The gory details

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 4:33 PM - 32 Comments

The Conservative-Liberal agreement, released just now by the Prime Minister’s Office.

The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition today agreed to form a working group to develop proposals for Employment Insurance eligibility reform that will:

(a) allow self-employed Canadians to participate voluntarily in the Employment Insurance system; and
(b) improve eligibility requirements in order to ensure regional fairness.

The working group will consist of three appointees of the Prime Minister and three appointees of the Leader of the Opposition. The working group will have access to briefings and data provided by the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development. It may consult such other sources as deemed necessary. The working group will deliver recommendations to the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and Canadians by September 28, 2009.

The parties will work in good faith to implement any consensus recommendations made by the working group. In addition, the Liberals will support the main and supplementary estimates this Friday. The Conservatives will support the Liberal opposition day motion (a draft copy of which is attached), also this Friday.

The Liberal motion after the jump. Continue…

Europe’s great shift to the right

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 4:10 PM - 21 Comments

It was at once a stunning expression of anger and a distressing measure of apathy. The results of this week’s elections for the European Parliament highlighted two worrisome trends among the citizens of the 27-nation political bloc: the rise of far-right, anti-immigrant parties, and a general decline in voter interest. Only 43.2 per cent of the European Union’s 375 million eligible electors cast a ballot—the lowest turnout in 30 years. Having 213 million people ignore a body that regulates so much is a “bad result,” admitted Margot Wallstrom, the European Commission vice-president. “It does affect the legitimacy of the EU.” But the rest of the world is justifiably more concerned about just who Europe’s motivated voters appear to be:

• In Hungary, the ultra-nationalist Jobbik (“For a Better Hungary”) party took 15 per cent of the vote, winning three of the country’s 22 seats. (The makeup of the 736-member legislature is based on proportional representation.) The party is best known for its angry public rallies against “Gypsy crime,” featuring formations of its black-uniformed Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard).
• In the Netherlands, the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) came second in the election, capturing 17 per cent of the vote and four seats. Its leader Geert Wilders is best known for his controversial short film Fitna, which links terrorism to Islamic doctrine. At home, he faces prosecution for “incitement to hatred and discrimination.” And last February, he was banned from entering the U.K., termed a “threat to one of the fundamental interests of society” by the Home Office.
• The Greater Romania Party (PRM), an extremist movement that rails against Transylvania’s “disloyal” ethnic Hungarian minority, won 8.7 per cent of the vote and two seats. Voted out of the Romanian parliament last fall, its leader, Vadim Tudor, is a controversial former journalist and Holocaust denier who has never hidden his ties to the former Communist secret police. It’s unclear if the PRM’s other winner, soccer club owner Gigi Becali, will be able to take his seat. At present he is under investigation for kidnapping and prohibited from leaving the country.
• Austria’s far-right Freedom Party almost doubled its share of the vote to 13 per cent, winning two seats. Italy’s staunchly anti-immigration Northern League, part of the governing coalition, claimed 11 per cent of the vote and eight seats. And in the U.K., the fascist British National Party won two seats—its first-ever victories in national elections—with a historic high 6.2 per cent of the vote.

“I think we’re in for a very hard few years,” says Heather Grabbe, director of the Open Society Institute in Brussels, a democracy-building NGO financed by billionaire George Soros. “It’s the politics of fear. These parties have managed to exploit the current economic crisis, the fact that people are worried about their jobs and their future, and convinced people that this will somehow all be worsened by the ‘strangers’ in our midst.”

ALSO AT MACLEANS.CA: Mark Steyn on why the fascists are winning in Europe

While it was the mainstream centre-right that actually won the election—Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP took 28.5 per cent of the French vote, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom Party captured 35 per cent, and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union took 38 per cent—few traditional parties saw their vote increase. And the left and centre-left vote all but collapsed in many countries. In France, the opposition Socialists took just 17 per cent of the ballots, Germany’s Social Democrats turned in their lowest result ever at 21 per cent, and Britain’s ruling Labour Party captured only 15.3 per cent, its worst showing since the Second World War.

The colliding trends—the rise of the far right and the left’s vanishing act—underline a fundamental shift in European politics, says Grabbe. “In a way, it’s the legacy of 1989 [the collapse of the Soviet Bloc] catching up with the left,” she says. “They don’t have a narrative of how to get out of a crisis like this. They don’t have a clear ideology to offer.” And faced with a choice between the discredited theories of the socialist past, and the rapacious reality of the free-market present, the majority of voters seem to have thrown up their hands in disgust.

Going forward, the biggest question is whether the anger and apathy will spill over to national elections. (Germany, Portugal and the U.K. will all go to the polls within a year.) Despite the fact that the European Parliament now has the power to amend or abolish two-thirds of the EU’s laws, voters in many countries continue to view it as a less important institution than their own legislatures. “It’s not treated very seriously,” says John Curtice, a professor of politics at Glasgow’s University of Strathclyde. “People use it as an opportunity to protest against the government or support smaller parties.”

For example, the BNP’s ascension in the U.K. may say more about the unpopularity of Prime Minister Gordon Brown than anything else. His ruling Labour Party, trailing badly in the polls and battered by an expense scandal, came third in the popular vote, behind not only the opposition Conservatives, but also UK Independence, a libertarian party that advocates withdrawal from the EU. “The Labour vote scattered to the four winds,” says Curtice. The BNP’s two victories came in working-class areas that have traditionally been Labour strongholds, but have been hit hard by the economic downturn.

Even then, the more decisive factor appears to have been supporters of the left staying home, rather than switching allegiances. The anti-immigrant party’s vote increased by just 1.3 per cent compared to 2004. And those worried about a fast slide to fascism in Britain were surely heartened by the spectacle of BNP leader Nick Griffin being forced to run away from a victory press conference after protesters pelted him with eggs. Not exactly Triumph of the Will.

Crackdown in Iran continues

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 3:54 PM - 1 Comment

Authorities in Iran lashed out at the U.S. on Wednesday, accusing it of engaging in “intolerable” meddling in the country’s domestic affairs. U.S. President Barack Obama has said he has “deep concerns about the election” but suggested U.S. officials would be cautious not to be seen as interfering because it was “not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations.” Meanwhile, law enforcement officials in Iran continued to crack down on protesters, arresting several opposition figures and at least 500 activists. The country’s powerful Revolutionary Guard also threatened legal action against web sites and bloggers whose online materials “create tension.”

Associated Press

The Guardian

Watching them watching you: Liveblogging Google at the ATI, Ethics and Privacy Committee

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 3:00 PM - 10 Comments

It’s going to be tough, but  ITQ will do her best to restrain her giddy fangirlishness when representatives from Google — well, Google Canada, but still –  take the witness stand during this afternoon’s hearing on privacy implications of camera surveillance. Also appearing: Canpages, Inc, which relies on traffic cams to provide directions and traffic reports.

3:21:09 PM
Good afternoon, Googlephiles/phobes! We’re running a bit late this afternoon – well, the MPs are, at least, due to a trio of votes that will probably take at least a half hour to get through; ITQ was, of course, here at the crack of 3:15pm. It turns out I’m not the only one drawn like a bug to a zapper to this particular hearing — there are at least three TV crews here, and the one witness – Olivier Vincent from CanPages – already present is willingly submitting to the scrum — he already has not one but two flatscreens hooked up to his laptops and was doing his best to explain how his company is *not* being investigated by the Privacy Commissioner — the two are simply “in discussions” over the company’s use of realtime street-level shots.

3:33:22 PM
The Googlers are here! The Googlers are here! They look so — normal. How disappointing. Only one of the three is actually slated to testify, according to the notice — Jonathan Lister. He, oddly, doesn’t seem to have a laptop, although he is armed with a bright red binder.

3:39:29 PM
Man, I’d forgotten how long it’s been since I’ve covered Ethics — I nearly didn’t recognize Pierre Poilievre when he scampered over to present himself — or allow himself to be presented to — the witnesses.
The vote is over, apparently, so the MPs should start trickling in soon; the NDP’s Bill Siksay is already here, as is the Bloc’s Richard Nadeau.

Continue…

There's a trick with a knife they're learning to do

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 2:06 PM - 21 Comments

Uh oh:

CALGARY – Onlookers at the Calgary Zoo were shocked Tuesday when a western lowland gorilla picked up a knife and pointed it at a troop mate, then placed it on a chair for the keepers to remove.

link

Is a second dot-com crash coming?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 1:50 PM - 1 Comment

The first Internet bubble ended with a bang; Web 2.0 may be ending with a whimper. News Corp’s MySpace social network is cutting 30 per cent of its staff and looks set to lose money when Google renegotiates its partnership. When News Corp paid $580 million for my MySpace in 2005, some thought chief executive Rupert Murdoch had lost his marbles. After all, the site only had 14 million monthly users. By valuing MySpace’s juvenile denizens at $41 a head, News Corp helped make social networking a hot ticket. Microsoft’s $240 million investment in Facebook two years ago, valuing it at a whopping $15 billion, only intensified the frenzy. So did talk a few months ago that Twitter, a company with no revenues, was worth $250 million. Yet Murdoch seemed largely vindicated. Four years on, MySpace has 130 million monthly visitors. And it has proved one of the few Web 2.0 companies able to turn a buck. The site brought in $1.6 billion in revenues over the past three years and probably earned some $200 million last year, assuming roughly 20 per cent profit margins on its $900 million of revenues. The problem is that most of that money came from the site’s three-year, $900 million search advertising deal with Google, which expires next year. The search giant has made it clear that it will only renew at a far lower price. Not only have advertisers had difficulty getting much out of advertising on social networks, but MySpace has lost the top spot to current market leader Facebook. Without Google’s business, MySpace could be set to lose $100 million annually. That may help explain the cuts demanded by Owen Van Natta, the new chief executive. His former employer Facebook, meanwhile, expects to generate positive cash flow next year, but if advertisers are becoming skeptical, that’s no certainty. Either way, the Web 2.0 bubble looks rather deflated.

The Telegraph

Putin painting lands artist in jail

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 1:49 PM - 6 Comments

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin works hard to keep up a strong, manly image—an image now tarnished by a picture portraying him as a long-haired woman in a low-cut dress. Alexander Shednov created the picture to protest Putin’s consideration of running for a third presidential term. Shednov was arrested by agents from Russia’s intelligence agency, the FSB. He says he was questioned for seven hours and beaten. Agents also searched his house and took some paintings. Shednov is awaiting a court appearance for the charge of inappropriate behavior.

The Daily Mail

Germany to ban violent video games

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 1:48 PM - 1 Comment

Germany is working to ban all violent video games. All 16 German states have approved the ban and are waiting for the German parliament to pass the law. As well as criminalizing games “where the main part is to realistically play the killing of people or other cruel or inhuman acts of violence against humans or manlike creatures,” the law would also make illegal the development of video games in the country. Historically, Germany has been critical of video games and drawn links between the industry and real-life violence. Earlier this year, a German teenager killed over a dozen people—his moves were allegedly inspired by the game Counter-Strike.

Yahoo! Tech

Eyes on the ball

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 1:42 PM - 24 Comments

I’m editing a videoblog of the day’s odd events on the Hill, and I always have a lot of fun videoblogging, but today the Iranian soccer team showed up for a match wearing the colours of the opposition to a regime that doesn’t hesitate to shoot into crowds of civilians. I’ll get back to our own municipal excitements soon, but I just wanted to tip my hat to people who seek democracy in places where it’s harder than here.

The more the merrier

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 1:04 PM - 1 Comment

Tuesday’s rally in support of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran no doubt drew tens of thousands of the contested president’s fans. But adding a few more to their ranks never hurt, so that’s exactly what they did—with the help of Photoshop. A photo of the rally (below) purportedly showing where extra attendees were copied-and-pasted has begun making its way around the Internet, casting doubt over just how many people were in fact there.

Daily Kos

Canadian astronaut still grounded

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 1:02 PM - 0 Comments

Julie Payette is still waiting to blast-off. The Endeavour space shuttle, which is supposed to take the Canadian astronaut to the International Space Station, is stuck on the ground for the second time in less than a week, thanks to a hydrogen gas leak. The problem is with ground equipment, not Endeavour itself, but still poses too much of a risk for NASA to allow a launch until the leak is fixed. The launch has been pushed back until July, when the shuttle will carry hundreds of pounds of food and the last segment of a Japanese designed laboratory to the International Space Station. The mission will be historic once it is off the ground—Payette will join Robert Firsk, a Canadian astronaut already in orbit, marking the first time two Canadians have ever been in space together. There will also be a total of 13 people at the space station, the most ever in orbit at once. In the meantime, Payette will be hitting the simulators to keep up her skills while she waits for lift-off.

CBC News

$7 million of missing gold lost in slag

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 2 Comments

Up to $20 million in gold and other precious metals is missing from the Royal Canadian mint. An external audit and an RCMP investigation have yet to figure out where most of it went, but a mint tour guide let slip that about
$7 million worth was lost through the gold refining process. Officials have not confirmed or denied the guide’s remarks, which the employee made to a tour group that included a reporter. However, officials have previously
admitted that an unprecedented demand for gold last year led to parts of the refining process being skipped, resulting in a much higher than normal concentration of gold in slag that is recycled or disposed. If the $7
million figure is correct, it leaves $13 million still unaccounted for.

Ottawa Citizen

When Amazon rules the world

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

Amazon.com has tentacles in every part of the book trade: It runs a print-on-demand service (BookSurge) and a self-publishing service (CreateSpace). It sells e-books and an e-device to read them on (the Kindle, a new version of which, the DX, went on sale June 10). In 2008 alone, Amazon acquired Audible.com a leading audiobooks company; AbeBooks, a major online used-book retailer; and Shelfari, a Facebook-like social network for readers. In April of this year, it snapped up Lexcycle, which makes an e-reading app for the iPhone called Stanza. And now there’s Amazon Encore, which makes Amazon a print publisher too. So many tentacles, publishers worry, that there may not be room for anyone else in the digital future. All retailers—just one of Amazon’s manifestations—get discounts from their wholesalers, but some publishers think the discounts Amazon asks for are getting too deep. “They’re fast approaching the point where we just can’t afford to do business with them,” says a well-known New York book editor, who asked not to be identified. “It’ll be interesting to see what happens then.”

Time

Gossip is good for women’s health

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

Research conducted by scientists at the University of Michigan has found women who regularly share intimate details of their lives with friends are happier and healthier due to increased production of progesterone, a hormone shown to reduce anxiety and stress, the London Daily Mail reports. The study divided 160 female students into two groups—one that asked one another questions designed to bring them closer such as “Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you want as a dinner guest?” The second group proof-read a botany paper. After 20 minutes, the women who had asked one another questions were found to have increased or steady progesterone levels, while the progesterone levels of those who’d worked on the botany project declined. ‘It’s important to find the links between biological mechanisms and human social behaviour.” said Professor Stephanie Brown, who led the research, which was published in the journal Hormones and Behaviour. “’These links help us understand why people in close relationships are happier, healthier and live longer than those who are socially isolated.’

The Daily Mail

Depression: is it really in your genes?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 11:48 AM - 0 Comments

In 2003, Duke University researchers published a landmark paper suggesting that a single gene helps determine a person’s risk of depression in response to divorce, job loss or another upset. This provided comfort, and an excuse, to some patients, the New York Times reports, who could point to their genes as a cause for depression. Yet on Tuesday, a group of prominent researchers reported this finding—one of the most celebrated in modern psychiatry—hasn’t held up to scientific scrutiny. The new report agrees that interactions between genes and life experience are likely important, but suggests that confirming it with any precision will be very difficult, and that the original finding may have been due to chance. This is bound to stir up debate within the field of psychiatry, as the genetics of illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder haven’t yet been pinned down. Since the 2003 finding, researchers have tried to replicate it more than a dozen times, with mixed success. In the new paper, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a coalition of researchers reanalyzed the data in 14 studies, and found “no evidence of an association between the serotonin gene and the risk of depression,” no matter what the subject’s life experience was. On the other hand, a major stressful event was shown to raise the risk of depression by 40 per cent.

New York Times

Why GM is like Joe Louis

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 11:46 AM - 0 Comments

Canadian ad guru Terry O’Reilly has become obsessed with a single flickering image in that new TV spot for GM, which fuses a stream of images meant to suggest a company in chrysalis rather than one sluffing into the Detroit
River. It is the brief shot of the boxer Joe Louis, whose personal narrative GM clearly wishes to replicate. Louis, for non-boxing fans, famously lost in 1936 to Germany’s Max Schmeling at a time when America was under economic siege and the country’s self-esteem was at an all-time low. But he came back in spectacular fashion, restoring national pride, and faith in the American dream. Is GM capable of a similar restoration? Hard to know. But if, as financial analysts say, half the battle is making Americans believe in GM again, they’ve clearly found the right ad team.

Montreal Gazette

Playing chicken with antibiotics

By Cathy Gulli - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 11:44 AM - 8 Comments

Disturbing data from the Public Health Agency of Canada reveals that antibiotics such as cephalosporin used in chicken hatcheries across the country is causing human resistance to the medicines, according to a startling report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal today.

Surveillance information from the Canadian Integrated Program for Antimicrobial Resistance (CIPARS), which is funded by the public health agency, “strongly indicates that cephalosporin resistance in humans is moving in lockstep with use of the drug in poultry production,” the CMAJ explains.

Continue…

It's not quite Watergate, but . . .

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 11:23 AM - 3 Comments

The Public Accounts committee may be heading for a showdown with Public Works after the department refused to comply with a request to hand over complete, unedited audio recordings of a series of group consultations with private suppliers on a new IT procurement system that could dole out as much as $80 billion over the next twenty years. The Ottawa Citizen reports that for months, the committee has been demanding that the department turn over the contents of tapes, but have been frustrated by balky bureaucrats, who have cited everything from transcription costs to privacy concerns for their footdragging. Late last month, the committee finally got its hands on some of the material, only to discover that it had been edited to remove what the department claims was personal information on participants who didn’t consent to the release—and, of the 18 tapes requested, six were withheld completely. Committee chair Shawn Murphy is vowing to keep up the fight, which he calls “a matter of principle”, over this deliberate attempt to flout the power of parliamentary committee to subpoena evidence.”"We asked those tapes be produced and, after all the excuses, Public Works finally produced them—but they were reduced and given to MPs altered and (portions) deleted. We are demanding those tapes in unaltered form.”

Ottawa Citizen

Conservatives safe—for now

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 11:14 AM - 15 Comments

It looks like the Conservative government will survive the summer after all. After a two hour meeting at Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s residence last night, it appears that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff will not vote against the government on Friday, as he originally threatened to do. Earlier this week, Ignatieff demanded details on Harper’s plans for employment insurance reform, the pace of infrastructure spending, the deficit reduction plan, and an alternative medical isotope supply—details that, if not provided, would provoke his party to bring the Conservative government down this week. But today, it seems as through Harper and Ignatieff are close to reaching a pact. Their tentative agreement includes a plan to set up a blue ribbon panel—half of whose members are to be appointment by the Liberals—to examine potential employment insurance reforms. Spokespeople from both offices characterized last night’s talk as “productive.” The two will meet again today to continue their discussion.

Winnipeg Free Press

Toronto Star

ParliamentaryCrisisWatch: Not with a bang, but a – blue ribbon panel?

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 9:40 AM - 129 Comments

By the time that word of a second summit between Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff had come out,  most of us ParliamentaryCrisisWatchers had already downgraded the election threat-o-meter from red to yellow, and were just waiting for official confirmation that the Liberal leader’s perfect record of backing away from any position that could ever potentially be described as “courageous” remained intact. We were not disappointed, although ITQ will admit that the blue ribbon threw us for a loop. Offering your grudging support for a government you’ve only just finished condemning for its “flagrant incompetence” is one thing — but doing it in exchange for a few vague promises to get back to you with more information, and an advisory panel? Somehow, that seems even more embarrassing than forcing your caucus to hide behind the curtains during votes, although that could be because you’re now forced to paste a fake smile on your face and pretend it’s a victory.

It is, as I was trying to explain to a friend last night, the public policy version of a tried and true prime ministerial evasion tactic: When ensnared in a scandal that threatens to provide the opposition with a seemingly bottomless supply of ammunition against the government, you announce a full public inquiry, and then spend the next few months — or years — responding to every subsequent question by imploring all and sundry to “let the commission do its work”. In this instance, of course, the prime minister can also remind the Liberals that it was their own leader who agreed to allow a panel of as-yet-unnamed experts “resolve their differences” — his and his, that is — on employment insurance. The rest of  you Liberal lot can just sit back and be quiet — the grownups are talking. They’ll let you know how it all works out.

Which means that, while there may only be a few days left before the House rises for the summer, the Liberals had best start coming up with a QP lineup that scrupulously avoids any mention of unemployment. Or the deficit, come to think of  – and ixnay on owingshay even the slightest hint of scepticism over the Conservative claim that all that stimulicious infrastructure money is rolling out in record time, or criticism over how the government has handled the ongoing isotope crisis. That’s what their leader seems to have done, after all — at least, if the glaring absence in the reports of yesterday’s meeting of any reference to the other three items on his bullet point list is any indication.

Continue…

Ignatieff/Harper: How it all went down

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 5:18 AM - 32 Comments

Harper How about a panel? We could appoint a panel to look into this whole Employment Insurance thing over the summer.

Ignatieff A panel? You must be joking. Only a day ago, I stood before Canadians and firmly proclaimed: “The government’s answers in this accountability report aren’t good enough. The government’s performance in Parliament isn’t good enough.” And a panel is going to change that? For weeks I’ve described as “urgent” the need to implement serious reforms to EI. On the very weekend I was confirmed as party leader, I declared in the strongest terms possible the need for “immediate” action to “protect these unemployed workers across the country who badly need help and if the government will work with me, we can get it done. If they won’t, we’ll have to have an election.” Further, I stated without even the hint of hedging that Continue…

Tea leaves

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 1:27 AM - 22 Comments

Canadian Press tries to figure out whether there’ll be a meeting tomorrow morning, or merely a phone call. Or perhaps an exchange of text messages. Or Facebook status updates.

Representatives for Harper and Ignatieff issued almost identically worded, brief statements saying that the two leaders agreed to “talk” or “speak” again Wednesday morning. The choice of wording suggests the pair do not feel it necessary to meet again in person. That in turn suggests they require only a last-minute chat to verify details before reporting to their respective caucuses, which hold regular weekly meetings every Wednesday morning.

Laureen Harper and the biker flick

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 12:58 AM - 27 Comments

Heritage Minister James Moore hosted a reception for the Canadian motorcycle film One Week at the National Gallery of Canada. Moore with Toronto Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay.

Laureen Harper.

Continue…

Stimulus for the ribbon industry

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 10:28 PM - 32 Comments

CTV gets something approaching a specific detail.

Sources told CTV News that Ignatieff and Harper had agreed to further examine the rules surrounding employment insurance. The prime minister will apparently create a blue-ribbon panel to examine the divisive issue over the summer, and Ignatieff will choose two of its members.