Thailand Free Trade Deal: Canada To Get Pitch During Harper's Asian Trip

BANGKOK - Thailand is planning a major pitch to open free trade talks with Canada this week, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper begins his second Asia trip in three months.

Thailand will sweeten its offer by positioning itself as a comfortable and safe entry point from which Canada could make further inroads throughout South Asia — raising the potential of a broader trade deal with the region's emerging, 10-country bloc, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

China is not an ASEAN member, so any economic gains with the bloc would represent a significant broadening of the Harper government's pro-Asia trade aspirations.

Harper, who made his second trip to China in January, has said increasing trade with Asia is a major economic priority after a series of economic hurdles soured relations with Canada's largest trading partner, the United States.

Alberta Election: Battle Shaping Up As Alison 'Mommie Dearest' Redford Vs. Danielle 'Psycho' Smith

EDMONTON - The election writ is set to drop this week in Alberta and if the demonizing hyperbole from the two rightist heavyweight parties is to be believed, voters have a simple choice: Mommie Dearest or Psycho.

The governing Progressive Conservatives and the upstart Wildrose party are running one-two in the polls as Premier Alison Redford prepares to call the campaign shortly after her caucus passes the budget on Wednesday.

"I think people are pretty anxious to get to the polls as am I," Redford said.

"I believe we're going to have a strong election. We're going to have a strong showing."

Redford is running in her first election as premier since taking over as party leader from Ed Stelmach last fall.

History is on her side.

Families And Teachers Join Tuition Protests

Student groups are hosting family-oriented protests across Quebec Sunday against the government's planned tuition fee hikes.

Protests and marches are taking place in Montreal, Sherbrooke, Quebec City and Alma.

Thousands gathered in Parc Lafontaine in Montreal before marching down Saint Denis Street towards the offices of the Ministry of Education.

Sunday's protests follow several hundred teachers gathering for a symbolic protest in downtown Montreal Saturday.

Teachers gathered in front of the controversial Ilot Voyageur, a building which was meant to become an integral part of l'Université du Quebec à Montréal (UQAM). They used a giant pair of scissors to cut a red ribbon and symbolically inaugurate the half-vacant building.

Part of the Ilot Voyageur now houses the city's bus terminal, but the rest is half-built and abandoned. UQAM started the project in 2005 but had to give up after falling heavily into debt.

Fleming Drive Riot: Rioters Hit London, Ont. Near Fanshawe College

LONDON, Ont. - A heaving, intoxicated crowd of up to 1,000 people spent much of Saturday night fuelling a large street fire and attacking authorities who tried to intervene as St. Patrick's Day celebrations in London, Ont., went awry.

The upheaval on Fleming Drive in the city's east end drew about 65 police in riot gear and 10 firefighters to the scene.

The area, near Fanshawe College, is heavily populated by students and has been the site of previous disturbances, but none as large as the latest one, authorities said.

"It was pretty tense and it was kind of unusual, even for that area," District Fire Chief Jim Holmes told The Canadian Press.

"That particular area has had some incidents in the past but I don't think ever to this scale and this number of people and this length."

Concerns are raised over B.C. government plan to ship unemployed north to work

VANCOUVER - Fraser Stuart laughed out loud when he heard the British Columbia government wants to train welfare recipients and then fly them north to fill badly needed jobs.

Stuart, who lives in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and is currently receiving social assistance, doesn't want to work in the north, but he wants a job and he's more than willing to take the training to get.

The 59-year-old worked for eight years in a homeless shelter in Montreal, and he wants to do the same in B.C. But he's been unable to pry the $1,600 for certification course from the provincial government, and his $610 monthly welfare cheque doesn't come close to covering it.

"Welfare won't pay for the course, so I can't work," said Stuart, sighing.

"If I take a student loan it would be clawed back 100 per cent. I wouldn't be eligible for welfare, because now I'm a student. They also expect me earn enough money to pay for it, but I'm not allowed to earn any money on welfare."

Ending fossil fuel subsidy a 'no brainer'

Ending fossil fuel subsidies in the next federal budget would be a "no brainer," says a former Conservative MP who played a key role advising former prime minister Brian Mulroney's government on environmental issues.

David Macdonald, the first chair of the House of Commons environment committee, established in 1989, noted that many global organizations, including the International Monetary Fund and the International Energy Agency, have urged all governments to get rid of the subsidies to avoid waste and to discourage energy consumption that is causing global warming.

"Fossil fuel (subsidies) are a drag," said Macdonald, who now supports the New Democrats. "They enforce consumption, they are unbalancing our energy future, and we should get rid of them."

David Sawyer, an environmental economist and director of climate change and energy at the International Institute for Sustainable Development has estimated the federal government could save more than $1.3 billion per year if it phases out all existing subsidies for the oil, gas and coal industries.

Buying the F-35 fighter jet makes sense for Canada

My solemn advice to the federal Conservative government: hands off the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

While you are seemingly still prepared to throw away more than $1 billion per annum on state broadcaster CBC, and are now warming to the numbing stupidity of paying $2 billion to public servants to leave the bloated bureaucracy, you are wavering on national defence. You are threatening the integrity of the Royal Canadian Air Force, which, thank God, due to your wisdom, we are now able to say again without sounding wistfully nostalgic.

Now is not the time for defence penury. We perceived more than a hint of parsimony and this week's non-commitment and equivocation from Associate Defence Minister Julian Fantino. His repeated use of the word "if" when describing the purchase of the F-35 to the House of Commons defence committee must give pause for concern.

Let us proceed with both hands on the throttle, but let us proceed with a flight plan. What will be the final price tag? Is it $9 billion, $16 billion or $30 billion? Confusion only engenders fear and a good talking point for the NDP, three letters which must persist in being deciphered as "No Defence Policy."

Never mind Dean Del Mastro: Robocall dots are easy to connect

Conservative robocall point man Dean Del Mastro prompted a lot of rude repartee in the Twittersphere yesterday when he suggested we should all just calm down and stop jumping to conclusions.

After all, Del Mastro explained in response to a CBC story the day before that pointed to a connection between people who had received misleading robocalls and an earlier call from the Conservative Party that identified how they planned to vote, "some of these things, as I've already indicated, could well have been mistakes."

Really!

The CBC analysis of the goings on in 31 ridings across Canada "showed a pattern indicating those who got misleading or fraudulent calls sending them to the wrong polling location had also gotten calls from the Conservative Party trying to find out which way they would vote." As the CBC pointed out, that's just the kind of information that’s likely to be guarded most closely by a political party. So how did the robocallers get it?

Will Broadbent’s bomb turn out to be a bust?

Ed Broadbent has gone nuclear on Thomas Mulcair. It is a strange thing to see one of the NDP's most respected senior statesman look to blow up the campaign of the apparent front-runner. Who knew the holier than thou NDP were capable of such primal political behaviour?

It is well known I am no fan of Mr. Mulcair but I didn't know Mr. Broadbent shared such a visceral view of the surly NDP member from Outremont. It is certainly well known in Ottawa that Mulcair prefers to scorch the earth rather than engage in the co-operative farming process his many colleagues prefer.

I honestly have no idea what impact Mr. Broadbent's sermon on the tomfoolery of taking Thomas to the top will have on NDP members as they vote for a new leader. But I know such extreme preaching often blows up on the preacher blowing past the congregation he is trying to sway.

Paint the Other Cheek

At a semi-secret meeting in the basement of a Greenwich Village church one Saturday night in February, a couple-dozen of the busiest Occupy Wall Street organizers sat in a circle of folding chairs. Calling the group to order was Yates Mckee, an art critic with aviator glasses and hair down past his shoulders, which seemed especially appropriate considering his choice to open the proceedings by reading from the Book of Matthew: turn the other cheek, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.

“A lot of people would agree that this movement is in crisis,” he said. “We’ve had these discussions about so-called diversity of tactics, which I think makes a lot of people very uncomfortable.” True. Just hearing those words put the room on edge. Since Occupy Oakland’s clash with police in late January, in just about every meeting and e-mail list OWS organizers had been arguing about tactics. Is this a nonviolent movement? What would it mean if it was? Or wasn’t?

“I think right now is the moment to look to great men of history,” Mckee continued imperiously, listing the men he had in mind: Jesus Christ, Gandhi and Martin Luther King. “They all show us that the way to build a popular revolutionary movement is through love, through harmony and through the strength of nonviolence.”