Archive for the ‘Liberals’ Category

Trudeau government hasn’t started planting 2 billion trees promised in 2019 campaign – CTV News

TORONTO -- While on the campaign trail a year ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised that a re-elected Liberal government would plant two billion trees over the next 10 years. But so far, none of those trees have gone in the ground.

Some federally-funded trees have been planted in 2020, according to Natural Resources Minister Seamus ORegans office, but the two billion promise referred to brand-new trees, on top of the usual replanting efforts.

Ian Cameron, press secretary for ORegan, says that COVID-19 is the cause for the delay.

Our government provided $30 million to businesses in the forest sector to ensure that they could safely continue their planting activities during COVID-19, he said in a statement to CTV News. We are also planting hundreds of thousands of trees through the Infrastructure Disaster Mitigation Adaptation Fund. These have been our priority in the past several months, and we were successful in those efforts.

Building off these efforts, we remain fully committed to planting two billion trees, and we look forward to sharing more on that soon.

Trudeau first made the promise in September 2019, after he met with Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, and before he participated in a climate march in Montreal.

The two billion trees were pitched as an important part of the Liberals plan to fight climate change and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The partys platform specified that it would create 3,500 seasonal tree planting jobs, and that it was all part of a $3-billion commitment to better conserve and restore forests, grasslands, agricultural lands, wetlands, and coastal areas.

Nature isn't just part of our identity as Canadians, it's also a part of the solution to climate change and it's a solution we can start using today," Trudeau told reporters in September 2019.

"Trees are remarkable. They pull carbon out of the atmosphere. They are renewable and they're sustainable and, eventually, they even recycle themselves. All we have to do is plant the first one."

When the plan was announced, officials specified that this would be in addition to the roughly 600 million trees that are already planted across Canada each year.

In order to have two billion trees planted by 2030, the government shouldve been planting 200 million trees a year starting in 2020, which breaks down to 547,945 trees planted every single day.

If they start planting in 2021, itll take 608,828 trees planted every day to make the goal.

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Trudeau government hasn't started planting 2 billion trees promised in 2019 campaign - CTV News

The conservatives who want to undo the Enlightenment – The Week

Conservative thought in America is becoming more radical. Which means that it's reverting to the form it often took in other times in Europe in the wake of the French Revolution, in reaction to the liberalism of the Enlightenment.

Unlike the tamer conservatism of the postwar decades, today's conservative critics don't locate the source of their discontent within the liberal tradition with the Progressive movement or the New Deal, for example, or the sexual revolution of the 1960s and '70s. Instead, the most influential and cogent conservatives of the present among them Patrick Deneen of the University of Notre Dame, Adrian Vermeule of Harvard Law School, and Sohrab Ahmari of The New York Post take aim at the liberal tradition itself and suggest that our problems stem from errors that have marked it from the beginning.

The indictment runs like this: The original liberal theorists including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and the American constitutional framers aimed to inspire the creation of individualistic societies in which people actively cut themselves loose from tradition and other moral constraints in pursuit of a life of ever-purer liberation. Many if not all of our challenges and difficulties from moral decay to capitalist decadence to widespread anxiety and depression flow from this original liberal goal, which has largely been achieved. The only effective way to respond to these challenges and difficulties is therefore to reject liberalism from top to bottom and look for another basis on which to found political and social life.

It's a powerful critique. But what would it mean to see it through to truly break free from liberalism, to create a fully post-liberal society? How would our lives change? What would our fellow citizens believe? How would they think and live?

The answer, I fear, is that they would think and live an awful lot like that portion of the American population today that sees the ongoing pandemic largely as an act of God that we should just accept without doing much by way of control or mitigation. A reporter at a recent Trump rally spoke to attendees who expressed this outlook. One is quoted as saying "I'm not afraid to die. The Good Lord takes care of me. If I die, I die.

That is the pre-liberal outlook that would be more fully revived and encouraged if today's radical right-wing critics of liberalism get their way.

The early modern proto-liberals who helped to inspire the Enlightenment had several aims, but a key one was the promulgation of an account of human origins that could serve as an alternative to the biblical narrative. The Bible describes the original human beings as created by God and placed in paradise. With their first sin disobeying the command to refrain from eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden to make their way in the world. But they are not abandoned by God, who continues to take a keen interest in his creation.

The remainder of the Hebrew Bible tells the story of one specially favored group of human beings as they oscillate between pious obedience and a mixture of disobedience and indifference toward the divine. At no point is God's providence and overarching concern withdrawn. The Christian New Testament expands on this story, adding the promise of redemption from sin at the hands of humanity's savior and the gratuitous gift of eternal life after death.

The first liberal thinkers were convinced that the biblical outlook had landed Europe in a mess. With most people certain their fate was in the hands of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and transcendentally good God, the norm was passivity before nature, priests, and princes. As a result, European life was marked by poverty, ignorance, violence, and tyranny. To change this, people needed to be persuaded that it was unwise to put their faith in divine providence. They needed to recognize an imperative to take matters into their own hands to devote themselves to a kind of humanistic self-help program.

"God will provide, said the pious. To which the proto-liberals responded, "No, he will not.

These writers helped to effect this change of view by proposing an alternative to the biblical account of human origins in a Garden of Eden. In this "state of nature, men and women are alone, struggling to survive and prosper without a divine overseer, needing to protect ourselves in a harsh and indifferent universe. It was up to us to devise a foundation for government that would secure minimal social goods life, liberty, property, and (in the most fortunate of circumstances) the "commodious living made possible by the division of labor and commercial activity.

The early liberal promise was this: If you stop passively expecting God to provide for you, it will become possible to create a world far more hospitable to human flourishing with good (or at least less predatory) government, tolerance for freedom of worship, an economy that over time produces increasing prosperity for all, education that allows for scientific, technical, and medical advances to make life longer, easier, less painful, and more pleasurable. All of this and more is within our reach. But no one will provide it for us. We need to take responsibility for ourselves and act to achieve it.

This vision of a self-reliant human future helped to inspire the Enlightenment and ultimately transformed the world, creating societies shaped by leaps in scientific knowledge, wealth, travel, communications, and health care. It made a world in which a new virus could arise and spread across the globe in a matter of weeks but also a world in which most of us knew it was coming, could try to prepare for it by changing our behavior, and begin working to devise therapeutic treatments and a vaccine to hold down the death toll.

But of course all of that depends on people maintaining the early liberal's disenchanted outlook on the human situation. If large numbers of people begin to reassert a biblical view in which the proper existential stance is one of obedience to higher powers that are presumed to reward and punish us if we start once again to treat such misfortunes as viruses, hurricanes, and wild fires as providential acts of God we must passively accept we will lose our edge in the battle to defend and expand the boundaries of a world made more habitable by human effort and ingenuity.

A post-liberal world would be an awful lot like the pre-liberal world. Remember that the next time you read an author making the case for a more radical, even revolutionary, form of conservatism or hear an unmasked person at a public rally say, "The Good Lord takes care of me. If I die, I die.

That's the sound of the post-liberal world being born.

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The conservatives who want to undo the Enlightenment - The Week

‘The message is simple’: Liberals refuse to work with Nationals if Barilaro remains leader – Sydney Morning Herald

"[He] is given the opportunity to speak second in cabinet after the Premier and can speak for as long as he likes," one Liberal minister said. "Not once in the past nine months has he raised this koala policy, then expects us to agree to his demands. You will not find a single Liberal minister, from the left or a conservative, who thinks we can work with this man. We will not work with Barilaro."

The fracturing of the Coalition was sparked by a policy designed to protect koala habitat, which the Nationals say would severely limit the way property owners could manage their land.

After an ultimatum from Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Mr Barilaro on Friday ruled out taking his Nationals MPs to the crossbench over the policy, in a move that would have stripped the government of its majority.

Ms Berejiklian had told Mr Barilaro to withdraw the threat or she would sign in a new all-Liberal ministry.

After backing down, Mr Barilaro claimed a win in the crisis, insisting he had secured a commitment that the policy would be debated at cabinet.

But Ms Berejiklian had already agreed to the cabinet discussion and said earlier in the week the "issue would be considered by cabinet in due course". It will remain on the agenda for a meeting on October 5.

Liberal ministers are furious at the tactics used by the Nationals and have said they will not negotiate with the junior Coalition partner while Mr Barilaro is leader.

I think what we have seen out of John Barilaro is the greatest act of political bastardry in quite some time.

"Why would we ever reward bad behaviour?" asked one senior minister, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He was prepared to destroy the government and now expects us to work with him."

Another Liberal minister said Mr Barilaro "would be sidelined in cabinet and ERC [expenditure review committee]", while another said the Nationals needed to identify their priorities.

"Is hanging on to John Barilaro more important than hanging on to their seats at the next election because the two are mutually exclusive. We simply cannot work with this man," the minister said.

Another minister said there could be "some small changes to the guidelines of the policy" but nothing Mr Barilaro brought to cabinet would be considered.

Mr Barilaro was contacted for comment. A spokesman from his office said they had received "1100 emails of support" after the Nationals had threatened to move en masse to the crossbench.

Nationals upper house MP Sam Farraway said the ministers were "cowards" for speaking anonymously and the government should be "getting a policy outcome for the agriculture and timber industry".

While Mr Barilaro's MPs were insisting he had their "absolute support", Police Minister David Elliott said on Friday the Liberals' relationship with Mr Barilaro would now be unworkable.

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"I think what we have seen out of John Barilaro is the greatest act of political bastardry in quite some time," Mr Elliott said.

Yesterday Nationals MPs had largely gone to ground.

Opposition Leader Jodi McKay has indicated her intention to move a vote of no confidence against the government when Parliament resumes this week.

NSW Nationals state director Joe Lundy said he was aware of some new memberships and others "getting in touch" to praise the party leadership over the stand-off.

"Our members expect us to fight for the issues that are important to them. And if we are not standing up for those issues then who is?" he said.

Mr Lundy said it was not necessarily a "city v country" issue, but that regions want their issues heard.

Alexandra Smith is the State Political Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.

Lucy Cormack is a state political reporter with TheSydney Morning Herald.

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'The message is simple': Liberals refuse to work with Nationals if Barilaro remains leader - Sydney Morning Herald

Liberals, Conservatives see drop in donations during height of COVID-19 pandemic – CBC.ca

Canada's two main federal political parties took in less money from individual donations during the second quarter of this year compared withthe same time in 2018 the last non-election yearas the financial slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

According to financialreturns released by Elections Canada this week, the Liberals and Conservatives together raised more than$6.2million in donations between April and June of this year, which is almost $3millionless thanthey raised during the same period in 2018.

Donations are always highest during election years, so comparisons with 2019 would not be relevant.

The drop in donations coincides with the period when the economy came to a virtual standstill as Canadians stayed home to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The Conservatives led the pack by pulling in donations from individualstotalling more than$3.5millionin the second quarter of 2018. The party also received about$436,000 in transfers from candidates in its ongoing leadership campaign, for a total of just over $4 million. Theparty raised more than$6 millionfrom bothdonations and transfers during the same period in 2018.

The Liberals pulled in $2.6 million in individual donations this year, compared withjust under$3.1 million in 2018.

The three smaller parties,meanwhile, saw theirdonation totals increase compared with2018.

The New Democratic Partyreceived $1.3 million this year compared withjust $872,000 two years ago, while the Bloc Qubcoisreceived $131,000 in donations, up from a meagre $42,000 two years ago.

The Green Party took in more than$633,000 from individuals and more than$87,000 from its leadership candidates for a total of slightly more than $721,000, up from $572,000 two years ago.

The numbers offer the first significant look into how the pandemic has affected the fundraising efforts of federal political parties.

The $8.2million raisedby all parties from individual donations between April and Juneis a slight decrease from the approximately $8.4million they raised during the firstquarter between January and March. A CBC News analysis found that March 2020 when the novel coronavirus began to shut down businesses and schools in Canada appears to have been the worst March for fundraising in Canadasince March 2006.

Parties had to halt their in-person fundraising events in March after the country went into lockdown. Emails and other messages soliciting money from donors were also temporarily suspended or altered to encourage people to pitch in only if they could.

"We know that not everyone is in a position to give right now, and that's OK. Your involvement means the world to our whole team and we're so grateful to have you standing with us no matter what," one Liberal party email sent in May told supporters.

"If you're able, though, please show your support and chip in $5 today to support our progress for Canadians (or whatever amount feels right for you at the moment)."

These messages have shifted in recent weeks to more traditional pushes for support as pandemic restrictions have lifted and businesses have started reopening.

The Conservatives have also begun asking party faithful to chip in to an "early election fund," with the message that the Liberals "could call an election at any time."

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Liberals, Conservatives see drop in donations during height of COVID-19 pandemic - CBC.ca

Liberals and progressives – The Recorder

Published: 7/31/2020 11:26:40 AM

In his book, Bias, former CBS news reporter Bernard Goldberg claims that there is a liberal bias in the national news media. He writes The bias Im talking about, by the way, isnt so much political bias of the Democratic-versus-Republican sort. For me that isnt the real problem. The problem comes in the big social and cultural issues abortion, gun control, feminism ,gay rights, the environment, school prayer.

Nowhere in his list do any of the economic and financial struggles of the poor, the near-poor, the lower classes, and the middle classes appear.

He is among a number of conservatives who seem to suggest that the liberals of the 1960s were primarily concerned with the bread-and-butter issues of survival of these groups as well as with expanding the social safety-net federal government programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps), while the progressives of 2020 seem to be primarily concerned with the social, identity-politics and culture-wars issues.

To the extent that this is accurate. You can put me down as siding more with the liberals of the 1960s than with the progressives of 2020.

(This letter to the editor is dedicated to the Suffragist Alice Paul.)

Stewart B. Epstein

Rochester, N.Y.

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Liberals and progressives - The Recorder