FELDSTED – It’s an attempt to appear to be doing something useful when all they accomplish is seizing more of our income, and then squandering it on boutique spending

One has to wonder what types of people we are governed by – here’s just four quick examples of why one would ask this:

Carbon Taxing:

Our governments, federal and provincial, are applying various carbon taxes aimed at reducing our use of fossil fuels. They piously claim that higher prices will reduce petroleum use, and thus reduce carbon emissions.

The premise is faulty in assuming that petroleum fuel use is discretionary; that

we all have the option of using vehicles less without infringing on our ability to earn a living, or without diminishing our quality of life, or that heating our homes and water is optional.

It also assumes that goods can be moved from port to warehouse - to retailer and farm - to processor to market - without vehicles driven by petroleum engines.

It is an attempt to appear to be doing something useful when all they accomplish is punishing us by seizing more of our income which they continue to squander on boutique spending.

Gun Control

We spend millions each year requiring people to qualify for a firearms acquisition permit and in case of handguns, a restricted firearms permit. We have created a whole bureaucracy to administer this nonsense that deals with law-abiding citizens who are harassed by fees and regulations. Gun owners are treated as criminals, and profiled as a danger to society which is preposterous.

We have created a lucrative black market in guns. The markups from purchase price to retail is large enough to attract smugglers who see an opportunity to turn large profits by importing guns and reselling to black market suppliers. The result is that criminals, and criminal gangs, are better armed than our police forces.

Once again indolent governments take the easy route, and pretend that they are increasing public safety by harassing the public. Police are discovering gun manufacturing sites where guns are produced by legally ordering parts, making other parts, and assembling complete firearms. None are offered to licensed gun owners. They are bound for the black market.

We introduced legislation, adding to a sentence, for someone who uses a firearm in committing a crime. Our courts decided that it was unconstitutional. Instead of appealing the decision, or changing the law, to make firearms use during a crime a separate charge or using the notwithstanding clause to override the court decision, our governments did nothing. Score a big win for criminals.

Illegal drugs:

We squander police, court and prison resources incarcerating people for possession small quantities of illegal drugs, rather than requiring them to take substance abuse rehabilitation. The likelihood that a drug addict will carry a supply with him or her is lost on legislators.

The penalties for those convicted of dealing in illegal drug are pitifully low ... and the economic and social costs of drug addiction are enormous.

Street drugs are expensive and addiction results in increased crime. Drug importers and dealers ruin thousands of lives every year but are not treated as the social pariahs they are.

Recently drug dealers have taken to adding synthetic opioids to their wares resulting in an outbreak of increased drug overdoses and deaths. Our legislators

and ‘progressives’ are running about, hair on fire, decrying an opioid crisis.  

Nonsense!

They are unwilling to accept that we have a serious drug addiction problem. People who are not addicted to drugs are in no danger of an overdose. The spike in overdoses is a symptom of our addictions problem.

Back to the drug dealers; it takes a tiny amount of synthetic opioid for a lethal effect. Dealers using opioids to stretch their supply and increase profits, are no different from any other mass murderers. The method is irrelevant. Look at the body count. Dealing in illegal opioids should be a capital crime with an automatic life sentence.

Pipelines 

The amount of misinformation we are fed is astonishing. Apparently, the risks of a pipeline failure are so high to our pristine environment that building and operating a pipeline will ruin our drinking water, contaminate our lakes and ruin all wildlife habitat just for starters.

Oil and gas pipelines have run through densely populated areas in America and Europe for decades without those disasters. Large sections of central Europe are fueled and heated with pipelines from Russia. Our government position is insane.

Our governments consistently fail to assess risk using common sense, logic and reason spiced with reliable information from elsewhere, scientific analysis and reality.

Legislators cannot remake the world as they wish it was. They have to deal with it as it is – lumps, bumps, warts, wrinkles and all.

John Feldsted

Political Consultant & Strategist

Winnipeg, Manitoba