Transparency. Despite Tory promises, spending cuts haven’t saved any money at all: Parliamentary budget officer report. OTTAWA — A new report from the Parliamentary Budget Office finds that the Conservative government’s spending restraint program is focusing on front line services, while back office spending continues to rise.
That’s exactly the opposite of promises made by Treasury Board President Tony Clement, who said last year that the majority of the spending cuts would target administrative and support costs and wouldn’t affect service to the public. Overall, the independent budget office found that Ottawa’s spending was down 0.6 per cent through the first six months of the current fiscal year, which ends March 31. Direct program spending fell four per cent. But spending on internal services — such as communications, information technology, human resources and financial management — actually rose eight per cent.
And the PBO report says capital expenditures, in large part driven by Defence spending, also climbed in the first half of 2012-13, up almost seven per cent. Tories created the PBO, and now want to strangle it for being successful. The federal opposition parties, in search of ideas with which to confront the Conservatives, have one staring them in the face.
Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Office, an innovation the Conservatives introduced and now regret, is in danger of being hobbled by its creators for having been too successful at its job. It deserves rescuing, but opposition efforts to date have been feeble and ineffective. Andrew Coyne: Feud with budget officer a conflict between Conservatives and their own ideals. U.S.: dismiss lawsuit over Americans killed by drones. The U.S. Government on Friday asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit over the killing of three American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen earlier this year: alleged Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar Al-Awlaki, his son Abdulrahman, and alleged AQAP magazine editor Samir Khan. The administration also threatened to invoke the State Secrets Privilege if the suit is not dismissed on other grounds.
The privilege, which 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama regularly blasted the Bush administration for invoking, allows the government to seek dismissal of a suit if it could expose national security secrets. Speak2Tweet. Take Action – Google. European Parliament Passes Resolution Against ITU Asserting Control Over Internet. Today, the European Parliament passed a resolution that condemns the upcoming attempt from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to assert control over the Internet, and instructed its 27 Member States to act accordingly.
United Nations wants control of web kill switch. AN unfettered internet, free of political control and available to everyone could be relegated to cyber-history under a contentious proposal by a little known United Nations body.
Experts claim that Australians could see political and religious websites disappear if the Federal Government backs a plan to hand control over the internet to the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU). A draft of the proposal, formulated in secret and only recently posted on the ITU website for public perusal, reveal that if accepted, the changes would allow government restriction or blocking of information disseminated via the internet and create a global regime of monitoring internet communications - including the demand that those who send and receive information identify themselves. It would also allow governments to shut down the internet if there is the belief that it may interfere in the internal affairs of other states or that information of a sensitive nature might be shared.
OpenWatch. Giving the homeless a place to live costs less than providing shelters and emergency services. Last month, the Canadian Homelessness Research Network (CHRN) released a compilation report on the costs of caring for Canadians on the street.
While homeless advocates usually make appeals to compassion and morality when championing policy reforms to help the most impoverished of this country’s citizens, the report attempts to illustrate empirically the financial impact of homelessness. What author Stephen Gaetz makes clear is that calculating the cost of homelessness must not only account for shelters or soup kitchens, but also peripheral services, such as health care and the justice system, that homeless people come into contact with more frequently than society at large.
As they are often poorly nourished, unable to engage in adequate sanitation practices, and live in settings where exposure to communicable disease is high, for instance, homeless Canadians experience a serious deterioration of their physical health. Pirate Bay’s Anti-Censorship Browser Clocks 100,000 Downloads. Within three days of its launch The Pirate Bay's PirateBrowser, which allows people to bypass ISP filtering and access blocked websites, has already been downloaded more than 100,000 times.
The Pirate Bay team say they never expected the browser to catch on this quickly, while noting that they are determined to provide more anti-censorship tools. The Rich See a Different Internet Than the Poor. Imagine an Internet where unseen hands curate your entire experience.
Where third parties predetermine the news, products and prices you see—even the people you meet. A world where you think you are making choices, but in reality, your options are narrowed and refined until you are left with merely the illusion of control. This is not far from what is happening today.