Archive for December, 2009

Posted on December 27, 2009 - by J Lane

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-27

• Ummm… I'm pretty sure this candy cane is curing my hang over. #
• I'm having a minor tiff with IE. I'll be beating it down soon, by why does our relationship always have to come to this? #
• Huh, I'm getting random cell phone pictures of some girl sent to my Gmail account. Way less sexy than it sounds. #
• This is one of the funniest seasons of Survivor. #
• Awesome. Every call I made or received with #rogersatt this month was roaming. Even the ones at home. #
• Do some people honestly not know that you're supposed to capitalize the first letter of peoples' names? Or are they just lazy? #
• Okay, I'm going to pop in a movie tonight and finish this site once and for all. #
• No tweets, no bio and web site listed re-directs to Amazon. Jeff Bezos, did you just start following me? #sneakybastard #
• I wonder if that night of over-indulging had something to do with this impending cold. #hindsightis2020 #
• Oh I get it. Mixed case and punctuation just isn't cool. Gotcha. #
• All I want for Christmas is a cure for the common cold. #
• I sense a lot of crime drama shows in my immediate future #psychicme #
• I use HRs to clear floats. I admit it. #

Posted on December 21, 2009 - by J Lane

Legality of HST (reprise)

I had blogged previously about whether the HST can legally exist based on the Canadian Constitution. Seems that a few others have noticed this now too, I just received this e-mail from “Fight HST”:

From: Rustad.MLA, John
Subject: RE: Harmonized Sales Tax
To: “jack kortmeyer” < *redacted*>
Received: Tuesday, December 15, 2009, 2:08 PM

Hi Jack,

This is the response from the Attorney General’s office:

This is from the Ministry of Finance:

The concerns which have been raised that the harmonized sales tax is an unconstitutional delegation of provincial legislative authority reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the tax.

The harmonized sales tax is a federal tax. It is imposed by the federal government under the Excise Tax Act. The constitutional authority for the Excise Tax Act is found in section 91(3) of the Constitution Act, 1867 which provides exclusive legislative authority to the Parliament of Canada for “the raising of money by any mode or system of taxation.”

Under section 92 of the Constitution Act, 1967, the province of British Columbia has exclusive legislative authority for “direct taxation within the province in order to the raising of a revenue for provincial purposes.” This is the constitutional authority for the provincial sales tax imposed under the Social Service Tax Act.

Under harmonization, British Columbia is not delegating its legislative authority for direct taxation to the federal government but agreeing not to exercise that authority in exchange for a share of the federal tax. If British Columbia no longer receives that share of the federal tax there is nothing to prevent British Columbia from again exercising its legislative authority and imposing a provincial sales tax.

Sincerely,

John Rustad, MLA, Nechako-Lakes

From: jack kortmeyer [mailto:*redacted*]
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 12:02 PM
To: Rustad.MLA, John
Subject: Harmonized Sales Tax

John

On Oct 14 2009 I attended a meeting with local merchants and yourself at the Chamber of Commerce meeting room in Burns Lake . During this meeting I made a brief presentation on my position as to why I felt the Harmonized Sales Tax in its present form is unconstitutional. With my presentation I also provided you with excerpts from the Lord Nelson Hotel Supreme Court Case, the Statute of Westminster 1931, the British North America Act 1867-1982 and even a comment on taxation by W.A.C. Bennett. You mentioned to me at this meeting that you did not know much about this Constitutional topic, however you assured me you would pass my information onto the Attorney General for his opinion, I have not to date received a reply. When may I expect an answer from the Attorney General on this very important Constitutional question?

As a Citizen of Canada and British Columbia I ask you our Member of the Legislative Assembly, the Attorney General and the Premier of British Columbia as elected officials to be absolutely certain my Constitutional Rights are protected on this subject of taxation.

Regards,

Jack Kortmeyer
Decker Lake

That’s interesting, the HST is simply “misunderstood”. I take issue with the idea that “British Columbia is not delegating its legislative authority for direct taxation to the federal government but agreeing not to exercise that authority in exchange for a share of the federal tax”. Is the Constitution not present to lay out the rights of the people, not legislative bodies? This doesn’t just seem like a different interpretation of the constitution, but rather the Government of BC is choosing to give up rights on our behalf. That doesn’t sit right with me.

This example was given in the e-mail from Fight HST:

Vander Zalm explained, “That is like the Feds agreeing to let BC legalize capital punishment by saying they are not delegating their legislative authority for criminal law to the Provincial Government, but agreeing not to exercise that authority in exchange for a share of the revenues saved from executing criminals instead of jailing them.”

It seems a bit extreme, but those parts of the constitution are there to specifically divide the responsibilities of the levels of government. Personally, I don’t think it’s right that provinces and the feds can choose to selectively exercise authority when it suits them. I would home that the courts would agree.

It might sound silly arguing about “our right to be taxed”, but in implementing the HST, the Government of Canada and the Government of BC are creating a very real problem: BC no longer has control over it’s own taxation that is used to fund real things within the province.Under the terms of the agreement, if the federal government should ever decided to stop transfer payments to BC, then BC will have the authority to once again implement their own PST (Hon. John Rustad said so himself in the last paragraph of his e-mail).

So if the federal government runs a little low on cash (I can’t imagine that ever happening!), and they decide to cut the money that they’re generously collecting and then “gifting” back to us, we can expect to enjoy both an HST and a PST in BC. Either there is a formal delegation of authority going on here, which is most likely unconstitutional, or BC is being sold into a very tenuous position where we’re having provincial affairs decided in Ottawa. Scary stuff.

Posted on December 20, 2009 - by J Lane

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-20

• Man, I'm in one of those moods today. Can't stand any of the music in my playlist, and everything is getting on my nerves. Blech. #
• The National Gallery site (UK) is wonderful. http://bit.ly/5ryu3f Their database of paintings is really well done. #
• Raffi Christmas songs playing. Kill me now. #
• Mmmm. Beer. — at Springwater Lodge http://gowal.la/s/24F6 #
• Any thoughts on a Fluid.app icon for @37signals Launchpad? Maybe the @37signals logo? #3dockiconsdownto1 #
• Wow, I'm floored at how well thought out the WP e-commerce plugin is. #
• My old school appears to be increasing the amount of money they spend on print materials asking for donations. That seems wrong to me. #
• I took it and so should you—The Survey For People Who Make Websites, 2009: http://aneventapart.com/survey2009 #
• Usher vs Yelling Goat: http://bit.ly/7qB1SU (via @hanlsp) #
• Pastebot is super useful. Thanks @tapbots #
• Seriously Mingle? Your default DB choices are PostgreSQL and Oracle? Guess I won't be trying version 3 after all…. #
• I'm trying to decide if the Photoshop job I did on a photo for a friend is too over the top. http://bit.ly/8yPi7Y #
• Confidence: it's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you are. (via @feather) Amen to that! #
• I'm on to @37signals. The launchpad just looks sexier and sexier as you add accounts. This is the greatest subliminal up-sell ever! #
• Introducing iStockHell, a collection of the worst stock photography known to man: http://istockhell.com/ (via @awilkinson) Awesome. #
• I wonder how long the MobileME iPhone app took in the approval queue… #
• Pretty sure my 5 year old is trying to blackmail my 3 year old. #
• I was just thinking "Boy, I'd love to re-write the API authentication mechanism for this". At least I won't have to store passwords anymore #
• Love it when WordPress sites tell me the version of WP they're using in the footer. Makes exploits so much easier #notserious #
• "The decline of the MBA will cut off the supply of bullshit at source" http://bit.ly/8BW0n1 (via @jasonfried) #
• Lights http://img.ly/hvY #
• Great @24ways article Mr. @snook! #
• Great @24ways article Mr. @snook! /via @lanej0 er that should be @snookca #
• In Sidney listing to an acapella version of Ol' McDonald #

Posted on December 13, 2009 - by J Lane

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-13

• General consensus seems to be that going potted is the greenest way to go for an x-mas tree. I have a bad habit of killing potted plants. #
• Bye power. It was nice while it lasted. #
• First site I've worked on where I've really gotten to play with some CSS 3 stuff. The future is exciting. #
• All of a sudden, I'm jonesing to go camping. #
• This cracks me up. http://twitter.com/newlywedsontjob /via @philsherry /via @snookca. This is going to be funny. #
• Please don't schedule your follow up sales call for 5 minutes later. #
• Feel kinda sleezy instructing friends in PUA techniques. #
• Dear kids: WTF? You call that sleep? Enjoy me on the 4 hours I got last night. Love, dad. #
• Depressing but excellent @24ways article on HTML email #

Posted on December 6, 2009 - by J Lane

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-12-06

• Niece just asked to watch Sleeping Booty. I think she might be a little young for that one. #
• Glad I'm inside working today. Brrr… visibility is decreasing as I sit here. (Miss my little island) #
• I just generated a #TweetCloud out of a year of my tweets. Top three words: time, love, thanks – http://w33.us/3qtk #
• About to start working my way through my inbox. Wish me luck. #
• In honour of #bbd09, I'm going to fix up this here page and make it non-puke worthy. #
• Darn. Statistically higher number of crashes in the days following a publicized air crash. Hope my pilot tmrw doesn't watch CBC. #
• Thank god my sister has an SUV. Otherwise, I might not make it to the airport tomorrow. #
• Please don't let me get snowed in and miss my flight. Please don't let me get snowed in and miss my flight. Please don't let me get snowed. #
• Working With RGBA Colour http://24ways.org/200901 #
• At #yyc about to head back to #yyj. Happy to be heading home. #
• #yyc will always be my hometown, but hot damn I missed the coast. Bonus that it's a beautiful sunny day. #
• Hey Galiano, what's up? http://img.ly/eV8 #
• And I'm down another 5 lbs. I wonder if the stomach flu had something to do with that? #
• Thinking about starting a news site that only publishes positive news stories. Could call it "Have you heard the good news?" #
• Alright, so I guess the family isn't coming home for lunch. #
• Great game concept: http://web.student.chalmers.se/groups/idp09-7/flashgame/ (via @MannyBorsboom) #
• Loving @24ways this year. Great articles, keep them coming! #
• I liked it much better when my stomach was my silent partner. #
• Anyone have the scoop on an Eco-friendly artificial x-mas tree? Seems like they're all toxic/PVC nastiness. #lazyweb #