Slicing through the fog of Airbus

By John Geddes - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 4 Comments

The contrasts between Brian Mulroney and Richard Wolson, the lawyer who questioned the former prime minister at the public inquiry into his dealings with German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber, could hardly have been starker. Mulroney was a portrait of weary, wounded dignity. Every complex, equivocal sentence he uttered threatened to lead the proceedings by a winding route to a dead end. Wolson was a study in tenacity and focus. His blunt questions came with minimal preamble, and, although courteous in a curt way, he didn’t hesitate to cut short a lugubrious Mulroney digression with an abrupt, “Stop there.”

Beyond their verbal styles, the two men’s physical presence offered striking juxtapositions, too. Mulroney, 70, sometimes looked drained. But his baritone still resonates with the rich undertones of irony and sarcasm that once made him such a riveting Parliament Hill orator. Wolson, 61, carries himself with a coiled energy. Aside from his distinctive coiffure—less a head of hair than a back-swept crest of quills—the closest he comes to a theatrical quality is when his patience runs thin and his voice upshifts from dogged to insistent.

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Perilous to be pro-South in North Korea

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

As North Korea ratchets up tensions with its southern neighbour, being seen as pro-South is increasingly perilous in the hermit kingdom. A southern news agency just reported that the leading pro-reconciliation deputy in the North, Choe Sung Chol, was executed last year, though some analysts believe he was sent to a re-education camp or possibly banished to a chicken farm. Other pro-South officials have been replaced by military hard-liners.

Relations have soured since last year’s election in the South of conservative President Lee Myung-bak, who ended years of “sunshine” aid flowing north and linked economic assistance to nuclear disarmament by Kim Jong Il’s nation. The North’s position soon hardened. “North Korea launched a probe into corruption last spring. However it later escalated into a political purge as inter-Korean relations worsened,” Lee Seung-yong, director of a southern research group that has extensive dealings across the border, told Reuters. “North Korea might have needed scapegoats. Reconciliation, which blossomed under liberal governments in Seoul, had caused a kind of admiration for South Korea among some party cadres.”

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Reading, writing, and radicalism?

By Jen Cutts - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

In a country where public education has long been low on the state’s list of priorities, madrasas, or Islamic schools, provide a way for Pakistan’s poorest families to educate, feed and even house their children. Though they have traditionally been open only to males, there has recently been a dramatic rise in the number of all-female religious schools: of the roughly 12,000 madrasas registered with the state, around 1,900 are attended by young women only. The female students, who have limited educational opportunities in Pakistan, are excelling in the schools and writing graduate exams at a higher rate than their male counterparts.

The illiteracy rate for women in Pakistan is nearly 80 per cent, and any opportunity for young girls to learn to read and write is worthwhile. There is concern, however, over what the madrasas’ real lessons are: some believe the schools are exposing students to radical Islamic teachings, and fostering sympathy for militant groups.

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Hooliganism prisoner free after 20 years

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

The Chinese government has never given a full account of what happened on June 4, 1989, when pro-democracy protesters were shot down in Tiananmen Square. Yet as the 20th anniversary approaches, a small piece of good news emerged: Liu Zhihua, the last activist known to be jailed on the now-defunct charge of “hooliganism,” has finally been released.

Liu was just 24 years old when he helped incite workers to strike at a state-owned factory in Xiangtan, Chairman Mao’s hometown. Over 10,000 employees participated, showing their solidarity with demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. According to the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco-based human rights group, Liu was convicted of “hooliganism,” a poorly defined offence frequently used against workers. (It was removed from China’s criminal law in 1997.)

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Don’t worry – Stephen Harper knows how to take care of this deficit problem

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 5:32 AM - 18 Comments

Coming soon to a TV channel near you:

[Ominous music. Images of piles of money.]

The federal deficit.

First it looked like it was going to be $34-billion.

Now it looks like it’s going to be $50-billion.

Why can’t it make up its mind?

Why is it flip-flopping like that?

[Abrupt silence. Dramatic pause.]

What is it hiding?

And where’s it been for the last 10 years?

[Music resumes. We see Continue…

You sicken me, you inferior kettle

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 4:20 AM - 4 Comments

The problem with the Conservative attack ads against Michael Ignatieff isn’t that they’re rude or desperate—it’s that they’re lame. The party that nailed Stéphane Dion as Prof. Whiny McShrugsalot has hit a sophomore slump in trying to pigeonhole the new guy.

The Tory argument against the Liberal leader boils down to three assertions:

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About those tapes (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 12:33 AM - 53 Comments

The Prime Minister’s press secretary explains the Prime Minister’s reference to “tapes.”

“We’ve got a lot of tape on him contradicting himself,” Teneycke said. “We certainly have hundreds of hours of footage of him in other forums as well at our disposal . . . and I’m sure we will find a use for more of that footage.”

Fun fact: It was six months ago this weekend that Conservatives eavesdropped on an NDP caucus conference call, a transcript of which was then distributed to reporters by members of the Prime Minister’s staff.

About those tapes

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 12:30 AM - 13 Comments

Michael Ignatieff’s scrummed response to the Prime Minister’s statement during QP, directed at the opposition leader, about “all the tapes I have on him.”

Question: Mr. Harper said he has tapes on you.

Michael Ignatieff: Yes, that’s the other thing. He said, he said in the House that he had tapes on me. That is the most Nixonian of Mr. Harper’s many remarks. Every day that goes by, he’s more like Richard Nixon. We are in the middle of the most serious crisis, economic crisis since the second world war and the Prime Minister of Canada is wasting his time listening to tapes of me. And then, not content with that, he says it in the House of Commons so he’ll intimidate me. I will not be intimidated by the Prime Minister. I’ve got a job to do which is to hold him to account. The public finances of our country are in free fall and he’s wasting time with tapes of me? It’s a joke.

How's this for an encore?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 11:26 PM - 6 Comments

The Governor General is going on a seal hunt.

Hate to say I told you 50000000000

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 7:11 PM - 124 Comments

Understand: there will be no going back from this, for the party or for the country. Whatever the budget’s soothing talk of “temporary” this and “extraordinary” that, and for all its well-mannered charts showing spending obediently returning to its pen, deficits meekly subsiding, multi-billion dollar “investments” repaid in full, we are in fact headed somewhere we have never been before. We are on course towards a massive and permanent increase in the size and scope of government: record spending, sky-high borrowing, and — inevitably — higher taxes…

If everything the budget foretells comes to pass, we might not come out too badly. A $34-billion deficit, after all, is only 2% of GDP, and even four years of deficits, if the budget’s projections hold, would barely budge our debt-to-GDP ratio. But if they do not — if the economy fails to recover on cue; if inflation spikes when it does, and interest rates soon after; if all those billions in new spending, once in place, do not prove so easy to trim back; if the assets the government acquires with all of its borrowed money do not turn out to be worth what they cost — then we will head into the approaching demographic storm loaded down to the gunwhales. It’s a monumental, even reckless gamble…

– A. Columnist, Maclean’s, Jan. 29, 2009

Sigh. It is so tedious being proved right. Mind you, a 50% over-run inside of four months wasn’t quite what I had in mind.

This is just a total, steaming train-wreck, economically and politically. As Terry Corcoran points out in the Post today, this has very little to do with the state of the economy and everything to do with years of runaway spending. Had spending been kept under the slightest semblance of restraint, there would have been ample margin for even the worst downturn. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to quote myself again:

It was in the 2000 budget, the deficit vanquished but memories of it still fresh, that Paul Martin promised to hold future increases in spending to no more than the rate of inflation plus population growth—“the benchmark used by most economic commentators”—or about three per cent per year. Yet hardly had he issued the pledge before he broke it. Program spending that fiscal year jumped by nearly $12 billion, or 10 per cent, twice as much as forecast. This was followed by increases of 5 per cent, 8 per cent, 6 per cent, and an astonishing 15 per cent in 2005. The Conservatives followed with increases of 7 per cent, 6 per cent, and 4 per cent—again, well in excess of the inflation-plus-population growth standard.

It is worth considering where we would be today, had governments of either party stuck to the not-terribly-exacting standard of fiscal discipline Martin promised in 2000. Had program spending been held to 2000 levels in real per capita terms—that is, allowed to increase by no more than inflation plus population growth—it would today be just $165 billion, or some $43 billion less than currently projected.

Just to update those numbers (that was written last fall, after all, which was, like, months ago): spending as of fiscal 2010 would be $169-billion vs the budget’s projected $229-billion, or whatever ghastly sum it’s at today: a difference of at least $60-billion. Even if the Tories had only held real per capita spending at 2006 levels, the deficit would be less than half its current — as of this afternoon, call back tomorrow — figure. But then, if I may quote myself yet a third time:

The $22-billion the Harper government will pile on top of program spending this year, adjusted for inflation and population growth, amounts to an increase of more than 10.1 per cent. That’s a larger rise, in real dollars per citizen, than anything the Trudeau governments ever attempted, even in the heady days of the early 1970s, when they were putting in place the institutions of the modern welfare state. (Its only possible rival is 2005, when spending increased by a similar amount — though its abrupt decline the following year suggests this was as much an accounting achievement as anything else.) For the record, it’s more even than in the infamous first budget of Bob Rae’s Ontario government.

No government in our history has spent this much, this fast. Before this budget, no government had spent more than about $6000 per citizen, in 2008 dollars — no, not even in the depths of the 1982 recession. This budget blasts through that ceiling, all the way to $6500, and stays there: four years from now, after the recession is presumably a memory, the government will still be spending nearly $6400 per capita. At the start of this decade, it was spending just $4800. Somehow the federal government is now finding ways to spend a third more inflation-adjusted dollars on each of its citizens.

So a field day for the Loyal Opposition, right? Not exactly. One, as the second quote above makes clear, the Liberals contributed more than their share to this mess, having raised spending even faster in Martin’s last years than the Conservatives have. Two, they voted for the Tories’ record-breaking January budget, taking credit for forcing them to spend more than the fall update had planned. Three, since then they have been urging the Tories at every turn to spend more (an extra round of stimulus!), faster (shovels in the ground! money out the door!), and with even less long-term direction (an extra five weeks of EI? That’s nothing! Make it nine weeks’ eligibility!) than was already the case.

Bitching about deficits is all right for green-eyeshade types like me. For born-again Keynesians like, well, everyone in Canadian politics, these should be glad days indeed. They wanted more “stimulus,” they got it. Instead, the Grits want to have it both ways, blasting the Tories for running deficits while complaining that very little extra spending has actually taken place, as in this Liberal press release:

Having arrived at Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s 120-day self-imposed deadline for stimulus spending, the only result the Harper Conservatives can point to is a record deficit of at least $50 billion and stalled stimulus projects throughout the country…

Well, yes: more proof, if any were needed, of the futility and waste of deficit spending. But if you believe in Keynesian demand management, it really doesn’t matter a whole hell of a lot how the deficit happens: what matters is that there’s a deficit — more money being “put into” the economy than “taken out.” I know, I know: the “multiplier” is greater for spending than for tax cuts. But still, a deficit’s a deficit. And $50-billion is $50-billion.

On the other hand, if you believe such old-fashioned “pump priming” is a theoretical absurdity and a proven real-world failure, you will recognize where all this is headed.

Definitely not just another gala: (Sort of) Liveblogging the annual "Embrace an Orphanage" dinner

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 6:30 PM - 6 Comments

ITQ will be liveblogging the festivities at the Museum of Civilization tonight, courtesy of the Children’s Bridge Foundation, so be sure to tune in tonight for full — if sporadic — coverage of what has become one of the hottest unabashedly apolitical events on the Hill fundraising circuit.

The fun starts around 7pm, so check back then!

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The Commons: The roasting of Jim Flaherty

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 6:18 PM - 15 Comments

The Scene. For awhile before Question Period, the front row seat between Tony Clement and Lawrence Cannon, normally occupied by the Finance Minister, remained unfilled. No doubt, Jim Flaherty might’ve been forgiven for staying home. The weather outside was frightful, rainy and cold. And the mood inside was foul, accusatory and scornful.

But with minutes to spare before the Speaker called for oral questions, Mr. Flaherty arrived. And for the next 45 minutes he was treated to a fine show. A dramatically staged tale about a $16-billion rounding error. A harrowing story in which he was both the central character and principal villain.

First to take the stage was Michael Ignatieff.

“Mr. Speaker, in September the government said there would be no recession. In October, no deficits,” he said, rising up a bit on his toes with each point, nearly singing his disappointment. “In November it promised a surplus, but in January it brought down a $34 billion deficit. Yesterday it ballooned to $50 billion, all this in a breathtaking six months, and still the money has not gotten out the door. This is incompetence on a historic scale.”

Then, finally, a question.

“How can the Prime Minister or any other Canadian,” he said, “still have confidence in the Minister of Finance?”

So challenged, Stephen Harper did the honourable thing. He bragged about the great deal he was getting from his bank. Continue…

The big red chair

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 5:31 PM - 0 Comments

Frank McKenna and Sheila Fraser on the Hour.

I’m reasonably assured that Heritage Minister James Moore will be on the show tonight.

The search for Tori Stafford: What's taking so long?

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 5:27 PM - 0 Comments

The search for Tori Stafford’s eight-year-old body is now in its eighth day. Ontario police have rummaged through rural properties, scoured two lakes, and seized at least one large garbage bin in their hunt for the little girl’s remains. Today, officers are focusing their attention on a specific plot of land near Highway 401, just a 20-minute drive from Tori’s hometown of Woodstock. “We’re still receiving tips and we’re following up on all those tips,” says Constable Laurie-Anne Maitland, a spokeswoman for the Oxford County Police Service. “They will go where the evidence takes them.”

For a few days, at least, the police were going where Terri-Lynne McClintic took them. One of two suspects now charged in connection with Stafford’s abduction and murder, the 18-year-old infamously offered to help investigators “bring Tori home to her family.” But as the search stretches into its second week—and McClintic is now back behind bars—it’s hard to ignore the obvious question: What is taking so long? If McClintic really knows what happened to the Grade 3 student, why is her body still missing?

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Week in Pictures: May 21st – May 27th, 2009

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 4:50 PM - 0 Comments

Actually, don't bother firing Jim Flaherty

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 4:31 PM - 203 Comments

There is nothing wrong with the Liberals calling for the head of Jim Flaherty. It would be hard to imagine a parliamentary system anywhere in which the finance minister’s validity wouldn’t be questioned by the opposition, on a day when he announced he had managed to turn 2% of GDP of fiscal stimulus, spread over two years, into 3% of GDP of deficit in the first year. Recall that we are still only five months from the good old days when Flaherty was projecting no deficit at all, in an economic update whose policy proposals were disowned by the transport minister two days later.

So I say the following with real regret. I’m the guy who endorsed Flaherty to replace Mike Harris for the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership in 2000, after all. (The OPC preferred to herd lemming-like off a cliff named Ernie Eves.) But come on. This guy is easily the most ineffectual federal finance minister in decades. Why believe a word from his mouth? Does anyone seriously believe he believes most of it?

So it’s fair for the opposition parties to call for Flaherty to be fired. But realistically now, would it make any conceivable difference?

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How to help Haiti by trying to do less

By Michael Petrou - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 4:23 PM - 10 Comments

Haiti is Canada’s second-largest recipient of foreign aid after Afghanistan, absorbing more than $100 million a year. I wrote about Canada’s impact on the country last year.

Earlier today I met with Michel Forst, the United Nations “Independent Expert on the Situation of Human Rights in Haiti.” He’s in Ottawa to meet with Canadian government officials and NGOs. Forst’s full report on Haiti and the international community’s involvement there can be read here. While things have vastly improved in Haiti, the country remains in rough shape.

What struck me from our meeting however, was what he had to say about the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). CIDA, he says, is trying to accomplish too much in too many different areas. By spreading its resources so widely, it has diluted the impact it makes on the ground. He argues that Canada should refocus on the areas where it can accomplish most and where its expertise is most pronounced – he suggests prisons and the justice system, and policing. Continue…

Official confirmation: This was unfair

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 4:16 PM - 31 Comments

Canadian Broadcast Standards Council says CTV violated various provisions of various codes in airing infamous Stephane Dion restarts.

The Putin pen is mightier than the . . .

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 3:30 PM - 0 Comments

Titled “Why it’s hard to fire people,” Vladimir Putin uses his article to explain what he calls a fair and personal method for axing his staff. He also uses it to admit that there was bureaucratic chaos surrounding his eight years in office as president, saying “if I hadn’t interfered in certain situations, in Russia there would long ago ceased to have been a government.” Although not confirmed, many analysts have said there was a power struggle between liberals and conservative former KGB officers in government, one Putin may have prevented from erupting into all out war. When it comes to actually canning someone, Putin recommends only firing for reasonable grounds, facing people one-on-one, and allowing them to plead their case. This article comes after a year of the former Russian president expanding and exercising his extra-curricular interests, from practicing painting, singing, and skiing to demonstrating his expertise in Judo.

The Independent

The Bush Hangover

By John Parisella - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 3:15 PM - 10 Comments

It is hard to underestimate the imprint George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” speech left on U.S. foreign policy. The story has been unfolding ever since, with the invasion of Iraq, the disengagement from bilateral talks with North Korea that had been started under the Clinton Administration, and the continuing alienation from an emerging regional, and possibly nuclear, power in Iran. The Iraq war quickly degenerated into an anti-insurgency operation that remains far from a conclusive; North Korea has once again provoked the ire of the world with its nuclear tests; and, as for Iran, with an election currently underway, it may not be the ideal time for the U.S. to radically alter its approach, but its nuclear enrichment program remains an ongoing source of worry. In the meantime, events in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan have become grounds for serious concern. I know it appears all too easy to blame Bush and Cheney for all this, but eight years of misguided policies cannot be reversed overnight or even in the first year of a new presidency, however well-intentioned or promising it may be.

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Ode To REAPER

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 3:09 PM - 5 Comments

Reaper had its (probably) final episode last night. It was what it’s always been: uneven, low-budget, silly, barely managing to make it through an entire plot, let alone figure out what the whole series is supposed to be about — and very entertaining. Can I sum up my feelings about it in 32 rhymed words? Yes. Should I? No. Will I? Of course.

Another sleeper
Is out of luck.
It was a keeper,
But they got stuck
With budgets cheaper
Than half a buck
And plots no deeper
Than “Disco Duck.”
But I’ll take Reaper
Instead of Chuck.

Another blow against Canada's claim to Arctic sovereignty?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 2:44 PM - 6 Comments

What little is left of a stone-and-sod wall dug up on Baffin Island could point to a trading relationship between Norse seafarers and a now-extinct group of aboriginals that dates back more than 700 years, according to a top Arctic researcher. The structure, which Pat Sutherland, Canadian Museum of Civilization’s chief of Arctic archeology, says bears a resemblance to those at the New World’s only confirmed Viking settlement, a UNESCO world heritage site at Newfoundland’s L’Anse aux Meadows. After failing to establish a permanent settlement in Newfoundland, Sutherland believes that the Norse travelled between Greenland and the Arctic for decades, trading with the Dorset people.

Ottawa Citizen

Political aides' stories differ at Larry O'Brien trial

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 2:41 PM - 0 Comments

Testifying at Mayor Larry O’Brien’s influence-peddling trial, MP Pierre Poilievre’s assistant and former campaign manager, John Light, said he was told Terry Kilrea would drop out of the 2006 mayoral race because he was being offered a federal appointment. Light testified that Greg Strong, (campaign organizer for O’Brien) made the comment during a phone conversation in August 2006. But minutes later Strong denied the claim and said the subject of an appointment for Kilrea never came up during his conversation with Light. Judge Douglas Cunningham ordered a voir dire to see if the hearsay from both men (and local businessman Thom Bennett) can be admitted as evidence.

Ottawa Citizen

Three strikes for Belgium's star

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 2:40 PM - 0 Comments

Quick, name a famous Belgian. Sort of falls off after Tintin and Jean Claude Van Damme, doesn’t it? But to his cycling mad countrymen and women, Tom Boonen is a household name. Trouble is that the three-time winner of the Paris-Roubaix classic is now mostly famous for his failings. He has tested positive for cocaine for the third time and the 28-year-old is battling to save his career.

The New York Times