Liberals to propose voting age be reduced to 3

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 12:11 AM - 99 Comments

If only we had a commissioner who was responsible for ethics

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 7:05 PM - 33 Comments

CBC explores the irony of news that the ethics commissioner will be investigating the ethics of giant novelty cheques.

Canada’s ethics commissioner will investigate dozens of allegations that Conservative MPs are using taxpayers’ money for partisan purposes. But Mary Dawson says she’s not sure how far her mandate allows her to go into ethical issues, despite her job title.

… in her annual report, Dawson highlighted that while the word “ethics” appears in her job title, it does not appear in the Conflict of Interest Act or the Code of Conduct for MPs. ”It’s quite unclear as to the extent to which my mandate extends into ethical issues that are not expressly referred to in either the code or the act and, in fact, one would wonder whether it extends there at all,” Dawson said at parliamentary ethics committee meeting.

"It's unbelievable, the gratitude and relief"

By Kate Lunau - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 6:16 PM - 6 Comments

On a cool morning last March, Kingston-based artist Sally Milne went on a local radio show to plead for her husband’s life. Suffering from a liver disease that was getting progressively worse, Christopher Mueller, a breast cancer researcher at Queen’s University, desperately needed a liver transplant; Milne, who’d already approached friends and family with no success, found herself on K-Rock‘s morning show, hoping to find a suitable donor. “They asked what Chris means to me,” Milne recalls. “I said, ‘We’ve been married for 22 years.’ ”

Sherrie Edmunds had never met Milne or her husband. But, months later, it was her liver donation that saved Mueller’s life.

Continue…

Kids These Days: Former BC Premier edition

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 6:05 PM - 20 Comments

After QP today, Ujal Dosanjh rose on a point of order to say:

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you and the House that I inadvertently tweeted about matters that I ought not to have tweeted about. That is the proceedings in camera of the defence committee. That was an error on my part and that entry will be deleted at the earliest possible opportunity, which is right after I get out of here.

The CBC has details of the infraction here, plus video of the apology. But what it doesn’t catch is the Speaker’s answer which went something like this: ” I thank the honourable member. I assume that tweeting means it went on Twitter… I don’t know anything about that stuff…”

(Anyone have the exact quote from Milliken? It was priceless; as if “Twitter” was some crazy thing the kids are up to).

He's a big fan

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 4:59 PM - 18 Comments

Gilles Duceppe, speaking with reporters after QP today, responds to Jean Chretien’s Order of Merit award from the Queen.

Question: Mr. Duceppe, very quickly, another opponent of yours has been given a great honour by the Queen.  Mr. Chrétien has been honoured by the Queen today.  Just wondered did you want to say congratulations?  Do you have anything to say about that?

Gilles Duceppe: I mean, I don’t have to say nothing about Mr. Chrétien, neither about the Queen.  Be happy, don’t worry.  Be happy.  Even with Lizzy.

At the lonely end of the rink

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 4:29 PM - 29 Comments

The Chronicle-Herald’s Stephen Maher and the Citizen’s Glen McGregor continue to investigate the distribution of federal stimulus.

Funds from a federal stimulus program designed to put hockey rinks and other recreation projects in communities across the country appear to be have been awarded disproportionately to Conservative ridings, an investigation shows.

Tory ridings have landed 66 per cent of all projects so far announced under the Harper government’s Recreation Infrastructure Canada program, also known as RinC.

RIP Vic Mizzy and Theme Songs

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 3:58 PM - 4 Comments

The replacement of theme songs with five-second title cards is a sad-making thing — it’s summed up by Accidentally On Purpose, which in its first few episodes had enough time for a long recap of the premise, but not for an actual theme song. The death of Vic Mizzy, composer of the themes for “The Addams Family” and “Green Acres,” reminds us of why shows need theme songs: his songs not only explained the premise, but created a sound that told us what the mood of the show was going to be.

In fact, the Green Acres song eventually was out of step with the actual premise of the show. It made sense in the early episodes, but then the show mostly dropped the idea that Lisa (Eva Gabor) wanted to go back to New York, and it became the story of one man living in a hellish small town where everyone is insane, including his wife. But if the song no longer really summed up the premise, it didn’t matter, because the sound of it — melodically, orchestrally, and the decision to have the stars sing it in their contrasting voices (Eddie Albert could sing extremely well; Eva Gabor could not) — told us what show felt like, just as the harpsichord-drenched Addams Family theme told us what to expect from this series.

Here’s one of Mizzy’s less successful songs for a less-successful show: Captain Nice, where Buck Henry tried to do to the Batman craze what he had done to the spy craze (in GET SMART). Note that the opening was only 20 seconds, just like a modern opening. A lot of shows in the ’60s had short openings and long closing credits (i.e. “The Dick Van Dyke Show”). So you can do a real theme song even with only 15-20 seconds; most shows now just don’t bother.

I'm From Canada And They Think I'm Slow, Eh

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 7 Comments

The “How I Met Your Mother goes to Toronto” bit last night (actually, “How I Met Your Mother goes to a Tim Horton’s set built at the Fox studio”) was great fun, probably because it wasn’t over-hyped in advance like “The Simpsons goes to Toronto” or “The Office goes to Winnipeg.” The show makes so much fun of Canada and Robin’s Canadian-ness that Canadian networks can’t really hype it that much; for one thing, it’s not a special event when they make Canada jokes, and for another thing, there’s always going to be someone — usually Barney — making jokes about how lame Canada is. Though last night, he got his comeuppance. (A word that Barney could probably turn into a suggestive joke, come to think of it.)

But even though her Canadian identity is the butt of many, many jokes, Robin is one of the most patriotic Canadian characters on TV (in the U.S. or in Canada). And there may be a lesson in the way the show advances every possible Canadian stereotype, and still manages to make Canada and Canadians seem like fun. A purely positive portrayal of Canada tends to make us seem boring, especially in comedy, which depends on stereotypes and generalizations. Canada comedy is more fun when it embraces these stereotypes, just as American comedy embraces all the stereotypes about Americans (and obviously, Barney’s transformation of Robin into an American was a parade of negative U.S. stereotypes).

The other fun thing about the show’s portrayal of Canada is that it uses stereotypes which it basically made up on its own, like “Canadians love guns” or “Canadians are afraid of the dark.” HIMYM is good at creating its own comedy mythology: ideas about men, women, or countries that were invented by the writers, but seem real because all the characters stick to them in a consistent, plausible way. Comedy relies on stereotypes, but it doesn’t have to depend solely on the ones we knew already; the writers can make their own.

And speaking of HIMYM and CanCon, Alan Thicke will make a return appearance in the show, in another episode about Lily’s psychotic desire to control other people’s relationships.

Finally, and this is not HIMYM-related, the second of the two Gemini Industry Awards galas is tonight. Let us feel liberated to make stereotypical jokes about the Geminis. And then, loosened up by those jokes, let’s acknowledge that there’s some very good stuff that will be honoured tonight. Like all countries, we are lame and awesome at the same time.

Stelmach gets Kleined

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 1:28 PM - 1 Comment

When former Alberta premier Ralph Klein squeezed out a 55.4 per cent approval rating in an internal Progressive Conservative leadership review vote in 2006, it led to his departure from politics. Klein had enjoyed massive popularity in his career, so the poor showing came as something of a surprise. Less so Ed Stelmach, the current premier, who faces the same vote on Nov. 7, during his party’s annual general meeting in Red Deer. Yesterday, Klein repeated his assertion that Stelmach must meet a 70 per cent threshold in the vote. Is Alberta’s business community ready for a leadership change, reporters asked him? “I think so. Enough said.” How must Stelmach be feeling with the vote just around the corner? “I suspect that he’s going through much the same as I went through,” Klein said. “It was uncomfortable.” Meanwhile, one-time Bonnyville Tory MLA Ernie Isley will head to the Progressive Conservative annual general meeting in order to cast a vote for Stelmach. Why? The recent Wildrose Alliance convert believes Danielle Smith, the upstart right-wing party’s new leader, would cream Stelmach. “Unless there’s a significant change in attitude in the Stelmach Conservatives, I will be with the Wildrose,” Isley told the Calgary Herald‘s Renata D’Aliesio.

Calgary Herald

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 1:23 PM - 198 Comments

Michael Ignatieff promises a national child care program.

The Liberals were in the midst of delivering on a $5-billion national child-care program before they were thrown out of power in the 2006 election. When Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives came to office, that program was abandoned, in favour of the $100-a-month cheques to Canadian parents known as the Universal Child Care Benefit.

Ignatieff said that if the Liberals are returned to government, that money will keep flowing to parents, but a national child-care program will also be phased in, as soon as the budget can handle it. ”They give the money to families, fine. Anything that helps families is a good idea. But there aren’t the spaces. If you don’t create the spaces, families don’t have a choice. That’s what we’re saying.”

The NHL’s anti-French “virus”

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 12:46 PM - 5 Comments

Francophone hockey players from Quebec are victims of ingrained, longstanding racism at the hands of the NHL. Such is the thesis of Le Quebec mis en échec (Quebec Bodychecked), by former NHL player Bob Sirois. Poring over decades of statistics, Sirois concludes that there is an anti-French “virus” in the league. Among his findings: about 20 percent of Quebecers who were passed over in the draft managed to break into the league—a rate that is nearly double for the rest of the country. “In light of these figures, don’t even ask whether it’s true that Quebecers are underestimated by NHL scouts,” he writes.

National Post

R. Crumb vs. the Bible

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 12:44 PM - 11 Comments

R. Crumb, best known for his bawdy—to put it mildly—underground comics featuring the likes of Fritz the Cat, is coming under expected fire for his illustrated version of the Book of Genesis (with its cover warning: “Adult Supervision Recommended for Minors”)—even though he hasn’t changed a word of the original. One day 15 years ago, for no reason he can remember, Crumb decided he wanted to read the myths of ancient Sumer. Eventually he found a scholarly work that said some of the myths were similar to the stories in Genesis. He read Genesis closely, and wished to illustrate it. He declared his anger at the description of his book by his own British publisher as “scandalous satire.” So he’s probably not happy with some of the other responses either. Mike Judge of the Christian Institute criticizes Crumb’s book for “turning the Bible into titillation.” According to Crumb, he’s merely being accurate, drawing and drawing out what is plain in the words: “I had no intention to scandalize the Bible,” he said. “I was intrigued by the challenge of exposing everything in there by illustrating it. The text is so significant in our culture, to bring everything out was a significant enough purpose for doing it.”

The New York Times

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 12:04 PM - 132 Comments

Ed Broadbent suggests taxing the rich to fight child poverty.

About 100,000 Canadians are in the top tax bracket for earners making more than $250,000. On average, those individuals earn more than $600,000 a year. Broadbent, 73, said increasing their taxes from 29 per cent to 35 per cent would put billions more toward eliminating child poverty, increasing the amount spent by $3.7 billion.

“With just that single move we would double the amount given for the national child benefit supplement and take children out of the devastation of poverty,” he said during a speech at the University of New Brunswick.

Hillier vs. Harper

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 11:50 AM - 34 Comments

Rick Hillier, Canada’s former top soldier, once described the Taliban as “detestable murderers and scumbags.” His opinion of the prime minister—and his band of all-controlling minions—isn’t much better. In a new autobiography, the retired chief of defence staff says he was continuously at odds with officials in Stephen Harper’s office. On one memorable occasion, after a media blitz publicizing job opportunities in the Forces, Hillier said he was hauled into a meeting with Gordon O’Connor, then the defence minister. “We want to see less of you,” O’Connor told him. Writes Hillier: “While he was never specific about who had been complaining about my profile, there was no doubt in my mind this ‘request’ was coming from the Prime Minister’s Office staffers.” Hillier also reveals that Harper’s underlings ordered him to ban the media from covering the repatriation of Capt. Nichola Goddard, the first Canadian woman killed during the Afghanistan mission. “Look, don’t bring the Airbus in, or if you bring the plane in, turn it away from the cameras so that people can’t see the bodies coming off, or do it after dark, or do it down behind the hangars, or just bar everybody from it,” Hillier quotes the PMO staffers as saying. “They clearly didn’t want that picture of the flag-draped coffin on the news.”

CTV News

Don't look away (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 11:49 AM - 14 Comments

The Star expands on what Hillier’s memoir says about the debate over what the public could and should see of the flag-draped coffins of Canadian soldiers returning from Afghanistan.

The controversy over letting the media show the return of Goddard’s body from the dusty district of Panjwaii, where she was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade on May 17, 2006, turned into a very public battle when her grieving father upbraided the Conservative government for censoring a politically painful event. But it was also the source of a private dispute between the head of the Canadian Forces and his political masters…

In the book, Hillier recalls attending graduation ceremonies at the Royal Military College in Kingston in May 2006 and being called into a backroom to take a call from the Prime Minister’s Office. The unelected staffers gave the decorated soldier and the defence minister orders that they wanted a change in Goddard’s repatriation ceremony – an emotional but fairly standard event where the coffin is unloaded from a military plane at CFB Trenton and driven to Toronto on Highway 401 in a sombre procession. ”Look, don’t bring the Airbus in, or if you bring the plane in, turn it away from the cameras so that people can’t see the bodies coming off, or do it after dark, or do it down behind the hangars, or just bar everybody from it,” Hillier quotes the PMO staffers as saying. “They clearly didn’t want that picture of the flag-draped coffin on the news.”

Wanted for arrest? No welfare for you

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 11:49 AM - 17 Comments

The British Columbia government—determined to crack down on wanted criminals who abuse the welfare system—has introduced a bill that will deny social assistance to people with outstanding arrest warrants. Rich Coleman, the provincial minister for housing and social development, said the new law is aimed mainly at people from other jurisdictions who move to B.C., although it applies to anyone with an outstanding warrant for an indictable offence anywhere in the country. “They will now be asked if they have an outstanding warrant,” he explained. “If they have, they will be advised that they won’t be eligible for social assistance until they clean up the warrant.” The bright side? The government will pay “transportation costs” so would-be welfare recipients can travel back to the scene of their crimes and clean up those warrants.

CBC News

Life imitates Sopranos

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Maybe those Sopranos writers weren’t so inventive after all. A former Mafia hit man shocked a Brooklyn court yesterday, when he publicly renounced the mob and came out of the closet. Robert Mormando helped slay a Queens bagel store owner in 2003 (mob boss Vincent Gotti suspected the baker of having an affair with his wife.) But he was so disgusted by his bosses that he left La Cosa Nostra and now lives an openly gay life with his partner. And as the NY Daily News notes, Mormando is hardly the first homosexual mobster.

New York Daily News

The Pope invites disaffected Anglicans to join the Catholic Church

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 11:11 AM - 30 Comments

In an unprecedented move, Pope Benedict XVI has opened the doors of the Roman Catholic church to a growing number of Anglicans left disaffected by Canterbury’s liberalism. Thousands of Anglicans have already left the church in response to its stance on homosexuality and female clergy. The historic move means that disillusioned Anglicans will be able to convert to Roman Catholicism while holding onto some of their religious doctrine rather than form small breakaway churches. While married Anglican pastors will be able to become Catholic priests, they will not be allowed to become bishops.

London Telegraph

Afghans to head back to polls

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 10:35 AM - 0 Comments

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has accepted an independent electoral commission’s request for a run-off election, which will take place on Nov. 7. Afghans first headed to the polls way back on September 17; soon afterwards, Karzai claimed victory with 54.6 per cent of the vote. But a Canadian-led UN panel has found evidence of fraud at thousands of polling stations across the country and that Karzai got less than half of the votes. According to Afghan law, that means another election is required. With U.S. Senator and chair of the foreign relations committee John Kerry at his side, Karzai accepted the UN panel report on Tuesday, prompting Kerry to say the new election will be a “moment of great opportunity” for Afghanistan. The move came amidst mounting pressure to do so from the U.S., Canada and Britain, all of whom have troops stationed in Afghanistan.

CBC News

Dangerous liaisons

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 10:28 AM - 4 Comments

A 33-year-old nursing student agreed to be interviewed about her sexual relationship with a highly dangerous patient in a Selkirk, Man., psychiatric facility, declaring that she still believes Joey Wiebe, 26, loves her—even after he was discovered last month to be hiding a knife, drugs, booze and money in the ceiling tiles of his room. Officials believe Weibe, who was found not criminally responsible in 2001 for the murder of his stepmother, whose throat was cut, was planning an escape. “He really listened to me, and you don’t meet a person that often that you can really talk to,” said the nurse, who spoke on condition her name not be used. “This was just a combination of having this emptiness and having someone who filled it.” The cost of filling up that emptiness: her marriage and career, admits the student nurse.

Winnipeg Free Press

Trying not to get lost in the numbers in pork-barrel politics

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 10:17 AM - 6 Comments

A Halifax Chronicle Herald-Ottawa Citizen report says 57 per cent of federal stimulus projects worth more than $1 million have been awarded to Conservative ridings. Since the Tories hold just 46 per cent of the seats in the House, that suggests they have funneled 23 per cent more big projects into their strongholds than would be expected if money was being spread evenly across the country. Still, the story raises questions. The government hasn’t released detailed figures, just a list of projects in four funding ranges—less than $100,000; $100,000 to $1 million; $1 million to $5 million; and more than $5 million. A government spokesman makes two claims that deserve follow-up attention, stating that most larger projects are actually in opposition seats and that a final tally will show “all regions are getting their fair share.” But take note: regions are different than ridings.

Halifax Chronicle-Herald

The short end of the Canwest stick

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 8:20 AM - 35 Comments

If you were to ask the general public how much of a bonus Canwest Global Communications executives deserve for steering the country’s biggest media company into the ground, the answer would fall somewhere between squat and diddly. But according to their bankruptcy protection filing this month, the correct response is $9.8 million.

The Key Employee Retention Plan (KERP) already approved by Canwest’s creditors, and given an initial thumbs-up by the courts, was the subject of “extensive” negotiations from the very beginning of the company’s efforts to extract itself from under its $4-billion debt load last December. Three directors, four top executives and 13 other senior members of management will receive two hefty cash payments—one at the end of this year, the other early next spring—in exchange for sticking around until the streamlined company emerges from the process. The details of just who is receiving the bonuses and how much have been sealed by the court at the company’s request to protect “sensitive personal and financial information.” But it’s clear at least some of the “retentions” will be decidedly short-term as the agreement calls for the three unnamed directors to resign from the Canwest board once the restructuring period ends. Leonard, David and Gail Asper, the children of the late Canwest founder Izzy Asper, are all currently directors, but are expected to have a much reduced role, and ownership stake, in the new company. Continue…

Million dollar questions

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 1:36 AM - 87 Comments

The Ottawa Citizen and Halifax Chronicle-Herald join forces to scrutinize what information the government has released about its stimulus spending.

An Ottawa Citizen-Halifax Chronicle-Herald investigation shows 57 per cent of the projects, with more than $1 million in federal funding nationwide, went to Conservative ridings. The party holds only 46 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. Conservative ridings therefore received 23 per cent more million-dollar-plus projects than if the projects were divided evenly among all ridings…

The difference between government and opposition ridings is particularly pronounced in Quebec, where the Conservative ridings received 22 per cent of large projects, although the party holds only 13 per cent of the ridings, which means they received 62 per cent more per riding than if the money were divided evenly.

A spokesman for John Baird’s office says “the totality of infrastructure funding” will show fairness in distribution. At the same time, the government has declined to release a list of projects, despite the Prime Minister’s assurances that such a list was available.

Don't look away (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 1:17 AM - 15 Comments

Global National reports that Rick Hillier was aware of Richard Colvin’s reports on the treatment of detainees in Afghan prisons.

According to insiders, it turns out Ottawa was indeed aware of reports from a senior Canadian diplomat, which repeatedly warned that Afghan detainees turned over to local authorities risked being tortured. Global National has learned from senior sources within the federal government and the Canadian military, that diplomat Richard Colvin’s warnings reached Retired Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff at the time…

Canada’s current top soldier says he’s working to get to the bottom of what happened to Colvin’s reports. Gen. Walter Natynczyk, chief of defence staff, said Friday he did not yet know where the diplomat’s reports landed back in Ottawa, who read them, and what was done with the information.