Go west!

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 4:34 PM - 4 Comments

For the past two years, Ottawa has topped MoneySense’s ranking of the best places to live in Canada. But this year, Victoria has taken the crown, thanks to its clean air, low unemployment, affordable tax rates, and the ease with which you can get around the city. The B.C. capital could use some cheaper housing options, but who wouldn’t pay a little extra to live in a city where the thermometer drops below freezing a mere 53 days a year? Ottawa drops to second on this year’s list, with Kingston rounding out the top three.

MoneySense

Swine flu: the photos

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 3:45 PM - 2 Comments

Saudi women banned from going to the gym

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 1:56 PM - 5 Comments

Saudi Arabia is about to shut down its dozen or so women-only gyms ostensibly because they’re “unlicensed and so illegal,” the Guardian reports. But leading Saudi clerics have recently condemned the gyms as places of “shamelessness” and argue they’ll tempt women to leave their homes and neglect their husbands and children. This would leave Saudi women who want to work out at the gym out of luck, given that mixed gyms are forbidden in the kingdom. The obvious step of making women’s gyms legal seems unlikely given that the authorities responsible for men’s gyms have “not been allowed or prepared to regulate those for women,” reports the paper, which quotes a businessman who tried to set up a women’s sports club and abandoned the project after hitting a wall at every turn. The gym shut-down occurs amid discussion that Saudi women might be allowed to vote in municipal elections for the first time, though no one is holding their breath: Prince Nayef, the powerful interior minister, who has said the kingdom had no need of either women MPs or elections, appears on the fast-track to succeed his half-brother the King.  

The Guardian

“Fat” Kate Moss a sign of lean economic times

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 1:54 PM - 5 Comments

Teeny-tiny supermodel and style-setter Kate Moss’s recent weight gain is heralded by the Times of London as part of the fashion world’s shift away from “death-camp-teen look” models to “statuesque“ 1990s models like Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista. Though Moss has added only enough poundage to require her to wear a bra for the first time in her life, she’s on trend with the larger economically driven acceptance of larger sizes, the paper argues. As proof, it cites an “exhaustive” academic study of the bodily dimensions of Playboy models from 1960 to 2000, which found that when social and economic conditions were tough, the Playmates selected tended to be older and heavier, and have “larger waists, smaller eyes, larger waist-to-hip ratios, smaller bust-to-waist ratios, and smaller body mass index values.”

The Sunday Times

Dept. of Homeland Idiocy

By Andrew Potter - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 1:47 PM - 10 Comments

In which Air Force One does a low-level fly-by of the Statue of Liberty for a photo shoot, and in the process gives cardiacs to hundreds of Financial District employees. The WSJ even has video.

Forgetful Fred

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 1:32 PM - 7 Comments

What a surprise…

Close Brian Mulroney confidante Fred Doucet answered repeatedly today he had “no recollection” to almost every question put to him at the public inquiry probing business dealings between Mulroney and German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.

His absence of memory concerning almost everything to do with a controversial proposal by a German company to build light-armoured vehicles in Canada clearly frustrated lead inquiry counsel Richard Wolson.

Doucet, a former chief advisor to Mulroney when he was prime minister, is thought to be a key figure in the inquiry in terms of Mulroney’s involvement in Bear Head Industries project. However, he stated dozens of time that he had no recollection of events or did not recall meetings with individuals with respect to Bear Head, although he acknowledged being hired by Schreiber to lobby for the project after he left the government in August 1988 and was paid $90,000.

Gosh. Doucet must feel a bit sheepish, don’t you think, not being able to remember anything about a project for which he’d lobbied diligently for many years? Still, nothing like as embarrassing as being caught lying under oath.

UPDATE: My mistake. He wasn’t lying. He just … forgot.

A former senior adviser to Brian Mulroney said he can’t remember writing three letters or receiving a fax regarding the purchase and delivery of Airbus planes to Air Canada.

Fred Doucet, testifying at the federal inquiry into the business dealings between Karlheinz Schreiber and the former prime minister, said he had no recollection of any of the correspondence relating to Airbus that took place between 1992 and 1994.

Of particular note is a fax that was sent to Doucet from Denis Biro, then Air Canada’s manager of investor relations, and a letter written by Doucet to Schreiber. Both are dated April 27, 1993, the same date that Mulroney received his first cash envelope from Schreiber at a hotel in Mirabel airport.

…

At a federal ethics committee last February, Doucet testified he had no knowledge about anything involving Airbus.

In a letter dated Mar. 24, 1992 and addressed to Schreiber, however, Doucet wrote that: “I do not want to bother you with the matter of the Birds. As I recall, you felt that by now I would have heard from [Frank Moores]. I have not heard from him.”

“Birds” is believed to be another word for planes.

When asked about the letter by lead commission counsel Richard Wolson, Doucet replied: “I do not remember anything about that.”

In the second letter, dated Aug. 27, 1993, Doucet wrote that “Mr. Biro has confirmed that 34 Airbus have been purchased and delivered to Air Canada according to the enclosed schedule.”

“I have no memory of that document either,” Doucet told the inquiry.

…

Wolson seemed perplexed that Doucet had memory of certain things, and no memory of others. He asked how Doucet how he could remember details of a meeting 15 years ago between Mulroney and Schreiber in which Mulroney brought up China, Russian president Boris Yeltsin, and French President Francois Mitterand.

“You can recall specific countries, specific leaders. How is that?” Wolson asked.

“Well it was very vivid in my mind,” Doucet said. “When you talk about the Chinese leadership, when you talk about personages like president Yeltsin, president Mitterand, it registers.”

Wolson asked: “And Airbus airplanes don’t?”

“No,” Doucet said.

So Airbus is now firmly in play, notwithstanding David Johnston’s purblind terms of reference. Doucet has just effectively thumbed his nose at the commission. If his testimony goes unchallenged, it will make a mockery out of the inquiry. And Judge Oliphant cannot allow that to happen.

AMNESIADATE: The Globe has more, including this sublime exchange:

Mr. Justice Jeffrey Oliphant, the chair of the inquiry, tried to jog Mr. Doucet’s memory by asking him the identity of his secretary, who appeared to be the author of one of the letters.

“What was your secretary’s name at that time?” the judge asked. “Someone with the initials B.H.?”

After a long pause, Mr. Doucet replied: “I don’t remember.”

He can’t remember the name of his secretary. Perhaps she (I’ll assume it’s a she) only worked there a week? Maybe he had dozens of secretaries? But what if he only had the one, and for some lengthy period of time? Anybody out there know the name of Fred Doucet’s secretary, circa 1993? The mysterious B.H.?

The left side of Iggy’s brain vs. the right

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 23 Comments

As always with Michael Ignatieff, there are the contradictions. Awaiting his coronation at next week’s party convention, the Liberal leader is everywhere, in interviews about and excerpts from his new book, True Patriot Love. And the more he speaks, the more the contradictions mount.

The Ignatieff who once declared in The Russian Album that “I do not believe in roots” now dwells on them at length, emphasizing his four-generation heritage of attachment to Canada. The ambitious intellectual who once believed that “life was elsewhere” now wants to be known as someone who is “anchored in the country.” The British television personality who publicly despaired, after the 1995 referendum, that he was “very hard put to see what kind of future we have” now burbles that “the country is not done. The story has only just begun.”

Continue…

Stop taxes, but give us medicine

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 12:36 PM - 1 Comment

Rick Perry, the Texas governor who recently blasted the federal government for “intrusion into the lives of our citizens” and suggested that his state might secede if the feds keep taxing them, has requested 37,430 vials of anti-viral medicine from the Centre For Disease Control, a federal agency, to help combat the swine flu outbreak. It looks like the federal government stops being intrusive when you need it to pay for something.

The Dallas Morning News

What Garth heard

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 12:21 PM - 30 Comments

The most entertaining parts of Sheeple, Garth Turner’s awkwardly titled account of his most recent time in politics, are almost definitely the previously undisclosed bits of private conversation and internal discussion Turner claims to have been party to. If only because truly candid, available-for-public-consumption comment from a politician is otherwise so rare.

Herein, a brief collection of Sheeple’s highlights in this regard. Note: some adult language follows. Continue…

Talking with the Tamils

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

In the lead-up to last week’s rally in Ottawa when tens of thousands of members of Canada’s Tamil community jammed Parliament Hill—protesting the Sri Lankan government’s handling of a 25-year-long war—MPs from all parties were meeting with protesters behind closed doors. Although the NDP were the only party that addressed the crowd, the Liberals, Conservative and Bloc MPs met with Tamil supporters. According to Minister of State Foreign Affairs Peter Kent, his party has been engaged in talks “with a variety of members from the Sri Lankan community,” and will be as “engaged as we can be until the fighting stops.” Both sides, he says, are “responsible for the continuing humanitarian tragedy.”  

The Hill Times

Computer to appear on “Jeopardy!”

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 11:35 AM - 0 Comments

IBM is in the final stages of developing a computer program to battle human contestants on the game show Jeopardy!—a move that, if successful, could bring artificial intelligence a big step forward, the New York Times reports. To successfully compete, the computer (nicknamed Watson, after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson Sr.) will have to be able to make subtle comparisons and interpretations, understand puns and double entendres, and interact with humans at rapid speed. Researchers are trying to develop a new type of software that can “understand” and respond to human questions, representing an effort by IBM to prove that research can be spurred by picking “grand challenges” like the famous chess battle (IBM was also responsible for the chess program that ran on supercomputer Deep Blue, beating champion Garry Kasparov in a 1997 match). Under rules negotiated by the show’s producers and the research team, the computer will receive questions as electronic text, and respond with a synthesized voice. Its answers will be based on text it has “read” before the show. In a recent demonstration at the IBM lab, Watson beat human competitors to the question, “Bordered by Syria and Israel, this small country is only 135 miles long and 35 miles wide,” by answering, “What is Lebanon?” However, the program also made errors, for example identifying “sheet” as a fruit.

The New York Times

Harper’s nuclear mistake

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 11:32 AM - 0 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s comments in the wake of the Chalk River isotope crisis made matters worse, according to a Natural Resources document. The briefing note, which was obtained by the Canadian Press through an Access to Information Request, says Harper’s derision of Canada’s nuclear safety watchdog as a “Liberal-appointee” inflamed the situation, comparing it to a debacle on par with the Mulroney-Schreiber affair. The 2007 shortage of medical isotopes used to treat cancer and heart ailments occurred when the Chalk River, Ont., reactor was shut down for almost a month after it was discovered that emergency backup power wasn’t tied to pumps which prevent meltdowns.

CTV

What is swine flu?

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 11:02 AM - 1 Comment

Pigs get it all the time. Swine flu is a respiratory disease caused by type A influenza viruses. It’s rare for humans to contract the infection, but it does happen, as we’re seeing around the world now. This particular strain—called H1N1—is especially scary because it is also transmissable between humans through coughing or sneezing. That boosts the chances of an outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control in the U.S., says the best way to avoid getting swine flu is by washing your hands regularly and thoroughly.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Google map of Swine Flu locations

A spotless sun

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 7 Comments

There is another global warming complication to worry about—the Sun. Solar activity is at its lowest point in decades, and there is no sign that the sunspots and solar winds will soon return to normal. Scientists are baffled, and now they are starting to wonder if a sustained period of listlessness from the Sun might throw our global warming calculations out of whack. 
The Independent

That's what friends are for

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 10:56 AM - 0 Comments

A close friend of the Prime Minister’s has, for the third time, landed a government appointment, once again raising charges of patronage. John Weissenberger, a geologist described as a friend for life of the Prime Minister, was recently appointed to the board of directors for the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, an independent corporation tasked with distributing hundreds of millions in research funding. Two years ago, Weissenberger was named chief of staff to Diane Finley, then minister of citizenship and immigration, a position he took after stepping away from an appointment to the judicial advisory committee. “Harper never promised an end to patronage,” says NDP MP Pat Martin, “but he did promise an appointments review commission and that’s one of his biggest failures of his administration in my view.” Liberal Marc Garneau adds his concern, including an assertion that Weissenberger is an “outright denier” of climate change.

The Toronto Star

Michael Ignatieff, milkshake-head guy of my dreams

By Paul Wells - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 10:42 AM - 30 Comments

Andy Lamey has come to some conclusions.

I once interviewed him, and if I could go back in time I would end it not by shaking his hand but by pouring a milkshake on his head and saying, “No Michael, you’re wrong.” If it were up to me interviews with Michael Ignatieff on any subject would always end this way, by law.

Surviving in the Imperial Valley

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 10:33 AM - 0 Comments

California’s Imperial Valley, a farming area in the state’s southeast corner, is no stranger to hard times. But the current downturn has taken an especially heavy toll. The Imperial Valley had the highest rate of subprime loans in the country and now entire subdivisions sit unfinished, their builders laid-off. Even the local cemetery is in foreclosure. The unemployment rate is over 25 per cent (also the highest in the Unites States). The local paper, the Imperial Valley Press runs a front-page feature called “Tough Times.” Residents say they’re used to the hardscrabble life, and know things will turn around sooner or later. As one local puts it, “You have to be tough to survive in the Imperial Valley.”

Los Angeles Times

Then he takes Tel Aviv?

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 10:19 AM - 7 Comments

Leonard Cohen’s plan to play Tel Aviv next fall as part of his extended, wildly successful concert tour is meeting with objections from British professors sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians. A group called the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine has published an open letter urging the Canadian poet-singer to boycott Israel in response to the recent fighting in Gaza. The British profs seemed pained by the notion of Cohen performing in Israel; they call his songs “the soundtrack of our lives.” There’s history in this dispute: Jewish by birth (although he’s a prominent practicing Buddhist), Cohen performed in Israel during the 1973 Yom Kipur War.

Haaretz.com

Wafting gently downward

By Paul Wells - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 8:51 AM - 60 Comments

Statistically, when you add the numbers from a bunch of different polls with different methodologies and questions together, you get porridge. But since I’ve linked to Calgary Grit’s monthly polling roundup in the past to show that nothing much was changing in voter support, here I am today linking to it to show the opposite. The polls have been an accumulation of discouraging news for the Conservatives.

Three quick thoughts. Continue…

DND again denies first, discloses later

By John Geddes - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 8:51 AM - 4 Comments

This morning’s interesting Globe and Mail story on a secret military project called Polar Breeze catches my attention for reasons that have nothing to do with shadowy plans for high-tech surveillance in the high Arctic.

The Globe reports that its earlier request for information on the subject was met with a blanket denial from the Department of National Defence. It wasn’t just a matter of the department refusing to disclose details about Polar Breeze: DND told the paper the project didn’t exit.
Continue…

Liveblogging former Mulroney advisor Fred Doucet at the Oliphant Inquiry

By kadyomalley - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 8:10 AM - 20 Comments

Hey everybody, I’m back! Did you miss me? Because I missed you —  not to mention, of course, a whole week of testimony at the Oliphant inquiry, which is why I’ll be heading back to Old City Hall this morning just in time for Fred Doucet takes the stand. Check back at 9:30 a.m. when Doucet — Mulroney’s longtime senior advisor, who has standing at the inquiry in his own right  – gives his account of the decades-long relationship between his former boss and Karlheinz Schreiber, who, during his testimony earlier this month, dismissed Doucet as little more than a gatekeeper for the former PM.

At the moment, Doucet is scheduled to go for two days; the rest of the witness list for this week reads like the index of a William Kaplan book. On Wednesday, Kim Campbell will become the first — but likely not the last — Right Honourable to testify, followed by Perrin Beatty, who served as her defence minister. On Thursday, the inquiry will hear from Senator Lowell Murray and Norman Spector, Mulroney’s former chief of staff, who made a memorable appearance before the Ethics committee. Depending on what’s going on in the Other Place — you know, the one with the clock tower — ITQ is hoping to provide full liveblogging coverage of each and every one of them.

(That is, presuming that I can remember how to liveblog, of course. I figure it’s like riding a teeny tiny bike that you pedal with your thumbs instead of your feet; presumably, the muscle memory will kick in.)

9:12:34 AM
Move over, Canada – ITQ is back! Back at Old City Hall, back on the Oliphant beat and back in her usual seat at, well, the back of the Victoria Room media encampment. With fifteen minutes to go before the hearing gets underway, the commission lawyers are in full huddleconference mode; it looks like Wolson will be the lead questioner this morning, and although I haven’t managed to catch a glimpse of his choice of neckwear for the day, he looks more than ready to get this examination underway. Schreiber’s lead counsel Richard Auger, meanwhile, is looking uncharacteristically dapper in a khaki-ish coloured suit and a salmon-coloured tie; his client, meanwhile, is still in brown.

My guess is that Wolson will take up most, if not all of today with his questions; I’m not sure who will go next, although if it follows the same rotation as Schreiber’s testimony, the Attorney General will take the second slot, followed by Guy Pratte – who isn’t here, oddly – Auger, and finally Doucet’s own lawyer, Bob Houston, who ITQ devoutly hopes won’t maintain the tone of barely concealed loathing that characterized his last appearance at the lectern during Schreiber’s appearance

Oh, and for the record, I did try my best to follow last week’s hearings, but it really isn’t the same as being there. As soon as I can get my hands on the transcripts, I plan on catching up in full.

9:27:23 AM
Huh. This is new: A statement from the bench, courtesy of Justice Oliphant. Oh, he wants to officially express the relief and delight of the commission by news of the release of Bob Fowler and Louis Guay, and to correct the record as far as a story that ran late last week alleging that Fowler had been summoned to appear before the inquiry. According to Oliphant, there were “informal” discussions between commission counsel and Foreign Affairs, but Fowler has not and will not be summoned to appear — his recovery from his ordeal is “paramount”.

9:30:23 AM
And now — Fred Doucet!

Continue…

Family is everything (redux)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 2:09 AM - 11 Comments

L. Ian Macdonald wants to know more about Michael Ignatieff.

Yet Ignatieff’s own children, Theo and Sophie, are absent from the story, living their own lives in Toronto and at the University of Edinburgh. Ignatieff says they are very cool with what their dad is doing, and that he couldn’t more grateful for their support.

And here is the divide between public and private life. In a way, it is none of our business, but they are part of his narrative, and in that sense the public is entitled to know something about them. Ignatieff, in his acceptance address, needs to find a way to bring them into his story. He can look it up under Barack Obama. There is still too much about him that Canadians don’t know.

See previously here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

TV, The Recession and Escapism

By Jaime Weinman - Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 9:50 PM - 0 Comments

Bill Brioux has an article in the Toronto Star about how the recession is impacting television; and he has more to say at his blog. The trends include a move toward escapism and comedy, and more stories about evil Wall Street/corporate types and rich people who lose all their money. Well, all these things have been on television for a long time, but the recession has caused the networks to green-light a few more pilots that fit into those respective categories, and make a few more recession-specific jokes in TV episodes (maybe not as many as comic strips, though). And that’s enough to make it a trend.

It will be interesting to see if there are any successes among the upcoming comedies about people who are laid off, lose all their money, move back in with their parents, etc. Remember, it only takes one success to create a sustainable trend, since every success is followed by half a dozen imitators. One thing I’ll note is that in dealing with a recession, addressing it head-on is not necessarily the best strategy; at least, it’s not always enough. In the ’30s, entertainment was famously schizoid: the most successful entertainments acknowledged the existence of the Depression, but then proceeded as if the Depression didn’t apply to the characters. The iconic movies of the era weren’t about people losing their jobs and going on breadlines — movies on subjects like that were probably more popular in the ’20s, when the subject was more remote from everyday experience — but Busby Berkeley musicals, Shirley Temple films, and crime dramas about gangsters who lived the high life until they were gunned down at the end. These films didn’t pretend that there wasn’t a recession, they just offered an escape into a better world. Leverage is cited in the article as an example of a show that got renewed because it fits that pattern: an escape into a world where the good guys win out over the recession-era baddies.

If you assume that audiences want some escapism these days, it’s not surprising that Better Off Ted isn’t doing so great; it’s a good show, but it’s anti-escapist, about a cartoonish corporate hell where the only thing worse than staying is leaving. (The Office is a bit different; by now that seems like a fairly fun place to work.) However, the more likely explanation for its problems is not that it’s out of touch with recession-era zeitgeist but that it’s on a network, ABC, where most of the single-camera comedies are tanking. So I had better pull back before I start attributing every case of low ratings to some kind of broad cultural force.

'The whole thing could turn out to be moot'

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 7:23 PM - 9 Comments

Interesting claim in a letter to the editor from a member of the American Bar Association.

I had the opportunity to speak last week with Joan Donoghue, the acting legal adviser at the State Department. While her comments were guarded – and properly so – it was clear to me the administration is seeking a diplomatic solution to Mr. Khadr’s status, which likely means repatriation.