Ontario Provincial Confederation of Regions Party

[bcholmes]

So I spent a bit of time poking around the Confederation of Regions party site. I'm against this party.

Do I Agree With Them?	CoR Platform
No	Direct Democracy -- CoR is against representational democracy, instead favouring referendums to decide matters of public policy. I am attracted to this attitude to a certain extent, but feel that there are a whole slew of complications that need to be thought through. Especially with regards to human rights and minorities. Additionally, CoR is against voting along party lines, and I support voting along party lines.
No.	Responsible fiscal management by government -- I am of the opinion that this is code for "we want to pay fewer taxes". I believe that the government should be financial responsible. But I don't think anyone wants otherwise, so I don't see why any party feels that this is a distinguisher. What I think CoR means is that they don't want money spent on things that they don't like. I support a lot of the things that they don't like. I also believe in taxes.
Yes and No	Health Care -- CoR believes in socialized health care (which I also believe in), in some form of user fees (which I don't believe in), and they are against two-tiered health care (which I am also against).
No	Single Publically-Funded School System -- CoR is basically saying that they oppose the Catholic School system. I do think that the Catholic School system is a historical oddity that doesn't really mean a whole lot in modern Canada. I also think that it's crazy to have a provincially-funded Catholic School system while at the same time refusing to fund other alternative religious school systems. But more importantly, I believe that CoR would be against other types of alternative schools
No	English Language as the official language of Ontario
No	We do not favour officially funded multiculturalism -- I think this platform item speaks volumes about CoR's attitudes
Yes	Protection of agricultural land -- I'm fairly wishy-washy about genetically modified food. I probably just don't know enough about the topic.
No	Finance -- I don't understand this section. They say that they're opposed to "takeovers by large international conglomerates, with out obligation to observe our laws". I'm just simply opposed to large international conglomerates, period. Then they say, "We are opposed to militant socialism in the form of undisciplined unions driving companies to upstakes and leave the country", which, y'know... speaks volumes. (Who are these "undisciplined unions"?)

Comments

[erik]

The "undisciplined unions" thing is them blaming unions with a lot of power using it irresponsibly (IE: for the short- and mid-term benefit of their members without regard for the long term consequences for the overall economy (including their members)), and pricing jobs out of the country.
There are similar issues here South Of The Border, of course. But the unions are so strong that we don't often talk about them.

I'm not sure I wholly agree or disagree. This behavior by unions certainly does occur. And it's generally a Bad Thing. But I am not sure what role the govt should play in curbing it; down here, any time government gets it's fingers in the union/employer situation, the worker loses.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

I've been becoming more and more interested in the GM food issues, as you may have seen in my journal of late.

Scope these:

Public Wants Biotech Food Tested (http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,60501,00.html)

Sour Grapes Over Milk Labeling (http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,60132,00.html)

Study Shows Consumers Watch Milk Labels Closely (http://www.wisconsinagconnection.com/story-state.cfm?Id=1112&yr=2003)

Confusion, ignorance about biotech food (http://www.sacbee.com/content/business/agriculture/story/7436306p-8379246c.html)

(my favourite from this last one, said without irony by a pro-GM person: Kjelstrom said information from the industry appears to be helping reduce negative opinions about genetic engineering. "It takes people time to get used to new technology," she said, adding that Americans tend to worry about more pressing issues, such as war and the economy, while assuming trusted federal agencies will protect them from dangerous foods.

--which, if you read the other articles, the FDA will *not* be doing because Monsanto has already convinced them that 'it's just food', so they don't need to test it or prove it's safe or anything; there's a basic assumption that if it wasn't safe, they wouldn't release it, right?

Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety

Farmer Ready for Final Court Battle Against Monsanto (http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=19834)

(this is the case I posted about the other day, trying to find info on.)

[thespian.livejournal.com]

blast. there was supposed to be a link to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (http://www.biodiv.org/biosafety/default.aspx).

sorry about that.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

One of the big issues with genetically modified food that I didn't think about too much early into the issue was that of a lack of variation in the population. Bananas is a great example. Bananas were heavily genetically modified the old-fashioned way -- selective breeding -- over the years. Naturally, they were modified to maximize their saleability. This meant a few things: First, the strains that were popular in big-ticket markets like North America (where people are more affluent and will pay more for tropical produce) began to overtake all of the other strains in terms of what companies would choose to plant and grow; Second, people don't like seeds in their bananas, so they were bred for smaller and smaller seads and greater and greater internal homongenaiety. As a result, the current bananas are nearly sterile, and more importantly, they are all of a single strain. Any disease or insect which targets weaknesses in that strain runs rampant through all of the banana crops. The lack of diversity is a real weak point, but is unfortunately also almost an inevitable offshoot of genetic modifcation for commercial production. They're saying that within about a decade there may no longer be bananas, because we'll have made them exctinct via these two types of flaws.

[purplesofa.livejournal.com]

Hmm.
I recently discovered Seed, a very interesting science magazine that did a whole issue on food. Their lead article was about this banana situation. But the perspective was entirely different. They showed that bananas are a major staple food in many developing countries, and they wrote somewhat positively about efforts to genetically engineer bananas so they continue to be available. I found other instances of well-tempered GMO support in the magazine, which made me wonder: (a) are the anti-GMO people just as biased as the pro-GMO companies? (b) who was publishing this magazine??

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

The original articles that I'd read that pointed out the problems also mentioned that genetic modification might be the salvation in this case. I think that all of this depends on how widely you define, "genetically modified." We've been selectively breeding for centuries, and it does produce many of the same kinds of problems. Many people tread the recent techniques as some kind of evil without realizing that you can get the same negative results the old-fashioned way.

I tend to assume that everybody (including myself) is a biased source of information, and that there are always more sides to the story than I'm seeing.

I think that there certainly are good things to be said for genetic modification, as well as for breeding and other things which can be used to promote diversity, promote hardiness, etc. The big problems come when you get a serious reduction in diversity, and that seems to be a major issue with allowing commerce in an increasingly heterogenous market most of the say in these issues. The free market will generally encourage the mass production of the most successful variants, and you can't exactly tell a company that a certain percentage of their crop has to be comprised of less popular strains.