‘We trusted him’

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 10:45 AM - 0 Comments

UPDATE: After several weeks on the lam, disgraced financier Earl Jones was arrested and charged with four counts of fraud and four counts of theft yesterday. His lawyer, Jeffrey Boro, suggested more charges will be laid in the coming weeks. Jones, who is free on bail, is expected to plead not guilty to the charges. This week, Maclean’s looked into how Jones allegedly defrauded his trusted clients for $50 million.

Until he scurried off in the night to parts unknown earlier this month, Bertram Earl Jones was a pillar of Montreal’s English community, an affable and charming fellow to whom hundreds of people entrusted their financial well-being for decades, a peerless businessman and loving father who doted on his elderly clients almost as much as his two daughters.

His reputation had already soured considerably by the evening of July 7, when Jones slipped away without saying a word to those whose savings he allegedly stole. Apparently, he couldn’t leave fast enough: investigators found thousands of documents packed into seven suitcases ready at the door of his office. In the days following, as calls went unanswered and cheques continued to bounce, he became known as a mini-Madoff, WASP instead of Jewish, Montreal instead of Manhattan, who allegedly targeted the very community where he’d lived for over 40 years—friends, associates, his own flesh and blood—for upwards of $50 million, maybe more. Jones has since hired a criminal lawyer and has purportedly been in Canada most of the time since his disappearance. His legacy will the hundreds of lives he’s upended and the millions of dollars he allegedly stole. “He knew what he was doing for a long time,” says lawyer Neil Stein, who represents numerous Jones clients. Continue…

Prof dismissed

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 10:31 AM - 0 Comments

An Ottawa professor suspected of being involved in a 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue that left four dead is out of a summer job. Earlier this week, Carleton University confirmed that Hassan Diab, a Lebanese-born Canadian citizen facing extradition to France early next year, had been hired on contract to teach an introductory sociology course for a few weeks. But the next day, after coming under fire from B’nai Brith for allowing Diab back into the classroom, the university announced that Diab would be replaced by a full-time faculty member in order to provide students with “a stable, productive academic environment.” B’nai Brith executive vice-president Frank Dimant praised the university for doing “the right thing.”

Ottawa Citizen

"Hundreds of corpses"

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 10:31 AM - 2 Comments

Reports from hospital workers and from released prisoners who were detained following Iran’s protests against Iran’s rigged June 12 presidential election suggest that hundreds of protesters were murdered, with others tortured and degraded. Some prisoners say they watched as detainees were beaten to death, while others say they had their fingernails ripped off or were forced to lick toilet bowls. Doctors say they registered 34 bodies at Tehran hospitals on June 20 alone and estimate the total death toll at 150, while family members of missing protesters were taken to a morgue in southwest Tehran and reported seeing “hundreds of corpses.” They were not permitted to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones unless they signed a form indicated they had died of natural causes.

The New York Times

Elmore Leonard Meets Elwy Yost's Son

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 9:51 AM - 0 Comments

FX announced yesterday that it’s picking up “Lawman,” a modern-day Western starring Timothy Olyphant and developed/written by Graham Yost (who is best known for Speed and Boomtown, but whom I always think of as the son of the Saturday Night at the Movies guy). It’s the first series to be based on an Elmore Leonard character since Karen Sisco, which was one of my favourite flops of the last decade.

Actually, there have been surprisingly few shows based on Elmore Leonard’s work, considering that he works in genres that are very TV-friendly (crime, Western) and that his self-consciously quirky style is the type of thing that a lot of shows aspire to. Before Karen Sisco there was really only Maximum Bob, the late ’90s Beau Bridges flop that tried to do a sort of David E. Kelley take on a Leonard novel, plus the usual number of unsold pilots. In some ways, the Leonard style would seem almost more suited to TV than movies, but there haven’t been many U.S. TV shows based on novels or novellas (though that is changing), and sustaining a half-serious, half-goofy style for a whole series can be difficult; the first thing Yost said after the show was picked up was that the big challenge would be replicating Leonard’s authorial “voice” in a 13-episode season.

Adorable

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 10:58 PM - 21 Comments

The Prime Minister is hosting Conservative MPs at Harrington Lake this evening (thanks taxpayers!). Blake Richards twitters the festivities.

WildRoseMPBlakeJust went for a paddleboat ride on Harrington Lake with my friend, Pierre Poilievreabout 2 hours ago from mobile web

Er, never mind (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 10:51 PM - 38 Comments

CBC confirms that Shawna Richer, the Telegraph-Journal’s editor-in-chief, has been fired and James Irving is no longer publisher. CTV says Irving has been “temporarily suspended.” And Canwest reports the Prime Minister was not pursuing the matter legally.

Hey look: Five university presidents, no waiting

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 6:17 PM - 14 Comments

Our interview with the presidents of the University of British Columbia, the University of Alberta, the University of Toronto, McGill University and the Université de Montréal went up this morning while I was scrambling to meet my deadline for the weekly print edition. The ruminations of Drs. Toope, Samarasekera, Naylor, Munroe-Blum and Vinet have already sparked a lively discussion on the comment board, and now you get to join.

Earl Jones makes bail

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 5:30 PM - 0 Comments

Earl Jones, the Montreal investment adviser accused of running an elaborate ponzi scheme, was released by a Quebec court on $30,000 bail on Tuesday. Jones’s bail conditions forbid him from leaving the province or contacting any of his former clients. And in case anyone he happens to stumble upon someone who’s still unfamiliar with his story, Jones has also been barred from managing anyone’s money. The 67-year-old financial guru is facing four charges of fraud over $5,000 and four others of theft over $5,000. The fraud charges alone carry a maximum penalty of up to 14 years in prison. Jones is due back in court Sept. 28.

The Gazette

AccountabilityWatch: Wait, back up a second — a two-year prohibition on what, now?

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 5:05 PM - 14 Comments

For any of you who aren’t too busy mulling over media ethics or keening over the imminent departure of the most quoteable senior official in the whole of PMO, here’s a serendipitous bit of followup to what turned out to be a most enlightening discussion that took place earlier today during the final day of hearings at the Oliphant Commission on the cooling-off period imposed on departing public office holders.

(Wait! This is fascinating stuff! Why are you running away?)

Anyway, earlier this week, ITQ found her mind wandering back towards to a post she wrote a few months back on the five-year prohibition on post-employment lobbying; more specifically, the exemption review process, which allows former public office holders to apply for an exemption to the ban. At that time, a grand total of seven requests had been made, and only one had been granted.

“I wonder what’s happened since then,” ITQ wondered. So she dashed off a note to the always helpful communications office at the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying, and just a day later, she received the following response:

Continue…

Rockin' out against the man with Jason Kenney

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 3:25 PM - 34 Comments

I met Lindy at a party in Montreal once.  He was quite tall. And his girlfriend said she was an actor for medical school seminars. Like Kramer in that Seinfeld episode.

Anyway. Lindy now sings songs about Ezra Levant, apparently. He’s quite popular with libertarians. And, as you’ll see at the end of this video, Jason Kenney.

'It’s a hot date for my boyfriend and I. We’ll ride our bikes or drive to a dumpster and load up.'

By Nancy Macdonald - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 3:17 PM - 2 Comments

Novella Carpenter turned a vacant lot in Ghost Town—the Oakland, Calif., neighbourhood famed for blight and violence—into an urban farm, complete with chickens, turkeys, geese, rabbits and a pair of 300-pound pigs. The 36-year-old’s memoir, Farm City (Penguin Press), hit bookshelves this summer.

Q: How long does it take you to feed the animals in the morning?
A: It takes about half an hour. I have six goats, but only two of them are milking. We have six chickens and about 15 rabbits. I’ve raised turkeys and pigs. It’s always a rotating cast.

Q: What does the garden look like?
A: You have to keep the animals separate from the vegetables—so the goats and the chickens are in the backyard. Then there’s the vegetable garden. It’s about 4,500 square feet. We grow all manner of things. Fava beans and lettuces. In the summer it’s tomatoes and cucumbers and corn and basil and then in the fall, tons of greens and onions. Winter is my favourite growing season because it rains, so I don’t have to water. Daylight hours are limited but you can grow broccoli, carrots and beets. Continue…

Elvis sighting

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 3:09 PM - 8 Comments

Before he went a few days without saying something in public and everyone panicked, Michael Ignatieff made an appearance in Coquitlam. And someone taped it, then uploaded a series of clips to YouTube.

So, for whatever you wish to make of it, here is Mr. Ignatieff in Coquitlam. In part three, he comes dangerously close to discussing something that sort of almost sounds like a policy of some kind. Continue…

A Better Michael Mann Creation Than "Public Enemies"

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 2:24 PM - 0 Comments

I don’t know why CBS/Paramount is the only big studio doing TV-on-DVD releases on a regular basis (even if it’s often split-season, music-altered releases), but they are, and their commitment to the Aaron Spelling Productions catalogue continues with the first half of the first season of Vega$. This show, one of the seminal products of TV’s disco era, combined formula storytelling, titillation, insane story ideas, the late Robert Urich in the most successful of his many, many series, and Tony Curtis as a dude named “Philip Roth,” the most bizarre character name choice since the second lead in Kiss Me Kate was named “Lois Lane.”

As the subject implies, Michael Mann wrote the pilot (he’d worked for Spelling on Starsky and Hutch) and was therefore credited as the creator of the show, though he didn’t write any episodes of the series proper. Still, “created by Michael Mann, produced by Aaron Spelling” is the sweetest incomplete sentence known to humankind.

(Seems like it used to be far more common than it is now for an in-demand writer to write the pilot and the pilot only, on the understanding that he wouldn’t have to do the series. Now that happens a lot with directors — big-name feature directors do the pilots and then take off — but for the most part, those who are hired to write pilots are simultaneously hired to stick around for a series if there is one. I think some of this has to do with the collapse of the TV-movie business on the networks; the line between writing a two-hour pilot and a two-hour TV movie was almost nonexistent, and when Mann wrote something like Vega$, he was essentially doing a TV movie that someone else could, if they chose, turn into a show.)

Plus ca change

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 2:03 PM - 3 Comments

Adam Radwanski likely strikes the appropriate tone on today’s news from the Prime Minister’s Office.

There’s a certain symmetry to Kory Teneycke leaving the Prime Minister’s Office just as Sandra Buckler returns to Ottawa. But it’s not as though this will change the government’s culture, any more so than the government’s culture was changed when Tenecyke replaced Buckler in the PMO a year ago.

Defending our moderately well-regarded name

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 1:54 PM - 7 Comments

Ujjal Dosanjh, now pretty much a member of the Obama administration, keeps up his efforts to defend the nation, this time on NPR. The full discussion, including the former head of the Canadian Medical Association, can be found here. Dosanjh has uploaded his contribution to YouTube.

Alberta prepares to throw money down a hole

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 1:42 PM - 4 Comments

Alberta’s Stelmach government has consistently pooh-poohed monetary constraints on its oil sands emissions—whether a carbon tax or cap and trade—in favour of the panacea of carbon capture and storage, which it says will keep Alberta’s cash at home. And how! Today Edmonton Journal columnist Graham Thomson exposes the folly of the Stelmach argument. “What we already knew was that the Alberta government is planning to spend $2 billion over 12 years on three pilot projects to bury up to five million tonnes of CO2 a year by 2015,” writes Thomson. “What we didn’t know is the cost of ramping up the process.” According to a recently released report commissioned by the Alberta Tories, Accelerating Carbon Capture and Storage Implementation in Alberta, those costs will be enormous—”up to $3 billion a year for 10 years,” Thomson writes. “That gets us burying 30 million tonnes a year. But Alberta wants to bury 140 million tonnes a year by 2050.” Electricity rates, meanwhile, are expected to “at least double” (coal-fired power plants are major emitters), meaning Albertans will pay twice, first as taxpayers, then as consumers. Burying carbon will certainly keep Alberta dollars at home—buried deep beneath the earth. “No other jurisdiction in Canada has done as much as Alberta” to hammer out a plan that will reduce emissions, writes Thomson, and with good reason. “That’s going to help Premier Ed Stelmach gain the higher moral ground at next week’s annual premiers meeting in Regina.” That too may be so. Still, isn’t it time the province reconsidered putting a reasonable price on carbon?

Edmonton Journal

Birth control for men

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 1:28 PM - 0 Comments

A just-discovered genetic mutation that causes one type of male infertility may help in the creation a birth control pill for men. The mutation occurs on a protein in sperm called PLC zeta, and it makes sperm defective. The European researchers studied the sperm of nine men at a fertility clinic. The mutation disabled the protein from fertilizing or “activating” the female’s egg. The team suggests that developing a drug that inhibits the PLC zeta protein could be used as a male contraceptive.

Science Daily

A crackdown on queue-jumpers

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 12:52 PM - 39 Comments

Conservatives—especially those with Reform roots—have always disliked the Supreme Court’s 1985 Singh decision. It ruled that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies not just to Canadians, but to anyone who steps foot in Canada—even foreigners who arrive illegally and file refugee claims. Because the ruling specifically required that asylum seekers be granted oral hearings, it lead to the creation of the Immigration and Refugee Board, an independent, quasi-judicial body that now determines who does and doesn’t warrant our protection.

Last week, Jason Kenney, the minister of immigration, mentioned that it was high time that Canada give its refugee system a makeover. The topic came up while he was fielding questions about the federal government’s controversial decision to slap visa requirements on Czech and Mexican nationals travelling to Canada, a move made in response to the record number of people from both countries who’ve filed refugee claims here in recent years. It wasn’t the first time Kenney has called for reform. Continue…

She's just so mainstream

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 12:50 PM - 2 Comments

A curious thing happened on the way to the now-seemingly inevitable confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama’s first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. The nominee herself was transformed.

Sotomayor, a long-time appellate judge of Puerto Rican descent, who rose from a Bronx housing project to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton, had for years presented herself as a different breed of female judge than, say, the only two women who have thus far made it to the top court. When those trail-blazers, Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, graduated from law school in the 1950s, they had to justify why they were taking the place of a male student. O’Connor graduated third in her class at Stanford Law School, but the only job offered to her at the time was as a legal secretary. Every step of the way, Ginsburg and O’Connor were at pains to prove their equality. A favourite saying of theirs was that a wise old woman and a wise old man would reach the same conclusion when deciding cases. Continue…

Ads appear on Vatican Radio

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 12:26 PM - 1 Comment

Vatican Radio, the official voice of the Roman Catholic Church, has begun airing advertisements for the first time in its nearly 80-year history, injecting a bit of the profane into its otherwise unwavering lineup of sacred programming. Now, in addition to tracking every move Pope Benedict XVI makes and every word he utters, listeners are being treated to 45-second ads, made in five languages, extolling Italy’s largest power company, Enel, and the virtues of clean energy. Facing a $22-million deficit the papacy has been turning a cost-cutting and revenue-enhancing eye on its radio service. It broadcasts around the world and on the Web in more than 40 languages, costs the Vatican about $31 million a year, and until now has brought in zero revenue. “It’s like having an 80-year-old child living at home all this time, and you say, ‘Darling, we still love you, you can go on living here, we’re not going to kick you out, but it would be nice if you would contribute to paying the phone bill, the gas bill or something,’ ” said Sean-Patrick Lovett, director of Vatican Radio’s English and Italian sections.

Los Angeles Times

EI hits a 12-year record

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 12:25 PM - 2 Comments

There were 778,700 Canadians receiving employment insurance benefits in May, according to Statistics Canada. This is a 9.2 per cent increase since April, a 55.6 per cent increase since October, and marks the highest number of people getting regular benefits since 1997. The amount of EI recipients has risen in every province, with Alberta, BC, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba all reporting their highest rates since ’97.

CBC News

Crocs said to be on last breath

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 12:24 PM - 3 Comments

Crocs, the empire behind the candy-coloured microbial foam clogs worn by toddlers, granny gardeners and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler is gasping for life, the Washington Post reports. The company, which had a profit of US $168.2 million in fiscal 2007, reported a US$185.1 million loss last year, slashed roughly 2,000 jobs and scrambled to find money to pay down millions in debt. Now it’s stuck with a surplus of shoes and has until the end of September to repay its debt. The global growth of the company founded in 2002 based in made-in-Canada technology “mirrors the country’s tale of economic expansion and contraction,” the paper reports. Part of its downfall was the shoes’ durability: “Who needs a second pair of Crocs in a recession, particularly when the first pair is holding up just fine?” Crocs executives are hoping for a rebound in sales but industry watchers are doubtful: “The company’s toast,” said one investment fund manager. “They’re zombie-ish. They’re dead and they don’t know it.”

The Washington Post

Er, never mind

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 11:45 AM - 153 Comments

The Telegraph-Journal retracts its wafer story and apologizes to the Prime Minister. And then apologizes to its own reporters.

There was no credible support for these statements of fact at the time this article was published, nor is the Telegraph-Journal aware of any credible support for these statements now. Our reporters Rob Linke and Adam Huras, who wrote the story reporting on the funeral, did not include these statements in the version of the story that they wrote. In the editing process, these statements were added without the knowledge of the reporters and without any credible support for them.

The Telegraph-Journal sincerely apologizes to the Prime Minister for the harm that this inaccurate story has caused. We also apologize to reporters Rob Linke and Adam Huras and to our readers for our failure to meet our own standards of responsible journalism and accuracy in reporting.

Oh by the way

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 11:38 AM - 11 Comments

Kory Teneycke is leaving. This would be Kady’s thing, but she’s otherwise engaged.