that sounds close to right, to me.

but, is she just telling us what we want to hear?

if she is, she left out water and pharmaceuticals.

no, seriously: this is a good start. it's certainly a lot better than it could be. that said, the drug thing is really key for everybody, on both sides of the border and is probably what a poll is going to identify as the public's biggest concern, in canada. but, i'm just a nerd on the internet, i can't go through this point-by-point. but, i can call on people more qualified than i am (toby sanger? maude barlow?) to get to work on it.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nafta-canada-demands-list-1.4246498

tim kaine is going to run for president in 2020, whether you like it or not.

i'd take this a step further: these institutions should be secularized. why are tax funds going to catholic hospitals? but, they shouldn't be privatized or shut down, they should be converted into normal hospitals.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/assisted-dying-religion-ethics-accessibility-1.4244328

but, to be clear: it's not just that abolishing government means abolishing property.

it's that the reason you want to abolish government is that it's the only way to abolish property.

being an anarchist on the left consequently should really be thought of as the ideological position that attaining freedom means abolishing all property; abolishing the state is just a necessary, albeit not sufficient, step to the elimination of property.

i mean, you don't think property rights exist somewhere out there in the ether, do you?

a "property right" is a law passed by an oligarchy, and enforced with a gun. the term is older than orwell, but it's an incoherent contradiction in terms. proudhom deconstructed this well - for if you have property then you are infringing on the rights of others, and to uphold the rights of all is to abolish property. property rights are neither freedom nor theft but truly impossible, and the only outcome of a system built on property rights is an oppressive dystopia.

but, the basic point is that property can only exist in the presence of government. there really isn't a substantial difference between these concepts; government and property are largely the same thing. and, the so-called ancaps that wish to suggest otherwise are really just living in a fantasy reality.

an anarchist would not interpret regulatory bodies as "big government", because it would reject the underlying premise of property rights. the government does not exist to regulate the market, but to protect it from regulation. regulation - real regulation by democratic or scientific bodies, not captured industry bodies - is consequently a way to break through the statist system of property rights and assert control by the people over their own resources.

regarding meat....well, maybe we shouldn't really have slaughterhouses. but, if we're to have slaughterhouses, they should belong to the people, and not to corporations. what currently prevents the democratization of resources is the government, through it's enforcement of property rights. regulation is consequently not about the government "interfering" in the realm of "private production", but about the people abolishing the state's control over resources, through the tyranny of property.

what removing the government from the business of meat processing means is abolishing the property rights used by private corporations and setting up local councils that distribute the meat on a needs basis.

nonsense about "free markets" is exactly that.

these issues tend to follow conservtive governments, who cut regulations in order to "eliminate red tape" (that is, increase profit). this leads to a giant social outcry, and then either the ndp or the liberals try to rebuild what was destroyed. and, this creates long term damage for the conservatives.

the conservatives in ontario, for example, are still dealing with the memory of the walkerton water tragedy, which was blamed on the government's cost-cutting behaviours. there are people who will avoid voting conservative for the rest of their lives because of this.

canada did go through the same anti-intellectual revolt against logic that the united states went through under reagan, it just happened here in the 00s rather than the 80s. and, we have a lot of work to do in undoing the damage created by the previous government.

unfortunately, it's not going to be the current prime minister that leads the charge on this. let's hope that his successor is a little more pro-active about it.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cfia-us-report-concerns-meat-inspections-1.4239198

see, this is what i want to hear.

and, it's similar to what the liberal party has historically held to - it's at the crux of their (i think very correct) historical criticism of the nafta deal. i've been over this here; it's similar to what happened in the united states, in that the deal was negotiated by the conservative party, but then the liberals came in in late 1993 and had to basically rubber stamp it, despite opposing it, because the alternative was dire...

i think the difference is that there's more real evidence that the liberals actually believed what they said, or at least that they did in 1993. i didn't vote for justin trudeau as a person so much as i voted for a hope of a return to the social liberalism of his father's liberal party; this is backwards in canada, but he struck me as a figurehead that would ultimately have little real decision-making power. it was the old liberal party machinery (the uplift in diversity, especially female representation, was certainly welcomed) that i wanted back in power. this is pretty much what that old party machinery would say. but, we've seen a lot of conflicting signals that the pmo leans more towards positions that are currently held by democrats, and were held historically by the conservative party :\.

everybody needs to be skeptical. but, this is a good signal, at least. it's the right approach, and for the right reasons. let's see what actually happens..

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/freeland-to-press-for-new-labour-environmental-sections-within-nafta-1.3544101