The PM, Jason Kenney and a room packed with rabbis

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 11:41 PM - 12 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave a speech to the Canadian Federation of Chabad Lubavitch to honour the memory of the Lubavitchers killed in the Mumbai Chabad House terrorist attack.

Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, also spoke passionately about the horrific attack.

Continue…

Mistrial by Twitter

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 11:22 PM - 33 Comments

The Times has a story today about jurors who are increasingly using the web to do a bit of extracurricular research on the cases they’re hearing, facebooking and twittering the proceedings even as they are going on, and even using their knowledge of how they are about to decide civil suits to engage in a bit of insider trading. For anyone wedded to the ancient “rules of evidence, developed over hundreds of years of jurisprudence” — that is to say, almost all of us – this is a problem. 

I’m increasingly convinced that the single biggest sociological challenge of the next 5 to 15 years is going to be coming to grips with the information panopticon. Lawrence Lessig was warning a decade ago about the way a great deal of the freedoms and privileges we cherish, and the institutions that run our lives, actually rely upon a great deal of real-world friction in the transmission of information for their proper functioning. I’d go further and argue that the end of privacy in all its forms is a far, far greater threat to liberal democracy than the demise of the newspaper that has everyone (well, everyone in the biz anyway) typing away in a panic. The question is whether we can merely adjust, or whether we need to build some barriers to information flows into the architecture of our world. I’ve tried to argue for the latter, though I won’t claim any great successes. 

Anyway, to the matter at hand: One solution to google-happy jurors would be to sequester them all inside Faraday cages for the duration of every trial. That’s not practical. Another would be to screen out all jurors who know how to use the internet. Again, not going to happen. 

So where does that leave us? Is the ancient common-law tradition of the jury trial going to disappear, or will it adapt? How? Any legal minds out there want to help me out?

FWIW (ii)

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 11:14 PM - 57 Comments

David Dodge’s c.v. (emphases added):

Mr. Dodge, appointed Governor of the Bank of Canada, effective 1 February 2001 for a term of seven years, retired on 31 January 2008. As Governor, he was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank.

A native of Toronto, Mr. Dodge received a bachelor’s degree (honours) in economics from Queen’s University, and a PhD in economics from Princeton (1972).

During his academic career, he served as Assistant Professor of Economics at Queen’s University; Associate Professor of Canadian Studies and International Economics at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; Senior Fellow in the Faculty of Commerce at the University of British Columbia; and Visiting Professor in the Department of Economics at Simon Fraser University. He also served as Director of the International Economics Program of the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

During a distinguished career in the federal public service, Mr. Dodge held senior positions in the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Anti-Inflation Board, and the Department of Employment and Immigration. After serving in a number of increasingly senior positions at the Department of Finance, including that of G-7 Deputy, Mr. Dodge was appointed Deputy Minister of Finance in 1992. In that role, he served as a member of the Bank’s Board of Directors until 1997.

In 1998, Mr. Dodge was appointed Deputy Minister of Health, a position he held until his appointment as Governor of the Bank of Canada.

Bells' hells

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 10:58 PM - 4 Comments

“I want to tell you tonight that I, Martin Brian Mulroney, 18th prime minister of Canada, will be there before the [public] inquiry with bells on because I’ve done nothing wrong and I’ve got absolutely nothing to hide.” A spokesman for Mr. Mulroney welcomed the government’s announcement.  “It will finally shed light on everything,” Luc Lavoie said. “We will be able to hear from everyone.”

Globe and Mail, Nov. 14, 2007

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is questioning the scope of a public inquiry into his business dealings with German-Canadian arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber and asking for a delay in hearings while the matter is sorted out. In an application filed with the inquiry, Mulroney’s lawyer Guy Pratte requests that the hearings, currently scheduled to start March 30, be postponed until April 14.

Canadian Press, tonight

The children, our future

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 8:13 PM - 10 Comments

Welcome to our Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister liveblog. Just like being there. Even if we’re not. And the show was actually taped last month.

7:51pm. Catching the last ten minutes of Jeopardy. Accepting that there’s something to be said for the CBC not spending its precious public dollars on American programming, surely there’s an exception to be made for Jeopardy, a show that screens for knowledge and lucratively rewards nothing more than intelligence and a quick thumb reflex. All things considered, it’s altogether remarkable that it’s still on television. There’s nothing remotely like it on network television. It and Fareed Zakaria’s GPS are the only things still separating us from the apes.

7:56pm. In the CNGPM promo they keep showing, Paul Martin observes that Canadians are looking for leadership but just aren’t seeing it. Not that that he’s had anything to do with that.

7:58pm. What is pop? No, gospel. Elvis won all his Grammys in the gospel category. Interesting. Continue…

Because Everyone Dies of Something

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 6:13 PM - 7 Comments

Today’s Daily from Statcan contained this gem, under new releases:

Study: Cancer prevalence in the Canadian population, as of January 1, 2005
Because of increases in the detection of cancer and improving survival, the number of Canadians living with cancer is rising.

In short: Cancer rates are rising because things are getting better.

In mourning

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 6:08 PM - 0 Comments

Mourners arrived more than four hours early to pay their respects to the 17 people lost last week in a helicopter crash off the coast of Newfoundland. More than 1,300 people packed the Roman Catholic Basilica of St. John the Baptist, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Premier Danny Williams. There were 18 people on board the offshore oil helicopter when it went down in the icy waters. There was only one survivor. Before the memorial service began, Archbishop Martin Currie shared this message: “When you deal with so much tragedy and so much pain over a few days, it affects you … [but] little by little, light will come back.”

CBC

Brief Thoughts On Shows That Won't Last Much Longer

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 5:41 PM - 19 Comments

- Reaper: As a WKRP nut, the Les Nessman shout-out could not have made me happier (even if they didn’t dare actually mention where the name came from, for fear of looking uncool). I wondered last night if this show could be a candidate to go to cable if/when the CW drops it. In many ways it’s the sort of show that used to be all over basic cable: fun, unambitious, low-budget fantasy. (Many of the writers come from the USA fantasy/comedy Weird Science, which was a half-hour teen-oriented version of that type of show.) The Sci-Fi channel, which I refuse to call SyFy, has gotten more ambitious in recent years, but they still have some shows like that. I can’t really get too strongly behind a “Save Reaper” campaign, though I’ll be happy if it does somehow wind up getting another season; it’s the kind of show that you turn on, enjoy and forget until the next episode. Which is fine, but the CW is a network that depends on its little-watched shows getting a lot of buzz, word-of-mouth and online repeat viewing, and Reaper is not that kind of show. But it’s all worth it to see Ray Wise’s devil leading an AA meeting and tempting them all to get drunk again (an idea that may be inspired by Bedazzled, where Peter Cook’s devil is always seen doing some kind of petty, nasty, annoying thing to make people’s lives miserable).

- Kings: There’s really nothing to say about this show except that nobody thought that NBC’s position could be any worse than it was, and then they go and greenlight this bomb. I will say that while I admire the creator’s idea of doing an updated version of a Biblical story, he chose a story that already bombed when it was made into a Richard Gere movie. The story of David and Saul is so depressing and tragic that it’s hard to make it into a work of popular entertainment, but when you update it, the way Kings does, it seems a lot more like a soap opera than a great tragedy. So you wound up with a show that was both pretentious (because of its biblical origins) and silly (because of the actual story it was telling).

We laugh because it's true, or at least funny

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 5:11 PM - 5 Comments

New Wells column. Chock full o’ merriment.

Why MacGyver, Book II

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 5:10 PM - 1 Comment

I commented last week that MacGyver has unexpectedly become a major pop-culture icon; this week, legendary producer/huckster Dino De Laurentiis and his daughter Raffaella helpfully confirmed my statement by announcing that they’re making MacGyver into a feature film.

By the way, looking for some YouTube-related thing on MacGyver, I found this speech by the show’s creator, Lee Zlotoff, where he says that “I have been invited to speak to the Pentagon, and they have started to adopt those principles into a lot of their thinking.” Just so you know where the U.S. learned its counter-insurgency techniques.

(Anybody remember Mad Magazine’s introduction for their parody of De Laurentiis’s remake of King Kong, the one with Jessica Lange and Charles Grodin that was a lot more entertaining than the Peter Jackson version? “That lovable ape is back. We’re referring, of course, to Dino De Laurentiis.”)

Belief v. understanding

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 5:03 PM - 11 Comments

Scientists assess Gary Goodyear’s views on evolution.

Elizabeth Elle, a biology professor at Simon Fraser University, said it’s good to hear the minister accepts the theory of evolution, but she was concerned about the example he provided.

“I think it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution by natural selection works,” she added.

The fundamental premise is that genetic variation among organisms results in differences in their “fitness” — a biological term referring to the number of offspring they have. That ultimately leads certain characteristics to become prevalent among their descendents. However, the types of characteristics that result in more offspring change over time as the environment changes.

Elle acknowledged that humans are evolving every day, being naturally selected for characteristics such as resistance to certain diseases.

“The kind of shoes that you wear and the surfaces that you walk on — I don’t understand how that would translate into differences in fitness from a biological sense,” Elle said.

Brian Mulroney just wants something to believe in

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 4:38 PM - 8 Comments

The former Prime Minister talks to the Globe about Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister, airing tonight on CBC.

“If you look at Question Period, you can see that it’s often the theatre of the absurd. There’s no relationship whatsoever to the problems of ordinary Canadians, and that’s one of the reasons why ordinary Canadians turn off so quickly in politics,” said former PM Brian Mulroney, in an interview before the show’s taping last month. “They look at it: It’s all contrived indignation and cheap shots and phony questions and unserious answers, so they turn off on it.”

Later, Kim Campbell takes a rather unnecessary shot at George W. Bush.

We’re going to liveblog the show or post a running diary after the fact tonight. Either way, there will be something here later.

Afghanistan: a US civilian surge

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 4:37 PM - 2 Comments

The high-level reports — more than one, if I’m not mistaken — that Barack Obama will use to settle his new Afghanistan strategy will be coming to his desk over the next 10 days. Bits are starting to leak out. Today’s news lead in the Washington Post talks of hundreds of new civilians being deployed to Afghanistan, inlcuding one at the right hand of the lead United Nations official in the country. Canada has already been substantially increasing its civilian presence in Afghanistan, but in a phenomenon we’re going to be getting used to over the next little while, their hundreds will soon swamp our dozens.

Saskatoon: Visit at your own risk

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 4:19 PM - 1 Comment

Poor Saskatoon. Just two weeks after Maclean’s declared it the most dangerous city in Canada, the community has been crowned with another dubious distinction: the ninth-most dangerous city in the world. Released by realclearworld.com, the global top-ten list includes such danger zones as Mogadishu (1), Caracas (4) and Johannesburg (7). Sandwiching Saskatoon is Norilsk, Russia (8) and London, England (10). Not surprisingly, city officials responded to the ranking the same way they reacted to the Maclean’s analysis: with outrage and denial. Clive Weighill, the police chief, said comparing his town to cities that require military intervention to thwart ethnic cleansing is “sheer lunacy.”

The Saskatoon StarPhoenix

"How Jon Stewart went bad"

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 3:30 PM - 30 Comments

Tucker Carlson is taking it well.

Note to Yann Martel

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 2:27 PM - 21 Comments

Last night, to better illustrate the Prime Minister’s phone-calling prowess, an official photograph was distributed with a short synopsis of Mr. Harper’s call to the Trinidad and Tobago prime minister.

Visible over his right shoulder is the Prime Ministerial bookshelf and it is possible there to identify at least a couple of books, namely The Secret Mulroney Tapes (by Peter C. Newman) and French Kiss (by Chantal Hebert). Also, possibly a book about Africa.

Feel free download, peruse and try to spot any familiar book spines here.

As noted below, our well-read commenters have identified Duty: Life of a Cop, The Fate of Africa and Heart Matters.

His master's voice: a foreign policy that is actually noticed

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 1:34 PM - 10 Comments

After a decade in power, John Howard landed himself a presidential invitation to Blair House in Washington, and left his country’s diplomatic apparatus to rot. The story. The report.

Some people will be delighted that Australian diplomacy stagnates while it diligently builds its armies. Indeed I have colleagues who sometimes contrast Canada’s mealymouthed whatever with the fine, virile, manly-man stance of the great, wonderful Howard government. They are invited to compare and contrast Canadian combat casualties in Afghanistan with combined Australian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The real AIG scandal — and it’s not the bonuses

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 1:04 PM - 1 Comment

The focus on excessive bonuses paid out at AIG is “obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant,” writes former New York governor and Wall Street watchdog Eliot Spitzer on Slate.com. Spitzer notes the bailout provided a smokescreen to hide the payment of an enormous second round of cash to the same group that had received billions through the TARP program already. The double-dealing can be traced to last fall when the initial decision to bailout AIG was made by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, then-New York Fed official Timothy Geithner, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. They said they feared AIG’s inability to pay its counterparties could trigger a systematic failure. “And who were AIG’s trading partners?” Spitzer writes. “No shock here: Goldman, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and on it goes.”

Slate Magazine

Preston Manning, Leninist

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 1:04 PM - 20 Comments

Peter Foster is eager to correct the misapprehension of anyone who thought the Reform party’s founding leader belongs to the far right. You want far right? Peter Foster is here to show you where the far right is.

Hey Campbell, give this man a raise

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 1:02 PM - 1 Comment

Sure to go down in the annals of wacky photo ops, B.C. environment minister Barry Penner, who suffers from ophidiophobia—a fear of snakes—announces B.C.’s ban on exotic pets, while holding a boa. Penner, looking deeply uncomfortable, recalled the tragic death of 32-year-old Tanya Dumstrey-Soos—clawed by a Siberian tiger two years ago—when announcing B.C.’s Controlled Alien Species Regulation; it bans 1,256 animals that pose a serious threat to public safety.

The Province

AccountabilityWatch Extra: First a dart, now a laurel.

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 1:01 PM - 4 Comments

Never let it be said that, during her periodic forays into AccountabilityWatch-ing , ITQ doesn’t report on the good news as well as the bad.

She was, as noted below, somewhat frustrated to find out that the identities of those who apply for an exemption from the five year ban on lobbying are shrouded from prying eyes unless their request is approved by the commissioner.

On the flipside, however, she is entirely delighted to discover that the Office of the Lobbying Commissioner has finally made it clear that, as ITQ put it earlier this year, all lobbyist disclosures are not created equal.

Pull up an entry from the communications log database that was filed by an in-house – or “corporate” lobbyist – and the following text now appears at the bottom:

The above name is that of the most senior paid officer who is responsible for filing a return for a corporation or organization (the Registrant), whether that person participated in this communication or not. Indeed, the Lobbyists Registration Regulations do not require that the names of in-house lobbyists (i.e. employees of corporations or organizations) who actually participated in this communication with a designated public office holder be disclosed.

In other words, just because it looks like Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters  Jayson Myers has gotten face time with the Prime Minister, four cabinet ministers and Canada’s current Ambassador to the United States over the last eight months, it doesn’t actually mean that he was present at every one of those meetings. It could have been any one of the 25 AMEC staffers listed in his registration. Consultant lobbyists, however, are still required to file communications reports under their own names. Why the double standard?

ITQ still doesn’t know – but at least now there’s less chance of confusion.

What your test scores don't say about you

By Rachel Mendleson - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 12:45 PM - 10 Comments

Consider the following scenario: university admissions officers have narrowed applications for the final place in an engineering program down to two. The candidates have similar credentials and identical test scores; the only difference is that one is a woman and the other is a man. Who should they choose?

The answer may come as a surprise. According to a paper slated for publication in Psychological Science, the fear of confirming negative stereotypes about the intellectual capacity of women in math and sciences likely led the female applicant to underperform. Though her test scores may be the same as those of her male counterpart, the woman has a “significant untapped potential,” says University of Waterloo professor Steven Spencer, who co-authored the study with Stanford University’s Greg Walton. Put simply, she’s the better choice.

Continue…

Bipartisan he’s not, and that’s a good thing

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 12:34 PM - 3 Comments

It took Barack Obama just two days after he was sworn in as president to toss overboard the “bipartisan” malarkey that had been one of the dominant themes of his campaign narrative.

On Jan. 22, he invited top congressional leaders from both parties to the White House to discuss his ideas for an economic stimulus plan. One of the goals of the meeting was to promote bipartisanship, but after listening to Republicans gripe about some of his proposed measures, Obama quieted them by saying, quite simply, “I won.”

The stimulus bill was subsequently passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, with the vote in both chambers breaking down almost perfectly along party lines. It’s been straight downhill since then on the hands-across-Congress front, with the sniping and potshotting escalating steadily to the point where last week Rush Limbaugh called bipartisanship “a false premise” and said that any good Republican should actually be hoping for Obama’s plan to fail.

Continue…

Blood ties

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 12:22 PM - 0 Comments

As the FBI faces pressure to expand its Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) to allow for “familial searches,” George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen issues a cautionary plea. Familial searches, which follow up on near-DNA matches in an effort to pinpoint a relative who may be responsible for a crime, have shown a 10 per cent success rate in the U.K. But Rosen argues that because of the racial disparity in the CODIS databank-African Americans represent 13 per cent of the U.S. population, but account 40 per cent of convicted offenders-black families might be four times as likely to be put under genetic surveillance as their white counterparts. At the same time, the controversial inclusion of arrestees in the DNA databank in several states could exacerbate the disparity further and, he predicts. “A national decision to begin familial searches without explicit congressional approval might cause a political firestorm that would imperil political support for the entire CODIS system,” says Rosen.

Slate Magazine