Big Oil Supports Paul Martin's Liberals
In recent weeks Paul Martin has speculated about who financially supported Stephen Harper, but now maybe we can ask Paul Martin about his own supporters. AlsoCanadian did a piece a while back about how a Canadian oil company, Talisman Energy, may have been helping the Sudanese government at the very same time the Liberal government was giving lectures on how the ethnic cleansing should be stopped. AlsoCanadian then showed us some very revealing facts about how the Liberal government had ignored calls to sanction Talisman and speculated about their policy of political donations.
Here is a summary of their political donations in 2003:
$10,000 to the Liberal Party of Canada
$10,000 each to the Paul Martin
$10,000 John Manley leadership campaigns
$5,000 to the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada
And their donation policy:
"In the past, we have had a policy of contributing $20,000 per year to the governing federal (editor: Liberal) party, with lesser amounts to opposition parties. We have also purchased tables at various federal party fundraising events. In accordance with the new law, Talisman’s policy has been revised to preclude all of these activities at the federal level. "
This would total over $200 000 to the Liberal party of Canada over the last 12 years, not including 2004 and on, when the election laws were changed.
Do the big oil companies represent your values? more importantly, do Paul Martin's values now reflect Talisman's?
Here is a summary of their political donations in 2003:
$10,000 to the Liberal Party of Canada
$10,000 each to the Paul Martin
$10,000 John Manley leadership campaigns
$5,000 to the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada
And their donation policy:
"In the past, we have had a policy of contributing $20,000 per year to the governing federal (editor: Liberal) party, with lesser amounts to opposition parties. We have also purchased tables at various federal party fundraising events. In accordance with the new law, Talisman’s policy has been revised to preclude all of these activities at the federal level. "
This would total over $200 000 to the Liberal party of Canada over the last 12 years, not including 2004 and on, when the election laws were changed.
Do the big oil companies represent your values? more importantly, do Paul Martin's values now reflect Talisman's?
posted by "Expert" Tom at 1:38 PM
3 Comments:
Consider this...
I'm a Conservative, I vote for Canadian Unity, and I'm Albertan, but shit like this post makes me want to leave confederation.
I'm in a the lower income tax bracket. I pay various federal taxes and I pay tax to my federal government through my provincial taxes. Alberta has been considered by the powers that be in Ottawa that we are "have" and need to pay more tax to all the "have nots" that live elsewhere. This apparently justifies the double taxation of myself by the federal government. However, I get less out of the federal government, and pay more in taxes to the federal government than people who live in Quebec who make more money than me.
Is being born near some oil wells with a people that elect a fiscally prudent government merit that I, a lower income Canadian, be on the bad side of a regressive taxation system?
On top of that, many of the schedule I banks in Canada revival or surpass the profits of oil companies, but does being born near Bank Central Toronto justify lower income earners there giving to richer people in other "have not provinces"? Should people working in banks be villified (many of them donate to political parties) like Western oil workers?
Should everyone that profits off of anything be considered evil? Hell, Eastern based media companies make more money than many if not all oil companies, but no-one points the finger at them as evil greedy entities.
Read Leviathan, study sub-game Nash equillibrium, and then read the Origin of Species. After that, you may understand the heart of Conservatism and recognize that profiting is not a crime.
You guys are missing the point. I don't think he was slamming anyone for making a profit on oil.
The point was how Paul Martin was demanding to know who contributed to Stephen Harper's leadership campaign (insinuating it was "evil republicans!") when Martin's contributors were people allegedly involved in genocide in Sudan. Being an oil company is beside the point.
Sam
Ya, the big oil title was just to get attention and use the Liberal's own scare tactics against them. We are definitly not anti-Alberta or anything. I mean, if we didn't have oil money, most of the country would be bankrupt by now. We were trying to make the connection between unethical companies supporting the Liberals like the last poster said.
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