Rights and Democracy rips itself apart

By Paul Wells - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 9:45 AM - 72 Comments

Last May 29, five board members of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, a Montreal-based organization usually known as Rights and Democracy, wrote to the Privy Council Office in Ottawa. Formed by an act of Parliament in 1988, Rights and Democracy receives $11 million a year from the federal government, which appoints its 10 Canadian board members (who then elect three international members). Rights and Democracy led the world, and far outpaced Canada’s government, last year in criticizing Afghanistan’s odious Shia family law, which would permit husbands to force their wives to have sex.

The May letter came from five of the seven board members who attended the March 26 board meeting. Its purpose was to complain about the other two: Aurel Braun, a University of Toronto political scientist who had been named board chairman only two weeks before the meeting, and Jacques Gauthier, the vice-chair.

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Shopping For Travel

By Takeoffeh.com - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 9:24 AM - 3 Comments

Few industries have benefited more from internet commerce than the travel industry. Travellers are now armed with a great deal of research – helping them make better vacation choices.

Many consumers believe that booking through an internet site will guarantee savings. This is not always the case, and much has changed since the first internet booking company opened its portals.

TakeOffeh.com walks you through some key points to consider before pressing the ‘buy’ button.

1. Not long ago, many of the vacation prices on the internet varied greatly – often appearing even lower than those advertised by the actual tour operator who packaged the vacation. However, a few years ago, tour operators leveled the playing field by prohibiting the practice of advertising their products at discounted rates. This does not mean an agent can’t actually discount a package, it simply means you won’t find large price discrepancies for the same package on competing internet sites.
2. Most travel retailers now have a booking system on their website to give the consumer the option of shopping on line 24/7. The beauty is you can also call and clarify issues with a live agent on the phone. This often provides a measure of security for those who are concerned about the legitimacy of a large impersonal website. This has brought back business to traditional agencies that saw business leaking to the big internet advertisers. While most big names are legitimate and provide some client support, it is a case of ‘buyer beware’ when the provider is completely unknown and may be based in another country.
3. Another thing most consumers may not be aware of is that there are relatively few internet booking engine providers in the marketplace. The smallest agency in the country may subscribe to the same distribution channel as the largest Canadian tour operator. For instance, one of the biggest booking engine providers in Canada is a company called Softvoyage which has a virtual monopoly on searching and delivering pricing and inventory for a variety of vacation options. So spending hours searching for a price on a variety of websites will likely yield very similar information. You are better off finding a provider with good customer service you feel comfortable with.
4. Travel protection, which should be very important for consumers, is under provincial jurisdiction. Not all provinces have a protection plan in place, while others have established strong and long standing programs. Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia have stringent agent requirements and excellent programs in place. Even if you reside in another province, if you buy from a retailer based in one of these provinces you are protected. On the other hand, if you are in Ontario, and buy from a Nova Scotia based agency, you are not protected. Smaller provinces have looked at the existing models and concluded that provincial laws which force credit card companies to reimburse clients for non delivery of service are sufficient.
5. The small print on the website where you are booking a hotel, car, or all inclusive vacation is important to read and understand. Before you finally submit your credit card information, you need to find out what the cancellation and change policies are. More than one person has lost their entire investment because of a zero cancellation policy. This is especially important to know when booking out of country properties you know little or nothing about. You will have a hard time chasing down someone who is anonymous and thousands of miles away. Better yet, make sure you get advice on insurance. It is likely the best travel purchase you will ever make.

By Ron Pradinuk
Ron Pradinuk is president of Journeys Travel & Leisure SuperCentre, a travel products retail outlet www.jouneystravelgear.com , as well as Winnipeg based Renaissance Travel. He is past national president of the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies.

Photo Credits: enviromantic, MorePixels

How to go about this (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 9:17 AM - 31 Comments

Lorne Sossin passes along his thoughts.

While the optics of the NDP proposal strike me as appealing, I do not think such legislation would be enforceable nor do I think it is the optimal solution. A vote to prorogue seems to me to some extent redundant—the opposition parties can bring down the government if they have lost confidence, and otherwise, if they continue to have confidence in the governmentt, they must live with some degree of executive prerogative. In my view, the better accountability mechanism is a Governor General who exercises discretion with respect to granting or denying requests to prorogue with the public interest in mind, and makes public her or his reasons for granting or denying such requests. The Governor General should make clear that prorogation will not be granted so as to avoid a vote of confidence, or for ulterior or improper purposes.

LCK on Coco: "His dreams are misguided"

By Colby Cosh - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 7:03 AM - 9 Comments

Louis C.K., who may be the dean of American standup comedy (or perhaps a regent serving during the Madness of King Chappelle), offers a sage commentary on the Late Night Wars. His insight is unique and valuable because 1) it’s Louis C.K., for God’s sake; 2) it’s saturated with sincere respect for everybody involved; 3) he’s written for and with pretty much everybody, including Conan O’Brien and David Letterman; 4) it’s easy to forget because he’s bald and pudgy, but he’s got a generational perspective quite distinct, in important ways, from that of the principals. LCK is four years younger than the boyish Conan, and easily young enough to be Jay Leno’s kid. In some respects he is obviously speaking for all the major comic talents out there who haven’t yet had their own successful series.

Rights and Democracy: Well aren't we busy

By Paul Wells - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 7:40 PM - 105 Comments

Ezra Levant has access to a lot of documents from Rights and Democracy, showing discretionary spending he really doesn’t like. Clearly admirers of the organization’s new board are prepared to fight really hard to see that the recent changes there stick. We’ll see whether their opponents have similar amounts of fight in them.

UPDATE: Ezra calls Rights and Democracy’s $110,000 cheque to the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights “a deliberate and flagrant contradiction to Canada’s foreign policy.” You know who else cut a cheque to the United Nations just four months after Rights and Democracy did? The Conservative government of Stephen Harper. For $73 million. I’m telling you, these UN-lovers are everywhere.

Opening Weekend: 'Extraordinary Measures,' 'The Last Station,' 'Creation,' 'Petropolis'

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 7:34 PM - 1 Comment

Harrison Ford in 'Extraordinary Measures'

Now that the Golden Globes are done and we await the Oscars, it’s the shoulder season, a time when Hollywood dumps the movies deemed not quite good enough to release in time for Academy consideration. This weekend we’ve got three pictures based on true stories, though in each case stagy melodrama upstages the truth. Two of them feature heroic scientists—Extraordinary Measures and Creation—and the third, The Last Station (opening in Toronto only this week) tracks the final days of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. But there’s another, smaller film opening in limited release (Toronto only for now) that I cannot recommend too highly—Petropolis: Aerial View of the Alberta Tar Sands, by Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler. This mesmerizing documentary reveals Canada’s most controversial natural resources as it’s never been seen. In the tradition of Edward Burtynsky, it finds a terrible beauty in grand visions of environmental devastation. It’s a must see film. But first the mainstream choices:

Extraordinary Measures

What ever happened to Harrison Ford? This A-list heavyweight has not aged gracefully, and I’m not referring to his looks. Ford seems to be in fine physical shape, and still game to play the battered action hero, as he did in the most recent Indiana Jones sequel. But as an actor he seems to have atrophied. That righteous stare of paranoid intensity, which might have been suitable for The Fugitive, has become a stock gesture, and seems both contrived and inappropriate for his latest role, as a maverick research scientist in Extraordinary Measures.

Similiar to Lorenzo’s Oil, but not as good, Extraordinary Measures is a drama about the race for a medical cure in which the fate of the protagonist’s kids hangs in the balance. It’s based on a book by Pulitizer-Prize-winning author Getta Anand’s book, The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million – and Bucked the Medical Establishment – in a Quest to Save His Children. The film tells the story of how John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) takes a huge risk by quitting his well-paying job to team up with a scientist (Ford) to find a cure for a fatal disease afflicting two of Crowley’s three children. It’s a fascinating tale. And as with Lorenzo’s Oil, the most thrilling moments are the stuff of science. But thanks to an over-torqued script, and the less-than-subtle direction of Tom Vaughan (What Happens in Vegas), dramatic contrivance tends to get in the way of a good story.

Fraser is the protagonist and plays the lead, but he’s clearly not the star, which poses a problem. Ford, who executive-produced the film, throws the balance of the drama off-kilter with his over-written part as the curmudgeonly scientist with a heart of gold—the renegade who blares ’70s rock in the lab and hates the pharmaceutical suits with such a passion that he jeopardizes the project, yet comes through heroically in the end. Ford’s character, Dr. Stonehill, is actually a composite of several real-life scientists, and he comes across that way, as one of those vanity creations that seems custom-designed for the star, with a luxurious repertoire of behavioral tics. And you have to wonder why this academic hermit, who commutes between the lab and the local pub, looks so pumped in his form-fitting t-shirts—less like a lab rat than a movie star who assiduously keeps himself toned for the next lead role. Ford could take a lesson in shape-shifting from Matt Damon in The Informant. Always the ex-carpenter, Harrison likes to talk about how he’s a team player and how everything he does is in the service of the story. His talk-show mantra is that, even though he’s a star, he doesn’t act like one.  Maybe that was once the case.  But not here. Continue…

Why Péladeau's anti-union plea is more than a bit disingenuous

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 7:02 PM - 8 Comments

Pierre-Karl Péladeau, the head of telecommunications behemoth Québecor, published an open letter in this morning’s Journal de Québec blasting unions for hampering the province’s economic progress. Not surprisingly, the missive isn’t going over very well. For those of you who can stomach record-breaking run-on sentences, here are the juiciest bits, translated into la langue de Gainey:

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“When we saw she was living, we all felt tremendous emotion”

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 5:41 PM - 2 Comments

(AP Photo/MINUSTAH, Logan Abassi)

The Haitian city of Jacmel, where much of the Canadian Forces’ relief efforts will be focused, has been as hard hit by last week’s earthquake as some of the most devastated neighbourhoods in Port-au-Prince.

The city of 40,000 is connected to the capital by mountain roads that have been made all but impassible by crevices and enormous chalky boulders that sheared off from cliffs during the earthquake. A Maclean’s reporter abandoned the car he hired when it was unable to continue and reached the city by flagging down a passing motorcycle. Subsistence farmers living in these hills complain that no aid has reached them.

“Nobody has come. We need food, medication, tents. The rain falls here every night and the children are sick and suffering,” Filamis Jimmy, a 34-year-old man, says. He and his family of six children are living under sheets beside the road, eating patties made of flour and water and fried in oil. Military engineers plus soldiers from 3rd Battalion, Royal 22^nd Regiment are deploying in the nearby town of Léogâne. They may soon push into the mountains where Jimmy and other rural victims of the earthquake live.

Jacmel itself is rubble and twisted metal. The city’s colonial-era architecture is cracked and toppling. Thousands of residents live in an enormous makeshift camp in a soccer field in the centre of the city. There is an open pit at one end that is used as a latrine. Huge vats of rice and beans supplied by the World Food Programme were cooking over open fires in the camp Wednesday, though some residents say they have had little to eat and those who hand out food in the camp give it to their friends and family. They say police beat people who swarm food trucks during aid deliveries.

The Canadian Forces are now in Jacmel in sizeable numbers. HMCS Halifax is floating offshore with 220 sailors on board. A medical unit from the Canadian Disaster Assistance Response team is also here.

The Halifax was diverted to Haiti immediately after the quake and arrived without stockpiles of emergency aid but made several deliveries of food and water. “We were able to spare what we could,” Lt.-Cmdr. John Wilson says.

Sailors from the ship have planned a latrine for the soccer field camp and have cleared rubble from the grounds of St. Michel’s Hospital, which was severely damaged during the quake. Dozens of earthquake victims are on the hospital grounds now. Some are in field hospital tents, erected where work crews from the Halifax hauled away debris. Other lie under scraps of cloth. All are at least off the ground, on cots or benches that have been pushed together.

DART’s medical contingent is at the hospital, working with Haitian doctors and nurses, and with some American civilian doctors who showed up and offered to help. Many of the injured suffer from fractures and open wounds. “We’re starting to do major surgeries,” Maj. Annie Bouchard, DART’s medical platoon commander, says. These include amputations.

“Some of the Haitian doctors are jealous because the Canadian doctors are giving such good aid,” one patient says. “The Canadians will do whatever it takes to help us. I’ve seen with my own eyes the Canadians and the other foreigners come with everything. If it were up to me, the Canadians could stay here all the time.”

Nearby, lies a 26-day-old baby girl, Elizabeth Joussaint, who has spent almost one third of her life under a pile of broken concrete.

“Me, all the family, we were sure she had died,” her grandfather, Michel Joussaint, says. The house Elizabeth was sleeping in collapsed during the earthquake. Her family hoped to recover her body and explained where she lay to a Colombian rescue team, whose members flagged an approximate location in the rubble where she might be found. A team of French firefighters arrived and started to dig. This was on Tuesday, eight days after the quake.

“We thought we were going to find a body,” one of the firefighters, Pascal Buisson, says. “When we saw she was living, we all felt tremendous emotion.” He slaps his chest. “We felt it here.”

The French firefighters handed Elizabeth to Haitian firefighters to take her to get medical help. She was brought to St. Michel’s. The French team came to see her the next day. She was sleeping, an intravenous drip in her arm, frail but breathing steadily.

Nation building

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 4:54 PM - 20 Comments

Freshly returned from Africa, Glen Pearson writes of Haiti.

Haiti presently suffers from uncontrolled migration, deep poverty, hunger, high violence, drug trafficking and the troubling reality of environmental degradation. In other words, its future hangs in a precarious balance. Businesses and corporations are always reticent to invest in infrastructure, yet that is what Haiti requires now more than anything – a functional education system, adequate health facilities, effective courts, earthquake-proof structures, accountable government, etc. Until such things are in place, investment will merely be the playground of the elites.

The truth is, Haiti is where much of Africa was two decades ago. Only now are we beginning to comprehend that the secret to Africa’s recent success hasn’t so much been corporate investment but effective development measures over the long haul. Build the roads, the ports, the hospitals, sanitation systems, schools, universities, women’s literacy, courts, etc. and the rest will naturally follow: businesses benefit from such staples and will add to them. But more importantly, Haitians are bettered by such investment. Unless such development measures are resourced adequately, the people of Haiti will never own anything, but be pawns in a world of the elites, much as Cuba was 70 years ago.

Paul Quarrington embraced life and art to the end

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 4:41 PM - 6 Comments

Paul Quarrington (Photo by Tom Sandler/Getty Images)

Today we lost a prodigious talent and one of the sweetest, funniest guys you’d ever want to share a beer with. Paul Quarrington died at home early this morning surrounded by his family. He was 56. Paul was a novelist, screenwriter, filmmaker, songwriter and musician. He was also a friend, someone I’d known casually for many years. But I had never grasped his range and power as an artist until recently. After being diagnosed with lung cancer last May, he turned his final months on this earth into a brave and singular  public performance—a life-and-death opportunity to nourish his creativity as a writer and musician with every last breath.  But we didn’t expect to lose him quite so soon. I’d fully expected  to see him fronting his band, the Pork Belly Futures, at a Toronto pub on the Danforth tomorrow night. Once again, he’d be at the microphone with his oxygen tank, making us laugh and cry—breaking our hearts with a new song he’d written about his fate and wrestling a curious insight out of the darkness, which he always kept at writerly remove, like a fish on the line. Paul had an almost courtly approach to death. And at the rate he was going, with a damn-the-torpedoes embrace of life, you began to feel the performance would never end. (For a documentary glimpse of Paul and his music, see the video at the end of this post.)

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The Mendoza Line

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 4:31 PM - 14 Comments

For those looking to somehow quantify whatever happens on Saturday…

According to a quick and entirely unscientific survey of already unscientific media estimates, anti-coalition rallies last December in Edmonton, Moncton, Ottawa, Victoria, Calgary, Toronto, London, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Windsor, Halifax, Regina, Fredericton and Saskatoon combined to draw about 9,600 protesters.

Pro-coalition rallies in Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, London, Vancouver, Moncton, Halifax, Regina, St. John’s, Montreal, Toronto, Windsor and Saskatoon drew, according to media reports, about 9,300.

Mansbridge says, 'Get over it'

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 4:25 PM - 42 Comments

Little-known fact: when Peter Mansbridge first started subbing as CBC’s National news anchor back in the early 1980s, he had a nightly house audience. In the cramped confines of the public broadcaster’s old Toronto headquarters, the flagship newscast shared a studio with the iconic children’s show The Friendly Giant. So hanging on the faux castle wall on the other side of the room, Rusty the Rooster and Jerome the Giraffe bore mute witness to the great events of the era.

Sitting in his glass-walled office at the CBC’s current and far more spacious digs—the grandly named and appointed Canadian Broadcast Centre—the 62-year-old journalist shares the story to make a point. The network’s recent high-tech makeover of its news programs is hardly the only change he’s lived through in four-plus decades at the Mother Corp. Revamps are a big part of the TV business. And unlike past budget-driven exercises, this one at least sees the news division bumping up coverage, not cutting it back. “It’s a radical departure in look, not in substance,” says Mansbridge. “People are still looking for serious news. They just want it in a different fashion.”

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Paul's Music

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 4:10 PM - 4 Comments

I am a fat man perched on a rock, the soul God gave me is not much good for anything. Still, I raise my arms towards the sunlight, hold them there for a long moment. Claire leaps up and down, she cries and laughs, she makes whooping noises, embraces me, shakes her fists gleefully in the air.

I lower my arms with all the grace and dignity I can muster.

The whales begin to sing.

– Paul Quarrington, Whale Music

H1N1 hit Manitobans, Aboriginals hardest

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 2 Comments

A new study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal paints a vivid picture of how the influenza pandemic played out in Manitoba, which has experienced the highest incidence of severe H1N1—181 patients were hospitalized, and 45 patients were admitted to the intensive care unit because of the virus. The researchers identified a pattern: the longer the time period between the onset of symptoms and the treatment with antivirals such as Tamiflu, the more likely patients were to wind up in ICU. In fact, the patients who waited the longest for treatment had the worst outcome; some even wound up on life support. The researchers found that while many infected people didn’t require treatment because they were able to overcome the virus on their own, recognizing the importance of prompt medical care for serious symptoms is essential. They also identified another key trend in severe H1N1: First Nations people were at higher risk for serious infection than other ethnic groups. This happened in New Zealand and Australia too, and was also witnessed during the 1918 Spanish flu. The researchers attribute this to the fact Aboriginals have experienced “social inequities that have led to significant health disparities.” They conclude that identifying the at-risk populations and risk factors associated with severe H1N1 is critical to combating future waves of the disease.

Canadian Medical Association Journal

Obama takes on the banks

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 3:05 PM - 3 Comments

Fightin’ words from Barack Obama. On Thursday, the president unveiled a series of new restrictions on the country’s banks. Aimed at freezing the growth of the “too big to fail” financial sector, the “Volcker rule,” (named after former federal reserve chairman Paul Volcker) will limit the size of banks and ban profit-making practices that are “unrelated to serving customers.” Explaining his motivation, Obama noted, “my resolve to reform the system is only strengthened when I see a return to old practices at some of the very firms fighting reform.” The 2008 financial crisis was precipitated by proprietary trading, in which banks made risky trades from their own accounts in order to boost profits. That activity is separate from the traditional commercial activities of the banking sector: taking deposits and making standard loans.

WhiteHouse.gov

New York Times

Cutting salt could prevent 92,000 U.S. deaths per year

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 2:48 PM - 5 Comments

Reducing Americans’ daily salt intake by just three grams could prevent up to 66,000 strokes, 99,000 heart attacks, and 92,000 deaths in the U.S. alone, saving $24 billion in health costs each year, researchers at the University of California said on Wednesday. This goal is attainable, the team insisted, noting that women would benefit the most. Salt is greatly overused in the U.S., Reuters reports, with up to 80 per cent of it coming from processed food. Men consume about 10.4 grams per day, and women consume 7.3 grams, but use is rising. The report didn’t take into account the benefits that would be conferred on children, or the fact that reducing salt intake might lower the risk of stomach cancer, kidney disease, congestive heart failure and osteoporosis.

Reuters

First humiliation, now whither US health care reform?

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 2:44 PM - 14 Comments

Reading all the commentary that has come out in the last 48 hours you would think the Massachusetts senatorial election was a referendum on health care reform. That’s going too far. Sure, the victory on Tuesday of Republican challenger Scott Brown in the seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy has ended the Democrats’ super-majority in the Senate, making the passage of Democratic agenda much more difficult.

But there were many other factors at play. For one thing, Martha Coakley was a weak Democratic candidate in a state, that while it stereotyped as “Blue” has a long history of voting for the other side to avoid one-party rule (and has elected numerous  Republican governors.) At this time, the governor is a Democrat, the state legislature is controlled by Democrats, and Democrats hold Congress and the White House.

Second, Massachusetts already has the kind of government-subsidized health insurance system that extends coverage to almost all people that is being debated in Washington.  Brown himself voted for the state program (which was signed into law by then Republican governor Mitt Romney, who must be licking his chops this week in anticipation of another presidential run in 2012) but says he doesn’t want to subsidize it for other states. Fair enough, but it doesn’t imply a national rejection of a national scheme.

Third, unemployment is at 10% and the economy is limping while bankers, recently bailed out by taxpayers, get big bonuses. People are angry and they are punishing the party in power. This would be the case health care bill or not.

Those caveats aside, the race is being interpreted in Washington as a rejection of the health care legislation. And Democrats seem undecided about what to do about it.

The simplest thing to do would seem to be for the House to pass the health care reform bill that has already passed the Senate — even though it is not as liberal as many House Democrats would want. The argument for this is that nothing more liberal can make it through the Senate now regardless. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today that there simply aren’t sufficient votes in the House  to do that. Ezra Klein goes over the Democrats’ options.

President Obama has suggested a more stripped down approach — taking a few essential aspects of the legislation — such as expanding coverage, and imposing rules on insurance companies that will prevent them from denying insurance to the sick — and just passing those. He said yesterday, “I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on. We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don’t, then our budgets are going to blow up and we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance to their families.”

Then today the White House indicated that it is just itching to move past the health care debate to focus on economic populism ahead of the November mid-term elections (and you thought his approach of leaving the whole mess to Congress was surprisingly hands-off before…)  “As the majority leader and speaker continue to look to the best way forward, the president has a very full plate,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. “There’s plenty of work for the president to do in the meantime.”

They’d rather talk about enter Obama’s  proposed crackdown on the big banks. In one sense, though, Obama’s timing could not be worse — just as he was announcing his plan to regulate the banks, they and other corporations just got the green light from the US Supreme Court to pile their money into the defeat of candidates they don’t like. As my friend Ben Smith points out, tough week.

Popular sentiment and constitutional convention

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 2:24 PM - 79 Comments

While Michael Ignatieff sends an open letter to Canadian Against Proroguing Parliament, David Eaves reviews a loose survey of the group’s demographics, attitudes and intent. In an essay for The Mark, Michael Marin speculates on the group’s potential to impose unwritten order on Parliamentary democracy.

Canadians have helped spawn constitutional conventions before. The outcome of the 1926 federal election, which produced a Liberal majority in the wake of the King-Byng Affair, contributed to the modern principle of political non-interference by the Governor General. If the opponents of prorogation sustain their pressure, they may play a similar role in 2010.

The Facebook group was the catalyst of public opposition to prorogation, emerging in the days following the prime minister’s call to the Governor General and driving public interest in the story despite its holiday timing. The group fuelled criticism in the mainstream media by serving as a clearinghouse for stories on the issue and funnelling traffic to the websites of large newspapers and television networks. This allowed the story to spill into the offline world and significantly alter the voting intentions of Canadians.

While the Facebook group wasn’t a conscious exercise in constitution making, the nature of constitutional conventions may allow it to serve that very purpose. But the work of Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament isn’t over. In order to ensure that a new convention is born, they are going to have to come out in huge numbers on January 23. Otherwise, the opposition we’ve witnessed over the last two weeks will be interpreted by future underhanded governments as temporary and will fail to restrain their abuse of power.

Searching for fame with your pants on the ground

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 2:24 PM - 7 Comments

Herein, the second in a semi-regular series chronicling the ninth season of American Idol.

Behold the power of living without embarrassment.

Some months ago, a 63-year-old civil rights activist named Larry Platt went to an American Idol open call in Atlanta. Aside from not possessing the necessary vocal talent, he far exceeded the show’s age limit. Still, he was allowed to audition for the show’s judges and proceeded to sing a self-penned song entitled Pants On The Ground, an infectious jingle meant to warn against the peril of wearing ill-fitting jeans.

Last Wednesday, that audition aired on Fox. By Thursday night, Late Night host Jimmy Fallon, impersonating Neil Young, was signing his own rendition of Pants On The Ground. Saturday afternoon, after leading his team to victory over the Dallas Cowboys, Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre sang the chorus during the team’s locker room celebration. On Monday, Platt, who marched in Selma alongside Martin Luther King Jr., was a guest on The View. A small record label is offering him a chance to record Pants On The Ground. In the meantime, he has achieved the triple crown of Internet fame: YouTube tributes, a million-member Facebook group and homemade t-shirts for sale on eBay.

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China tops Japan: next up, the U.S.

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 2 Comments

At the dawn of the new decade, there are few countries over which economic forecasters predict sunnier skies than China—and with good reason. After edging out Germany late last year to become the leading merchandise exporter, China, whose GDP is estimated to have grown by 8.5 per cent in 2009, is now poised to unseat Japan as the world’s second-largest economy. At this rate, some say the People’s Republic (which also just became the world’s biggest auto market) could overtake the U.S. economy as early as 2030.

Though no doubt significant, these milestones only hint at what Loren Brandt, an expert in the Chinese economy at the University of Toronto, characterizes as “a deep and sustained process of economic reform.” When China opened its doors to foreign investors 30 years ago, private enterprise was non-existent. In other words, says U of T economics professor Xiaodong Zhu, “They had a lot of catching up to do.”

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Got raw milk!

By Shanda Deziel - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 1:55 PM - 5 Comments

After a dramatic legal and food ethics battle, dairy farm Michael Schmidt triumphed today when a Newmarket, Ont., judge ruled that he can continue distributing raw milk through his cow-share program, which does not break the law against selling unpasteurized milk. Schmidt, of Durham, Ont., runs a cow-share program that is exempted from the province’s health protection and promotion act and the milk act. People pay a portion to cover the cost of cow, which provides the farmer with a loophole to offer the owners milk without having to sell it to them. Schmidt, who was found not guilty of 19 charges, celebrated his victory with a cold glass of raw milk outside the courthouse.

Health Zone

Maclean's Covers Gallery – 2010

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 1:39 PM - 11 Comments

Click images to enlarge

Presenting Obama, the musical

By Michael Barclay - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 2 Comments

In July 2008, Barack Obama gave a speech before an adoring crowd of 200,000 Germans in Berlin. Democrats hailed the performance as JFK-esque, while Republicans accused the then-presidential candidate of being little more than a grandstanding celebrity. But even Democratic partisans are likely to cringe at the notion of a fawning new German musical called Hope!, based on Obama’s presidential campaign, which premieres in Frankfurt on Jan. 17.

Written and conceived by the American composer Randall Hutchins, Hope! is a big-budget production with 30 cast members playing key figures in the election campaign—both Democrat and Republican—as well as citizens caught up in the excitement, including what the official website describes as “an Afro-American committed non-voter” and “a humorous Italo-American restaurant owner.”

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Why aren’t neck guards catching on?

By James Jackson - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 1:10 PM - 2 Comments

Referees are the peace­keepers of our national pastime. Sometimes they are forced to risk their necks—literally—on the job. Such was the case for Ontario minor hockey linesman Kevin Brown, who had his carotid artery slashed by a skate while breaking up a fight during a Junior C game on Dec. 29 in Woodstock. The Ontario Hockey Association has responded to the incident forcefully, making neck guards mandatory for all OHA on-ice officials as of Feb. 1.

The decision would seem to be a no-brainer. Most minor and house hockey leagues across Canada already require players to wear neck guards—the same logic should apply to the 33,000 referees and linesmen in Canada, who are just as susceptible to errant skates and pucks. And yet other provincial associations have not followed Ontario’s lead. Yves Archambault, technical director for Hockey Québec, says that there are currently no plans to make neck guards mandatory for refs in Quebec. “There are many injuries during the year for referees—cuts and pucks to the face—but the [new rules] are always reactionary,” says Yanik Gagné, referee coordinator for Hockey Québec. “Where is it going to stop?”

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