Natural Resources Update: We have witnesses, people! #RNNR

By kadyomalley - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 4:58 PM - 21 Comments

Here’s the official list, hot off the committee website:

2:15 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Witnesses
Society of Professional Engineers and Associates
Michael Ivanco, President

Videoconference

International Society of Nuclear Medicine
Robert Atcher, President

As an individual
Sandy McEwan, Special Advisor on Medical Isotopes to the Minister of Health

3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Witnesses

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
Hugh MacDiarmid, President and Chief Executive Officer
Bill Pilkington, Senior Vice-President and Chief Nuclear Officer

4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Witnesses

Department of Natural Resources
Serge Dupont, Deputy Minister
Tom Wallace, Director General
Electricity Resources Branch

She’ll have to check her records to be sure, but ITQ is fairly certain that she’s liveblogged every one of the above witnesses at previous isotope-related meetings, with the exception of the minister’s special advisor, Sandy McEwan.

Jim Flaherty's permanent tax on everything

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 4:45 PM - 26 Comments

Federal budget 2008. Replacing remaining provincial retail sales taxes (RSTs) with value-added  taxes harmonized with the GST is another area where provinces can contribute  to strengthening Canada’s Tax Advantage … The Government recognizes the significant economic benefits to Canada from sales tax harmonization and is willing to work with the five provinces that still have RSTs to help facilitate the transition to provincial value-added sales taxes harmonized with the GST.

Federal budget 2009. Modernizing these harmful taxes by implementing a value-added tax structure harmonized with the GST is the single most important step that provinces with RSTs could take to stimulate new business investment, create jobs and improve Canada’s overall tax competitiveness.

Jim Flaherty, March 30. Last week, Ontario’s Liberal government, after objecting to the combined tax for years, decided to switch. Ottawa agreed to help Canada’s most populous province with that move by giving Ontario one-time compensation of $4.3 billion. ”I think this is very good economic policy,” Flaherty told reporters in Ottawa Monday. “This is a massive tax cut, a $5 billion tax cut for businesses in the province of Ontario and that means job creation and investment in the province of Ontario. So, this is very good economic policy over time.”

Jim Flaherty, August 4. Ottawa is prepared to cut a cheque to three holdout provinces if they agree to merge their sales taxes with the federal GST, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Tuesday. ”We’ll see what their governments decide to do,” he said. ”But the same proposal – in terms of transition funding – that we made with the province of Ontario followed by the province of British Columbia is available to those provinces as well. The same formula.”

Dick Harris, August 10. Bringing a harmonized sales tax to B.C. isn’t the federal Conservatives idea, Cariboo-Prince George MP Dick Harris is emphasizing … Reached Monday for comment on the issue, Harris said the Conservatives are merely adhering to federal legislation passed by the old Chretien Liberal government that includes a formula to determine how much funding a provincial government should get for making the move … ”The legislation is still there, of course, and even if we wanted to change it, the Liberals and the NDP and the Bloc would not vote to change it and we’re a minority government,” Harris contended. Asked what the Conservatives’ position is on harmonizing the provincial sales taxes with the federal goods and services tax, Harris said the party hasn’t really taken one saying it’s strictly a provincial government decision.

Larry Miller, August 11. “First, I want to make it clear that this was a change initiated by the province of Ontario and was not a decision made by the federal government in any way.”

James Lunney, August 20. As this was a decision of the BC provincial government, I encourage you to contact your MLA Ron Cantelon (ron.cantelon.mla@leg.bc.ca) to relay any concerns you may have.

Canada’s sickest lake

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 4:40 PM - 34 Comments

Cisco! Walleye! Whitefish! From the foredeck of the MV Namao, a scientific research vessel on Lake Winnipeg, student-scientists in rubber boots and banana-yellow hard hats are calling out the catch. They’ve also landed troutperch and emerald shiners, whose weight, stomach contents, skin tissues and isotopic concentrations will help gauge the health of the huge prairie lake. The trawl net—which looks like a bright blue tube sock with a nine-metre hole—was hauled aboard by a yellow crane just before the skies went suddenly dark, unleashing a heavy wall of rain like only the prairies can. Walloped by wind and rain, even the Namao—at 34 m, the biggest ship on the lake—is rocking and rolling on Lake Winnipeg’s dangerous, ocean-sized waves.

Perfect storm conditions are also brewing below the surface. Ironically, the isolated prairie lake, ringed by pristine Boreal forest, tucked far away from industry and major population centres, has become the sickest big lake in the country. What was once a small patch of algae, first noted in the 1990s, now grows to smother more than half of the massive 24,500-sq.-km lake most summers. In 2006, the pea soup blanket covered almost the entire lake, home to 10,000 cottagers, a $100-million tourism and recreation industry, and a $25-million commercial fishery. It’s “like sailing through a sea of green paint,” says Namao head biologist Alex Salki, one of a handful of concerned local lake scientists who founded the Lake Winnipeg Research Consortium. The putrid green mat, twice the size of P.E.I. and clearly visible from space, is jaw-dropping evidence of an ecosystem in deep trouble. Already, Lake Winnipeg, the world’s tenth-biggest lake, is in worse shape than notorious Lake Erie, says David Schindler, one of the world’s top water authorities, based at the University of Alberta. Continue…

Week in Pictures: August 13th – August 19th, 2009

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 4:22 PM - 0 Comments

Booting the outlaw off the chopper

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 3:20 PM - 1 Comment

They have long been proud symbols of filth and freedom, chromed-out American nightmares, phallic anarchy barely contained between one’s legs. With a simple conversion—take a motorcycle, lower it, yank out the front fork and affix a pair of comically large handlebars—you have a chopper, a freaky and dangerous caricature of the motorcycle begetting it. Choppers are unruly by design: those ape-hanger handlebars have the effect of crucifying the rider on his bike, turning his body into a giant sail in the oncoming wind and putting the brakes practically out of reach–if there are any brakes to begin with.

For this reason, choppers were long an anomaly reserved for those fatalistic or stupid enough to push their luck that much further. Often built by the riders themselves, choppers were stripped down, brutally loud and, above all, American; I’d rather have a sister in the whorehouse, the old saying goes, than a brother on a Honda. Continue…

The readable Ignatieff

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 2:08 PM - 87 Comments

Google Scholar—a search engine for academic journals and papers—is a fairly decent way to kill a few hours. It’s also what started this, an unofficial collection of Michael Ignatieff’s freely available writings, assembled here for all your educational or objectionable purposes.

Do try to contain yourselves. Continue…

Tarivona Asher Mutsengi 1983-2009

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 6 Comments

Tarivona Asher Mutsengi was born on March 8, 1983, in Bulawayo, a city in southwestern Zimbabwe, the first of five children to Philip Gilbert, a businessman, and his wife, Martha. As a child, Asher, as everyone called him, spent most of his time in the nearby town of Plumtree, where Philip owned a gas station, and the family had enough land to grow watermelons and maize. During holidays, cousins, aunts and uncles would descend on their garden. With his wide smile and quick wit, Asher was always “the centre of attention,” says sister Rumbidzai, naturally assuming the leadership role in childhood games, pretending he was a priest (the family were devout Catholics) or a doctor. Whenever one of the kids had a loose tooth, he insisted that the new one would grow in faster if they let him remove it—which they did. “We believed everything that he told us because he was so convincing,” says Rumbidzai.

In addition to their fields in Plumtree, the family had a farm in Gutu. At the time, they could have afforded to hire farmhands, but “my father preferred us doing it, so that we experienced it,” says Rumbidzai. Philip rewarded his children for good grades, and Asher had no trouble meeting those expectations; he was once given a bicycle for his academic achievements, and would let Rumbidzai ride it—as long as she paid him in chocolate. A member of the debate club, Asher held firm to his convictions. The only time he didn’t make the top spot in his class was on purpose, after an argument with his father. Says Rumbidzai, “He liked stressing his point, even if it was a losing side.” Continue…

Seeing red

By Peter C. Newman - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 25 Comments

If the speculation among Ottawa insiders that a general election will be called for Nov. 9 proves to be correct, the Liberal party will be tested as never before. Early indications are that the election campaign will be fought according to the smack-down rules of the wrestling world. Last man breathing wins. Will it be the urban cowboy from Alberta whose approach to governing is not so much pre-Keynesian as Precambrian? Or will it be the Count from Petrograd whose many careers deserve the same designation as his jazz equivalent, Stan Getz, the high-strung saxophone virtuoso, who was once described as being “a swell bunch of guys”.

For the first time this decade, the Liberals are firmly united behind their leader and plan to wage a campaign that will eradicate the memory of Stéphane Dion’s nightmarish stewardship. As Liberal leader, he behaved like a debutante who had strayed into an abattoir and never regained consciousness—until he vanished into a void of his own devising, otherwise known as “the Coalition.” Continue…

Teach me how to live, Jayson

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 1:30 PM - 3 Comments

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea that Jayson Blair, the 33-year-old former New York Times reporter and fabulist, responsible for the resignations of the Times’ two top editors, turn his hand to teaching people how to live. “People say, ‘Wait a minute. You’re a life coach?’ That makes no sense,’” Blair, whose journalism career crashed after the Times discovered vast instances of plagiarism and fakery in his work, told the Associated Press. “Then they think about my life experiences and what I’ve been through and they say ‘Wait a minute. It does make sense.’ ”

Associated Press

Lockerbie bomber freed

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 1:28 PM - 1 Comment

The man convicted for 270 deaths in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 is being set free. Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, 57, was sentenced to life in prison by a Scottish court in 2001 for the bombing, which brought the plane down in Lockerbie, Scotland. He has been granted clemency by Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill, based on a law allowing prisoners to be set free when near death. Al-Megrahi has prostate cancer, and is expected to die within three months. The US government has pressured Scotland to deny his release, and many of the families of those killed in the bombings have condemned the minister’s decision. However, many Libyans support freeing al-Megrahi, as they claim he was a scapegoat and the plane was brought down by Palestinians. Al-Megrahi has always maintained his innocence, and appealed his case in 2007.

CBC News

Do hybrid incentives really work?

By Ken MacQueen - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 11 Comments

Ambarish Chandra is a professor at Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. He drives a Jetta. Hal Hamill of Surrey, B.C., owns AAA Auto and Truck Scrap Pickup. He drives a tow truck. His job is hauling aging clunkers off the roads, while Chandra and his research team try to do the same thing, academically. From different perspectives, the two have reached a similar conclusion: government incentives to get old gas guzzlers off the road may prime the economy, but their impact on the environment isn’t as green as advertised.

Chandra is co-author of a study that found Canadian and U.S. incentives to buy hybrid vehicles are largely a waste of money, if their aim is reducing emissions. “There is a long history in economics of programs designed to sway consumers to do one thing having unintended consequences,” says Chandra. In this case, most consumers using government incentives (as much as $10,000 in Ontario) toward the purchase of hybrids would buy them anyway, he says. Hybrid incentives may steer some from fuel-efficient smaller conventional cars, but they have no impact on reducing demand for SUVs, vans or trucks. Continue…

Mission accomplished

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 66 Comments

Alison Crawford reflects on the exquisite precision of a Stephen Harper photo op.

The Coast Guard’s Pierre Radisson ship and the submarine HMCS Cornerbrook lined up one one side of the frigate HMCS Toronto. On the deck of Toronto, was a gaggle of reporters, cameras at the ready.

Then, Defence Minister Peter MacKay sauntered onto the deck with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. They stopped to make idle chit chat until urged by handlers to move forward a few metres in order to have them perfectly positioned with the other two vessels in the background.

But wait! There’s more! Three CF-18 jets flew past in formation. But the fly-by was a little to fast for some camera operators and photographers to catch the entire montage of sub, jets and coast guard, so the CF-18s passed over four more times.

Hockey in Barrie with Conservatives and animal print protective cups!

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 12:47 PM - 13 Comments

Ontario Tory MP Patrick Brown hosted and played in his second Hockey Night in Barrie charity game at the Barrie Molson Centre. The teams were a mix of Conservative MPs, past and present NHLers and some celebrities. The event raised $121, 000 for Barrie’s Royal Victoria Hospital. Team Blue won 15 to 13. Below, Labour Minister Rona Ambrose and Defense Minister Peter MacKay.

Hockey Night in Canada’s Ron MacLean.

Marc Hickox from the TV show Rent-A-Goalie.

Continue…

Store refuses to cover up tobacco wall

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 11 Comments

Bob Gee just wants the government to back off. His Kentville, N.S., store, Maders Tobacco, has been operating for 80 years, but over the last decade, a constant stream of new rules and regulations has been driving him crazy. The 65-year-old had to remove three tobacco displays, take the lettering off his front window, and hang 10 signs declaring the dangers of smoking. Then, in November 2006, the province passed legislation requiring him to cover all his tobacco products.

Gee says the final rule was one step too far, and he won’t cover up. So last year he was charged with improper storage and display of tobacco products, which carries a fine of up to $2,000. The court gave him time to change his mind, but he refused. Prosecutors said he could use a catalogue to show customers what was available. He refused. He was told he could get an exemption if he stopped selling products like chips and pop and officially became a tobacconist. He refused. Continue…

Truth, Justice and the Islamic Way

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 12:18 PM - 2 Comments

The world’s first Muslim cartoon superheroes have taken the Arab world by storm, and now they are headed for British television screens. Named the 99, as each possesses one of Allah’s 99 attributes, the characters include a burka-clad woman named Batina the Hidden and a Saudi Arabian Hulk-type man named Jabbar the Powerful. They have proved a hit from Morocco to Indonesia and were recently named as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the world by Forbes. Now they are being brought to British TV by Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, with a mission to instill Islamic values in children across all faiths. The 99 were created by Naif al-Mutawa, a clinical psychologist from Kuwait, who felt Muslim children needed a new set of heroes to look up to, to counter jihadist role models. “It hit me that the stories I was hearing were from men who grew up believing that their leader, Saddam, was a hero, a role model—only to one day be tortured by him,” he said. “I decided the Arab world needed better role models.” However, despite being called the 99, there will never be a full cast of 99 superheroes since it is forbidden to depict all Allah’s attributes. Al-Mutawa hopes his creation will have universal appeal: “It is based on attributes such as generosity and mercy. These are not things that Islam has a monopoly over.”

The Telegraph

Video ads to appear in magazines

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 12:17 PM - 0 Comments

Readers of Entertainment Weekly might be surprised to see TV personalities speaking to them from wafer-thin screens embedded in the magazine, the Financial Times reports. As part of a marketing experiment from CBS and Pepsi, the ads don’t start moving until the reader turns to the right page. The cost of these ads weren’t disclosed, but they’ll certainly be far more expensive than traditional advertisements. The video, which will show on a screen of a similar size to those on mobile telephones, will feature characters from CBS Monday night shows, and a video promoting diet soda.

Financial Times

Maclean’s Interview: Theodore Roszak

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 3 Comments

In 1969, historian Theodore Roszak’s The Making of a Counter Culture coined the term that defined a generation. His new book, The Making of an Elder Culture, explores the potential social sea change resulting from a geronto­cracy in which most of Western society is over the age of 50.

Q: You make the provocative claim that baby boomers have a second chance to reshape history due to their demographic clout, even that their place in history could hinge more on their second act as “elders” than their first act as radicals.

A: Yes, the people leading the way toward a gerontocracy are the same people who were raising hell on the college campuses of the ’60s. This is a very special population because they had a special historical experience that acquainted them with the willingness to make big changes. These people are going to be older for a longer period of time than they were ever young and have much more political and financial clout than younger people.

Q: How will this shift in social consciousness begin to shake out?

A: Well, once again the demographic weight is going to force people to think differently, even if they start off with a very negative attitude—which is generally the attitude we have toward aging. But you’re going to have to put up with the fact that we now have a lot of 70-year-olds and 80-year-olds who are not like your grandparents or great-grandparents. They go on working, they’re professionals, they are active. These are not just parasites leaning on the rest of the society. I talk about experience being of great economic value, but we’ve never given it enough weight in our economic thought. And I speak as a historian—this is an unprecedented state of affairs, and so it’s new to people, they’ve never had to think about the demographics of their society in this way. Continue…

Mitchel Raphael on the cabinet minister who’s lost 30 pounds

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:40 AM - 2 Comments

Newfoundland MP has ‘rescued a few people’
The 191-year-old Royal St. John’s Regatta is held the first Wednesday in August—or, if the weather’s not right, the first good day after that. The regatta committee assesses conditions in the early morning and then, if it’s good for the boats, declares a holiday for the city. “You should have the right to have a holiday on a good weather day,” says Newfoundland NDP MP Jack Harris. Harris has been going to the Royal St. John’s Regatta for more than 50 years. He usually plays a game or two of crown and anchor, though not this year. His big win in the past was “a couple of bucks.” He recalls that many years ago, kids would walk around the regatta carrying buckets of water with an egg cup at the bottom. A person would double their money if they landed a coin in the egg cup. Harris himself never landed a coin in the cup. “You were pretty much saying goodbye to your dime,” jokes the MP. This year, Harris was joined by NDP Leader Jack Layton. It was Layton’s first time at the regatta and as he and Harris walked the grounds the phrase “pair of Jacks” was heard a few times. Layton was made an honorary member of the regatta committee and presented with a baseball cap. On that same committee is Liberal MP Siobhan Coady. A member since 1992, she has also been a judge at the regatta and in the ’80s was an active rower. She never tipped a boat, “but I’ve rescued a few people,” says Coady. She’s also known as a “treat” lady because she always gives out crabs or shrimps.

Has anybody got a riding they could give to Elizabeth May?
Last month Green Party Leader Elizabeth May had her first weekend off since the start of 2009. That weekend was part of her five-day summer vacation, spent entirely on a train from Vancouver to Nova Scotia. Her leisure reading included The End of Energy Obesity: Breaking Today’s Energy Addiction for a Prosperous and Secure Tomorrow by Peter Tertzakian and Keith Hollihan, and P.D. James’s mystery novel The Private Patient. May loves mystery books: “They are diverting and make you not think much about reality.” She also read Wayson Choy’s Not Yet and met the author at one of her favourite events, the Read by the Sea Festival in River John, N.S. May has been spending much of the summer looking for a new riding to run in. She says Michael Ignatieff made it clear there will be no leader courtesies offered to her (his predecessor, Stéphane Dion, did not run a candidate against May in Central Nova). The Green leader was thinking of running in former Tory, now Independent MP Bill Casey’s riding since he has resigned, but she feels a general election will be called before that by-election. May’s daughter, Victoria Cate, will attend the University of King’s College in Halifax this September, which will make it difficult for the Green leader to see her unless she picks another East Coast riding. But the priority for the Green party, she says, is for her to find a riding she can win. Continue…

What should be the dominant issue in the next federal election campaign?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:38 AM - 30 Comments

Best rhetorical question I read today

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:24 AM - 56 Comments

Courtesy of Joe Klein:

How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists?

Forget an A, here’s $20

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:20 AM - 7 Comments

There are a lot of explanations out there for why Canada’s First Nations students are still so far behind. With on-reserve graduation rates hovering around 30 per cent, according to the Assembly of First Nations, Aboriginals are less than half as likely as other Canadians to crown their teenage years with a high school degree. Many say the crux of the problem is chronic underfunding of First Nations schools—rooted in a federal funding formula that dates back to the 1980s. Others admonish lousy on-reserve teaching and poor communication with provincial schools. Still more find blame in dated technology, or ethnically biased curriculum, or cultural attitudes on reserves that undervalue formal education.

But while the ideological debate rages, some First Nations have taken matters into their own hands. Their solution: pay students to go school. Honey Powless, of Ontario’s Six Nations, graduated in 2007 and recalls cashing in every semester at Hagersville Secondary. Her school’s incentive scheme operated on a sliding scale; First Nations students were rewarded different amounts of money, depending on how good their attendance was. “Kids were really looking at that,” she says. “It really helped us through.” The 19-year-old says she usually earned the maximum payment: $150 a semester—money she spent on her cellphone bill. Continue…

Stephen Harper takes brave stand against vegetarianism

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:14 AM - 46 Comments

Having sampled seal, the Prime Minister will now eat only that. And is forcing his eating habits on others.

Harper arrived in Iqaluit, Nunavut on Monday night with a planeload of the cabinet ministers that sit on cabinet’s Priorities and Planning Committee. P&P held a meeting in Iqaluit Tuesday. At lunch, at Harper’s request, cabinet was served a menu of boiled and raw seal livers and ribs.

On Wednesday, as he bantered with reporters aboard the HMCS Toronto while sailing on Frobisher Bay, Harper noted that even Transport Minister John Baird, a vegetarian, tried some seal meat at lunch. ”I’m tired of John’s vegetaranism,” Harper joked.

But lunch on Tuesday did not, apparently, quench Harper’s appetite for seal. For dinner Wednesday, Harper requested seal steaks and encouraged his staff to try a bit. We have been told that journalists travelling with the prime minister this week — I’m one of them — will see seal in some form or another on the menu Thursday.

Afghans head to the polls, defy Taliban threats

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:04 AM - 0 Comments

Taliban hanged voters with ink-stained fingers in Afghanistan today, as voting took place in the country’s second ever presidential election. Afghans defied Taliban threats and poor security to vote, although turnout was higher in the comparatively peaceful north of the country than in the insurgency-ravaged south. Results of the election will not be known for weeks.

The New York Times

With age comes wisdom?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:03 AM - 0 Comments

A Toronto immigration lawyer has plunged the federal court system into chaos by challenging the jurisdiction of the deputy judge assigned to his case on the grounds that Canadian law does not allow judges to stay on the bench past the age of 75. The move left the federal court “scrambling … to adjourn and reassign cases scheduled to be heard” by the judge in question — Louis Tannenbaum, a retired judge, and one of seven deputies, only one of whom is under 75. Not surprisingly, it also sparked a spirited rebuke from the Canadian Association of Retired People, which opposes mandatory retirement at any age. “”You should judge people based on their competency,” CARP spokesperson Susan Eng – a lawyer herself – told the Star. “It’s legitimate to ask people to have cognitive ability when they are doing a job that requires absolute clarity. But you judge on the basis of the individual competency, not on some arbitrary age.” Another lawyer predicts that the enforcing the age limit has “the potential to cripple the court” which has “already been stretched to the limit in its ability to hear cases.” The motion against Tannenbaum will be heard on September 30th.

Toronto Star