Can you hear a difference?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 10:12 AM - 0 Comments

Whatever’s wrong with Karen Stintz’s intonation didn’t stop her from getting elected to Toronto city council. Yet taxpayers got stuck with the bill for Stintz’s voice coach, who set out to make the Ward 16 representative sound a little less like a key scraping down the side of a car. Money well spent? Judge for yourself. The Toronto Star has kindly provided samples of Stintz speaking before and after she received “vocal coaching.” Short of slowing down her delivery a bit, the trainer doesn’t seem to have made much difference.

The Toronto Star

Let him be perfectly clear

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 8:46 AM - 2 Comments

As promised, ITQ will be on hand as Team Mulroney makes its case for “clarification and direction” on the Commissioner’s recent ruling on standard of conduct. According to written submissions filed in advance of today’s hearing, neither Team Schreiber nor the Attorney General seem to be all that interested in giving the former prime minister, in the words of the latter, “a second kick at the can” on what should and shouldn’t be taken into consideration.

9:27:17 AM
Good morning, inquiry fans! Are we all ready for some rock’em, sock’em motion for clarification and direction action?
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Sarko le Queb?

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 10 Comments

The French appear to have rapidly tired of their hyperpresident, and many of his critics have taken advantage of the annual “Week of the French Language” (what, you don’t have tickets? — ap) to take him to task for playing fast and loose with la langue de Moliere:

Mr Sarkozy jangles nerves with colloquial tics such as dropping the “ne” between pronoun and verb in negative sentences. “J’écoute mais je tiens pas compte,” he said the other day. (I listen but I don’t take notice). He often uses the slangy “ch’ais pas” for “je ne sais pas” and “ch’uis” instead of “je suis”.

In other words, he talks like he should be checking your oil at a gas station in Repentigny.  But the French have turned on him, like he’s some visiting cousin from the wilds of Belgium or something — as  Fanny Capel, the head of a campaign group called Sauvez les Lettres (Save Letters), told The Times: “We have un beauf at the head of the state.” Un beauf, or brother-in-law, is shorthand for uneducated and ignorant.

When you factor in his penchant for jogging and his newly-muscular approach to NATOR, it would appear that French have gone and elected themselves a Gallic George Bush. Which, you might say, is a form of le payback.

NATO: MacKay's late-blooming Polish friendships

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 8:36 AM - 37 Comments

Polish diplomat touts “young, super-intelligent, dynamic and resourceful” Peter MacKay to (non-satirical) Polish newspaper for NATO secretary-general. (That’s “młody, superinteligentny, dynamiczny, przedsiębiorczy,” for those of you brushing up on your Polish.) And indeed, a Polish googlenews search shows considerable interest in “kanadyjski minister obrony Peter MacKay.” One doubts that a late-blooming Turkish/Polish alliance-within-the-alliance can save the MacKay candidacy, but it is fun to watch.

The Minimalist on Food

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 8:28 AM - 8 Comments

I haven’t had a lot of time or patience for the food hysteria  that took hold of North Americans over the past five years; the ridiculous argument over organic versus local struck me as mostly a replay of the equally ridiculous debate over paper or plastic grocery bags, or incadescent versus fluorescent bulbs.  What the whole debate has long needed is someone with a combination of real knowledge and good sense; and he’s finally arrived in the form of Mark Bittman.

There is more wisdom packed into his short piece from last Sunday’s Times than in the truckloads of books published recently. The smarts begins with the title and continues right to the end. Michelle Obama appears to have her head screwed on right as well. Good news all around.

Afghanistan: "I have decided to look at the situation with optimism"

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 8:26 AM - 1 Comment

This is the most complete interview I have seen with Elissa Golberg, who is returning to Canada (to run DFAIT’s international disaster-relief efforts) after 11 months as ROCK, the first civilian Representative of Canada in Kandahar. It was conducted by a German newsmagazine.

A very different kind of red book launched

By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 2:44 AM - 1 Comment

Rudyard Griffiths, co-founder of the Dominion Institute, held the Toronto launch of his book, Who We Are: A Citizen’s Manifesto at Toronto’s Ultra Supper Club. According to the publisher, the book is “a passionate call for Canadians to take stock and reengage with our country and its values before we falter as a nation.”

 Marc Chalifoux, Executive Director of the Dominion Institute.

Joseph Lavoie of Navigator Limited. He’s also a former winner on Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister.

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Barred senator still collects $130,400 a year salary

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 2:30 AM - 2 Comments

Though he’s been barred from the Senate since 2007, when he was charged by the RCMP for allegedly using “Senate resources for personal gain,” Senator Raymond Lavigne continues to collect his $130,400 a year salary, according to the Toronto Sun. Lavigne, a Chrétien-era appointee, could face up to 14 years in prison if found guilty on all the charges—fraud over $5,000, breach of trust and obstruction of justice. But according to Senate rules, since he hasn’t been convicted of a crime he continues to get paid. He’s officially off on “public business,” writes the Sun. Apparently, he even shows up on picture day. His case goes to trial in November.

Toronto Sun

Public intellectual

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 12:56 AM - 11 Comments

Andrew Steele considers Michael Ignatieff and elitism.

You would be hard-pressed to identify a single Canadian prime minister who was a populist either in appeal or policy. If Canadians want hockey players and lumberjacks in top office, they certainly don’t show it with their voting behaviour.

While there have been successful populist parties at the provincial level, the few attempts at populism at a federal level have never broken through to the broader public. Social Credit was never more than a protest party. Their Quebec variant was short-lived. The Reform Party was far less successful than it’s more disciplined and elite-driven Conservative successor. In fact, the biggest mistake Mr. Ignatieff could make would be a sudden and jarring turn to token populism.

The Ritual Of Linking To the Fake Canadian-Themed Website Mentioned On TV

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 11:13 PM - 3 Comments

Most people who saw tonight’s How I Met Your Mother will have checked this out by now, but, in answer to the obvious questions.

-Yes, there is a Canadiansexacts.org.

- Yes, that is Alan Thicke, composer of the “Diff’rent Strokes” and “Facts of Life” theme song, TV dad, and all-around Canadian god.

- No, we don’t actually get to see him doing the “reverse Rick Moranis” or the “Edmonton Soiler.”

- Yes, one caption spells Sudbury as “Sudsbury.” And, in answer to the follow-up question, no, that mistake probably doesn’t keep the webmaster up nights.

“Canada, you did it again. You even managed to ruin this. Why? Why do we let you be a country?” — Barney Stinson

Lede of the year

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 10:44 PM - 15 Comments

David Akin produces an early contender.

In Richmond, B.C., senior citizens are getting $18,500 from the federal government to hold a few “intergenerational” movie nights.

Granted, the most interesting finding may come at paragraph 12.

That Show Didn't Start Slow!

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 7:19 PM - 3 Comments

Dollhouse offered its best episode yet on Friday (not coincidentally, its funniest), but it kind of got buried by two things: one, it was up against the BSG finale, and two, Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku spent weeks telling every interviewer that this was going to be the episode where the show got good, meaning that what should have been a pleasant surprise wound up as an anti-climax. Even the Fox promos might as well have said “Forget what you’ve seen before, watch the episode where it doesn’t suck any more.”

Oh, well. It’s still an improvement. Not so much for the increased arc/mystery elements; those just remind me of the many dropped hints from the early part of season 7 of Buffy, which wound up leading to many moments of anti-climax and cop-out-ery as the season went on. The improvement was in the increased amount of dark humour (and the more humour this show has, the more freedom it will have to ask us to take its serious themes seriously) and the greater attention paid to non-Dushku characters. I still get the feeling that the theme of the show is weirdly insular; there are many little references on the show to the idea that the show is really about Hollywood and its exploitative nature. Doing a mock interview feature about the Dollhouse just seemed to make the connection even stronger. If Buffy was about regular teenage obsessions, Dollhouse sometimes comes off as being about the things that Hollywood insiders are obsessed with. Which is not to say that Hollywood types are the only people who are worried about whether they’re being exploited and forced into different roles by their jobs. Just that when you get lines like “The dollhouse deals in fantasy. That is their business, but that is not their purpose” — that sounds a lot like a description of a Hollywood studio.

Speaking of Buffy, it’s interesting that one thing Whedon fans sometimes say is that Buffy the Vampire Slayer started out slow and took a long time to get good. I was surprised to hear that, because that’s not the way I remember it, and that’s still not the way it seems to me when I watch the first season. The first season started with an extremely strong (if low-budget) two-part pilot that was a spectacular success, the first critical hit that the WB had ever had; like many shows, it then had its ups and downs as subsequent episodes tried to figure out what the format of the show would be, but the basic style and tone of the show was pretty much set, and all the first season’s episodes have some very good scenes. By the end of the first season, the format (monster of the week as metaphor for teen problem + overarching evil conspiracy + teen soap/romance) was pretty much established.

I guess my point is that every first batch of episodes has growing pains, but if the early episodes are building character relationships and appealing performances and coming up with cool scenes (“I Robot, You Jane” is rightly seen as the worst episode from season 1 of Buffy, but the final scene is my favourite part of the whole series), viewers can feel like the show is living up to its potential, even as it promises even more in the future. Dollhouse‘s sixth episode had potential, but I’d still rather watch Buffy‘s sixth episode.

The Bully Pulpit: Benefits and Risks

By John Parisella - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 7:00 PM - 7 Comments

So far, it is fair to say that Obama firmly believes the presidential bully pulpit is the way to go. He has already scheduled a second primetime press conference for this week and, given his weekly radio and Internet addresses, we can safely assume media exposure is not a concern to him. The question is, how long can this go on? Is he not running the risk of overexposure?

Theodore Roosevelt was the first to describe the presidency as a “bully pulpit.” The White House, he figured, provided an ideal platform for speaking directly to voters and above the heads of those in Congress. The occupant of the Oval Office is at the center of government and has particularly easy access to the media, which can be used to cajole invitations, advance policy and defend actions. Successors like FDR, JFK, and Ronald Reagan were able to push the bully pulpit far beyond what Theodore Roosevelt imagined.

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Silly question

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 6:47 PM - 4 Comments

What would a Canadian television host have to say on air to elicit multiple on-camera responses from American defense secretary Robert Gates?

The Commons: Greg Gutfeld, and other less important matters

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 6:37 PM - 19 Comments

The Scene. The Conservatives have identified a loophole in the Speaker’s recent ruling against the use of Parliament’s time to launch personal attacks against political rivals—namely that it’s not a personal attack if you don’t immediately identify the individual you are defaming.

So it was that Mike Wallace, another of the government’s enthusiastically obedient, if relatively interchangeable, backbenchers, was sent up before Question Period to air various allegations against “someone.” Only at the final moment did he reveal that this “someone” was, in fact, the Liberal leader. Suffice it to say, the Prime Minister found this quite hilarious.

In related news today, this first day back for Parliament after a week off, the Conservatives also made use of another gap in the Speaker’s prohibition—namely that it does not cover little-known and generally irrelevant late-night television hosts who say rude things about us on American cable news network shows that are watched by fewer people than live in Windsor, Ontario.

So it was that two Conservatives were sent up before Question Period to bemoan the besmirchment of this country’s honour done by one Greg Gutfeld, an American TV personality who once apparently edited the erudite current affairs journal, Maxim. Continue…

Thank You, My… Little Friends, My… Small Friends.

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 5:45 PM - 0 Comments

Maurice LaMarche declared that today is also talk like William Shatner Day, so you still have a chance. To get in practice, here’s the cartoon that was built entirely around LaMarche’s Shatner impression, “Karaoke-Dokie” from Animaniacs. (As I said in an earlier post, in the pre-YouTube era, Shatner’s “Rocket Man” was known only to a select few people, and making a reference to it — the way Chris Elliott famously did on Letterman — was a very obscure in-joke. Now that anybody can see and hear Shatner’s “singing,” the reference comes off differently; what was intended as an in-joke is now a standard pop-culture reference.)

Kenney on Galloway: For the record

By Andrew Potter - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 5:39 PM - 9 Comments

The minister is sticking to the story that Border Services made the decision, and he’s staying out of it. Here he is at a scrum after QP:

*****

Question:            There’s growing pressure for you to intervene in the George Galloway matter.  Are you going to?  Are you going to I guess change the government’s mind or the decision to ban him?

Hon. Jason Kenney:    Well, I have no intention to.  The Canadian Border Security agents made a preliminary assessment of Mr. Galloway’s admissibility to Canada.  And they determined under Section 34-1 of the Immigration Refugee Protection Act that he would be likely inadmissible because of his material support for a banned illegal terrorist organization.  According to Mr. Galloway’s own admission earlier this month, he provided financial and corporeal support to Hamas, an organization which deliberately targets and kills innocent civilians and is therefore illegal in Canada.  I don’t see why I — we should make exceptions and override the decision of our professional border security agents in making a judgment about the inadmissibility of someone who provides funding and resources to an illegal terrorist organization.

Question:            Those who argue it’s a free speech issue, what do you think of that?

Hon. Jason Kenney:    It has nothing to do about speech, it has everything to do with actions.  It’s not about words, it’s about deeds.  It’s not about his opinions, it’s about his financial, material support for an illegal terrorist organization.  The law is clear and experts will tell you this that anybody who provides material and financial support to an illegal terrorist organization is prima facie inadmissible to Canada.  Our border security agents made that determination and I see no compelling reason why I should second guess them.  If this was simply about, you know, Mr. Galloway expressing his opinions, I’m sure he can do that by publishing his views in Canada, by telling people his views.  His views are no secret.  I think they are odious but certainly in Britain he has a right to express them and if he was a Canadian citizen and he was already here he would have a right to express them verbally in Canada.  That’s not the issue.  The issue has nothing to do with freedom of speech and everything to do with the — maintaining the integrity of our Immigration Act which says that individuals who provide material and financial support to illegal terrorist organizations are inadmissible for entry to Canada.  I think it’s a reasonable law and I have no intention of second guessing the considered opinion of our professional border security agents in that regard.

Neil Young on the financial crisis

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 5:22 PM - 1 Comment

It’s a far cry from his usual flannel shirts. Wearing a business suit and sunglasses in a new video for his song “Cough up the bucks,” Canadian music legend Neil Young reclines in a limo, reading the Wall Street Journal. “Where did all the money go?” he sings mournfully. Good question.

Gawker

The Cartoon Crossover That Might Have Been

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 4:47 PM - 0 Comments

In response to the announcement of a Family Guy/Bones crossover, William Rabkin recalls a story he and Lee Goldberg almost did for Diagnosis Murder until they ran into rights troubles: Dick Van Dyke solves a mystery with the help of Scooby-Doo. Lee Goldberg also supplies his own account of the planned Scooby crossover; the idea had to be dropped because Hanna-Barbera had been bought out by Warner Brothers, which dragged its feet on letting them use the character.

If they had done the episode, most of the animated footage would have come from the first time Dick Van Dyke met Scooby, but This unproduced story was a substitute for another gimmick show they had to abandon, a live Diagnosis Murder. They had to drop it when ER announced plans to do a live episode of their own.

The Rabkin/Goldberg years of Diagnosis: Murder were actually quite a blast, and one of my favourite examples of how any show can be made worthwhile if the writers think outside the box. A typical Dean Hargrove older-skewing procedural was tricked out with so many gimmicks, stunts, in-jokes, cameos and harangues about the state of ’90s television and popular culture that it was always worth tuning in just to find out what they would try next. (In one episode, taking place at a radio station, Dick Van Dyke’s character walks by a booth and sees himself, on The Dick Van Dyke Show, from the episode where he was a radio DJ. That may or may not have been the same episode that had cameos from Stephanie Miller and Donny and Marie.) They seemed to realize that being a low-budget formula show didn’t preclude them doing some things that could surprise us, something you rarely see on today’s CBS procedurals.

(Link via Mark Evanier.)

Fox host apologizes to Canadian troops

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 4:21 PM - 9 Comments

Greg Gutfield, host of Fox’s Red Eye–you miss it if you happen to be asleep on weekdays at 3 a.m.–has gone and apologized for making fun of Canada’s troops. The host offended Canadian sensibilities last week when he questioned the efficacy (and, it would seem, the very manhood) of this country’s military–on a day when four Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan. Defence Minister Peter Mackay was outraged, Gutfield said sorry, and we all went back to not watching Red Eye.

CBC News

Yes we approximately can! Logo-checking the new Liberal website thing

By Paul Wells - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 4:03 PM - 62 Comments

The Liberals are very excited about their new website, which keeps the Conservatives’ feet to the fire by making you sit through videos of Liberal MPs who Represent Issues. So Marlene Jennings and Ken Dryden are there to Protect The Vulnerable, and Dominic LeBlanc and Alexandra Mendes are there to Dare You To Guess Who The MP Sitting Next To Dominic LeBlanc Is, and so on.

But because I focus like a laser on what really matters, I was struck by how hard it is to come by a truly original logo these days. Here’s the Liberal logo:

And here’s one of many, many, many logos associated with A Prominent New U.S. President:

So you have the maple leaf in place of Old Glory; and the green leaf is banished forever, because, you know, the environment is bad luck (cough*Dion*cough), and the chart demonstrates the Liberal determination to make sure nothing ever gets better. Graphics is fun!

Bitter feud in sugar

By Cathy Gulli - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 2 Comments

Something’s amiss in the sweet and sleepy world of Canadian sugar. After years of relative calm, it seems the two behemoths that make up Canada’s sugar duopoly—Redpath Sugar Ltd. and Rogers Sugar Income Fund—are suddenly spoiling for a battle, and that has analysts and investors nervous.

Slow, steady and profitable has long been the state of affairs in Canada’s sugar business. But a few weeks ago, analysts warned that the giants had awoken and seemed to be ready for a mutually destructive fight. Michael Van Aelst at TD Newcrest released foreboding reports alerting investors that “ramped-up competitive activity” had “reached a level not seen in over a decade,” and he downgraded Rogers stock to “reduce” from “hold.”

Continue…

One of our aircraft is miss— oh, never mind. There it is: Liveblogging the Russian Embassy at National Defence

By kadyomalley - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 3:15 PM - 17 Comments

Check back at 3:30 p.m. for full coverage as the Defence committee begins an opposition-initiated investigation into last month’s allegedly illicit intrusion attempt by a Russian military jet with an appearance by embassy political attache Dmitry Trofimov.

3:16:33 PM
Hey, remember this morning’s committee lookahead, during which I noted – with no small amount of anticipatory glee – that this meeting was moved to one of the big kid tables in Centre Block, which I attributed to preternatural prescience on the part of House administration?

Well, turns out that not everyone was tipped off to the move, including, unfortunately, the people charged with setting up committee rooms in advance of the meeting. Which is why when reporters – including ITQ – started showing up to secure good seats, there weren’t any – seats, that is, good or otherwise. Instead, there was a stack of chairs waiting to be unloaded, as well as a half-assembled table, a box full of standing mics and a very frazzled maintenance crew doing its best to beat the clock and bring order to chaos. They’re still at it, even as the MPs – including newly elected chair Maxime Bernier – have begun to trickle down from the post-QP srums. I’m sure they’ll make it on time, but really, as I said to one of the other reporters who arrived to watch as the big top went up: “What will the Russians think of *this*?”

Oh, and there’s also a school and/or tour group on hand to watch: thirty-odd oddly intent early twentysomethings, who will, I’m sure, be dazzled by this demonstration of parliamentary insight. Provided the rest of the committee isn’t sitting around an empty room in East Block wondering why they’re the only ones there, of course.

3:31:25 PM
Trofimov. That’s the name of our Russian visitor; sadly for any of you who were hoping for a modern day Trevanian anti-hero, he looks like – well, a career civil servant, which as far as I know is exactly what he is.

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Iggy of the Times

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 23, 2009 at 2:04 PM - 4 Comments

While trying to make the case for himself as the next prime minister of Canada, Michael Ignatieff apparently found time to read Leslie Gelb’s new book about American foreign policy, How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy, and pen a review for the New York Times. “Talk of Bretton Woods II may be overambitious, but some new global architecture of financial regulation and oversight, or at least more effective coordination of national regulation, is going to be necessary once we touch bottom in this financial crisis,” he writes. “American financial misrule may have gotten us into this mess, but it will be American leadership that will have to dig us out, with the help of solvent allies with good banking systems, like Canada’s, among others.”