NDP to win eight more seats!

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 1:45 PM - 16 Comments

Ed Broadbent rallies the faithful in Halifax.

At the federal level it is the Liberals and Conservatives who mismanaged the economy and created the crisis of inequality by slashing programs and imposing regressive taxation. Their policies will perpetuate the status quo. Our task, once again, is to lead the struggle. We must restore the dream for social justice. But this isn’t just a dream. We now know it is both ideal and possible to create a Canada that is healthier in every respect; a Canada with more involvement by our citizens; a Canada where neighbours are seen as friends, not as competitors; a Canada in which babies born the same day in Cape Breton and Calgary will have equal opportunities in life. Our task as New Democrats is to demonstrate, show and persuade Canadians that with more equality this kind of Canada is possible. Let’s get on with the job.

A carbon tax by any other name, would smell as rank…

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 1:43 PM - 17 Comments

Waxman-Markey, the massive climate change bill currently working its way through the U.S. Senate, contains a provision that would allow the president to impose tariffs on imports with carbon footprints bigger than U.S.-made goods. That has Alberta’s provincial government worried, particularly with creeping protectionist policies in the U.S., as well as the “dirty oil” talk from Barack Obama’s camp during last year’s primaries. “The thing that really bothers me,” Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach told the Calgary Herald’s Renata D’Aliesio, “is that they’re giving the president, presently the way it’s written, executive powers of imposing administrative taxes, border adjustment taxes.” Lobbying efforts by Alberta’s representatives in Washington, seeking to soften the bill’s “sharper edges,” have been fierce, says Alberta D.C. envoy Gary Mar. But Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice counsels optimism–of a sort–because of Canada’s efforts to harmonize our climate change regime with the U.S.’s. “At the end of the day, we’re confident that Canada will have a commensurate environmental regime, and so those border adjustments won’t penalize Canada,” Prentice says. But the question remains–harmonize to what? Chopin’s Funeral March?

Calgary Herald

400 dead in mudslide

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 1:28 PM - 0 Comments

About 400 people are believed to have died in the mudslides that struck Taiwan, and the death toll is expected to reach at least 500. The country’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, is asking officials to increase efforts for rescue and relief as reconstruction work begins. He said typhoon Morakot has caused the most devastation on the island in 50 years. The storm wrecked 7,000 homes, caused over $1.5 billion worth of damage, and wiped out 34 bridges and 253 sections of road, destruction that is severely hampering rescue efforts. Over 1,900 people are still stranded, and the army has given up any hope of rescuing the hundreds more believed to be buried under the mud.

CBC News

Stuff you should read

By Andrew Potter - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 1:04 PM - 14 Comments

1. David Eaves chipping in on the debate between Lawrence Martin and Alison Loat over our apathetic youth.

2. Over at Glavin’s place, a guest essay about detained Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari

3. Colby Cosh on Les Paul.

4. The NYT on Yale UP chickening out on printing those infamous cartoons… in a book about the cartoons.

5. Molly Ringwald on John Hughes.

Have a good weekend.

The Strangest Re-Tool Of Them All

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 3 Comments

After Alan Sepinwall posted this interview with Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence, there was some discussion of whether any show had done this before: make so many drastic changes — in cast, premise, and setting — that it’s essentially a spin-off show with the same title. There are very few, it turns out. Jason Mittell came up with The Practice, whose final season David E. Kelley basically turned into a season-long backdoor pilot for Boston Legal. Apart from that, nothin’. There have been other shows that re-vamped as drastically as Scrubs, but they always changed the title to indicate that this was not the same show. So when everybody had left All in the Family except Archie and it became the story of him running a bar with a bunch of new characters, it became Archie Bunker’s Place. Three’s Company married off Jack Tripper and dumped his two roommates; it became Three’s a Crowd. Even with three out of four Golden Girls running that hotel with Don Cheadle, it had to be retitled The Golden Palace. But though Lawrence says he wanted to do the same with Scrubs, calling the new season “Scrubs Med,” ABC said no. Stephen McPherson, head of ABC, said it had to remain under the same title because “he wants to keep the brand.”

What this shows is that Scrubs, ABC and television are all in kind of a weird position. Scrubs is not a true hit show and never has been, but it always does just well enough with a demographically-desirable audience that it’s in a network’s interest to keep it around (or at least the network that owns it, ABC; NBC dropped it because there’s not as much in it for them). In the past, when a show had run this long and had ratings comparable to Scrubs‘, a massive re-tool was obviously a desperation move, and changing the title was the best idea for one of two reasons. Either the parent show’s ratings were sinking so badly that it was a good idea to make it clear that this was a different show — potentially pulling in those who hadn’t watched the original — or the producers wanted to change the title for fear of damaging the brand of the original. (The Golden Girls would suffer in syndication if the Golden Palace episodes were part of the package.) But ABC doesn’t expect Scrubs to get good ratings, just good enough to fill a spot while they’re looking for new comedies; it’s a very old, effective utility player. And as Lawrence mentions in the interview, its syndication shelf life isn’t huge, so the issue of the re-tooled episodes hurting the brand isn’t really that important.

Or at least, the damage that this season could do to the Scrubs brand is not as important as the short-term boost ABC can get from the reliable if unspectacular Scrubs brand. Fifteen years ago, Scrubs‘ performance would make it a struggling show that the network would only bring back if it pretended to be some other show. But by current standards, its performance is good enough that the network has an interest in pretending it’s still Scrubs, when it really isn’t.

Court: Bring back Khadr

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 12:36 PM - 7 Comments

The federal government has lost its bid to overturn a ruling forcing it to press for the repatriation of Omar Khadr from the Guantanamo Bay prison. The government had had argued the seriousness of the allegations against Khadr, the 22 year old Toronto native is charged with killing a U.S. army soldier in Afghanistan, should allow for his prosecution before a U.S. military tribunal. But on Friday, the Federal Court of Appeal found that Ottawa’s ongoing refusal to bring Khadr back to Canada “offends a principle of fundamental justice and violates Mr. Khadr’s rights.” The court upheld an earlier decision calling on the federal government to demand Khadr’s return “as soon as practicable.”

CBC News

No food for wives who don’t want sex

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 12:35 PM - 6 Comments

When the Afghan government shelved the first version of the legislation, which applies to the Shia minority, after western governments complained that it legalized rape within marriage, President Hamid Karzai promised to change the law. But the revised version is just as bad. The final draft says that Shia men can deny their wives food if the women don’t obey their “reasonable” sexual requests. It also gives males guardianship of children and the right to refuse permission for women to work. Human Rights Watch, which obtained the draft, says it even violates the country’s own constitution.

The Guardian

Half sick of shadows: More musings on those EKOS approval ratings

By kadyomalley - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 12:18 PM - 27 Comments

Ever since this week’s EKOS survey came out, ITQ has found herself absolutely fascinated by the approval ratings for the various party leaders, mostly because those results actually seem to be telling us something we didn’t already know, as opposed to the voter intention flatlines that just keep on reminding us that, for all intents and purposes, as far as the permanent campaign goes, this summer has been one long, slow, dead heat.  But a poll that ranks Jack Layton above Michael Ignatieff, as far as general thumbs-uppedness from the voters, putting him just two points behind Stephen Harper, well — that makes you stop and go “huh,” especially when the very same respondents leave his party languishing in the mid-teens when asked where they’d mark an X on the next federal ballot.

(For those of y’all who are ready to eject ITQ from your bookmarks like Dana Larsen from an NDP convention if she doesn’t stop rambling on about opinion polls, the rest of this post has been ITQuarantined behind the jump.)

Continue…

Now what?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 11:46 AM - 53 Comments

The Federal Court of Appeal upholds the Federal Court’s ruling that the Canadian government is obligated to seek Omar Khadr’s repatriation.

Here is the decision in its entirety. Select excerpts after the jump. Continue…

'Brick-by-brick, block-by-block'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 11:45 AM - 2 Comments

Here is a piece from this week’s print edition on the state of the NDP. Several dozen sentences ensue, just one of those having anything to do with the fact the party may or may not change something about its name.

Even by the normally quixotic standards of the NDP, it has been a strange year. For a fleeting moment in December, it appeared Jack Layton was going to be a cabinet minister in a coalition government. By the end of June, Michael Ignatieff had a deal instead with Stephen Harper, and the Prime Minister was addressing the party in Parliament’s far corner as the “Bloc Anglais.”

The leader of the NDP, now six years into his tenure, remains relentlessly enthusiastic. “It was a fascinating eight months,” Layton says, explaining himself next with duelling metaphors. “I always say to folks: get ready, I’m a long-time sailor; I don’t go tacking back and forth to try to catch the lightest little gust of wind. When I ran for leader, I laid out a plan and I said it’s like a construction project. You’ve got to start with the foundation and you build, brick-by-brick, block-by-block.”

What Obama's been really saying

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 11:44 AM - 0 Comments

Politico.com has analyzed President Obama’s words since taking office and concluded that he sounds more like a peacetime president than a leader of a country engaged in two foreign wars. The president said “health” and “economy” each more often than the words “Iraq,” “Iran,” “Afghanistan” and “terrorism” combined. Also noteworthy are words that Obama completely avoided: “Abortion” received just 15 mentions, and “immigration” came in at 39. “That tells you everything you need to know about the priorities of this administration,” says Marc Thiessen, a former chief speechwriter to Bush. “Clearly, President Obama has made health care a priority and the war on terrorism a lot less of a priority.”

Politico

Obama's purported "death panels" have familiar source

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 11:41 AM - 2 Comments

The stubborn yet false rumour that U.S. President Obama’s health-care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks. Advanced even this week by Republican stalwarts including the party’s last vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and Charles E. Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator, the nature of the assertion nonetheless seemed reminiscent of the modern-day viral Internet campaigns that dogged Obama last year, falsely calling him a Muslim and questioning his nationality. But the rumour, which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite of an avalanche of reports laying out why it was false, was not born of anonymous emailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyber-conspiracy theorists. Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of the Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, New York’s lieutenant governor).

The New York Times

Swiss referendum on minarets

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 11:40 AM - 6 Comments

The normally sleepy Swiss country town of Langenthal has become the focus of a virulent right-wing campaign to ban minarets from all mosques in the Alpine republic on the grounds that they symbolize ideological opposition to the country’s constitution. Switzerland’s “stop minaret” movement is backed by the influential ultra-conservative Swiss People’s Party, (SVP) which was re-elected in 2007 with its largest-ever share of the vote after mounting an anti-foreigner campaign that was denounced by the United Nations as racist. Ulrich Schüler, an SVP parliamentarian and leading member of the anti-minaret movement, says the edifices are political rather than religious. “They are symbols of a desire for power, of an Islam which wants to establish a legal and social order fundamentally contrary to the liberties guaranteed in our constitution,” he said. Switzerland is home to a population of about 400,000 Muslims, the majority of whom are Turks, Bosnians and Albanians. The “stop minaret” campaign was launched two years ago, prompting a national debate on the subject. A petition in support of its aims has since been signed by more than 100,000 citizens. Under Swiss law the issue now has to be decided by a national referendum which will be conducted in late November. However, before then, the “stop minaret” campaign is hoping to create a legal precedent by thwarting construction of a minaret in Langenthal, a provincial town halfway between Bern and Basel that is home to 14,000 people and 11 churches.

The Independent

Binge drinking impairs university students’ brain function

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 11:39 AM - 0 Comments

A new study shows that binge drinkers need an additional effort to complete a given task, and have a deficiency determining relevant and irrelevant information. The study, conduced by Spanish researchers, also said that sporadic consumption causes greater damage than consuming similar amounts of alcohol at a constant, moderate pace (i.e. over the span of a week versus all in one or two nights). Compared to their peers, university binge drinkers “required greater attentional processing during the task in order to carry it out correctly,” says Alberto Crego, an author of the study. It was also found that university binge drinkers experience memory deficits that are traditionally exhibited by chronic alcoholics. “These results collectively suggest that impaired brain function may occur at an early age in binge drinkers during attentional and working memory processing,” says Credo.

Science Daily

Shovels in … mid-air

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 9:43 AM - 0 Comments

The projects are ready to go, but hundreds of millions of promised federal funding dollars is still in bureaucratic limbo, and that has left local municipalities facing a “tough choice, the Toronto Star reports today: Do they cross their fingers and break ground on some of those hundreds of approved-in-principle infrastructure projects now, and hope that the cheques will be in the mail in time to pay the construction costs — or wait for a formal agreement? Both the provincial and federal governments are advising cities to build now, even if there isn’t a signed agreement in place, and some cities, like the “cautiously optimistic” Durham Region, which has gone ahead with tenders for several road and pipe replacement jobs. But others, like Oakville, fear that could leave already cash-strapped cities on the hook for the bill: “Expecting municipalities to start projects without these signed agreements” could put cities at risk, according to Oakville treasurer Patti Elliott-Spencer. “We don’t really know the full rules of the program.”

Toronto Star

This Week: Good news/Bad news

By The Editors - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 1 Comment

Face of the week
Still here in Bangkok: alleged Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in a court cell. He was fighting extradition to the U.S., and won.

A week in the life of Larry O’Brien
The Ottawa mayor has wasted little time since his acquittal last week on charges of influence peddling. By Thursday he was back at city hall, tackling an overflowing in-basket after a briefing from acting mayor Doug Thompson. O’Brien had been on a leave of absence since May 1 as the trial dragged on. On Tuesday, he announced he is preparing a major speech on the issues facing the city. It will set priorities for the 2010 municipal elections, where he’ll face the voters’ verdict.

GOOD NEWS

Seeing justice done
Lawyers shouldn’t represent themselves. Doctors shouldn’t treat themselves. Now RCMP complaints commissioner Paul Kennedy rightly says Mounties shouldn’t investigate themselves. In a report issued Tuesday, Kennedy says investigations of fellow Mounties are “flawed and inconsistent.” Among the problems: lead investigators knowing members under investigation; members of lower or equal rank investigating fellow officers; the RCMP’s failure to track internal cases, or their outcomes. The force, says Kennedy, “has no understanding of what the scope of the problem actually is.” The airport tasering and death of Robert Dziekanski and the in-custody shooting of Ian Bush, both in B.C., are two RCMP self-investigations that raised serious public doubts. RCMP brass should embrace Kennedy’s recommendation that arm’s-length bodies investigate serious internal cases. The force’s credibility is at stake.

Sticking it to the flu
The H1N1 flu virus faded from the news this summer, but it’s folly to think the risk from human swine flu is over. Nationally, more than 60 people died and 1,300 have been hospitalized since the pandemic started. The Canadian and provincial governments will spend $400 million on 50.4 million doses of swine flu vaccine. The vaccine, under production in Quebec City, should be available to all who want it by November. “Nobody will be left behind,” says Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq. Vaccine production isn’t a “sexy” political issue, but it’s heartening to see we are prepared when, and if, the flu storms back this winter.

Help is on the way
Overdue reinforcements will aid Canadian troops, who have paid a bloody price in their efforts to protect civilians and drive Taliban insurgents from Kandahar. U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, head of NATO forces in Afghanistan, will boost to 21,000 the number of U.S. soldiers deploying to the region. It’s a belated recognition of the Taliban’s strength, the area’s strategic importance and Canada’s lonely battle to hold the fort.

Candid camera
YouTube is more than a video bazaar of the bizarre. The Internet time-waster is also proving a fine law-enforcement tool. Three Saskatchewan men pleaded guilty Monday to duck hunting with a rifle from a car, tipping off authorities by posting their escapades online. Quebec police are examining the parent-shot video of a seven-year-old boy at the controls of an accelerating Honda. Some bemoan the proliferation of closed-circuit cameras in public spaces, but why worry when we’re incriminating ourselves on YouTube?

BAD NEWS

Our lost summer
It must be said: this summer stinks. We’re not just talking the weather, but let’s start there. Too hot. Too cold. Too dry. Too wet. Every region has its cross to bear, and sometimes cross bears, too. In B.C., dry weather forced a campfire ban. In Ontario you couldn’t spark one for the rain. At Ottawa’s Britannia Yacht Club, miserable conditions drove kids inside to learn knot-tying or to watch Pirates of the Caribbean. Same story at “Sunny” Acres Day Camp in Montreal, where a treasure hunt for gold-painted rocks had to be held in a hallway. Kids might as well work, but little chance of that. The student unemployment rate hit 21.9 per cent, the highest on record. July has much to answer for, and August is no prize either. And the September forecast? An election, we fear.

Let’s make a deal
Putting avarice in the service of justice can make for gauche public pleas. Consider the P.E.I. man who’s purchased ads in B.C. newspapers offering to split EnCana’s $1-million reward for information leading to the Dawson Creek pipeline bomber with the bomber himself. “He’ll probably find a girlfriend or a friend or a relative to do the same thing, so why not me?” says James Halstrum, who promises to deposit half the cash in an offshore bank account if he’s allowed to turn the bomber in. The RCMP is reportedly looking at whether such a deal would contravene the law as much as it does good taste.

Olympic begging
The Vancouver Olympic Committee faces a financial shortfall six months from the start of the Winter Games. It’s gone begging to both governments and the private sector to donate the services and salaries of 1,500 staff that VANOC needs but can’t pay for. Much of the blame falls on a weak economy, and the International Olympic Committee. The IOC failed to deliver two key sponsors: a shortfall of $30 million. And it required VANOC to buy up all outdoor advertising to resell to approved sponsors. Some $12 million of that is unsold. Organizers are cutting costs and expectations while the IOC sticks taxpayers with its champagne dreams on a hot-dog budget.

WhyTunes
Bob Dylan is recording a Christmas album. Try not to fear. He went electric, and the world was only momentarily thrown off its axis. He did TV commercials for the Cadillac Escalade and fans stayed true. But is the world ready for Dylan nasalizing Here Comes Santa Claus? Doubtful. Pray he doesn’t add a Christmas theme to his classics. Sad-Eyed Lady of the Snowlands. Sub-zero Homesick Blues. Just Like a Snowman. Brrrrr. Well, it wouldn’t be Christmas without a turkey.

Econowatch

By Steve Maich - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 1 Comment

Last January, Maclean’s published a cover story warning that the Canadian economy would likely lose a quarter of a million jobs this year. The economic storm was just beginning to reach hurricane force, but Canada was still in relatively good shape. The government was still insisting that our world-leading banks would shelter us, and a couple of rival publications chortled at our economic warning and suggested we were being alarmist. I wish.

It turns out we underestimated the threat to Canada’s job market by a fair bit. As of July, roughly 331,000 jobs have been lost in 2009, the unemployment rate has gone from 6.6 per cent to 8.6 per cent, and if not for the fact that thousands of Canadians now consider themselves “self-employed,” the carnage would look far worse. Continue…

The Queen's YouTube channel, John Hughes' pen pal, and a religious conversion reality TV show

By Lianne George - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 1 Comment

Whisky business
On Sunday, Queen Elizabeth II, 83, launched her new YouTube channel, where she will broadcast her 50th annual televised Christmas message this December. According to Buckingham Palace, “the Queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people.” Also available on the Royal Channel will be video clips of garden parties, state visits, and footage of a day in the life of Prince Charles. Some things about the royal family, however, are not for public consumption. According to the Daily Mail, the Norfolk Police has declined a request made under the Freedom of Information Act for details on how many officers receive a bottle of whisky from Her Majesty each year at Christmas time. The police department issued a five-page response defending its secrecy, claiming that in the wrong hands, this information could allow “domestic or foreign terrorists to establish the level of police protection afforded to royal residences.” It would reveal, however, that two of its officers, Chief Insp. Dick Curtis and Sgt. P. Newby, had each receieved Christmas puddings from the Queen, valued at £13.

It worked for Bill
Hyun Jeong-eun, the head of Hyundai Group, one of South Korea’s most powerful conglomerates, ventured to North Korea this week to discuss “current issues” with officials and attempt to secure the release of one of her employees. The man, known only by his family name, Yoo, who was taken prisoner in March in the Northern border town of Kaesong, according to the BBC, allegedly for “undermining the North’s political system.” Hyun’s visit is said to have been prompted by the recent success of former U.S. president Bill Clinton in negotiating the release of two American journalists. Clinton is reported to have raised Yoo’s case during his visit with Kim Jong Il, but so far there is no reason to believe the North Korean dictator has any intention of releasing him. Continue…

The ‘No kids’ debate continues

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 11:59 PM - 420 Comments

We knew “The Case Against Having Kids,” the August 3 cover story, would elicit response and debate. But we weren’t prepared for the deluge—well over a hundred letters and more than 1,000 comments on Macleans.ca (at last count). Clearly, the subject struck a nerve—and as one email indicates, even a gastrointestinal tract or two: “Disgusted,” was its subject line. “It made me nauseous to read the article…in fact, I’m not even sure what was the point of the article aside from promoting yet another fad and the ultimate age of selfishness.”

So to recap the point of the article: to examine the small but growing strata of people who are choosing not to have children. The moment was ripe: Corinne Maier’s manifesto No Kids: 40 Good Reasons Not to Have Children, which sparked furor in France last year, was about to land in North America. Increasingly those who are voluntarily childless are taken seriously as a statistical cohort and as the subject of research. Additionally, a number of high-profile women, such Cameron Diaz, have recently said they have no plans to have children.

The topic is so new in mainstream discussion that many readers assumed it has to be anti-child—reading “The Case Against Kids,” rather than “The Case Against Having Kids.” One inflamed letter writer even suggested it’s not safe to send trick-or-treating children to my house on Halloween (It is! Honest!). A pregnant woman expressed her displeasure, concerned the article could affect her domestic harmony: “But I have got to say that I, being a mom-to-be for the first time, due in 5 weeks did NOT appreciate my husband being welcomed home after a hard day at work to this headline.” Some readers complained the story was one-sided: “I presume you’re going to give equal space to “The Case For Having Kids,” a reader fumed, as if civilization itself didn’t provide that. Continue…

'God bless America'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 10:37 PM - 53 Comments

Kady has news of the latest outrage: Michael Ignatieff likes America.

Anyway. There once was a time when Stephen Harper was deeply concerned that his political opponents didn’t like America. So deeply concerned that his entry in the Hansard index for the second session of the 37th Parliament has its own subsection for “Anti-Americanism.” So deeply concerned that he stood in the House of Commons on April 3, 2003 and moved that “the House of Commons express its regret and apologize for offensive and inappropriate statements made against the United States of America by certain Members of this House; that it reaffirm the United States to be Canada’s closest friend and ally and hope that the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is successful in removing Saddam Hussein’s regime from power; and that the House urge the Government of Canada to assist the coalition in the reconstruction of Iraq.”

Speaking on behalf of that motion he enthused about the United States, cited Sylvester Stallone and deemed our proximity to that great nation to be “our biggest asset in this very dangerous world.”

Full text after the jump. Continue…

But does Michael Ignatieff love the United States enough?

By kadyomalley - Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 9:30 PM - 112 Comments

Okay, so earlier today, while some of us were trying to pay attention to the NDP pre-game show, the Tory Talking Point Brigade was busily sending around the following exchange between Michael Ignatieff and a New Brunswick reporter, which apparently took place following his speech in Saint John earlier today:

Question:                                           I just have a question about something you said in your speech about the 21st century not belonging to the United States but more to China.  Can you elaborate on the implications of that for Canada and what Canada has to do to get itself ready for that.

Hon. Michael Ignatieff:                   Nobody is a bigger fan of the United States than I am.  I sometimes paid a political price for my affection for the United States.  I’m making an export market point and I’m making a geo-strategic point.  I think that as we go through the 21st century, India and China, Brazil, those are three key markets which are going to grow.‬

That’s right: “Nobody is a bigger fan of the United States than I am.”  How, the TTPB asked, can Canadians expect this man — who was out of the country for 34 years, which he spent loving America and attacking their country while plotting to replace the Canadian flag with a beer label and install George W. Bush as Governor General  (or something like that — you know how ITQ’s attention tends to wander when she’s being spun) — anyway, how can Canadians possibly expect him to stand up for their rights? Especially when, in his own words, nobody — nobody! — is a bigger fan of the United States than he is.

Well, hang on a sec, ITQ thought to herself.

Continue…

Last night at Zaphod's

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 6:14 PM - 8 Comments

It was one thing when the chucklehead in the red leather baseball cap took his shirt off and started twirling it like a lasso over his head, but when the girls around him did likewise you knew something special was going on…

Passion Pit played Ottawa last night.

Nortel and the Avro Arrow myth

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 6:03 PM - 106 Comments

I’ll have lots to say about this Nortel nonsense in a bit, but for now let me just deal with the inevitable Avro Arrow analogy. Appearing before the Commons industry committee the other day, Research in Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis trotted out the well-worn Arrow story to pressure lawmakers into blocking Nortel’s deal to sell its wireless operations to the Swedish telecom giant Ericsson.

He told MPs that allowing Nortel’s next-generation wireless patents to go to a foreign-based company would be similar to Canada’s notorious decision to cancel development of the Avro Arrow aircraft in 1959….

Lazaridis noted that he has a model of the Canadian-designed Avro Arrow on his desk and that 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of its cancellation. “Fifty years later we consider the disposition of another beachhead built by Canadian ingenuity,” he remarked. “Let us learn from our history and not make the same mistake again.”

There are any number of things wrong with RIM’s case, but the first and worst is the notion that killing the Arrow was some sort of terrible mistake. Indeed, if the best RIM can do is cite the Arrow, darling of every nationalist drama queen and high-tech trainspotter who never bothered to actually inform themselves of the reasons for its demise, that tells you just how weak their case is — though it was enough to send the Toronto Star into one of its patented teenage swoons.

For those in need of a refresher course, let me point you to Michael Bliss’s classic history of Canadian business, Northern Enterprise, pgs. 474-477. I’m going to quote it at some length, because, well, it’s just so damning…

Continue…

Russia makes new (old) friends

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 6:00 PM - 0 Comments

Evoking the good old days of the red menace, Russia and Cuba are once again growing close. The two countries, who were formerly thick-as-thieves allies until the breakup of the Soviet Union, recently signed a deal giving Russia oil exploration rights off the coast of Cuba. Estimates place as much as 20 billion barrels of oil within Cuba’s territory in the Gulf of Mexico, a lucrative investment for Russia’s Zarubezhneft oil concern. Cuba, meanwhile, gets a $150-million loan in exchange.

The deal, signed by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, appears to be part of a Russian push for closer relations with leftist, anti-U.S. Latin American nations. Before heading to Cuba, Sechin visited Nicaragua, where he signed a visa-free travel agreement meant to foster trade. In Venezuela, meanwhile, he met with President Hugo Chávez and signed a military co-operation agreement that will see billions of dollars worth of Russian arms shipped to the country—effectively doubling Chávez’s stockpile of military hardware. The deputy PM made it obvious that Russia wants to stay close to Latin America. “I would like to express our deep satisfaction with the positive dynamics in the development in our diplomatic relations,” he said. Continue…