parties and non-elected technocrats, bureaucrats and public service unions can maintain their current cushy lifestyles on the back of future generations of our youth.

The financial facts already show us that Toronto, Mississauga and Hamilton etc. do not have the investments required for the maintenance of the current outdated and much-needed repairs for existing city infrastructures let alone news ones for road tolls at the expense of our sewers, waters and hydro systems.

This report is biased and one-sided as it only pertains to new methods of taxation or increased taxes, in my humble opinion.

No mention of pay as you go financing, zero-based budgeting process, spending reductions or program eliminations, tax decrease for the property owners, a GTHA across the board business tax increases for public transportation services, negotiated austerity packages, councils inability and unwillingness to implement meaningful and much needed economic structural reforms, tax evasion by both corporations and citizens, reduction in public service positions and smaller size councils in line with provincial and federal riding's.

Taxpayers throughout the GTHA are more than open to an open transparent all-encompassing discussion of government financing and expenditures.

However unlike the media, unelected technocrats and civil servants, the citizens in today’s society want to discuss both sides of the coin, Spending and Taxes along with all options, not just more of the same with new revenue sources.

The gridlock is with those that have only the one view of seeking more revenues in any form from an already overburdened and taxed out society and citizenry. 

Up DATE http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/11/23/graphic-canadas-national-debt/

Source

http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2012/ex/bgrd/backgroundfile-50609.pdf

Born in Canada Requires No Obligations for the Inherent Rights of Citizenship! Perhaps it should?

For all of us who were born in Canada, it is taken for granted by our government and legal system, that at birth without any obligations or question one automatically is entitled to all rights of the country (Canada) where we were born.  

With today’s globalization and ease of air, sea or rail travel should we as a country perhaps start to at least question this automatic citizenship with its legal rights?

I put this topic forward because of today, especially with the ease of international air travel, individuals who themselves might already be Canadian citizens, not by birth, have planned to have a child or two or three here in Canada and then within a month or two of giving birth hightail it back to their original countries of birth so that their children will be homed and live outside of Canada for most of their young life’s?

How at birth can one recognize, accept, understand and later abide by the fact that Canada is founded upon the principles that recognize the supremacy of God and rule of law? 

Is this right? You the taxpayers and citizens should debate and decide this obvious flaw within our present born in Canada automatic citizenship handout policy!

Canada citizenship's for those immigrating or becoming a permanent resident of Canada do require a number of year’s of actual residency requirements and other obligations.

Should Canada perhaps not have at least a minimum of say 10 years of actual residence of a newborn before our government and the legal system automatically hands out citizenship to babies birthed in Canada?       

If we had had such a policy then we might not have been politically blindfolded and saddled with the Omar Khadr child warrior catastrophe?  

For all Canadians, these questions shall, unfortunately, remain until such time as citizens and our government no longer will have to question if born in Canada babies and child warriors honestly, transparently and legally full-filled such a commitment of a residency obligation for those inherent rights of a valued Canadian citizenship document.     

It’s our decision Canada!

Sources:

http://timestoronto.blogspot.ca/

http://www.capitalnews.ca/index.php/news/citizenship

http://www.weeklyvoice.com/headlines/ottawa-cracks-down-on-citizenship-frauds/

Khadr’s Home in Fact and Reality was Not Canada.

Khadr born in Canada, Homed and Lived in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Born in 1986 and that same year moved to Pakistan to live.

After 10 years in Pakistan or elsewhere he returned to Canada in 1996, until his father was released thanks to media and political pressure.

Then Khadr, after homing in Pakistan for the first ten years of his life since birth, once again, after less than one year left Canada that same year of his arrival in 1986 with his father and others to live in Afghanistan at the home Osama bin Laden’s Taliban compound.

Thus for myself and perhaps millions of Canadians, in fact, and reality, his home was never truly Canada even though he was physically born in Canada. 

Thanks to the Canadian Press and Star here is a look at the long odyssey of this Canadian born individual:

Sept. 19, 1986: Omar Khadr is born in Toronto but lives with family in Pakistan until 1995.

1995: Khadr’s father is arrested in connection with the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad but is freed after then-prime minister, Jean Chrétien raises the arrest with Pakistani counterpart Benazir Bhutto.

1996: After briefly returning to Canada, the family moves to Jalalabad in Taliban-controlled eastern Afghanistan, where they live in Osama bin Laden’s compound.

1996: The Khadr brothers begin attending weapons training camps affiliated with the Taliban and bin Laden. The family makes annual trips to Canada to raise money and collect supplies.

1999: The family moves to Kabul.

October 2001: The U.S. begins military operations in Afghanistan in response to Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

November 2001: The U.S.-backed Northern Alliance rebels chase the Taliban out of Kabul. Omar Khadr flees to his father in Logar, Afghanistan.

June 2002: After training on AK-47s, Soviet PKs and rocket-propelled grenades, Khadr, 15, works as a translator for Al Qaeda and conducts a surveillance mission.

July 27, 2002: Two Afghan government soldiers are killed and several U.S. troops sustain injuries as coalition forces move in on Khadr’s compound. Khadr throws a grenade that kills U.S. Sgt. 1st Class, Christopher Speer. Khadr is injured in the melee.

October 2002: Khadr is transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

February 2003: Investigators from the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) interview Khadr at Guantanamo.

March 2004: Khadr’s grandmother, Fatmah Elsamnah, launches a lawsuit against the Department of Foreign Affairs, alleging Ottawa failed to protect her grandson’s rights as a Canadian. Elsamnah later launches a similar suit against the U.S. authorities.

Aug. 10, 2005: A Federal Court judge says Canadian agencies, including CSIS, are violating Khadr’s Charter rights by turning information gleaned in interviews over to the U.S. investigators.

Nov. 7, 2005: The U.S. military charges Khadr with conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy in connection with the deadly 2002 skirmish that killed Speer.

Dec. 17, 2005: Khadr’s eldest brother, Abdullah, is arrested in Toronto for allegedly acting as an Al Qaeda go-between and supplying explosives.

February 2006: A U.S. civil court orders the Khadr family to pay $102 million to Speer’s widow and a second soldier injured in the 2002 attack.

March 17, 2008: Khadr alleges that he was threatened with rape and violence by interrogators seeking to extract a confession.

May 23, 2008: The Supreme Court of Canada concludes that Canadian officials illegally shared information about Khadr with the U.S.

July 15, 2008: Khadr’s defence counsel releases video of Khadr being interrogated by CSIS officials in 2003.

Aug. 14, 2009: Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal upholds a ruling that requires the Canadian government to press for Omar Khadr’s return from Guantanamo Bay.

Oct. 7, 2009: Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler is officially dismissed from Khadr’s legal defence team.

Jan. 29, 2010: Canada’s Supreme Court overturns court orders requiring The Canadian government must try to repatriate Khadr, despite agreeing that Khadr’s human rights are being violated.

April 29, 2010: Khadr’s defence team rejects a plea-bargain offer from U.S. military prosecutors that would have forced him to serve his sentence in a U.S. prison.

July 7, 2010: Khadr tries to fire his three American lawyers, including a military court-appointed military lawyer, saying he has no chance at a fair trial. A judge later refuses to allow it.

July 12, 2010: Ottawa pledges to fight the ruling ordering it to remedy the breach of Khadr’s constitutional rights.

Aug. 9, 2010: Khadr officially pleads not guilty to five war crimes charges, including murder, at a pre-trial hearing. Judge Col. Patrick Parrish rules Khadr’s confessions will be admissible as evidence.

Oct. 25, 2010: Amid talk of an agreement, Khadr changes his plea to guilty on all five counts; gets opportunity to apply for a transfer to a Canadian prison after one year in a U.S. facility.

Oct. 26, 2010: Jurors scheduled to attend start of Khadr sentencing hearing.

Oct. 31, 2010: Jurors sentence Khadr to 40 years in prison for war crimes but a pre-trial deal limits the actual sentenced to eight years.

May 26, 2011: The Convening Authority for Military Commissions rejects a clemency appeal filed by Khadr. The prisoner had appealed to have his sentence cut in half, arguing that improper testimony swayed the jury at his sentencing hearing.

Aug. 4, 2011: Khadr fires his long-time lawyers Dennis Edney and Nate Whitling and hires Toronto-based lawyers John Norris and Brydie Bethell.

April 2012: U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta signs off on Khadr’s transfer.

April 18, 2012: Ottawa receives an application from Khadr officially requesting a transfer to Canada from Guantanamo Bay.

July 13, 2012: Lawyers file a notice of the application in the Federal Court to ask it to review why Canada was delaying Khadr’s repatriation.

July 26, 2012: It’s revealed that Khadr tried to plead guilty to terrorism charges in Canada for speedy transfer home. The documents show that the 2008 proposal was rejected by the U.S. military.

Sept. 6, 2012: Ottawa is given videotapes and documents assessing Khadr’s mental health by American military officials. The material includes an interview of Khadr by a psychiatrist.

Sept. 29, 2012: A U.S. military airplane brings Khadr back to Canada. He is transferred to the Millhaven Institution near Kingston, Ont.

Now within less than a day, the mainstream media is calling for the release of this convicted killer from our Canadian prisons!

The question remains, did he honestly and transparently actually full-fill his obligations if any and rights to Canadian citizenship when he never truly lived or was permanently homed in Canada, even though he was born here?

Your decision!