'Hook, line and sinker'

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, February 28, 2009 at 3:01 PM - 9 Comments

David Pugliese counters yesterday’s “news.”

The Russians have been doing such sorties for the last year and a half. In August 2007 Russian President Putin announced to the world that such sorties would begin again. “Starting in 1992, the Russian Federation unilaterally suspended strategic aviation flights to remote areas,” Putin said at the time. “Regrettably, other nations haven’t followed our example. That has created certain problems for Russia’s security.”

Yesterday’s incident prompted some amusement at NDHQ about how gullible some in  the news media can be and how easily some journalists swallowed the government’s bait hook, line and sinker.

However, that laughter was somewhat tempered by mid-afternoon when TV newscasts started linking the Arctic sovereignty issue and the Russian sortie. NDHQ types started getting worried that journalists would later start asking about what was happening with the Arctic training base, the Arctic patrol ships and the new icebreaker that were promised by the Harper government. The answer to what’s happening with those projects is “very little,” said one DND insider.

Up for air

By Andrew Potter - Saturday, February 28, 2009 at 12:34 PM - 0 Comments

Greetings, PotterGoldsters:

Some of you might have noticed that my blogging has been exceedingly light over the past few months; probably the lightest period of blogging since I started blogging for This Magazine seven years ago.

There was a reason for it: I’ve had a long-outstanding book due for a publisher in Canada and the US, a project on the culture of authenticity and the modern search for meaning. I submitted the manuscript yesterday, thanks to my fantastic agent, encouragement from my editors and — it has to be conceded — a fairly significant threat. As the saying goes, it isn’t that I work best under pressure; I work only under pressure.

Anyway, there is lots more work to be done before the book sees the light of day, but I should now be able to find time to blog. More importantly, I should be able to find time to read and think about things to blog about.

On thing I’ve wanted to do for a while is start a book club on this blog. Joe Heath has a book coming out very soon that I’m really excited about. Maybe we’ll read that first.

Meanwhile, see you all Monday.

Weekend Viewing: "Real Families"

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 11:27 PM - 0 Comments

I didn’t have time to seek out something to embed this weekend, so in honour(?) of Jerry Seinfeld’s “The Marriage Ref,” here again is the famous 1980 WKRP episode about a network reality show where the hosts make fun of ordinary people with imperfect marriages. Replace Peter Marshall with Jerry Seinfeld and you’ve got the future of NBC. Incidentally, it seems like in the late ’70s and early ’80s there was a lot of worrying, in popular culture, about reality television and its inherent cruelty. Albert Brooks’s Real Life, which undoubtedly influenced this and a number of other TV episodes, and Stephen King’s “The Running Man,” which was published in 1982. So reality-bashing isn’t exactly new.

The announcer is Johnny Olsen (The Price is Right). Music includes “Peg” by Steely Dan, “You Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC, “She’s So Cold” by the Rolling Stones and the then-new “Once In a Lifetime” by Talking Heads. Oh, and for an unplanned connection to last week’s weekend viewing: the daughter, Stacy Heather Tolkin, was the voice of Sally in The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three
Continue…

He is of everywhere

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 10:55 PM - 75 Comments

Michael Ignatieff, speaking to a town hall in Halifax, Jan. 8. I have the unique distinction of being probably the only Canadian in the world who has two members of his family who both wrote biographies of Nova Scotia’s greatest man, Joe Howe. How about that? It’s a true story. My great grandfather wrote a biography of Joe Howe, whose statue is maybe 400 yards away. And my grandfather wrote a biography. I don’t know how they ended up doing that, but they did. So Joe Howe’s been a hero all my life. And Joe Howe said a great thing, which we should remember and should be above the doors of Parliament. “The only questions I ask myself are: What is right? What is just? And what is for the public good?” And that’s what we have to talk about this afternoon.

Michael Ignatieff, speaking to the Empire Club and Canadian Club in Toronto, Jan. 23. The Empire Club and the Canadian Club are institutions that have always mattered to my family. My great-grandfather—a proud New Brunswicker named George Parkin—spoke to the club. My grandfather—a Russian émigré named Paul Ignatieff—spoke to this club. My Dad spoke to this club in 1969. He said then: “Those to whom this opportunity is offered, I realize, have to be brilliant, or original, or both. Since there is difficulty in being brilliant when you are trying to be original, and being original when you are trying to be brilliant, I shall merely try to be informative.” 

Michael Ignatieff, speaking to a town hall in Orillia, Feb. 7. This town will be forever associated with Stephen Leacock. Just a little story … My grandfather was a school teacher and he taught school with Stephen Leacock. They were personal friends.

Michael Ignatieff, speaking to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce, tonight. “I am delighted to be back in the City of Champions. In 1872, my great-great-grandfather, the Reverend George Grant, joined his lifelong friend, Sir Sandford Fleming, in travelling across Canada to survey a route for the transcontinental railroad. After arriving in Edmonton, my great-great-grandfather wrote: “Looking fairly at all the facts, admitting all the difficulties, and what country has not its own drawbacks, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that we have a great and fertile North-west … capable of containing a population of millions. It is a fair land; rich in furs and fish, in treasures of the forest, the field, and the mine; seamed by navigable rivers, interlaced by numerous creeks, and beautified by a thousand lakes; broken by swelling uplands, wooded hill-sides and bold ridges … The air is pure, dry and bracing all year round.” He put those words into a book, Ocean to Ocean, which provided many Canadians with their first glimpse of the future province of Alberta. 

The Minister of National Defence and Minister for the Atlantic Gateway

By Paul Wells - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 10:11 PM - 35 Comments

MUSIC: Bach To Basics?

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 8:41 PM - 6 Comments

I recently ordered a new CD (yes, I still listen to some music in disc form) that hasn’t been released in North America yet but has been available in France for some months: a recording of Bach’s much-recorded Mass in B Minor by the French conductor Marc Minkowski and his period-instrument orchestra Les Musiciens Du Louvre.

Minkowski is one of the period-instrument conductors who does the most consistently interesting work, along with René Jacobs and a few others. Many historically-inclined conductors get a little timid about doing things that aren’t authentic or historically justified, with the result that their performances can sound just as tame as the big-orchestra baroque performances that they replaced. Minkowski, who in addition to his baroque conducting is also a specialist in 19th-century French music (especially Offenbach), may sometimes err, but he rarely errs on the side of timidity; he’d rather be weird than dull.

This is his second recording under his new contract with the French label Naïve (he was with the big label Deutsche Grammophon for many years until it cut down its roster); his first was a disc of music from Bizet’s Carmen and L’Arlesienne, which may have been the best classical recording of 2008. This one will be more controversial, and I’m not completely sure yet what my reaction is to it… but I think I like it.

The reason it will be controversial is that Minkowski has chosen to perform this Mass, one of the longest and most famous of all choral works, without a chorus. There is a theory advanced by some musicologists/performers that Bach’s works weren’t actually intended for a “chorus” in the sense of a large group of singers. Instead, the soloists would also sing the chorus parts. In the case of the Mass, which was never performed during Bach’s lifetime, it’s written in a way that makes it seem likely that he didn’t expect to have completely separate teams of solo singers and chorus singers. Minkowski, in common with two or three other conductors who have recorded the Mass, uses ten solo singers who take turns doing the solo numbers and also act as the chorus: two voices to each part. Sometimes he seems to mix n’ match a bit, using just one voice to a part when that will sound better.

As the liner notes explain (and Naïve always has big, well-made book-like packaging with notes, essays, and texts; they make the best case for actually buying CDs as opposed to downloads), while Minkowski thinks this is probably the historically accurate way to do the Mass, that’s not the reason he chose it; he chose this method because it makes the Mass seem more like Bach’s famous Brandenburg concertos, where “a dozen or so instrumentalists collaborate as a tightly knit ensemble.” The idea is that instead of alternating between the chorus and soloists, or (as some recordings do) having the solos sung by members of the full chorus, you have a small team that does it all, and the drama comes from seeing and hearing what they’re going to do next or who’s going to sing what. This recording was made in conjunction with live performances — I don’t know if it was actually made at live performances; there’s no audience noise — and I suspect that this method, done right, would work wonderfully in a live performance. It’s a little more questionable on a recording, where the voices are all you have and it’s easier to hear how incredibly difficult it is for two people to carry an entire chorus part on their own. But it is pretty fascinating to hear, and there is some drama in hearing the singers try to blend into one unit, then become individuals again when they sing on their own. The soloists are mostly good, though the best-known of them, Nathalie Stutzmann, has a voice I can’t listen to with much pleasure (she not only sounds like a man, but a very depressed man). There’s also, of course, a Canadian, Colin Balzer. Canadians rule the classical world.

I wouldn’t want to hear this piece done like this every time, but there’s an argument for hearing it done this way once, especially in excellent sound and with the energy that’s typical of Minkowski’s conducting. I’m not always completely sold on Bach because he’s so… well… churchy rather than theatrical, but Minkowski seems to understand and convey the drama that’s inherent in religious music. His approach isn’t as extroverted as I might have expected, but it’s never sludgy or ponderous like some performances of this work can be. And maybe the small-chorus method helps here, by making the piece sound more intimate and human than it usually does.

There’s a YouTube video made by the record company as a promotion for the recording; this doesn’t really give a full idea of what the recording is like, but it does give an idea of the approach.

Sarkozy: It's French for "worn out"

By Paul Wells - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 7:08 PM - 31 Comments

Off the record, ministers and advisors in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government tell Le Monde: He’s paralyzed, he’s worn out, we can’t execute all his plans, he’s contradictory, he’s a control freak who can’t control what a freak he is…well, I’ll let them tell it. As always, the Sarkozy government is fun in its own right, and perhaps instructive as a funhouse mirror of administrations closer to home. Fun excerpts:

The hyper-presidency has reached its limits. The method was supposed to allow quicker action, by having every reform led from Elysée Palace. Ater two years, the machine seems to have seized up.

The Elysée can’t manage to implement the 1,001 reforms announced amid great media pomp. There’s no follow-up. “Once a decision has been made we can’t follow reforms through. It’s humanly, administratively, impossible,” says a presidential advisor. Continue…

The Curious Case of Barack Obama

By John Parisella - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 6:53 PM - 29 Comments

What is it with this guy? Barack Obama’s first 100 days have to rank among the most active in over 70 years.

He promised a stimulus package and signed one two weeks ago; he promised mortgage relief and delivered; and while Secretary Geithner may have been short on details as far as relief for the financial sector is concerned, he still delivered the beginnings of a more comprehensive package. In the meantime, Obama announced the closing of Gitmo and, just today, he elaborated on his Iraq strategy. Obama’s visit to Canada clearly illustrated a new era in American diplomacy and his address to Congress this Tuesday further outlined his commitment to four major policy areas—energy, health care, climate change, and education. And he’s got a plan for all of it to boot. Still, the fight over the budget remains.

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Found: the Republicans' leader

By Paul Wells - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 6:25 PM - 52 Comments

He’s Rush Limbaugh, crowned by a liberal group with money for an ad campaign. This ad could be a good place to start a conversation about the whole idea of “negative campaigning,” because I’ll be a lot of people who were furious when the Harper Conservatives were taking shots at Stéphane Dion over the past couple of years caught themselves feeling pretty good about this Rush Republicans ad. Sauce for the goose…

When Executives Become Producers

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 5:51 PM - 1 Comment

You may have read the news that Chris Albrecht, the former mastermind of HBO (until he had to step down due to his arrest in 2007), has set up his first show as an independent producer: “The Borgias,” a Franco-American co-production to be created and written by Tom Fontana (Oz, Homicide). The concept itself is plausible enough as a way of piggybacking on the success of The Tudors – pretty soon there’ll be a show about every scandalous aristocratic family — but what interests me is the question of what happens when a TV executive goes into producing.

Different executives come from different kinds of backgrounds, and some of them actually started out as producers before going into the development/network side of things. But when they can no longer get work running a network, they usually announce that they’re going to develop their own projects, and it doesn’t always go well. Jamie Tarses, former NBC and ABC head, did manage to put together the reasonably successful My Boys for TBS. But Warren Littlefield, who was a well-respected development executive at NBC in its ’90s glory years (and who was affectionately parodied by Bob Balaban as “Russell Dalrymple” on Seinfeld, a show Littlefield oversaw), couldn’t come up with much more than the quirky cult flop Keen Eddie, and he did better than his mentor Brandon Tartikoff, whose post-NBC career as an independent producer was quite dismal.

It’s not exactly big news that the skills required to develop a show as a network executive are different from the ones needed to develop a show as a producer, even a non-writing producer; the jobs may both be essentially executive positions, but the objectives are different. The network executive mostly needs to have, or pretend to have, a sense of what the audience will want to see. The producer has to have a sense of what the network executives will want to buy. It often turns out that executives, after they leave the network, don’t necessarily understand what it is that makes a network executive want to buy a show. Can you blame them? No one really knows, not even the executives themselves.

I end this post with this only marginally-relevant clip of TV executive Jordan Levin, who, after being one of the people who helped found and run the WB, now produces what appear to be the equivalent of very expensive YouTube videos.

Speaking Of Dickens…

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 5:16 PM - 1 Comment

PBS has picked up the North American rights to last year’s BBC miniseries based on Little Dorrit, written by their resident miniseries guy Andrew Davies. The first episode will air on Masterpiece Theatre on March 29.

The miniseries didn’t get very good ratings (nothing compared to the response to Davies’ Bleak House miniseries that made him the BBC’s star adaptor), even though it was hyped as being particularly relevant to the times: the theme of the novel is money and its corrupting influence on human relationships; there’s a very Bernie Madoff-ish character in the story, and it’s the book where Dickens introduced the idea that the government has a “Circumlocution Office” devoted to making sure that nothing ever gets done, by tying up every new idea or invention in endless red tape.

But while Little Dorrit may be my favourite Dickens, it’s a very hard book to adapt; the 1988 two-part movie version has fans, but I’m not one of them. It has at least two big problems for adaptors. One is that it doesn’t have as many colourful characters and events as Dickens’ other books; it may actually be his best-written book, but it doesn’t have any characters who have become cultural icons, and it doesn’t have as many violent and spectacular events that made Bleak House such a perfect candidate for Davies’ soap-opera approach. The lack of colourful characters may be part of what hurt it in the ratings; most of the time is taken up with the hero, a man approaching middle age and trying all sorts of failed schemes to give direction to his rudderless life, and the heroine, a tiny, mousy young woman who has great strength of character but a no strength of personality.

The other problem is that even though it has Dickens’ usual complicated, coincidence-heavy plot with melodramatic contrivances that are set up at the beginning and revealed at near the end, the story is split into two separate parts, one when the title character lives in debtors’ prison with her father (“Poverty”), the other when a long-lost plot contrivance has made her family rich but even more dysfunctional (“Wealth”). The break between the two parts is very awkward, yet neither part works as a separate story on its own. So it’s hard for an adaptor to whittle the story down to a manageable size, whereas with Dickens’ other novels it’s at least possible.

Econowatch

By Steve Maich - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments

As they have so often over the past few months, General Motors and Chrysler—the two most troubled of Detroit’s automakers—were at centre stage of the economy this week. The two companies outlined their plans for survival, which include a request for close to US$56 billion in emergency government aid. Up to $10 billion is to come from Ottawa and the Ontario government. The rest is expected to come from Uncle Sam.

In return for this public largesse, the automakers promise to maintain some manufacturing capacity in Canada, but it’ll be nothing like the glory days. GM has said it will cut its Canadian workforce to 7,000 by the end of next year (down from 20,000 in 2005), and will shut down more than 200 dealerships across the country. Chrysler wasn’t so detailed with its plans, but there is little doubt the cuts will be similarly drastic.

Continue…

Recovery is impossible without some change

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 4:15 PM - 46 Comments

The longer the credit crisis wears on, it seems, the less we learn. In the early days the signal-to-noise ratio in the commentary was relatively high, as these things go. But since the crisis intensified last fall, the volume of nonsense has grown exponentially, and not all of it in Paul Krugman’s columns.

Each new intervention only spurs calls for still more radical measures, often to deal with the consequences of the last. So the expenditure of trillions of borrowed dollars in fiscal “stimulus,” much of which will, as critics suggest, be dissipated on imports from other countries, becomes the pretext for “Buy America” rules, to prevent such “free riding.” In the same way, corporate bailouts are used to justify capping the salaries of executives at recipient firms—which may at least make these CEOs think twice before taking the government dosh.

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Coyne v. Wells on the sorry, sorry state of the media: All the self-pity, and twice the denial!

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 3:41 PM - 85 Comments

Coyne and Wells discuss hard times for the media

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Coyne v. Wells on the sad state of the media business

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 3:36 PM - 0 Comments

Coyne and Wells discuss hard times for the media

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Watch the HQ Version

Coyne v. Wells on the sad state of the media business

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 3:35 PM - 26 Comments

Coyne and Wells discuss hard times for the media

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Experts (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 3:02 PM - 13 Comments

The Justice Minister announces new mandatory minimums for serious drug crimes.

He acknowledged the added jail time might not deter hardened gang members inclined to violence, but added, “We have to start somewhere.”

Travel's wild web

By Nina Slawek, Takeoffeh.com - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 3:00 PM - 4 Comments

Now everyone’s an expert. From Uncle Joe to the Taxi Driver – they all have a line on the best deal, the best website. And who doesn’t love a deal?

The companies that own a large share of mind in this brave new world are the big box travel agencies such as Expedia and Travelocity (and yes, they are travel agencies). They sometimes feature better prices because they sell in volume. But the choice is limited to mass-market options. They cannot offer you that cute little farmhouse in Tuscany where the owner shares winemaking tips. Nor can they suggest which all-inclusive property in the Dominican will be best suited to your personal travel style.

Experts

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 2:59 PM - 29 Comments

Stephen Harper, yesterday. “First of all, we know that those who have traditionally advocated soft-on-crime policies will continue to oppose this kind of legislation It is essential for deterrence to have strong penalties that we know will be enforced … The truth of the matter is, those who say that tougher penalties on perpetrators will not work don’t want them to work, because they don’t believe in this kind of approach … les soi-disons ‘experts’ s’opposent à ces législations, ce sont les experts qui nous ont donné la situation actuelle.”

Despite such talk, the so-called “experts” continue to assert their so-called “grasp” on so-called “reality.” Continue…

The Nuclear Age

By Alex Shimo - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 2:35 PM - 8 Comments

The weekly announcements of yet another new nuclear plant in the works suggest an industry gaining credibility after years of environmental backlash and NIMBYism. The province of Ontario says it will build two nuclear reactors at the Darlington generating station east of Toronto. Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall says his province will be “the Saudi Arabia of uranium for the world”, hopefully without that country’s security concerns. In Manitoba, the town of Pinawa, Man., 180 km northeast of Winnipeg, is in discussions with Atomic Energy of Canada to put a nuclear lab in the town. The site used to have a functioning plant in the 1960s, but it was closed in 1998.

Many Canadian environmental groups, from the Pembina Institute to Greenpeace Canada, has firmly come out against this rise in nuclear power. And while the problems of nuclear power are well known – managing the waste, contamination and the inevitable accidents, there has been a shift in public perception, especially in countries with much stricter carbon dioxide targets than Canada. Indeed, many prominent greens have come out in favour of nuclear energy as an unfortunate, but necessary evil. Stephen Tindale, former director of Greenpeace UK, says he has had an about face, almost like a religious conversion, and now embraces nuclear energy as the only way to solve climate change. George Monbiot, author of Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning, has also had a change of heart, and now says that nuclear power is “less threatening” than climate change.

Of course, neither solution sounds particularly welcoming – it’s hard to say whether frying later is preferable to living on top of a contaminated nuclear site. However, if nuclear power really is the only way to stop the planet’s meltdown, perhaps this nuclear renaissance should be embraced.

The Obama Mega-Budget simplified

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 2:28 PM - 10 Comments

This illuminating chart ran in the Washington Post today. Accompanying stories here and here.

SOURCE: Office of Management and Budget, By Karen Yourish and Laura Stanton, the Washington Post.

DHS Secretary Napolitano on the Northern Border

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 2:03 PM - 5 Comments

Obama’s new secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, just held a conference call for Canadian reporters to explain the Northern Border Directive she had issued and tamp down reports in the Canadian media that she’s planning to “thicken” the border.

She said that as a former Southern border state governor from Arizona, she doesn’t know much about the situation on America’s northern border and the directive was a way of getting the department to inform her about issues such as manpower, technology, volume of crossings, places of greatest concentration, etc.

“I’m just trying to ask some questions. You would do the same thing if you had come into a large department…” she said.

I asked Napolitano whether, given the economic crisis, and the longstanding complaints from business about the increased costs of post-9/11 security measures and other red tape and fees, would the Obama administration change the “security trumps trade” approach of the Bush administration to one that reconceptualizes security to include economic security.

Her answer was:

“I think that phrase ‘thickening of the border’… I found it a difficult phrase I’m not sure it’s an accurate characterization.”

(These guys would beg to differ. Also these people. And them.)

But she added, ” I am very cognizant of the balance must be struck” [between security and trade.]

She said the stimulus bill would provide additional funds for improving infrastructure on the northern border, but wasn’t ready to announce where or by how much.

She was very upfront in saying, “I am just beginning to learn about this border.”

She said she’s planning a visit to the Canada-US border; no date yet.

You're Blind, Ump, You're Blind, Ump, You Must Be Out of Your Mind, Ump!

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 1:50 PM - 6 Comments

For years there’s been talk of doing a remake of Damn Yankees, and now that they finally have a cast in place, with Jake Jake Gyllenhaal as the Faust figure who sells his soul to the devil to be a baseball player and Jim Carrey as Satan (typecasting!), they’ve waited so long that the plot setup will have to be changed: since the Yankees no longer win every year, they can’t really make a musical about someone who sells his soul for a chance to beat the Yankees. But they can’t change the title either, because, well, what’s the point. So it’ll be interesting to see what veteran writers Lowell Ganz and “Babaloo” Mandel (who haven’t actually written a good script in years, and who lose extra baseball-comedy points for being responsible for Fever Pitch) make of it.

This is actually a good property to remake. It’s got name recognition, it’s got several recognizable hit songs, it lends itself to updating because most of the story is not very era-specific, and it’s also a subject that lends itself to location shooting (many musicals do not work if you take them outdoors). The original movie is well-known, but it’s not so good that it can’t be improved upon: it kept nearly all of the stage cast (like the movie version of the previous show by the same people, The Pajama Game) and the stage director, George Abbott, leading to an authentic Broadway feel but also a certain staginess and a lack of movie glamour. (By being so faithful to the stage play it retained some of the flaws of the stage play, like the fact that the female lead, Lola, doesn’t appear in the show until it’s almost half over.) It also cut some good songs from the play, like the raunchy “The Game.” A new movie with a bigger budget and a less stage-bound feel could actually work, done right. (They’d have to go back to the source novel, “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant,” for some additional ideas that weren’t used in the play, and drop a few songs that aren’t relevant to the story, like “Who’s Got the Pain?,” which only worked because Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse needed a specialty number in the second act.)

Also, this subject has new relevance because of the steroid era. The story of a man who literally sells his soul for the chance to become a great baseball player, and leads his team to victory with supernatural enhancement, has all kinds of potential parallels to what’s been going on in baseball for the last decade or two.

I’m pretty sure Carrey can handle the one song in his role (it was written for Ray Walston, not exactly a classically-trained vocalist); I have no idea if the Guy Gyllenhaal can sing, but I guess he’ll learn.

Sorry, have we met?

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 1:46 PM - 13 Comments

Photo by Alan Hustak

Last week’s Maclean’s story detailing strategist and organizer Beryl Wajsman’s return to the Liberal Party of Canada has erupted in Ottawa. Wajsman, whose name appeared on a list of ten prominent Liberals “banned” from the party following the sponsorship scandal in 2005, has since returned to the Liberal fold, primarily as an organizer for Michael Ignatieff advisor Alfred Apps.

Conservative Public Works Minister Christian Paradis brought up Wajsman’s return in the House of Commons yesterday, and followed up with a press release saying the Liberal Party “has clearly not learned its lesson from the Sponsorship Scandal.”

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