Everybody's got a price (Updated)

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 6:39 PM - 12 Comments

▶

As I was watching my beloved Habs drop yet another game last Thursday—seriously guys, Colorado?—the same Loto-Québec commercial kept coming on every time there was a break in the game. There wasn’t anything inherently interesting about it except for one of its stars: Jacques Demers. Pardon me, make that Senator Jacques Demers.

Apparently, Demers’s gigs at RDS, the Senate, and the car delearship just aren’t paying the wealthy former coach’s bills anymore. Besides, God forbid he be asked to sacrifice a paycheque or two in exchange for the six-figure salary he’ll be earning in the Senate.

Though I think highly of many individual senators, I’m not enamoured with the Senate as an institution. Stephen Harper, on the other hand, evidently loathes everything about it. What else could possibly explain the nomination of a barely-literate former hockey coach-cum-analyst with no discernible knowledge of (or interest in) politics to the Senate? And what else could justify telling him he shouldn’t even bother pretending to take the job seriously and turn down two-bit opportunities to hawk lotto tickets and used cars? Seriously, I’d love to know.

UPDATE: A Liberal reader emailed to note that Demers had an especially hard time making up his mind when the issue of VLTs, which add more than a $1 billion to Loto-Québéc’s bottom line, came up in the Senate earlier this month. Demers has—oddly enough, given his role as Loto-Québec pitchman—expressed some interest in tackling problem gambling, most recently on Tout le monde en parle. Still, he ended up abstaining from a vote on a Liberal-supported bill that would have restricted where the terminals can pop up after he was gently reminded by fellow Tories his party wasn’t in favour of it. “Of course,” he told CP by way of explanation, “I want to be a team player for the Conservatives.”

The Commons: And so we come full circle

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 6:36 PM - 112 Comments

The Scene. The Prime Minister was not in his seat this afternoon when Question Period began. Which seems a shame. Not least because of the profound moment in the history of his government that he was not there to witness firsthand. The rest of us will at least be able to say we were there, that we saw it with our own eyes and heard it with our own ears. The Prime Minister will have to suffice with seeing it on TV. Or perhaps hearing about it from a member of his staff.

Although, maybe it was best he wasn’t there after all. Indeed, in a way, it’s better he was spared the awful sight.

The session began simply enough with the obvious, the Liberal leader wondering aloud about a potential conflict of interest involving a Conservative senator and a sizable government contract. “Mr. Speaker, a pattern is becoming all too clear,” Michael Ignatieff posited. “The Conservative government is using stimulus spending to buy votes and reward its friends. This morning, we learned that one of the Prime Minister’s newest senators works for a company that has just won $1.4 million in infrastructure spending. At a time when the middle class is struggling, would the Prime Minister explain why infrastructure spending that is needed by all Canadians ends up in the hands of a member of his own—”

His time expired, the Transport Minister stood smirking to dismiss Mr. Ignatieff’s concerns. The Liberal tried again, this time en francais. John Baird once more swatted the question away. “Mr. Speaker, there is no reason to jump to the conclusions that the Leader of the Opposition does,” Mr. Baird declared. “If he has any evidence of any wrongdoing, rather than pontificating in this place, he should put his facts on the table and be accountable for those. We have been completely open, completely transparent with the infrastructure spending that we have made.”

The Liberals howled with mocking laughter.

“The grant in question was made by a crown corporation,” the Minister finished, “with no lobbying and no involvement whatsoever of my office or the office of the Minister of Public Works.”

Here, then, is where it happened. Where everything that once was up turned down. Where left became right, day became night and blue became red.  Continue…

How does the finding of fraud in Afghanistan's latest election affect your view of Canada's mission there?

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 5:17 PM - 26 Comments

New York Times to shed 100 jobs

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 2 Comments

The New York Times will cut 100 jobs before the end of the year. Bill Keller, the editor of the paper, sent out an email to the entire staff informing them that they will all be sent “buyout packages,” allowing them to apply for a voluntary buyout. If 100 people don’t take the buyout before the year is out, then the paper will have to resort to layoffs to eliminate its quota of jobs. The paper, which has more employees than any other newspaper in North America, also cut 100 jobs last year; its executives said earlier that they hoped to get through this year without shedding any staff, but plummeting advertising revenue has forced the organization to make bigger cuts, including a 5% pay cut for employees. Keller wrote in his staff email that “I yearn for the day when we can do our jobs without looking over our shoulders for economic thunderstorms.”

FishbowlNY

The New York Times – Media Decoder

'Those are pretty strong words'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 5:00 PM - 6 Comments

From Question Period this afternoon, the Defence Minister takes questions from the Bloc, Liberals and New Democrats on the matter of Afghan detainees, Richard Colvin and the Military Police Complaints Commission.

M. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ): Monsieur le Président, contrairement à ce qu’il a prétendu à la Chambre des communes, le gouvernement sait depuis mai 2006 que les prisonniers afghans risquaient d’être torturés. Le rapport du diplomate canadien en poste à Kandahar vient confirmer un peu nos dire et s’ajoute aux questions que le Bloc québécois a soulevé en cette Chambre à ce sujet à de multiples reprises. Comment le ministre de la Défense nationale peut-il prétendre en cette Chambre qu’il n’a jamais vu le rapport de Richard Colvin sur le traitement des prisonniers afghanistan?

Hon. Peter MacKay (Minister of National Defence and Minister for the Atlantic Gateway, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the important issue, really, is what Canadians have done to improve the transfer arrangement that was left in place by the previous government. It is important to note that there have now been over 170 visits to Afghan prisons. We continue to mentor the Afghan army and police, as well as corrections officers. The transfer arrangement has been greatly improved, as has the Afghan penal system as a result of the hard work of Canadians. As for this report, we receive hundreds, if not thousands, of reports annually through the Department of National Defence, as well as the Department of Foreign Affairs. That is why they did not make it to my desk.

Continue…

Metablog: Adding to Wells on Ivison on Naylor

By Andrew Potter - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 4:55 PM - 4 Comments

Colleague Wells points us to what I agree is a very good piece by Ivison on David Naylor’s visit to Ottawa. Toward the end of his column, Ivison references a piece on the recession and higher education, written by Alex Usher and Ryan Dunn of the Educational Policy Institute.

Alex has a piece in the recent 50th anniversary issue of University Affairs, which looks at the main trends driving higher education in Canada (and the world) right now; the article is one of those science-fictiony things where Alex writes as if it is 2034 and he’s looking back at how current trends played out over the next few decades. It’s all pretty smart, but here’s what I think is the part most relevant to Naylor’s agenda:

Institutional mistrust of government, and mutual mistrust between the federal and provincial levels of government, had stymied the development of a national quality-assurance system. And sheer inertia had stalled any changes to credit definitions or adoption of a European-style process for common degree outcomes across institutions.

Moreover, few Canadian institutions had made serious investments in a presence abroad (let alone set up campuses) and almost none had experience in promoting themselves abroad in a way that could challenge the American, British and Australian universities that dominated the market. So, what many universities had thought of as their “Plan B” in the event of government cutbacks – foreign student recruitment – turned out not to be viable.

Here’s the full article.

Pork brings out the MPs

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 4:50 PM - 3 Comments

The Canadian Pork Council held a special reception at the Sheraton hotel. Below, Liberal MP Mark Eyking.

Eyking with some of the pork being served.

Continue…

"Well, NBC Just Lost Another Affiliate" — Groucho Marx

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 4:34 PM - 3 Comments

That’s a quote from an episode of You Bet Your Life, and it popped into my head when I saw this L.A. Times article on Jay Leno’s disastrous effect on the 11 o’clock news.

Leno, who is smarter about TV than most network executives, knew this was going to be the biggest problem; he said several times before he started his new show that his job was to provide a good lead-in to the 11 o’clock news where affiliates make their real money. But he hasn’t managed to keep people watching. Maybe he thought leaving “Headlines” to the end of the show would be enough to prevent the tune-out that often happens after the interview is over; it wasn’t.

This is a case where what makes economic sense for the network doesn’t make sense for its affiliates. NBC might do fine with Leno because, little-watched though it is, it is cheap to produce. But the thing about expensive scripted shows is that they have stories, and people who watch the first half-hour (or the first 15 minutes, if it’s a comedy) tend to want to see the second half to find out how it ends. Which in turn keeps them looking at the TV by the time the “film at 11″ arrives. A talk show has no story, no ending, and unlike variety shows, it doesn’t even usually have the promise of a great sketch or act in the final five minutes. Even if you liked what you saw so far, there’s not a whole lot keeping you from changing the channel. Which is a disaster for local stations.

Obama, Fox News, and You

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 3:56 PM - 16 Comments

Just some quick points about the Obama Administration’s strategy of bashing Fox News:

1. The easy rejoinder to the claim that Fox News is a “wing of the Republican party” (for which Anita Dunn, who made the statement, is Fox News’s target for tonight) is that, well, the rest of the media is liberal. Except it isn’t. Even MSNBC, which is often considered the liberal Fox News, is only considered liberal because it has the only openly partisan liberal hosts on cable news, along with conservatives like Joe Scarborough, and Chris Matthews, who is just a crazy person prone to man-crushes. (He has a man-crush on Obama, but he also had one on Bush.) The conservative argument about liberal media bias is that it’s unconscious, that because media personalities skew liberal/Democratic, they have certain unexamined liberal assumptions that they incorporate into their work as if they’re “objective.” Liberals actually agree with conservatives that TV media personalities incorporate unconscious biases into their work, but liberals see these as the biases of elites, which are not necessarily liberal at all (particularly on issues like the Iraq war). But whichever way you look at it, it’s different from what Fox News does. Fox News is a combination of partisan outlet and entertainment, and its genius is the way it has made partisanship into entertainment — for example, bringing on the most pathetic, beaten-down liberals imaginable so that the audience can enjoy watching them lose the argument. (That was the whole point of teaming freakish-looking Colmes with handsome, all-American Hannity.) Other networks, terrified of being called liberal and constantly bending over backward to prove they aren’t liberal (MSNBC famously canceled Phil Donahue’s show, despite decent ratings by their standards at the time, to prove they weren’t liberal), simply aren’t in the same league either as partisanship or as entertainment.

2. Jacob Weisberg’s article on why Fox News is “Un-American” is pretty hellaciously silly. Which is too bad, because he’s raising a point that probably should be discussed seriously: given that Fox News is slanting the news to favour a particular political party, should journalists treat it as if it’s the same exact thing as a non-partisan outlet? But the idea that news has “a century-old tradition of independence” that is being destroyed by that nasty foreigner Rupert Murdoch is, as many people have noted, kind of weird. Even if you assume that openly partisan news ended after the collapse of the Hearst empire, that would still would be less than a century ago, and of course the tradition of partisan news persisted for much longer than that, particularly at the level of local newspapers. Apart from that, his assumption that the American approach to news is better than anybody else’s is, really, pure jingoism, on the level of saying that the U.S. has the “best health care system in the world.” It’s telling that his biggest worry is the presence of “a variety of populist and ideological takes on the news,” i.e. shows with opinions in them. This is silly. Fox’s opinion shows are just talk radio on TV. The more problematic thing about the network is that its “objective” news reporting, which it defends to the death, tends to be increasingly indistinguishable from the opinion shows in terms of what issues it considers important. If Fox News dropped the U.S.-style pretense of objectivity, it would be a lot less problematic, and might help pave the way for a genuine liberal alternative. Bashing Fox for pretending it isn’t conservative makes sense; bashing Fox for being conservative doesn’t.

3. As to why the Obama administration is picking this fight, I think Fox News pundits are correct in comparing this to Nixon and Agnew’s media strategy. It’s partly about playing to the base (since liberals hate the media even more than conservatives nowadays). But mostly, it’s about pushing the media in a certain direction. Nixon picked up the “liberal media” strategy, at a time when these complaints were closer to the truth than they are now, as a way of guilt-tripping the media into examining their assumptions. There were many editorials and articles written asking whether the media was out of touch with what would now be called “Real America,” the silent majority that elected Nixon. Reporters and pundits began trying to make sure they didn’t descend into knee-jerk liberalism. Today, the Obama team is trying something similar. His aides are telling CNN and other networks that they shouldn’t be like Fox News. This won’t and shouldn’t hurt Fox’s popularity any, but it could help jolt CNN et al into wondering if they’re out of touch with the majority that elected Obama, and re-check for conservative assumptions (anti-tax protests are the most important things ever) in their work. Call it the Nixon strategy in reverse, which makes sense after 40 years of the U.S. media being spooked out by the original Nixon strategy.

A columnist writes about education and the knowledge economy

By Paul Wells - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 3:45 PM - 23 Comments

And it isn’t me! Or Jeff Simpson! No, it’s colleague John Ivison, who does a bang-up job of summarizing the conversation that ensued when UofT president David Naylor came to Ottawa last week, where he ran into freelance provocateur Alex Himelfarb. The topic was brains and money. Ivison’s column is worth your attention.

Want a mortgage? How much do you drink?

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 3:36 PM - 0 Comments

Prospective house buyers in the UK could have to disclose how much they spend on alcohol and cigarettes to be approved for a mortgage if a proposed clampdown on loan practices is enforced, reports the Times of London. A sweeping review of mortgage lenders by the Financial Services Authority called for lenders to be more rigorous in their financial checks, down to personal spending habits. Spending on shoes, clothes and childcare could also be assessed under a new, industry-wide “affordability test,” the paper reports. The new measures aim to stamp out risky lending that has been criticized for compounding the financial crisis and tipping hundreds of thousands of homebuyers into negative equity. The authority conceded that there were some flaws with its proposed plan—namely consumers potentially underestimating their spending or “failing to incorporate past experiences into their budgeting.” The paper has been put out for consultation until early next year with a “feedback statement” to be published next March.

The Times

Taillon wins ADQ leadership race

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 3:35 PM - 1 Comment

Gilles Taillon is the new leader of the Action Démocratique du Québec, after an extended, bloody and largely ignored leadership race. The Quebec right wing party has lost much of the credibility (and supporters) it gained after its surprising turn as the province’s official opposition. It is still reeling from a devastating election loss last December and the subsequent departure of leader Mario Dumont. As a result, Taillon, a former director of the pro-business lobby Conseil du Patronat du Québec, must first repair the inner turmoil within his party before he can even begin to convince voters that the ADQ matters again.

The Canadian Press

Rhetorical question of the day

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 3:33 PM - 23 Comments

Liberal Todd Russell, yelling in the direction of Rob Nicholson this afternoon as the Justice Minister took a friendly question about crime legislation.

“What’s the mandatory minimum for cheque fraud?”

The accountability act: don't bother sticking around for the punchline

By Paul Wells - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 3:21 PM - 157 Comments

From our Halifax colleague Stephen Maher:

Last month in Oakville, when asked about the allegation — made by a Tory candidate — that one project was killed because the riding was Liberal, the prime minister said don’t worry: “We can give you a list of announcements made across the country.”

Three weeks later, after repeated requests for that list, his office told me this week to stop bothering them. Turns out the prime minister was joking, or lying. They are not going to cough up a list. Instead, they directed me to the useless actionplan.gc.ca site, and suggested I click on 6,000 individual links and draw up my own list.

FAIL.

These people are either cynically withholding information that would allow voters to see where their tax dollars are beings spent, or they are idiots, or maybe both.

The election day that wasn’t

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 2:29 PM - 4 Comments

Today was supposed to be election day. In accordance with a bill passed in May 2006, just months after Stephen Harper’s Conservatives won a minority government, federal elections would be held every four years, starting on Oct. 19, 2009. At the time, the law was championed as a way to promote fairness. As Harper said in 2006, “Fixed election dates stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar. They level the playing field for all parties.” But in calling a federal election last fall, Harper proved that the bill has no teeth. He used the opportunity to best Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, who was under siege for his controversial carbon tax proposal.

Toronto Star

Iran blames Sunni group for weekend bombing

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 2:11 PM - 1 Comment

Iran has threatened retaliation for a bomb blast that killed at least 42 people in southeastern Iran, including members of the Revolutionary Guards, an elite military unit that is charged with the defence of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Iran blames Jundallah, a Sunni insurgent group based in the Balochistan regions of both Iran and Pakistan, for the attack. Tehran alleges links between Jundallah and British, American, and Pakistan intelligence services. All three countries have issued statements condemning the bombing.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Mum’s the word

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 2:09 PM - 0 Comments

An online headline in the Edmonton Journal this morning says it all: “Stelmach may comment on new Wildrose leader.” Such is the anticipation of hearing what Premier Ed Stelmach has to say about Danielle Smith’s decisive leadership victory this Saturday at the Wildrose Alliance’s leadership convention that the merest hint he may comment is enough for a story. Stelmach, writes the Journal‘s Trish Audette, “is scheduled to greet participants in a Venture 100 Business Forum in Edmonton today, his first public appearance since the right-wing Wildrose Alliance Party selected its new leader on the weekend.” Golly! Though a number of Tory MLAs have already attempted to downplay what’s being billed as an Alberta politics “game changer” (“Wildrose no thorn: Tories,” reads a Calgary Sun headline), Stelmach’s silence on the issue is his most eloquent utterance yet: The Tories are scared and don’t appear to have a clue what to do. The Wildrose Alliance has outpaced the Liberals in polls as Alberta’s second choice for governing the province and it’s growing fast. The Tories, meanwhile, continue to sink.

UPDATE: Stelmach told reporters on Monday that Danielle Smith’s victory in the Wildrose Alliance Party’s leadership race didn’t faze him one bit. “We’re still focused on our plan for Alberta,” he said. “We still have a sizeable majority. The people gave us a strong mandate to do what’s right for Albertans.”

Edmonton Journal
Edmonton Sun

Human-smuggling ring may be behind vessel seized in B.C.

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 2:07 PM - 2 Comments

According to Australian news reports, a ship seized off the coast of B.C. carrying 76 asylum-seekers may be linked to an Indonesian man alleged to be the ringleader of an international human-smuggling operation. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says authorities there arrested Captain Bram, a.k.a. Abraham Lauhenapessy, aboard a boat carrying 255 Sri Lankans, some of whom have since said they were offered spots on the Ocean Lady, the ship seized by Canadian officials. They reportedly opted for the trip to Australia because, at US$15,000, it was a third of the price of going to Canada.

CBC News

The most popular dog name on the planet?

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 2:06 PM - 1 Comment

Traditional pet names like Fido, Rover and Rags have fallen by the wayside. Since the turn of the century, human names like Max, Charlie, Molly, Lucy, Sam and Abby are increasingly popular, with Max being perhaps the most popular dog name anywhere. According to the Vancouver Sun’s 100,000 entry dog name database, there are 1,347 dogs named Max in and around Vancouver, putting it first overall. The name Fido was popular in the 1860s, the paper reports, when Abraham Lincoln’s yellow lab cross was photographed for a portrait, becoming the first celebrity presidential pet. Fido (meaning “faithful” in Latin) attended the president’s funeral procession. The tendency to give dogs human names, says UBC psychology professor Stan Coren, might have come from the growing number of female dog owners, and dogs’ growing companionship roles. In fact, 19th century girl names are favoured for dogs and human girls in BC: eight of the top 20 girls names, according to BC Vital Statistics, are also among the top 50 dog names. For boys, meanwhile, only two of the top 20 baby names in BC, Sam and Jack, are popular dog names, too.

The Vancouver Sun

Beware the angry fans of boy bands

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 2:04 PM - 1 Comment

Don’t anger fans of boy-bands. That’s the clear message coming out of the UK where the Press Complaints Commission has received 22,000 complaints and counting over a Daily Mail columnist’s musings on the death of Boyzone member Stephen Gately. The singer died suddenly last week at age 33 after a night of partying on the Spanish island of Majorca. Although his family has said the death was due to “natural causes” the Daily Mail pointed to some unanswered questions about his final hours. But it’s the references to Gately’s homosexuality that really seems to set his fans off.

The Independent

Smoked salmon in East Block courtyard

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 2:02 PM - 0 Comments

To honour the Jewish holiday of Succoth (Feast of Tabernacles), a special ceremonial succah was set up in the East Block courtyard. Representatives from Chabad and Bnai Brith were on hand for the celebration. Below, Conservative MP James Lunney.

Frank Dimant of B’nai Brith (left) with Liberal MP Joe Volpe by the succah.

Continue…

H1N1 vaccine ships

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

The H1N1 vaccine are headed to provincial and territorial authorities across the country in preparation for the federal government’s approval of its release to the public later this week, Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced Monday. Two million doses have shipped already, with another three million expected to be available every week throughout the flu season, which has already begun in BC and the Northwest Territories. The federal government originally planned to rollout the vaccine in mid November, but the CBC reports that it’s been co-coordinating with local health authorities to start giving shots earlier than previously announced.

CBC News

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 7 Comments

Glen Pearson lobbies for accountability in foreign aid.

The Harper government presented its first annual accounting report on the Aid Accountability Act to Parliament two weeks ago, and many waited with keen anticipation to see if the government would continue hiding CIDA within a cloak and dagger operation or if it would finally use such a solemn occasion to finally treat the issue with a hoped for trait of transparency. I worked with a team of NGOs, large and small, to analyze the paper once it was presented and, sadly, it was unanimously agreed that the accountability inherent in C-293 is not being accurately reported – the smoke and mirrors remain…

We examined the new report in comparison with the accounting the British version of CIDA (Department For International Development) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development must undertake each year. While CIDA’s accounting for $3.75 billion comprises only six pages, the other reports run in the dozens of pages. In the area of health, where the other reports are expansive, CIDA’s report offers the reader no idea of the details of the Canadian programs, their overall impact, or even the location where those programs took place.

Cons: sure thing—right after the flying pigs.

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, October 19, 2009 at 1:07 PM - 32 Comments

…and silent it will likely remain.