CYA Group Blog

Hi everyone,

Have I got a wonderful opportunity for you I'm currently working on a project with the United Nations, and I was wondering if anyone of our readers who will be in the Metro Vancouver area in September might be interested in taking part in it.

The project's called Me in Media, and it aims to get youth (aged 14 to 18) talking about media, diversity, and what it means to be included in society. You'd be working with other youth and brainstorming about your opinions on these topics. Afterwards, you'd be able to publish your findings with the U.N., sharing your perspectives with the world.

More information can be found here: http://mmunac.org/vancouvermim/

Our readers include many passionate youth from all over the country, and so, I'd like to see if any of you guys might want to get involved with Me in Media.

If you'd like to take part in this project, send an email to me at bwoo27@hotmail.com with your name, email address, and school.

Cheers,
Brandon

As most of you are probably already aware of two major strikes that have occurred lately, with Air Canada employees striking as well as Postal workers. As of today a tentative agreement was reached for Air Canada workers pending some issues on pensions, that will see Air Canada employees back to work. The specific issue that I would like to address from these strikes is what is happening in Parliament, before this tentative agreement was reached the government introduced legislation designed to force the union back to work. The Government is now turning to the Canada Post strike to introduce back to work legislation. Naturally the NDP opposes such legislation and will set the debate come Monday. The Conservative government responded that they have no choice but to introduced such legislation because of the mandate of economic recovery.

I personally find this statement and the actions of the government politically distributing. I understand the thought process behind the conservative government in the sense that these workers striking is bad economically. However passing legislation that forces workers to go back to work, takes away the workers right to strike, not only is this an intrusion on workers rights it also tilts the bargaining table between unions and corporations to the side of corporations. By passing such legislation you open a whole new string of issues on worker rights and you allow corporations to continue pushing the limits further and further for the sake of profits and making money. Which ties back to the thought process I assume the Conservative Government is undertaking that striking is bad economically. As mentioned I find myself distribute that the government that the people elected into power that is suppose to look out for the interests of the people is overlooking the rights they are infringing upon with such legislation for the sake of money.

*RobbyJF*

With the new budget haven been presented on the hill, one of the hot topics has been the decision to phase out the per vote subsidy for political parties. Now I've read and listened to a lot of the debates about whether this was a strategic move by Prime Minister Steven Harper to cripple the already reeling Liberal party. Personally I like to think that this move is done to make strides to getting Canada out of a deficit, but that just may be me hoping that our new prime minister isn't leading his majority government to make decisions based off of personal grudges or gain. However what concerns me about this decision to phase out the per vote subsidy is the impact it will have on the green party, a party that has made tremendous strides with Elizabeth May winning the parties first seat in parliament. This has been a party that has pushed hard for programs such as the per vote subsidy, since this allows them to continue to keep up with larger parties such as the conservatives. With these new changes I wonder how the green party will continue to keep up and whether more Canadians will be willing to open there wallets to help support this party. Following that thought however I began researching more into the funding of political parties and learned that people who do donate to there political parties 400 dollars or less receive a tax credit of roughly 75% when the department of finance does the calculations up for this in comparison to the per vote subsidy is portioned out more evenly between the five major federal parties, the tax credit option leaves the conservatives with over 50 % of the tax credit donations given out by the Canadian revenue agency and addition to the reimbursement which continues to cripple the smaller parties such as the green party, thus the per vote subsidy helps to somewhat level the playing field, but with that being scrapped now I find myself circling back again to whether this move is in the best interest of helping to balance the budget or whether this is the conservatives taking their majority and tilting the field to their favour.
*RobbyJF*

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