Happy New Year! 2023

I want to wish everyone a happy new year! Let’s hope that 2023 is better than 2022. Like a LOT better. Here’s to hoping that 2023 being more patience, tolerance, and understanding around the world that people can be who they want, do what they want, and live the life they want so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.

This message is intended specifically for countries like China, Russia, Afghanistan, and North Korea, plus any middle eastern country promoting terrorism, or hindering the freedom of women, and anyone deemed a minority, and yes, I’m looking at you, Iran.

I’m hoping, but not holding my breath, that people will take a moment this year to think before judging, commenting or doing stupid shit to other people.

Regardless… Happy new year, and lets make some positive changes for 2023 and beyond.

Sometimes, “NO” is the only answer!

With all that is going on in the world these days, sometimes the best answer, or solution is just to say no! Then remember what prompted you to say no, and follow up and be heard.

For example;

Russia… You think it’s okay to invade Ukraine? NO. What about lying to the citizens? NO. Poisoning anyone who opposes you… NO NO NO.

Alabama removing bathrooms for transgendered kids… NO. No you are not. NO NO NO. Sorry, but not sorry. NO

Florida requires kids and teachers to out children who are gay… NO. NO. NO. NO. Then suggesting you would prosecute parents of trans kids… Heck NO.

Texas and their abortion ban… NO

Truckers honking all night and terrorizing citizens in Ottawa because they think they know what’s best for you and for me… NO

Siding with this fringe element saying they just want “freedom”… NO

Brining in the emergencies act because you want to be able to overreach and leave your legacy… NO

It’s time to say no, and mean it.

Giving a Nazi salute to a Jewish teacher… NO! Especially when the teacher comes from a family who survived the holocaust… Disgusting.

…and sadly the list goes on!

I think we’re entering the era of saying no and meaning it. Saying no to tyranny, stupidity, hate and intolerance. Hopefully we’re not just saying no in the moment and then letting something else distract us from following through on our “no” and getting these people out of office, off our media and get their antique ways gone forever!

Our futures should be about love, positivity and inclusion, and saying no is a good way to get there!

Being racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, or anything else where you are giving an opinion on how others live their lives… NO. As my mother used to say, when my sister or I chimed in on what someone else was eating at dinner or doing with their food, “look at your own plate!” Don’t concern yourself with what others are doing. Just take care of yourself.

Abusing transit officers, or anyone providing service to the public because you feel the need to comment your personal comments or concerns around anything, including mask mandates… NO.

Honestly… This list could be endless, but keep your opinion to yourself unless it’s kind, considerate and helpful. Just be nice!

Canadian Election 2021: What you need to know before you vote

As a Public Policy major and as someone who worked in the government, my experience and expertise mean nothing when you compare it to people who work in the field, are running for election or who have their own views and beliefs.

So, that means this is just my perspective as someone who has lived in Canada for half a century and has voted in more than a few Canadian elections.

I think everyone saw this coming except for maybe the Liberal government who have done a terrible job over the past 6-years at following through on promises, They’ve treated Canadians like we’re all stupid, listening to them evade answering questions, answering with their pre-worded message rather than answering questions and all the while smugly thinking they’re doing a great job, while Canadians stewed in frustration at this drama teachers satire.

Black face, ethics violations. SNC Lavalin, running up the debt and deficit, and being the worst “feminist” government in history by treating his female colleagues like crap. We’ve all been shaking our heads. We shook our heads when this government couldn’t get vaccines to Canadians while the rest of the world was putting shots in arms, everyone in the government would say the same thing; “We have the largest selection of vaccinations in the entire world”, which literally translated to mean, we’ve paid 5 companies a lot of money and only really 3 came through for us.

This government tried to get unlimited taxation powers because they knew they would need it to recover the billions and billions of dollars they gave away to Canadians who needed it, but also to Canadians who didn’t need it, were not qualified to get it but did so anyways.

Federal government workers who couldn’t perform their jobs worked the phones answering questions about the benefit payments were rewarded with a 6% pay increase, and a giant slap in the face when the PM told the public that they were not equipped to hand of benefit payments so that was awarded to a charity, the WE Charity, because Trudeau decided it was a smart move. WOW. So that cost the Finance Minister his job… The umms, and ahhhs, just kept coming. After a Green party member took an incorrect and anti-semitic stance against Israel’s right to defend itself, the Liberals happily stepped up to take that candidate, while telling everyone that they stand against anti-semitism. They also stand against sexual misconduct in the military, in theory, certainly not in practice. Yet, while all these issues were rolling through, the Liberals had their plans, their strategy, and they thought they had Canadians fooled.

Having the NDP support pretty much everything that the Liberals did, allowed the government to take on and pass traditional NDP policies, and while the NDP must have felt this was a great move, essentially, the Liberals were slowly making the NDP obsolete, because why vote the NDP if you can get NDP-style policies through the Liberals.

The next move the Liberals did is to promise a ton of stuff. Listen to their campaign promises and you’ll always hear the number. $1 million here, $1 billion there… They’ll promise to anyone, everywhere, and sometimes they’ll make it happen and sometimes they won’t – well, usually they won’t (see electoral reform). The reason the Liberals spend is obvious, because if they don’t get re-elected, they leave the country with a MASSIVE debt, and the Conservatives have to step in and cut spending, and balance the budget. Then the Liberals campaign on the Conservatives being that party that has to cut programs and prevent all that great stuff the Liberals promised and viola… Liberals back in power.

It’s a great policy, because the Liberals think they’re smarter than all of us…

But they made a mistake.

They assumed that they had an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that no one knew Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, so it was the perfect time (COVID, Afghanistan, Military, etc.) to plunge Canadians into an election, and at the time of this posting, it’s not going so well.

O’Toole, is a different type of politician. Former military, a lawyer, worked in the private and public sector, and really smart, I’ve had the opportunity to meet O’Toole twice, and his experiences and expertise blew me away. He knows what people want Conservative governments to do – be fiscally responsible – and what they don’t want Cons to be (see US).

So over a week into the election, we’re seeing something different. Trudeau is stammering to get out his message. He seems egotistical and disingenuous, where as his main competitors, O’Toole and even Singh, seem much smarter, much more articulate and much more prepared.

Singh’s message to tax the “ultra rich” has not been widely embraced because people fear he’s talking about them, and that his message stifles the incentive of people who want to take the risks and earn the big dollars, that extra taxation of their efforts is counter intuitive. His Tik Toks… Still getting a ton of views. Tik Tok, however, still the most used app for kids. Kids can’t vote. But his Tik Toks are… ummm… anyways…

So, as the Conservatives started polling quite poorly, and have now taken a 4-6% lead over the Liberals, its going to be an interesting few weeks as we see what happens to the Liberal party and i they can right the ship. They need less comments like, “the Taliban are my brothers”, and picking at the Conservatives for not forcing all their candidates to be vaccinated, while not all the Liberal candidates are vaccinated. The Canadian public appear to be fed up, and they’re questioning everything because the Trudeau government forced them to. Will this government wind up like the Conservatives in 1993, or like the Liberal government in Ontario after Kathleen Wynne was done destroying the province.

The countdown is on…

The Urban Daddy is Back… Sort of.

Well after a fairly long period of inactivity and about 60 more drafts, I felt it was time to bring back some content to The Urban Daddy.

Here are the groundrules;

1. Since the kids are getting older, they don’t necessarily want me discussing any details about their personal lives, (“I’ll sue!” said one of them), so I’m going to go back to basics and discuss a bunch of random stuff which involve things Daddies do when their kids are getting older, like work, play and everything in between
2. I’m not an influencer. I appreciate the pitches, and offers, but only on some occasions would I go down that road. I don’t write posts for that reason, and if all I did was give away stuff, why would people come here??
3. I’m Canadian. Based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I’m not affiliated with Urbandaddy.com in the US, other than the fact that I was here before them, and I sold them my Pinterest account.
4. I’ve been busy. Some good, more not so good, but I’m still here. I’ve gotten a new career working for a company and filling a role that I absolutely love, so that’s good. COVID is still here, but I’m double vaccinated and I wear a mask where possible so I don’t pass along any germs to anyone. I’ve always wondered why sick people don’t wear masks to prevent spreading their colds. I learned this was a very kind thing when we were in Japan a couple of years ago and asked a local guide why there were people wearing masks outside. I thought it might be due to air pollution, but the guide explained that these people are not feeling well and didn’t want to make others sick… Take that, anti-maskers!
5. I took an online cooking class through George Brown College and their culinary area. It was an intro to cooking and it was vegan and the whole experience was amazing. I used to have a hang-up about cooking – had convinced myself that I was unable to just pick a recipe and follow it – but this course had me making tons of great stuff, like stocks, risotto, my own pasta, and my own tofu. I’m going to take another… Soon.
6. I’ve also managed to expand my volunteering and wound up with a board position on a local hockey league as their registrar… Not going to lie, but it’s a huge challenge, because I’ve been busy in my new paid role, and trying to find time for my volunteer role has posed a few challenges.
7. I had hurt myself quite badly at the beginning of the pandemic (not sure if I wrote about this or not), but I was walking on Yonge Street with my sister, and I stepped off the curb to avoid people, but the street was uneven so I rolled my ankle, and in the process did a crap-load of damage to myself, tearing muscles and ligaments off my right hip, right ankle, and I tore my left groin muscle, resulting in me passing out on Yonge Street, then a few days later in the hospital for a ton of tests and medication when I was unable to move because everything seized up. It took me about a year to be able to get everything moving pain-free and since that time, I’ve been walking about 5km/day where possible. I’d love to be able to lose that COVID weight, then the late-night snacking weight, followed by the baby-weight I gained when our now 16yo son was born.
8. I have a love/hate relationship with the Olympics, so I’ll hopefully have some more words to say about them shortly, other than to say that they always make me cry, and I’m so happy for all Canadian athletes who have won medals, or tried their best.
9. So, yeah… I guess we’ll see how long this lasts. 😉

More Kid Kontent: Gross Commercials, Politics and Tik Tok

Today, April 19th, 2021 is the first Canadian Federal budget in over 2-years. It’s been a hot topic of conversation amongst my friends, my colleagues and, yes, my kids.

At work, and among friends, we are concerned that the only way this Liberal government can pay for all the massive spending they’ve done over the past 7-years is through increased taxation. Increased taxation to Liberals tends to mean, calling taxes anything but taxes, so “levies”, “fees” and other cute names get thrown around, while the Liberals continue to push for increased taxes on the “wealthy”. Unfortunately, “wealthy” in Canada now becomes anyone earning over $80,000, or combined income of “$120,000”, which essentially becomes the “middle class”.

But I digress.

Whatever I know about politics in Canada I have earned through a specialized honours degree in Public Policy and Administration at University, plus an additional 10+ years of working for the Canadian government. That, however, still doesn’t make me qualified to educate my children about government-related matters because my kids know more. They have Tik Tok.

From Tik Tok, they learn a ton. A lot of it is really helpful, and useful, and informative. The facts that these kids pepper me with are factually correct, and legitimate. Considering the chaos around schooling during a pandemic, it’s nice to see the kids are learning important facts, however, some of these facts are a bit, shall we say, too far to the left, and blur the lines between what’s going on the in the US, and what political life is like in Canada.

The extra scrutiny of the Trump Republicans in the US has caused kids to not only tie together Conservativism in the US with Conservatism in Canada, but it also brought along the stereotypes and misinformation from the US, up to Canada. I can’t say how many times, I’ve mentioned that the Canadian conservatives won’t allow guns, won’t discuss abortion and that conservatives are not Neanderthals who treat people different by race, age, sex, religion or nationality. It’s not a thing.

With all of that being said, I do welcome the attention that they now pay to politics, and enjoy the dialogues that we can have around what’s best for Canada and what’s best for Canadians. If my kids know anything, it’s how to spend only the money they have, and not the money they hope to have or hope to borrow, thus making themselves fiscally responsible. They also know that this government in particular is fiscally irresponsible and they do not like the concept that their taxes will be higher as they start to earn money.

When prompted what they would do if they strived to be a high income earner, to start a business, employ and support others and earn as much as they could, they were quite frank in their replies. They would take less money to offer their employees a higher wage/salary. I commend them for that. Unfortunately, when prompted about what they would do if the government took 60% of their income or more, they simply replied, that they would move to a country which took less.

This is my biggest fear with the way this government has gone about their business.

When an election comes, they spend, spend, spend, because they know 3 things. First, that ordinary Canadians appreciate the spending and think the government is doing something for them. Second, they know that if either of the governments are critical of the spending, they would in turn be criticized by Canadians, and third, they know that when a new government takes over and has to balance the budget, by spending less or cutting costs, that narrative doesn’t go over well at all, and can be used as a re-election strategy (re-elect us, because we don’t cut everything like they do).

With all that being said, I expect this will be an election budget, not a pandemic budget, meaning, spending a LOT of money on everything and not making any controversial decisions. No taxes. No cuts. Just spend, spend, spend, without any regard for who is going to pay and when.

Can’t wait to discuss this with the kids, at a more appropriate time.

We started to have this conversation but then one of 2 dreadful commercials came on the TV. It’s a commercial with Heinz Ketchup (a brand we love), in which a potato with a face gets cut up and eaten. It’s enough to not want us to eat potatoes anymore, and just barely exceeds that horrible Pepsi commercial with ice cubes with faces are plummeted into a glass where they melt to death.

As the kids pointed out, we don’t eat as much mean because of the efforts associating the food with a living being that has feelings. After watching those commercials, the kids want to establish a charity to save the potatoes and save the ice cubes.

UGH.