GallowayWatch: Calling all constitutional lawyers, armchair or otherwise …

By kadyomalley - Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 11:25 PM - 28 Comments

Hot off the CP newswire:

Organizers are to announce Monday they will file an emergency injunction in Ontario federal court on Tuesday seeking to overturn Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s entry ban on the outspoken politician

I confess; I’m really not sure exactly how this is going to work, since neither Citizenship and Immigration nor Jason Kenney are responsible for the “entry ban” on George Galloway.

The Sun (UK), which first broke the story, attributes the decision to declare Galloway “inadmissible” to “border security chiefs”, and in an email to the National Post, a spokesperson for Kenney’s office explicitly states that the decision was made by the Canada Border Services Agency:

He was deemed legally inadmissible to Canada under s.34(1) of our  Immigration Act (which can be found here). The decision was made by CBSA officials based on s.34(1) of the Act and was  based on a number of factors, not only those mentioned in the Sun piece. It  was an operational decision; not one taken at the political level.

Since CBSA is under Public Safety, not Citizenship and Immigration, I’m not sure which decision will be the subject of the emergency injunction request — CBSA’s “deeming” of Galloway as inadmissible, or the minister’s refusal to issue a special permit, especially since as far as I know, Galloway hasn’t even asked for one, although who knows — maybe the preemptive denial by Kenney’s office is sufficient to mount an appeal.

Hopefully, someone with more of a grasp of the legal procedures involved will be kind enough to clear this up for a very confused ITQ, but in the meantime, if you’re similarly puzzled,  feel free to try to figure it out in the comments.

ALMOST INSTANT UPDATE: The Ottawa Citizen has an interview with William Ayers, who was stopped at the border earlier this year, and who is also challenging the ban in court:

On Jan. 18, immigration officials at Toronto’s Island Airport refused to admit [William Ayers] when he arrived from Chicago for a speech at the University of Toronto. Ayers said the officials told him their records indicated that he had a 40-year-old felony conviction, which he denies.

He said he asked the officials if they really thought he was a threat to Canada.

“They laughed and said, ‘of course not.’ So I said, why am I not being allowed in? And they said, ‘it’s not our decision.’”

Ayers said he was well-treated before officials put him on a plane back to Chicago.

“I said to them at one point, ‘I’m an American — come on, where are the chains?’ And they said, ‘we don’t do that in Canada.’” …

Ayers said he’s visited Canada “maybe 25 times” over the years.

For a while, he made an annual pilgrimage to the Stratford Festival. Invariably, he’s scrutinized by immigration officials.

In 2005, though, he was turned away when he tried to enter the country to give a lecture at the University of Calgary. He was given no reason.

Ayers has appeared at conferences in Toronto, Windsor, Montreal and Vancouver, and has spoken at the University of Ottawa half a dozen times.

He serves on dissertation committees at the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa.

“I’ll have to do that by phone if I can’t get in,” he said. He currently has four lawyers working on his case. “I’d very much like to get it cleared up if it’s a misunderstanding.”

(Thanks to Commenter Sisyphus for the link!)

Now, Ayers’ case is a little bit different from that of Galloway – if his record does indeed show a felony conviction, that would be enough to put him on the banlist, although it seems odd that it would only have come up twice, and not every time he tried to enter the country.  But the reaction that he claims that he got from the officers on duty, who told him that it “wasn’t [their] decision”, is curious enough to merit a little digging on exactly what the process CBSA uses to determine potential threats — and how often this is done preemptively — before the individual so targeted shows up with his prospective Canadian itinerary in hand, which seems to have been what happened to Galloway.

It sounds like an ideal job for the Public Safety committee, come to think of it. After all, they’re already looking into border security issues. How about it, guys?

UPDATE: Follow-up post here. Curiouser and curiouser.

Afghanistan/Pakistan: Death from above 2009

By Paul Wells - Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 11:15 PM - 8 Comments

U.S. military has massively expanded use of remote-piloted drone attacks within Pakistan since last autumn, and especially since Obama’s inauguration.

Problem: Some analysts say drone attacks are really, really bad counterinsurgency, because they leave the innocent with the guilty to die in the rubble, and grief and anger are an excellent recruiting tool for extremism. That argument is well canvassed in this piece.

But in fact, an understanding of the nasty blowback airstrikes can provoke seems to be driving some of the strategic thinking in Afghanistan. This piece says one reason Obama has sent 17,000 incremental troops to Afghanistan, and may well send more, is that more troops will “enable U.S. and allied commanders to reduce their reliance on the airstrikes and Special Forces raids that have inflicted growing civilian casualties…”

Is it possible that the efforts of all those freshly-arriving U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan could be undone by resentments fuelled by all those U.S. airstrikes in Pakistan? I doubt it’s possible to know the answer, but I still think the question is worth raising. Obama is to unveil his new Afghanistan strategy this week or next. Which is Yet Another reason why it would have been handy to have the banks fixed by now, if that were possible.

March's party-preference polls

By Paul Wells - Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 10:36 PM - 5 Comments

Microscopically different from February’s!

"The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories"

By Paul Wells - Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 10:28 PM - 22 Comments

Too bad, Saab. How can Sweden just let an industrial pillar go like that? That’s a complex question. The decision, like every decision any government anywhere makes these days, will strike many as wrongheaded. I’m not sure how much of Sweden’s employment is attributable to Saab; it may well be lower than the fraction of Canada’s (or Ontario’s…) employment that depends on the Big 3. But if Sweden’s centre-right government believes the country’s future need not look like its past, this chart may offer part of the answer:

This is a chart of GERD, gross expenditure on research and development (here shown as the sum of business expenditure, or BERD, and government effort). It’s a rough measure of how much a country spends on new ideas. Canada’s at 13, the U.S. is at 5, and Sweden’s at No. 1. (For the past five years, successive Canadian governments have tried to make our performance look better by saying Canada “spends more on university-based research than any other G7 country,” a nice distraction from both our mediocre private-sector R&D effort and the stronger university-based effort of non-G7 countries like Israel and… Sweden.)

Sweden may be more comfortable letting go of its past, in other words, because it has made such a determined head start on its future.

Die! Die, Bad Robots! Die!

By Jaime Weinman - Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 10:19 PM - 38 Comments

I’m not really equipped to evaluate the finale of Battlestar Galactica. (Because I haven’t kept up with all the developments this season, and this is a finale that obviously rewards viewers who have followed every episode — or punishes them, depending on how you reacted to it.) But.. (and don’t read further if you’re anti-spoiler)

I will note that the final twist reminded me of how pervasive the influence of Star Wars has become. (Well, I mean, apart from the fact that the original series, and therefore this one, would not have been on the air if it hadn’t been for Star Wars.) Outer-space stories set in the distant past rather than the future used to be be considered kind of an oxymoron, and with one caption (“a long time ago…”) Star Wars changed that, for good or ill. So now we’re at the point where a futuristic sci-fi series can reveal that it actually took place in the past, and that’s not one of the top 10 most suprising revelations in the series. I’ll admit that the point of this twist kind of eluded me, if only because all science-fiction is about the present; that being the case, it seemed a bit odd to spend such crucial minutes on saying what already went without saying — that this is a cautionary tale about our time. (It’s what might be called the One Froggy Evening ending.) But it’s a pretty minor point one way or the other.

I also went looking for a snarky recap of the finale. Good snarky recaps are hard to find — the TWOP recaps don’t do it for me at all, being basically just straight plot summaries with a few jokes thrown in — but I like this one, which angrily summarizes the plot in simple, un-adorned detail. Actually it’s not so much snarky as enraged, which is probably more enjoyable than snark.

Then it turns out that each of the Final Five only knows a PART of the secret of resurrection so they have to mindmeld by sticking their hands in Anders’ goo bath in order to give Cavil said secret. Then Tory spends like five minutes being like I KNO WE WILL SEE EVERYTHING IN EACH OTHER’S BRAINS IF WE DO THIS SO JUST KEEP MIND OKAY THAT WE ALL HAVE DARK SECRETS. WE. ALL. HAVE. SECRETS. and everyone is like, YEAH WHATEVER. So they mindmeld and then of course they all see that she killed Cally and then Tyrol breaks the mindmeld and kirks out and chokes Tory to death. And Cavil is like OMG IT’S A TRICK and so fighting breaks out and he randomly shoots himself in the head for no apparent reason.

MPs get close with statue: Genies coming to Ottawa

By Mitchel Raphael - Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 11:16 AM - 16 Comments

As part of the lead up to the Genie Awards in Ottawa on April 4, Susan Smith of Bluesky Strategy Group has been schlepping a giant Genie statue all over the Hill and getting folks to pose with it. There was a even a special screening in the Speaker Peter Milliken’s dining room of clips of some of the films nominated where folks like Newfoundland Liberal MP Scott Simms (below) got to pose with Genie.

Heritage Minister James Moore and Sara Morton, CEO of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.

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"Canada can't muzzle me"

By Paul Wells - Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 5:55 PM - 43 Comments

George Galloway takes to the infandous internets to fustigate his Ottawa tormentors.

Sunday update: Lorne Gunter doesn’t want Galloway kept out.

Olivia Chow’s forum: Let’s get digital, digital, I wanna get…

By Mitchel Raphael - Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 5:24 PM - 0 Comments

Toronto NDP MP Olivia Chow hosted a packed public forum at the University of Toronto. Making It Work: Art, Access and Legislation in the Digital Age was an interactive panel discussion that focused on building an online Canadian arts presence that was fair to the “creator” and “user.”

Speakers included Charlie Angus, the NDP’s Digital Affairs Critic (left) and Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet And E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa.

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"What an awful mess"

By Paul Wells - Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 2:44 PM - 26 Comments

Paul Krugman really doesn’t like the Obama administration’s latest plan for fixing the banks. I mean, really really. This vehement a reaction, from this not-automatically-hostile voice, on a weekend after a hellacious week for the White House, is a non-trivial problem for the Obama administration.

MacKay and NATO: The Atlantic gateway only goes one way

By Paul Wells - Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 2:37 PM - 21 Comments

Not sure we should take the latest NATO secretary-general story as more definitive than the last five, but anyway: Reuters says many anonymous sources say the US backs Anders Fogh Rasmussen for sec-gen. Was Peter MacKay considered by Washington, then dropped? Again, one wonders how much credence to hang on the Washington Post report a couple of weeks ago that left that impression. Anyway, speculate among yourselves.

SUNDAY UPDATE: Turkey’s clinging to its man, Peter MacKay.

On BSG

By Andrew Potter - Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 10:57 AM - 14 Comments

I bailed on the show after Starbuck came back from her death. It was clearly looping into “wtfrack do we do now?” territory. But because I’m a sucker I cycled back in last night, just to see if they could wrap it up decently. 

The fact that I expected it to be lousy doesn’t make it any less disappointing. So, all of that to find that the whole thing was a three-way mashup of The Matrix, No Logo, and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? 

Ugh.

Fowler/Guay Watch: Driver released

By Andrew Potter - Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 10:36 AM - 0 Comments

The driver kidnapped along with Robert Fowler and Louis Guay has been released. 

Iggy on Galloway

By Andrew Potter - Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 9:55 AM - 7 Comments

This is pretty much my view. Though I really would like to see the evidence that Galloway is in any way a security threat to the country:

“He can come to canada and talk rubbish all day long, as far as i’m concerned,” Ignatieff told reporters in Manitoba. “If there’s a security threat, that’s another matter. I’ve heard no evidence yet that he presents a security threat. Of course, if there is one, as a responsible public official, I will accept what the security services say on M.r Galloway.”

Meet Disney’s new Miley Cyrus

By Jaime Weinman - Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 2:00 AM - 20 Comments

Demi Lovato is the new Miley Cyrus. The Disney company hasn’t actually called her that, but it doesn’t need to; its promotional technique says it all. Not long before Cyrus’s naughty Vanity Fair photos appeared, Disney made a big investment in Lovato, who had been appearing in some of the company’s smaller shows; it put her in the TV musical Camp Rock (with those other cash cows, the Jonas Brothers), concert tours, and a new sitcom, Sonny With a Chance. The show premieres in Canada on the Family Channel on March 16, but the 15-year-old Lovato had already been promoted as a star before an episode had aired anywhere; creator Steve Marmel told Maclean’s that this is the first kids’ sitcom where “instead of going from TV show to star, someone has gone from star to TV show.” It’s a youthful version of the old Hollywood studio system: a company picks a performer and turns her into a star before anyone quite realizes it.

Lovato told Maclean’s that while Disney has been “awesome helping my career” in both music and acting, the company never actually spelled out its plans. “I don’t think they ever tell somebody ‘we want you to be a star,’ ” she said. “It’s just that they like to push the shows or movies or things like that.” But the projects Disney has chosen for her have all somehow managed to reinforce the image she needs to be the new Miley Cyrus: someone who can sing, is constantly perky, and seems like a regular girl who got the break of a lifetime.

Continue…

Family ties

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 1:28 AM - 17 Comments

A potential federal bailout for private television broadcasters is about to come under scrutiny before a parliamentary committee. Starting March 25, the House of Commons standing committee on Canadian heritage will launch a series of hearings into the television industry’s current economic crisis. But the opposition is serving notice that it intends to find out why the Harper government seems intent on helping private companies like CTV and Canwest Global, while leaving the publicly-owned CBC to fend for itself.

“We want to make sure that (Heritage Minister) James Moore isn’t making a sweetheart deal with a bunch of lobbyists who are close to the Prime Minister,” says Charlie Angus, the NDP’s heritage critic. Earlier this week, the Canadian Press reported that Stephen Harper has recently met with both Canwest CEO Leonard Asper, and Pierre-Karl Peladeau, head of Quebecor, owners of the French language TVA network, to discuss the broadcasters’ concerns. Moore has indicated that the government is looking at regulatory changes and tax breaks to aid the networks—most specifically Canwest which is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy—but says no specific commitments have been made.

Witness lists for the hearings are still being drawn up, but the first to be heard from will be Konrad von Finckenstein, chair of the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC.) Private broadcasters have long been after the CRTC to treat their conventional channels more like specialty networks, which receive a share of cable subscribers’ monthly bills known as carriage fees. Cable providers like Rogers, which owns Maclean’s, are opposed to the idea, claiming the system could inflate customers’ bills by as much as $10 a month.

One opposition concern is the close relationship between Canwest’s owners, the Asper family, and the ruling Conservative Party. The media company’s newspapers have endorsed Harper in the past two federal elections, reflecting a shift in the family’s political allegiances. Izzy Asper, the company’s late founder was a former leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party and a lifelong Grit partisan. In 2003, the year he died, the company donated almost $54,000 to the Liberals, more than double the $25,000 it gave the then Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance. But Asper’s children—Len, David, and Gail—have broken with the faith. Especially since dithering by former Liberal Finance minister Ralph Goodale on tax changes for income trusts shaved an estimated $150 million off the value of a 2005 Canwest newspaper trust offering. In 2007, for example, Len, David, and Ruth, their mother, all donated $1,000 each to the Tories, close to the new maximum. So did Gail, although she also gave $500 to the Green Party and $1,100 to the Liberals.

And since Stephen Harper took power in Jan 2006, his government has been supportive of some of the Aspers other endeavours. The Tories not only carried through with Liberal pledges to fund Izzy’s dream of a Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, but substantially upped the ante. In addition to $100 million towards construction costs, Ottawa has designated the project a “national museum”—the first-ever outside the National Capital Region—and pledged a further $21.7 million a year in operating funds, in perpetuity. (The Asper Family Foundation have pledged $20 million to the project—the third $4 million installment is due later this month—and Gail has been instrumental in raising a further $85 million for public and corporate donors.)

This past December, Treasury Board Minister Vic Toews, indicated that Ottawa is ready to give a further $15 million to another family obsession—a new stadium for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Under the proposed plan, the private sector will pony up $100 million of the $150 million estimated cost of the new 30,000 seat facility at the University of Manitoba. And David will take control of the now civically-owned franchise.

Another hot topic at the hearings will be the lack of government interest in bailing out the CBC. The sudden drop off in advertising has left the public broadcaster with a $100 million hole in its budget. But its pleas for an advance on next year’s funding, or other financial assistance, have been greeted with a collective Tory shrug. The NDP’s Angus questions why James Moore seems so willing to help one part of the industry, and so disinterested in the plight of another. “He’s basically hanging the CBC out to dry, going as far as to ridicule its request for bridge financing,” he charges.

But the bottom line for opposition parties will be getting the government and networks to live up to existing commitments regarding local broadcasting and Canadian content. And there they might find at least some common ground. Indeed the sudden Conservative interest in a bailout has followed on the heels of CTV’s announcement that it will close three underperforming stations—two in Ontario and one in Manitoba. And similar noises from Canwest that the same fate awaits its 5 E! channels unless a buyer can quickly be found. Coupled with the networks cuts to local newscasts, the trend bodes ill for the Tories’ favoured strategy of going “over the head” of the press gallery in Ottawa, and flogging its policies through interviews with local media.

“It wasn’t local broadcasting or Canadian content that brought us into this mess,” says Angus. “And things shouldn’t be balanced on its back.”

—with Philippe Gohier

Ignore your problems, and they just might go away

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 6:47 PM - 58 Comments

“If there are any economists in the room, you’re no good,” Monique Jérôme-Forget told an in camera press conference on provincial budget day. “You change your minds every month.”

With that, Quebec’s finance minister apparently believed she could justify the dodgy numbers her own budget contains:

The projected deficit for the upcoming year will be about $3.9 billion. How do you get to that figure? First, take the $2.5 billion bite the government says the recession will take out of government revenues. That leaves you with $1.4 billion left to account for. Now add the $826 million in stimulus measures the government says it has included in this unique, “recessionary” budget. And, just to be generous, top it off with the $75 million the government says Ottawa cheated Quebec out of by changing the equalization formula midway. After all that, you’re still left with a $500 million hole.

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Weekend Viewing: Sciography – The Making of Battlestar Galactica (the other one)

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 6:45 PM - 0 Comments

This is Battlestar Galactica night, so here’s something that’s distantly related to the subject. In 2000, the Sci-Fi channel, which had not yet learned the glorious new truth that led it to rename itself “SyFy,” did a show called “Sciography,” where they did episodes about the making of some of the most popular science-fiction shows. The style was halfway between a parody of Biography and a slightly geekier copy of it. This episode is about the making of Battlestar Galactica, which at that time was the only Battlestar Galactica there ever was. It’s not the best BSG, but it is where the whole thing started, and the new, better BSG couldn’t have existed without the basic strength of that concept.

The episode ends with cast and crew discussing the possibility of a remake or movie version and the conflicts over what it should or shouldn’t be; Richard Hatch is the one advocating doing BSG as the kind of show it might have been, rather than the kind of show it was.

(Click “Continue” to see the rest of the “Sciography” episode)

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Louis Vuitton's $3,650 recession-proof shoes

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 6:12 PM - 2 Comments

It will likely come as no great relief that the rich and beautiful are managing to keep themselves swathed in finery despite the troubled economy. Still, anyone looking for hard evidence need only consider “Spicy,” a dizzy looking new shoe by uber-designer Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton, described as “a beaded, bejewelled confection set with purple, green and orange stone.” Already, Spicy has adorned the feet of Victoria Beckham, Chloe Sevigny, Madonna and Heidi Klum. Model Alexa Chung was almost bowled over by paparazzi in Paris trying to get a clear shot of hers. One fashion editor describes the must-have shoes as “fun and jolly.” Others might call it a mortgage payment.

The Daily Mail

The Macleans.ca Weekly News Quiz

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 6:08 PM - 0 Comments

Take the quiz: click here.

InfandousWatch: Freedom of speech includes the freedom to use long words

By Paul Wells - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 4:54 PM - 39 Comments

Jason Kenney’s comms director sets the world afire with his vocabulary.

The AIG bonuses: what matters more than what's legal?

By John Geddes - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 4:07 PM - 28 Comments

President Barack Obama’s worst moment on yesterday’s Jay Leno show came, not when he made that bowling gaffe, but when he airily suggested a distinction between what’s legal and what’s moral.

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An Old-Fashioned Cartoon Crossover

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 3:59 PM - 1 Comment

The upcoming Bones/Family Guy crossover is being promoted as something big and new because it’s an animated character appearing on a live-action show. But really it’s a very old-fashioned crossover where characters from one long-running show pop up on another long-running show on the same network. Though I guess Family Guy is more popular than Bones, this isn’t really the sort of crossover that’s done to boost a show’s popularity. It’s more the sort of crossover that happens when two shows are produced by the same studio, and so when the live-action show wants to do an animated segment, they arrange to borrow a character from their sister show.

It used to happen quite often in the movies; Bugs Bunny appeared in two live-action musicals at Warner Brothers, Two Guys From Texas and My Dream Is Yours, Tom and Jerry swam with fellow MGM contractee Esther Williams, and most famously, Jerry appeared with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh after Disney refused permission to loan out Mickey Mouse. A scene which, to bring us full circle, was copied by Family Guy, because why make new animation when you can just trace over the old animation and claim you’re doing an homage?

Mitchel Raphael on Harper’s hairstylist

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 3:55 PM - 7 Comments

The anti-Julie Couillard

At this year’s Politics & the Pen gala, the Writers’ Trust of Canada awarded the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for political writing to James Orbinski for An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century. Last year, Maxime Bernier arrived at the event with Julie Couillard in a tight gold dress. Times have changed. This year Bernier was spotted walking in with someone a little less flamboyant: fellow Tory MP Ted Menzies, wearing a bow tie and cummerbund in his family’s tartan. One MP quipped that Couillard really should have been invited, noting that she did, in fact, write a book. At this glitzy A-list event filled with writers and politicians, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, Transport Minister John Baird, and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty all spent time greeting the glamorous Stefania Capovilla, who was attending her first Politics & the Pen. Capovilla knows these politicians’ true colours: she’s their hairstylist. She coifs a virtual who’s who list of Ottawa’s political elite thanks to PMO staffer Aaron Campbell, who first visited her while the Conservatives were in opposition and then started recommending her to others. She even cuts Stephen Harper’s hair. The gala’s entertainment was provided by comedian Brent Butt from Corner Gas, who was seated next to Laureen Harper. Butt doesn’t understand why, having had two sitting PMs on the show, he still has to pay taxes. During his routine, the lights kept going on and off. The mystery was solved when it turned out that Mrs. Harper’s RCMP guard was leaning on the light switch in the Fairmont Château Laurier ballroom. Continue…

UK teachers to teens: go ahead, sleep in

By macleans.ca - Friday, March 20, 2009 at 3:47 PM - 0 Comments

When John Barker first introduced late start times for teenagers at his school in Tonbridge, England, he faced criticism from fellow educators. But since the new timetable was introduced in September 2007, Barker says he’s noted an improvement in behaviour, exam scores and attendance. The idea for a staggered day came from British and U.S. research, which suggests that sleeping in helps teenagers brains’ to work better. But Barker admits the decision to keep the conventional schedule on Fridays (8:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m.) wasn’t based on scientific findings, but rather his students’ desire to devote the evening to “family times.” (Read: Kick off their social lives early.)

Guardian.co.uk