What's not wrong with Canadian democracy

By John Geddes - Monday, September 28, 2009 at 9:42 AM - 29 Comments

Argument about what ails Canadian democracy, if anything, is picking up lately, which is good. But it seems to me that much of the discussion is confused and misdirected, which is bad.

The latest fodder for debate, considered here by my colleague Andrew Potter, is the Institute for Research on Public Policy’s report “Ontario’s Referendum on Proportional Representation: Why Citizens Said No.”

The starting point of the report, however, strikes me as a deeply flawed reading of key political events of the past quarter century and what they tell us about the state of Canadian political life.
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Electoral Reform linkage

By Andrew Potter - Monday, September 28, 2009 at 8:24 AM - 33 Comments

Here’s the IRPP study

Here’s the Canada West survey

Here’s me, drawing what I think is the main, somewhat disheartening, message from the IRPP study.

Here’s Robert Roach of the Canada West Foundation, writing in The Mark. I think this gets it almost right:

It is too bad that the provincial reform efforts failed as one or all of them would have provided a live Canadian experiment with an alternative system that we could learn from and a spur to change at the national level.

The only quibble I have is that it’s not clear to me what conclusions we can draw about national politics from provincial experiments in reform, given that the main problem federal PR is supposed to solve — regional fracturing — is not much of a problem in any of the provinces. That’s not to say we shouldn’t experiment, and it is possible that if a province were to give MMP a shot that voters would just get comfortable with it and it might tip more provinces to give it (another) shot. At which point it might become normalised, and it wouldn’t seem so exotic at the federal level.

For what it’s worth, I’ve started to come around on some proportional element for the House, largely for the reasons Coyne’s been hammering at for ages. Wouldn’t be the first time he’s persuaded me of something.

***

One thing that does have me wondering, and about which I have no good thoughts, is the relationship between the reform process and the ongoing reluctance of voters to endorse the proposed changes. The main conclusion of the Canada West paper is that the citizens’ assembly process is now entrenched as a required element of any reform. Yet the main conclusion of the IRPP study is that citizens continue to see electoral reform as “elite driven”, even when it is given the stamp of popular input and civic engagement. The only parallel I can think of is that it is like if the public had a veto over the jury system. The jury sits for weeks or months, considers the evidence, deliberates, and returns a verdict. And then the public then votes on that verdict and reject on the grounds that it is “elite driven”.

I’m not sure what to make of this.

UPDATED: Dubious Poll Reporting Achievement of the Week Award: Sun Media/Leger Marketing

By kadyomalley - Monday, September 28, 2009 at 8:19 AM - 14 Comments

Honestly, ITQ isn’t trying to pick on Sun Media or Leger Marketing here, but — well, actually, she sort of is, but only because this story — on support for the Afghanistan mission —  is such a perfect example of how media outlets can unwittingly (at least, she assumes it’s unwitting) render the findings of even a fairly stark and straightforward poll utterly meaningless:

Almost half of Canadians say our troops should remain in Afghanistan, but only if the mission changes from a combat role to a training and development mission.

A Leger Marketing poll says 45% of Canadians support staying for a non-combat mission, while 12% want the troops to stay until the war is won.

Okay, let’s do some math. 45 +12 = 57. 100 – 57 = 43.  So what did the 43 percent of respondents — just 2 percent fewer than those who back a continuing, if non-combat role for Canadian troops in Afghanistan — think about the future of the mission? We don’t know, because – somewhat unbelievably – that result simply isn’t provided. Seriously, ITQ reread the article three times, thinking she was  somehow missing it, but no, it’s just not there. The fact that it isn’t, and that we don’t even know what the third option*–  if any — might have been, makes this poll virtually useless as far as presenting anything approaching an accurate snapshot of Canadian public opinion.

UPDATE:ITQ partially retracts her accusation, and takes full responsibility for her sloppy interpretation of the regional data, buried in which is the fact that 37 percent of respondents want to see Canadians leave “immediately,” although that still leaves six percent unaccounted for. But she maintains that that number — which is higher than she would have expected, frankly — should have been presented with the rest of the topline data. So there.  (She also now wonders why there was no option that would have troops leave in 2012, with no continuing mission — “development and training”-focused or otherwise, and can’t help but think that including that as a possible outcome could have substantially altered the results. But that’s a polling nitpick, not a reporting one.)

Oh, and the story also fails to give field dates, sample size or margin of error — all of which is helpful, if often overlooked information when attempting to determine how much credibility to give a particular poll, but that’s a comparatively minor sin. Excluding the views of 43 percent of respondents, on the other hand, is pretty much indefensible, not to mention inexplicable.

*For the record, ITQ suspects that there was, in fact, a third choice presented to respondents, although really, even if there wasn’t, the fact that such a sizeable contingent was undecided, or went with ‘none of the above’ would still be noteworthy; based on previous polling on the Afghanistan issue, it almost certainly proposed a scenario in which Canadian troops would remain until 2012, but then withdraw on schedule, and withdraw completely, not simply reconfigure the mission into one focused on ‘training and development.’

Anyone know where a guy can get a carpetbag around here?

By Paul Wells - Monday, September 28, 2009 at 8:19 AM - 11 Comments

Former mayor Glen Murray considers running for mayor again. It’s the details — what he’s the former mayor of, and what he would like to be the mayor of now — that make the story interesting. And yet somehow highly unsurprising.

Broken democracy? Bah humbug!

By Paul Wells - Monday, September 28, 2009 at 7:14 AM - 57 Comments

Colleague Potter demurs.

MUSIC: Passion Dance

By Paul Wells - Monday, September 28, 2009 at 12:37 AM - 0 Comments

On different nights, the John Coltrane Quartet’s various members would take turns taking the lead, or so it seems to me on listening to their records, though it was probably a matter of accident and a listener’s perception as much as it was anyone’s plan. The European tour recordings that the Pablo label licensed in the 1970s and 1980s are a far more terrifying documentation of Elvin Jones’s power than the more restrained studio sessions from the same period. To me the 1965 sessions released in 2005 as One Down, One Up: Coltrane Live at the Half Note are the McCoy Tyner show. (Generations of saxophonists view those tapes as the pinnacle of Coltrane’s power, so again, it’s a matter of perception.) There’s an almost punk intensity to the pianist’s playing on those dates, the way he pounds out those left-hand ostinatos, the fire he lights under his bandmates on every tune. Tyner’s most important victories were harmonic and architectural, but he was also simply an unflagging source of power on the bandstand.

Was and sometimes still is. On Saturday night at l’Astral, the gorgeous little Ste. Catherine St. concert space the Montreal International Jazz Festival opened this summer and will operate year-round, Tyner led a quartet through a collection of tunes from his albums of the late ’60s and early ’70s on Blue Note and Milestone. Half the fun was getting to hear Tyner on this material instead of in a Coltrane tribute or a set of standards, and the choice seemed driven by the presence of Gary Bartz, a saxophonist who first rose to prominence in around 1970, often on Tyner dates. In fact, Bartz seemed to be the one calling the tunes.

On the Milestone and Blue Note dates, Tyner sought a musical personality distinct from Coltrane’s by throttling back on the intensity and deepening Coltrane’s exoticism. There’s a lot of African, Hispanic and Middle Eastern grooves on these tunes, and on Saturday, propelled by Eric Gravatt on drums, Tyner showed he remains capable of maintaining those grooves’ rhythmic propulsion even as he pushed and relaxed his timing. So he was both driving and fluid; the music was both urgent and playful.

Tyner is 70 now, his shoulders seemingly half as broad as when he was a young man, his voice barely above a whisper when he offered brief, cheerful introductions peppered with inside jokes he kept tossing Bartz’s way. He’s lost some of the precision and sheer force of his playing. His right-hand delivery of melody lines in parallel octaves sometimes missed a note, and the whole band would periodically lose the thread of a tune and cast about for a measure or two until they found it again. But there’s still something fiery at the heart of Tyner’s playing, a surprisingly hard defiance that recalls the Tyner of the Half Note sessions. Taking a solo turn on the ballad I Should Care, he would bring the volume up to crashing climaxes that were frankly out of character with the tune’s mood, but so emphatic they were enthralling on their own terms. And on Promise, a hard-driving blues tune with the prominent repetitive ostinato groove Tyner favoured all night, he started tracing hair-raising harmonic variations in a middle register between his left-hand bass and his right-hand melody, striding his left hand up to the middle of the keyboard to ingeniously subvert the tune’s harmonies with a third line between the other two. At moments like that, the show became more than a chance to rekindle memories of a great band of the past. It became a chance to hear a great pianist right now.

Democracy as war

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 28, 2009 at 12:16 AM - 7 Comments

Tabatha Southey gives thanks.

God bless Prime Minster Harper for warning us that holding an election would “screw up” Canada’s economic recovery. In part it’s the sheer eloquence of the man that sustains us: “Screw up” the economic recovery, he said, rather than, say, “Totally mess with its head.” And it helps to be reminded that one should never rush headlong to “fight” an election and that, spun properly, living in a democracy becomes a very good reason to feel put upon…

An election, Mr. Harper also said, was the “one thing” that would derail our economic recovery (putting the ball rather firmly in his court, I would say, during what could be a very nasty flu season), and the Prime Minister’s right. That last election, the election to end all elections, has depleted us. And yet, still, still, when the young people ask me, “What was it like?” I smile a little sadly and I tell them, “I’m not sure that you can ever understand, but for those of us who lived and loved in those dark days of the last election, everything else will always seem a bit colourless. Not that I would wish another generation to make the sacrifice we made. Indeed, apparently, we voted then so that they would never have to. But oh, the friendships one made! The songs we sang! The stirring works of the great electoral poets …”

'Serious and pervasive problems'

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 11:59 PM - 0 Comments

As Andy Worthington notes, the National Institute Of Military Justice recently released a report of its observers on the proceedings at Guantanamo Bay, three of whom attended portions of the trial of Omar Khadr. Jonathan E. Tracy, formerly of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corp, observed proceedings against Khadr and Mohammed Kamin and concludes as follows.

At Guantánamo I observed competent and well‐prepared attorneys litigate important issues for their clients. It was reassuring to see the professionalism that all the parties are bringing to these proceedings. However, this did not mitigate the serious and pervasive problems inherent to the military commissions. The defense teams face numerous obstacles in the preparation of their cases, the untested system has leaks in numerous places, and the existential justification for military commissions remains unresolved and obstructs legitimacy.

Koalitionen

By Paul Wells - Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 10:31 PM - 63 Comments

Would it surprise you to learn that Der Spiegel‘s superb English-language website has the best coverage of the German elections? Start here, with a chart showing party losses (the two big centrist parties) and gains (everyone else, with the *ahem* disappointingly non-Fascist, non-Muslim libertarian FDP as the big winners). The FDP leader will be foreign minister. Think of him as Max Bernier in baggier suits. Then go to the what-it-all-means catch-all page, a liveblog that doesn’t quite have ITQ’s zing, and this Youtube of Simon Rattle rehearsing the Berliner Philharmoniker in Haydn’s The Seasons, just for kicks.

Observations:

• The cheap talking point of the next few days in Ottawa will be that Germany just switched from a coalition of the centre-right and centre-left to a coalition of the centre-right and the slightly-righter, and nobody freaked out. It’s such a cheap talking point that I’ve already used it, tonight on CPAC. The slightly higher-value talking point is that this coalition didn’t advertise itself before the election. Angela Merkel’s choice of coalition partner remained her prerogative, and contingent on the returns, until after everyone had voted. So the Tom Flanagan argument, that coalitions should only be valid if they advertise their makeup before everyone gets to vote, wasn’t followed in Germany. And nobody’s freaking out.
• The social democrats took a pasting, by early accounts racking up the worst decline in popular-vote score in any postwar German election. This matches the result in many countries the European elections earlier this year (as does the *ahem* extremely mediocre score of extremist right-wing parties). One starts to suspect that in the current climate, voters are uncomfortable with parties that seek to expand the state (beyond what centre-right parties are already doing). If my first point above should tend to comfort Canada’s Liberals, this one should tend to scare them.
• If her new coalition geometry does allow her to become a bit more economically conservative (while allowing her to resist social-conservative pressures that are really not to her taste anyway), Merkel will have strong support from a few of the neighbours, including the libertarian (but so far disappointingly timid and mercenary) Civic Platform government in Poland, and both Britain’s Brown government and its Tory opposition.

I couldn't possibly comment

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 9:36 PM - 20 Comments

Jason Kenney comments, and yet does not comment, on the plight of Toronto grocer David Chen.

“He is a victim of crime, of property crime, petty crime. Crime that is costing his business at least $50,000 a year,” Kenney said of Chen. “He employs 10 people and has a family of four. And it is not easy to make ends meet.”

… Still, Kenney tread carefully and stopped short of commenting on whether Chen should have been charged in the case. “I can’t comment as a Minister of the Crown on particular investigations or particular cases. That would be inappropriate. It would violate the convention of sub judicie (before the courts),” Kenney said. ”But I can say that I regard Mr. Chen as a victim of crime and, similarly, these other shop owners are. And we need to keep that in mind.”

… Police Chief Bill Blair could not be reached for comment today. An unidentified man answering the phone at Blair’s office told a Star reporter to call back in the morning and then cursed “Christ!” before hanging up the phone.

Props for Pops

By Paul Wells - Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 9:36 PM - 10 Comments

They don’t give you an instruction manual when they give you a political column, so in 1997 when The Gazette gave me one (it was extortion; I was threatening to quit) I looked around for my own models. William Safire, the great New York Times columnist who died today at 79, was one. Emulating him was healthy for the same reason it’s okay for a saxophonist to try to play like Sonny Rollins: Because you can’t, but in trying you will push yourself past whatever was blocking you before.

Safire had strong opinions but there was no club whose members were immune from his criticism, nor any that would forever be denied his praise. I am pretty sure he voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, though not in 1996. His example pushed the Washington Post to go get their own conservative columnist, a tweedy kid named George Will. He came to journalism from outside — he was a Nixon speechwriter — but he cared more than most of us about the only tools we will ever have: the techniques of the reporter and the English language.

He was a playful columnist. After Nixon died, Safire filed occasional phone interviews with his old boss from Heaven. His “reading X’s mind” columns, in which he would write in the first person about what some great figure must be thinking, were not fanciful, the way young Dowd would write them, because Safire reported those pieces exhaustively before launching into his voice-appropriation thing. And his annual Office Pool quizzes were awesome displays of polymath showing-off.

Safire trusted his gut and his voice, but never let tone and instinct be the sum of his work. On good days, the rest of us remember his example.

Let the (non) confidence games begin! (Yes, again.) UPDATED

By kadyomalley - Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 12:08 PM - 218 Comments

Scroll down for updates!

Well, we haven’t yet gotten the official word from PMO — hey, what’s up with that, guys? Y’all don’t work on Sunday mornings anymore? — but according to the dependably chatty John Baird, who made an appearance on CTV’s Question Period earlier today, the Stephen Harper Stimulus Reporting Experience will hit Saint John, New Brunswick sometime tomorrow, during which the prime minister will unveil the third — and, as far as ITQ knows, final — report on the Economic Action! Plan.

For those of you wondering why he’s doing so at an out of town venue, rather than, say, in the House of Commons — yeah, ITQ was also under the sadly mistaken impression that the Liberals had been clever enough to stick a provision to that effect in the agreement that averted a June election, but as it turns out, that’s not the case. The only requirement is that it be tabled there, presumably just as the balloons drop and the Tory-blue dyed doves are released at an undisclosed location somewhere in New Brunswick.

What does that mean as far as the fall season of election speculation? Let’s get out the calendar and find out!

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Hung out to dry

By Julien Russell Brunet - Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 11:40 AM - 45 Comments

When Nortel Networks filed for bankruptcy protection in January, it was particularly hard on Ray Hounsell. The 63-year-old’s family had been working for the telecommunications giant for three generations, putting in more than 100 combined years of service—yet he is almost certainly going to get stiffed on his pension. “I spent 38 years in Nortel,” he says. “My dad spent 36 years in Nortel. And his father, my grandfather, spent 30 years in Nortel. Needless to say, it has been extremely difficult.”

Now, Hounsell is preparing to get in line with the rest of Nortel’s creditors—the bondholders, commercial lenders, and suppliers—for a piece of the company’s rapidly diminishing assets. At best, he figures he’ll get 70 per cent of the money he was promised, while banks that made secured loans to the company will likely get back every penny. Other former Nortel employees won’t be as lucky. According to some estimates, ex-Nortel employees entitled to severance payments and employees on long-term disability will get back just 10 per cent of the money they are owed. Continue…

Maybe next time, Moammar

By macleans.ca - Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 11:27 AM - 4 Comments

He was probably scoping out 40 new female bodyguards, was one St. John’s resident’s explanation for why Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was making a mysterious stop in Newfoundland. But speculation over the reason for his visit has been replaced with the question of why he has cancelled. After his delegation made various bookings at the city’s opulent hotels and manions, he’s backed out—although the accommodations were still paid for. Like the Conservative government—who has condemned Gadhafi over the Lockerbie affair—most St. John’s residents weren’t too happy about the visit to begin with. But no one likes to be snubbed.

Toronto Star

How Obama divided America

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 38 Comments

It was the largest protest march, so far, of Obama’s presidency. They came from around the country on Sept. 12, tens of thousands of people filling Pennsylvania Avenue en route to the White House, where only months earlier an ecstatic crowd had celebrated the election of the first black president of the United States and the end of the Bush era.

Now they came in anger, with signs declaring “Tax Slave Revolt” and “Stop Spending our Grandkids’ Futures,” and chanting “No Obamacare.” One sign read, “National health care doesn’t work. Just ask Canada.” Some aimed personally at the President. “Let’s see your records! Let’s see your birth certificate!” shouted one man into a megaphone. Others chanted simply, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” Continue…

Iran pushing boundaries before Geneva talks

By macleans.ca - Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 10:57 AM - 6 Comments

With the admission of a uranium-enriching plant, Iran is forcing the world’s hand. On Thursday, when Iran meets in Geneva with the five members of the U.N. Security Council, its nuclear program is first on the list of topics. On Saturday, President Barack Obama threatened “sanctions that would bite” if Iran didn’t fall in line. And defense secretary Robert Gates reiterated that on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday—the same day that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shot off short-range missiles. While Britain, France, Russia and the U.S. are prepared to enforce economic sanctions, China is reluctant due to its heavy Iranian oil imports.

Reuters

AP

But he used to be a writer

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 10:57 PM - 71 Comments

The Observer’s Rachel Cooke tries to understand Michael Ignatieff’s current predicament.

But Ignatieff used to be a writer, a man who could say whatever he liked, and now he is a politician, and is able to say precisely nothing unless it comes straight from the script. How can that be fun? The Ignatieff brow – portcullis to his great big brain – wrinkles in the approved manner. “In politics, there’s a kind of literal-mindedness,” he says. “It’s what you say, not what you mean, and you have to say only what you mean. Your question implies that I’ve suddenly had to tie myself in knots. No, I don’t have to tie myself in knots, and I don’t have to cease being who I am. But I have to watch what I say because the public has no other way to judge me than by what they read. I can’t walk around saying: ‘I keep saying these dreadful things, but I’m actually a nice fellow!’ Why should they believe that?”

But writing is about nuance, and politics is, well, not. I don’t know how he contains himself. “Again, I don’t see it that way. I see this as the most exciting thing I’ve ever had to do. The most difficult, but when it’s going well, the most rewarding.” Writing and politics are both, he insists, about listening, about expressing what people are thinking and feeling. But the bonus in politics is that, in theory, the politician gets to make people’s lives better. “The idea that there is this contrast between a world of subtlety, and a world of bald, flat generalisations doesn’t sound like what it’s like at all. The best part of what I’ve been doing in the past four years has been listening intently to Canadians in big rooms and small rooms, in wharves and bars and airport lounges, just trying to pick up the music here, so that what’s really on their minds gets into the policies.”

Fancy footwear as The Hill Times turns 20

By Mitchel Raphael - Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 1:29 PM - 16 Comments

The Hill Times celebrated its 20^th anniversary at the Library and Archives Canada on Wellington Street in Ottawa. NDP MP Niki Ashton addresses the crowd below.

Montreal Liberal MP Justin Trudeau in Fluevogs.

Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells with a shoeless Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt.

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Talley of the Dolls

By Jaime Weinman - Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 1:31 AM - 1 Comment

Based on tonight’s season premiere, Dollhouse seems to be going in the right direction, which for me means two things:

1) A more sensible tonal balance, displaying a sense of its own absurdity (which the early episodes mostly did not have) without descending into too many of the mood-breaking one-liners that you would get on Buffy. This show does need to play it straighter than a comedy-drama like Buffy, but it cannot afford to play the whole thing as if we’re all expected to take it seriously. Some of it can be taken seriously, like the affecting scene with Mad Scientist and Dr. Amy Acker, but some of it can’t. I say this as one who is still not sold on the idea that this show has big issues to deal with or that it really works as an exploration of identity and morality. Whenever it gets too close to the real world, it just seems a little glib and even potentially offensive, like the throwaway reference to Alzheimer’s disease (as if trying to draw some kind of equivalency between a real, painful loss of memory and the cornball sci-fi kind). It’s a lot more entertaining than it originally was, and I’d say it’s now a lot of fun. Not sure it’s more than that, even on the Buffy level of combining two conventional genres into one (monster-fighting and teen coming-of-age soap). Whether you can accept a show’s aspirations is, of course, a matter of personal taste, but I think it also has a little to do with the basic idea and how many leaps of faith it requires to believe in it. Once you accept the idea of robots n’ space ships, the premise of Battlestar Galactica is fairly simple, plausible, and above all similar to stuff that happens around us every day — the war and annihilation part, not the robots part. That makes it easier for me, at least, to accept it as a commentary on our world; it has the simplicity of myth. Something like Dollhouse has a setup that is so complicated and requires so much suspension of disbelief that I (again, personally) find it harder to take seriously when it tries to tell us something about our own world. Our world is crazy; it’s not that crazy.

2) The other thing that made the episode work was that Eliza Dushku, a weakish link on her own show, was given a fairly small role. In fact, this episode suggested how the procedural story-of-the-week angle, originally something the show couldn’t handle, might work for it: Dushku’s Echo can spend much of the episode doing action-y things — in this case, culminating with a car blowing up, always something worth seeing; not enough cars are destroyed in prime-time nowadays — while other characters handle most of the soapy or funny moments.

The menu at Red Lobster

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 7:11 PM - 86 Comments

Rick Mercer unloads.

Maybe it’s time to ask not what is wrong with Canadians, but what is wrong with our leaders. Or better yet, let’s just start placing the blame squarely at their feet. It’s not like we choose the leaders, the parties do. And apparently this is as good as it gets…

Voting Conservative is not a problem for a majority of Canadians; we’ve done it before. Voting for an angry guy who thinks we’re stupid and will believe anything? That takes some getting used to…

Mr. Ignatieff is, as we speak, surrounded by a brigade of young people in pointy shoes and designer glasses who work for him, worship him and twitter about him. Why we should vote for him? I’ve read the tweets; I’ve yet to see an answer…

The problem with Jack is, we all saw how excited he got when he actually thought that he was going to be a part of a coalition government. It wasn’t a normal excitement; it was the kind of excitement that scares other passengers on a plane.

Gilles Duceppe goes unscathed. Which may or may not be Rick’s subtle way of endorsing Mr. Duceppe for Prime Minister.

How we do politics now

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 6:41 PM - 14 Comments

—–Original Message—–
From: Aaron Wherry
To: Chow, Olivia
Sent: Fri Sep 25 15:35:36 2009
Subject:

Olivia…

Any chance you’ll run for mayor of Toronto?

Wherry.

—–Original Message—–
From: Chow, Olivia
To: Aaron Wherry
Sent: Fri 9/25/2009 6:07 PM
Subject: Thanks for thinking about me

I will let you know on Twitter if I am interested.

Olivia Chow’s Twitter feed is here. As of this writing, no expression of interest has been made.

Obama steps onto the world stage

By John Parisella - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 6:26 PM - 9 Comments

This week at the United Nations, Barack Obama delivered his vision of America wishes to be under his administration. His administration has brought a marked shift in foreign policy rhetoric, with a greater emphasis on partnerships, multilateralism and diplomacy as its guiding forces. Obama sent a message that Kennedy, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Bush senior could have easily delivered—strength with a strong dose of realism and pragmatism. America will no longer stand alone and the problems facing the world are so acute that all nations will have to meet their responsibilities. And yet, the same nostalgic neoconservatives who brought America into two inconclusive wars feel justified in chastising Obama for being too apologetic and appearing weak. Fortunately, their credibility deficit means they have little influence at this stage.

His success at the Security Council yesterday, where he presided over a resolution on nuclear disarmament, illustrated his skill at bringing global powerhouses together. More than ever, Iran, North Korea, Libya, and Venezuela are getting the message that it is not ‘them against America.’ The Obama approach is about to face a more serious test with the news out of Iran this morning that the Ahmadinejad regime has been working on a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have already joined Obama in confronting the Iranian government and we should expect the months ahead to serve as a gauge of the effectiveness of this new diplomatic approach.

Continue…

New Liberal ads!

By Paul Wells - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 6:10 PM - 42 Comments

Courtesy of guess who. Ronald Reagan could have warned the Liberals this would happen.

'Canada's Best and Worst Run Cities' correction

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 25, 2009 at 5:48 PM - 0 Comments

The Maclean’s survey of Canada’s Best and Worst Run Cities, published in our July 27th issue, misstated the residential tax burden for the city of Longueuil, Quebec. The original figure, as compiled for Maclean’s by the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, put the average tax burden per residence at $666. The city of Longueuil has now revealed its own estimate is $1241 per residence. The published figure was calculated using only those taxes directly assessed by the City of Longueuil and failed to include the taxes paid by city residents to cover services provided to the entire Longueuil Urban Agglomeration (of which the city forms a part).

The adjustment means Longueuil’s grade for taxation efficiency falls from an A+ to a C+, or from 1st to 14th among the municipal governments surveyed. Accordingly, it drops from fifth place to seventh in the overall rankings.

Maclean’s regrets the error.