Harper's in deep

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 4:42 PM - 25 Comments

A poll we commissioned for Barack Obama’s visit this week contained a curiosity for domestic political watchers. When we asked which federal leader—Michael Ignatieff or Stephen Harper—would maintain a good relationship with the new U.S. President, Ignatieff came out on top. No surprise there: the Liberal leader made a name for himself as a foreign-policy intellectual and his values square nicely with those of Obama, a Democrat. But when we tried the obverse question—which leader would stand up to Obama when Canada’s interests are threatened—Ignatieff still came out on top. Fully 36 per cent of those surveyed by Angus Reid Strategies figured the Grit boss was up to the task, compared to 28 per cent who had faith in the prime minister (14 per cent said neither; 22 per cent weren’t sure).

The finding invites a number of interpretations. Maybe Canadians admire Ignatieff’s credentials as a foreign-policy thinker. Perhaps Harper is unable to shake the Conservatives’ longstanding rep as the aye-aye Uncle Sam party. Or maybe it is a measure of the deep hole Harper has dug for himself.

The PM has faced a lot of this sort of news since Ignatieff—once dismissed as a haughty intellectual—adroitly snared the Liberal leadership in December. In a recent Harris-Decima poll, Ignatieff was the only federal party leader to receive a net positive rating (43 per cent favourable versus 32 per cent unfavourable; Harper’s numbers were 43 and 49, respectively). Respondents to the Maclean’s poll, meanwhile, gave Ignatieff a 42 per cent overall approval rating, compared to 38 per cent for Harper.

For Tories trying to gauge the full impact of the pre-Christmas parliamentary crisis, this is stomach-churning news. A couple of months ago, Canadians’ distaste for another election clearly outweighed their disgust with the Tories for triggering the showdown. But Harper is now in a head-to-head contest with the Ignatieff-led Liberals, rather than with a hypothetical coalition of Dion-led Grits and NDPers. The best he can hope for now is that the approval numbers are misleading. Could respondents be voicing general crankiness, rather than genuine political preference? Are they upset about some specific Conservative policy?

That’s where detailed questions about specific policy areas come in. Our query on relations with Obama, after all, was in essence a question on leadership. That Harper scored badly on both sides of it speaks to serious issues of trust. It’s not just that people think Harper will offend Obama, or that he will cave to the U.S. leader. It’s that they’ve lost confidence in his basic judgment. Or, more accurately, more of them trust Ignatieff’s judgment than trust his. For the Liberals, the danger lies in over-estimating the depth and meaning of that distrust. Does it relate specifically to U.S. relations, or to issues across the board? Is it regionally concentrated, or does it apply equally across the country? Will it hold if the Grits trigger an election?

We have only hints with which to answer these questions, but some are pretty compelling. Ignatieff’s decision to support the Conservative budget two weeks ago, for instance, actually burnished him in the eyes of voters, suggesting broad-based receptiveness to his chosen compromise (a Canadian Press-Harris-Decima survey suggested 72 per cent support for his idea of quarterly “updates” on the stimulus package in exchange for supporting the budget). And while Harper’s approval rating has held in Alberta at 59 per cent, the Maclean’s poll suggests it has plunged in other parts of the country. In the former Reform-Alliance-Conservative stronghold of B.C., for example, it has sagged to 45 per cent while nearly one out of two people surveyed in B.C. disapprove of the PM’s performance. In Quebec, his approval rating has plummeted to 22 per cent.

None of this is to say the Tories can’t come back—at least they have some sense of how far they’ve fallen. But they better start climbing soon, because the hole can get deeper still. And the way things are going, the idea of Ignatieff stumbling into it with them seems like a lot to hope for.

Big Yellow Taxi

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 4:05 PM - 32 Comments

Today in unflattering, if unfair, but also fun and vaguely instructive, comparisons.

Washington Post. President Obama today signed into law a $787 billion economic stimulus plan that he said begins “the essential work of keeping the American dream alive in our time.” In a speech and signing ceremony in Denver, Obama said the new law is aimed at creating millions of jobs and halting the U.S. economy’s downward spiral … Obama said the legislation will save or create 3.5 million jobs over the next two years, pulling the nation back from the brink of what he has called a potential economic catastrophe. The measure aims to spur job growth through massive new investments in energy, transportation, education and health-care projects, while reviving social safety-net programs.

National Post. Prime Minister Stephen Harper touched down in Toronto this morning. He and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty rode into a GO train maintenance shed aboard a special GO train to announce $500-million in new money for GO. Of the money, $173-million will add about 5,000 more parking spaces at 12 GO train stations around greater Toronto. Another $75.5-million goes to the Hamilton Junction Project, a job to rebuild the rails in downtown Hamilton so that more trains can leave Hamilton every day for Toronto … The parking structures he is funding are all in the 905 region, including $30.5-million for a new GO parking structure in Cooksville (downtown Mississauga) and $30-million for a structure in Erindale (also Mississauga.). The third big parking garage is a $30.5-million job in Oakville.

Two speeches (can you believe it?) on NATO and Afghanistan

By John Geddes - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 4:03 PM - 3 Comments

Paul Wells points out the apparent inconsistency between Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s two major speeches about Afghanistan and the future of the NATO this month. He’s right of course that MacKay seems to have, at the very least, shifted his emphasis.

Still, it looks to me like MacKay is systematically working to make Canada’s voice on these important issues heard in advance of the NATO defence ministers Feb. 19-20 meetings in Krakow, Poland, and that show of active engagement on the world stage—a rare thing from this government—looks good on him.

Continue…

On the agenda

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 3:52 PM - 4 Comments

From Canwest’s account of Ignatieff in Quebec City.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff will raise the fate of Omar Khadr — the only Canadian imprisoned in the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay — when he meets Thursday with U.S. President Barack Obama.

The Liberal leader has taken on a campaign, along with other opposition leaders, to repatriate the 22-year-old detainee and recently urged Obama in a letter to release Khadr immediately. But he refused to say if he will use this meeting to ask the U.S. president to pressure the Canadian government to repatriate Khadr.

“I don’t think you ever put pressure on the President of the United States,” he said. “He’s our guest, we will welcome him with friendship and affection and we will have a frank and clear discussion.”

Ignatieff added, he intends to congratulate Obama on his decision to close the U.S. prison camp.

“We want to help Mr. Obama in any way we can to bring the Guantanamo Bay episode to a close and that necessarily means that Mr. Khadr, a Canadian citizen, should come home and face justice in Canada,” Ignatieff told reporters in Quebec City.

'Sum: Forty tales from the afterlives' by David Eagleman

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 3:49 PM - 1 Comment

It’s often remarked, particularly by atheists, that most postulated hells are richly imagined, with precise levels of pain laid out for the most remote niches of sin, while heaven tends to be rather, well, fluffy: white clouds, harps, unending songs of praise, and … otherwise indescribable. That’s presumably because humans have no difficulty at all in imagining absolutely everything going bad, and a much, much harder time with the opposite. Something much the same illuminates Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives (Penguin), neuroscientist David Eagleman’s brilliant, witty, endlessly inventive collection of micro-tales of various post-life existences. Most involve God (or other creators) and the notion of reward (just or otherwise); it’s only that the more interesting things get, the more they resemble hell, or at least our current existence.

Take the title story, for example. In this afterlife the deceased relive everything, but this time events are reshuffled so that like moments are grouped together: the do-over does give you seven straight months of having sex, but that has to be balanced against 18 days of staring into the fridge, not to mention five months of sitting on a toilet flipping through magazines. Or “Perpetuity,” where the dead awaken in a typical North American suburb. Some of the dead, that is; the survivors soon learn that all the truly good people they had once known—Samaritans, saints, philanthropists—didn’t make it, but remain “rotting in coffins, the foodstuff of worms.” Naturally, a current of unease floats under the good life, popping up while shopping or barbequing: whatever God has in mind for the sinners, it can’t be good. (One character theorizes He’s stockpiling soldiers for an eventual war with another God in the next universe over.) But no one guesses the truth. We were made not just in God’s physical image, but his social one too. He spends most of his time pursuing happiness and attempting to avoid boredom. He’s grown bitter and envious of our brief lives, and those of his creation whom He dislikes are condemned to the same immortality that weighs upon him. That old song, “Everybody wants to go to Heaven, nobody wants to die”? Eagleman will have you believing the opposite.

Vaguely Alarming E-mail Message of the Day

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 3:03 PM - 0 Comments

“Jack Layton is now following you on Twitter.”

Car trouble

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 1:30 PM - 1 Comment

News of GM and Chrysler restructuring has sent the Canadian auto industry into a tailspin, again. Our auto trade deficit (the value of vehicle and parts imports minus exports) has more than doubled since last year to $13.8 billion, a record low. (A decade ago, Canada enjoyed a surplus of $14.3 billion.) For the first time ever, when you combine the U.S. and Mexico markets, supply of Canadian-made vehicles has outstripped demand. Trade to Asia and Europe is hardly better. If the automakers negotiate a loan agreement with Washington, it could mean plant closures and major job losses in Canada—on top of the thousands of layoffs that have already happened over the last year, especially in southern Ontario. Later this week, GM and Chrysler Canada will court provincial and federal governments for $4 billion in aid. No matter, car analyst Dennis DesRosier says “ultimately it will end up in blood on the factory floor here.”

Toronto Star

On seriousness

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 1:15 PM - 29 Comments

Rob Silver delves into parliamentary reform.

Lots of people – including many politicians and pundits – talk a lot about how horrified they are by parliamentary decorum. Accusations of a doctored tape here, your family are a bunch of terrorists there. That’s our House.

Shock, horror is expressed. Promises to raise the tone are made. I blame Harper, Tim blames the Liberals. And on it goes. You want to change the tone in the House of Commons in one day? Pass a law eliminating parliamentary privilege as it relates to defamation. Treat the House the exact same way you treat the scrum outside the chamber.

There isn’t a single substantive issue or debate that I can think of that would be harmed in any way.

The Love Affair With Obama

By John Parisella - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 1:11 PM - 11 Comments

I am not surprised that Canadians are getting caught up in the hype surrounding Barack Obama. Personally, I have already been invited to present six conferences since his election to discuss the ‘Obama Effect.’ Why is this? Have we suddenly fallen for the rock star glamour surrounding his success? It is all a bit odd, considering polls taken in Canada at this time a year ago seemed to favour Hillary Clinton.

To some, his popularity in Canada should be seen as an indictment of our current political class. After all, no party leader in Canada is polling above 35 per cent; no provincial leader is considered an emerging PM—in fact, I know few Canadians who can name all ten premiers; and the federal cabinet is virtually anonymous. To others, this seemingly invisible and unexciting political class is consistent with the nature of our country: boring, overly polite, and reluctant to boast about its achievements. Fareed Zakaria’s column in Newsweek addresses this perception of Canada as the “boring neighbor to the north.” In it, Zakaria describes our country as a model of good governance, lauds our still-imperfect health care system as superior to the US model, and acknowledges that our more reliable and secure banking system is a source of greater financial stability. An American journalist praising Canada on the eve of a visit by the most popular American president in recent memory? Wow! Not bad for a political class that no one really cares for or gets enthused about.

Continue…

Damned if you do . . .

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 14 Comments

B.C. Hydro—one of North America’s greatest champions of compact fluorescent light bulbs—has discovered an “unintended consequence” in their increased use. The cool-burning bulbs have resulted in a substantial decrease in electricity use. But unlike inefficient incandescent bulbs, which give off excess heat, CF bulbs don’t help warm the house . . . so people turn up the thermostat. The result, B.C. Hydro estimates, will be a 45,000 tonne annual increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2017.

The Vancouver Sun

Fun with consistency; or, maybe it's not NATO that Afghanistan is testing

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 12:37 PM - 13 Comments

Peter MacKay, yesterday:

“Afghanistan tests the ability of the alliance to execute its most basic mission in the 21st century and in a global context. If NATO cannot deter or defeat the real physical threat facing alliance members, and indeed contribute to the building of security for the larger international community, then we have to ask ourselves, what is NATO for?”

Peter MacKay, Feb. 8:

“In spite of the challenges, I would suggest that, if Afghanistan was a litmus test for NATO, the Alliance has already passed.”

Will They Or Won't They? Why Should They?

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 12:34 PM - 3 Comments

In comments, Alan asks:

Do you have any thoughts on the general tv sitcom (usually) formula of the will they or won’t they relationship? For example, Tony and Angela from Who’s the Boss?, Ross and Rachel from Friends, Chuck and Sarah from Chuck, etc. It just occurs to me that this is a formula we see repeated in show after show, and that there isn’t really any great resolution to it. On the one hand, if the entire series (say five or six seasons) keeps up the will they or won’t they, then people get really tired of the fact that they aren’t getting together. On the other hand, if they do get together then there’s really no place to go from a storytelling standpoint (e.g. Ross and Rachel).

I think the essential point about sexual tension is that while it’s a long-term trap for a show, it’s a short-term boost — and on a television series, the short term is what matters most. Shows will often start with ideas or relationships that are unsustainable beyond one or two seasons, if that, but the producers can’t afford to worry about what it’s going to do to the show five years from now: they’ll be very, very lucky if they last that long. More to the point, the only way the show will get to run five seasons is if the producers try every ratings-grabbing gimmick they can think of to make it successful, and that includes the sexual tension angle.

One very famous example: when Seinfeld was in danger of being canceled at the end of its first regular season, Larry David wrote an episode — a great episode, and by his own admission the only one with actual human emotion in it — where Jerry and Elaine discover their unresolved sexual tension, try sleeping together without emotional attachments, and then finally end the episode as boyfriend and girlfriend. It worked: the episode did well and the show was picked up for a full season of 22 episodes. When it came back, David simply dropped the whole relationship, because it had been only a stunt to get one good episode and a full-season pickup. But that’s Larry David, and he’s a law unto himself; most producers would feel obligated to stick with something like that, even if they didn’t think it was the right direction for the show. But they all do it, because the short-term interest of keeping a show on the air is the most important consideration. So it’s useful to have the will they/won’t they formula to call on when they need a sweeps stunt. Sure, Chuck will have some problems when Chuck and Sarah finally get together, but it wouldn’t even be around by now if they didn’t have that stuff to put in the promos.

Some shows have tried to defy the sexual-tension conventional wisdom, but it doesn’t usually work. The creator of NewsRadio, Paul Simms, broke NBC’s rules by having Dave and Lisa sleep together in the second episode (“in real life, when people are attracted to each other,” he said, “they tend to have sex”). But NBC insisted that he create a will-they/won’t-they angle in the show’s second (and first full) season by breaking them up and then getting them together again; that probably helped the show get a five-season run. Later on, Simms broke them up permanently and mostly banished their relationship from the show, and judging from the DVD commentaries is genuinely puzzled at the fact that many fans actually liked the relationship stuff and wanted to see Dave and Lisa together. But much as I hate ‘shipping, I have to say he was fighting a losing battle: ‘shipping is just a natural impulse, and many of us are rooting for certain characters to “get together.” If a show doesn’t demonstrate any interest in that stuff at all, a lot of viewers are going to lose interest as well.

Such is our present state

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 12:02 PM - 9 Comments

Glen Pearson on the press gallery.

We are all aware that the media’s chief undertaking now is “agenda setting.”  It instructs us not so much how to think but what to think about. But once it accepts that less reflective role, it lies susceptible to the manipulations of political parties and their ability to capture attention. While a political strategy might indeed have been brilliant and effective, it might also be wrong and evasive.  Yet most in the media will have already moved on from that reality because deadlines were calling. The truth will probably never be discovered because the media really don’t have the time to undertake that kind of investigation.  Political manipulation wins and the truth is obscured or untested.

This is all probably true. Though deadlines are almost definitely a poor excuse. Continue…

Iggy: Western rage scuttled coalition

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 12:02 PM - 10 Comments

In a fascinating interview with the Regina Leader-Post, Michael Ignatieff says the threat of alienating the west   persuaded the new Liberal leader to back away a coalition with the NDP. “You are, after all, looking at someone who turned down the chance to become prime minister of Canada, and I did so, in part, because I felt that it would divide the country,” Ignatieff told the Leader-Post’s Angela Hall just prior to addressing a gaggle of young Saskatchewan Liberals. Ignatieff goes on to more or less rule out a formal coalition with the NDP and basically says Canadians don’t want coalition governments period. “We’ve decided that we’re not comfortable with it.”

Canwest News Service

13-year-old dad heralded as baby-faced symbol of “broken Britain”

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

England’s latest tabloid celebrity, 13-year-old new dad Alfie Patten, has become the poster boy for all that is broken about Britain—from bad parenting to soaring teen pregnancy rates—reports the Telegraph. Thrust into the spotlight by parents who’ve hired a big-league PR guru, Alfie stands, at his full 4 feet, “bewildered and exploited, at the centre of this immorality tale for our times,” alleges the paper in a scathing invective worthy of Trollope. What began as a deeply unfortunate, cautionary account of ill-advised adolescent fumbling  “has deepened into an extraordinarily dysfunctional quagmire of children taking paternity tests, parents sanctioning underage sleepovers in the same room, and family breakdown, all of it played out on Channel 4 and in the red-top newspapers—for a fee.”

Telegraph.co.uk

MacKay pins future of NATO on Afghanistan

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 10:10 AM - 3 Comments

Speaking in London, Eng., Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Afghanistan presents NATO with a test of its purpose and capacity. European commitment to the mission has long been a source of discussion and controversy, and calls for more troops from some allies persist as the U.S. prepares to refocus its efforts in the region. But MacKay, who is said to be pursuing the secretary general position at NATO, may have over-stepped with these latest comments. “The alliance does a lot of different things and plays a lot of different roles, and to hinge it all on the future of an operation in Afghanistan is an unfortunate linkage,” says Allen Sens, a professor at the University of British Columbia.

Ottawa Citizen

Welcome, Mr. Obama. And yes, Harper’s hair is real.

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 10:09 AM - 30 Comments

Briefing Notes for President Barack Obama

Visit to Canada, February 2009

The Country: Our northern neighbour, Canada ranks second in the world in total area, fourth in total land area and 314th among favourite spring break destinations (ahead of “Greenland” and just behind “the basement”). Canada’s population density—3.5 inhabitants per square kilometre—is among the lowest in the world, but crowded enough when you consider that one of those inhabitants used to be Howie Mandel.

System of Government: Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy. At one time a British colony, Canada asserted its political autonomy in 1982 after just 115 years of thinking it through really, really carefully. Britain, which by then had completely forgotten about the whole “Canada” thing, ultimately agreed to grant independence, though mostly to stop Pierre Trudeau from hitting on the Queen.

Continue…

Environment Minister says oil sands "not just a PR problem"

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 9:55 AM - 0 Comments

Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner has been busy of late preparing for U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Ottawa this week. He’s laid charges against oil sands giant Syncrude in the death last year of 500 ducks unfortunate enough to land on one of its toxic tailings pond. And his government last week released a 20-year plan for greener growth in the oil sands. The environmental impacts of the oil sands aren’t “just a PR problem,” Renner, a florist in Medicine Hat before going into politics, told the Edmonton Journal. Still, he says, “It’s incumbent on us not to apologize … but to say we have a system in place to manage the impact and manage it in a reasonable way.”

The Edmonton Journal

B.C. naturopaths could get prescribing power

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 9:45 AM - 0 Comments

B.C. medical doctors are speaking out against a move to allow naturopaths to prescribe medication. If the provincial government goes forward with a proposal to alter its health profession guidelines, B.C. would become the first province to give naturopaths prescribing power. But the B.C. Medical Association argues that the move, which is being touted as means of providing more options for health service delivery, would put patients at risk.

Vancouver Sun

GiornoWatch: Meet Paul Wilson, who, as it turns out, may actually be nonpartisan — or at least markedly less partisan — after all.

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 9:45 AM - 9 Comments

Okay, so it’s possible that ITQ may have been a wee bit too quick to arch her delicately sceptical brow at the notion that the Prime Minister’s newly appointed policy director – who, as of yesterday, is on the job, according to the PMO staff list – could possibly exemplify a new spirit of not-quite-as-zealously-partisanship at Langevin.

Paul Wilson may have spent years on the Hill working for three of the four incarnations of the modern Conservative Party, but this Ottawa Citizen article on the increasing presence of Evangelical Christian lobby and advocacy groups in Ottawa – first published in 2006, and reprinted by the Rockefeller Institute’s Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy – suggests that he made a conscious effort to avoid the big-C Conservative label when he left politics to take up a post with Trinity Western University:

Paul Wilson, director of Trinity’s Ottawa campus, is quick to point out the university’s presence has more to do with its educational mission — to groom active citizens guided by their faith — than with an overtly political agenda.

He bristles at comparisons between Trinity and Patrick Henry College near Washington, which has been described as a Christian college that trains young Republicans to become politicians.

Continue…

Having trouble affording all your mistresses?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 9:43 AM - 2 Comments

Forced to dump all but one of his five mistresses, one Chinese businessman decided to hold a competition to decide which to keep. The winner would receive a monthly US$800, and an apartment. They presented themselves in front of a modeling judge, gave speeches, sang songs, and drank alcohol (to prove their mettle). His twisted contest turned fatal when one of the women, eliminated early, for her looks, drove the businessman and four remaining contestants off a cliff. Only she died. The businessman paid her parents $85,000. His wife and 4 mistresses have since left him.

Daily News

Smooth as a baby’s…?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Move over Botox. A controversial anti-aging product called Vavelta has hit the British market, and it is made from the foreskins of baby boys. Once the skin has been circumcised, scientists isolate its fibroblast cells, and multiply them, then package them into treatment vials. Fibroblasts cells provide skin with its strength, elasticity, resilience and lock-in moisture. According to Intercytex, the Cambridge-based manufacturer, the product can be used to treat wrinkles, acne or burn scars. Each vial costs $1,200 and can treat about 4 centrimetres of skin. In the UK, 150 patients have received the Vavelta injections, but the treatment has yet to be approved by Health Canada or in the United States.

Scientific American

Lily Allen and Perez Hilton in spat

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 9:30 AM - 1 Comment

Having already gone head to head with Elton John, Cheryl Cole and Katy Perry, Lily Allen is now embroiled in a slurring match with celebrity blogger Perez Hilton. The singer told the blogger that he was a “parasite” and a “bitter, lonely old queen” after he encouraged his fans to campaign for Allen to put him in her next music video. The spat, which played out on Twitter, had Hilton delivering his own caustic replies and parodying the lyrics from Allen’s new song “It’s Not Fair.”

Times Online

How to win ministerial enemies…

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 6 Comments

A warning to all past, present and future seekers of federal funding: You might want to avoid calling the guy who signs off on the cheques a “professional whore,” lest you end up facing the same fate as the Canadian Arab Federation. According to a Sun exclusive, the organization, which received almost half a million dollars from Ottawa last year to support its immigrant settlement program in Toronto, faces budgetary retribution after its president, Khaled Mouammar, deployed the epithet in response to criticism from Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney over the presence of Hezbollah paraphernalia at a recent pro-Gaza rally. In response, the minister told the Sun that he has asked departmental beancounters to keep Mouammar’s comments in mind when the current funding arrangement expires next year.

Ottawa Sun