Coyne v. Wells: Looking west

By Coyne VS Wells - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 45 Comments

On Jan. 20, Maclean’s will present a round table discussion on “The West is in. Now what?” at Calgary’s Theatre Junction Grand, the third in a series of national debates. Broadcast live on CPAC, it will feature Nancy Heppner, Saskatchewan’s minister of environment, Lloyd Axworthy, the University of Winnipeg’s president, Lindsay Blackett, Alberta’s minister of culture and community spirit, and Melissa Blake, mayor of Fort McMurray, Alta. The event will be moderated by CPAC’s Peter Van Dusen, and include Maclean’s columnists Paul Wells and Andrew Coyne as panellists. Tickets can be bought at macleans.ca/inconversation. This week, Wells and Coyne kick off the debate.

Andrew Coyne: Paul, I’ll start by softening you up with a barrage of statistics. In 1896, when Sir Wilfrid Laurier laid the foundation for a century of Liberal dominance with his first of four election wins, Quebec held 30 per cent of the population of Canada. The whole of the territory of Canada west of Ontario accounted for less than 10 per cent. As late as 1980, when the National Energy Program was launched, Quebec held nearly as many people as the four western provinces combined. Half the seats in Pierre Trudeau’s majority government that year came from Quebec.

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"To be frank, it's not a convincing argument"

By Paul Wells - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:29 AM - 17 Comments

Our colleague Michael Petrou files his first dispatch from Haiti, and stirs up a debate about how, and by whom, aid should be distributed.

Bomb plotter sentenced to 12 years

By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:22 AM - 10 Comments

A McMaster University honours student who participated in a terrorist bomb plot—and was arrested while unpacking a truckload of what he believed was explosive fertilizer—could be released on parole by the end of 2011.

Saad Gaya was slapped with a 12-year prison sentence this morning, but Justice Bruce Durno also ruled that the confessed terrorist deserves seven-and-a-half years credit for the three-and-a-half years he spent in pre-sentence custody—which leaves four-and-a-half years left to serve. The decision means Gaya can apply for parole in approximately 18 months, after completing just one-third of his sentence. The ultimate decision will rest with the National Parole Board.

A member of the so-called “Toronto 18,” Gaya was among the four core suspects who conspired to set off explosives in southern Ontario in retaliation for Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan. Of the four, Gaya was clearly the lowest on the totem pole. He took orders from the admitted ringleader, was assured “no one would get hurt,” and was told their target would be some sort of military facility. It wasn’t until after his arrest that he learned his accomplices had decided on two other targets: the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Toronto headquarters of CSIS, Canada’s spy agency.

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Whee

By Paul Wells - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:11 AM - 17 Comments

I have seen the future of Canadian newspapering, and it looks like Ray Heard and Beryl Wasjman.

Why haven’t you seen Avatar yet?

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 11:03 AM - 25 Comments

It looks like the movie about blue aliens by that brash Canadian from Niagara Falls is poised to become the top-grossing picture of all time. After roaring past the $1-billion threshold in a record 17 days, James Cameron’s Avatar will likely shatter the $1.8-billion tidemark set by Cameron’s own Titanic 12 years ago, especially if it does well at the Oscars. Which begs the question: why? Everyone seems to agree that the story is corny, its message is naive, and its cliché of the noble savage is retrograde. Friends of mine who have no desire to see Avatar keep asking, why is it so huge? Is it just a massive feat of marketing?

No, it’s the magic, stupid.

Love it or hate it, Avatar boldly goes where no movie has gone before. Some of the film’s harshest critics have even confessed they would see it again—just for the 3-D experience of being so deeply inside a movie. Then there are those who swear they’ll never see it, as if on principle. They dismiss it as just another escalation in the Hollywood blitzkrieg of special effects, a victory of digital artillery over human emotion. I would argue the opposite. Sure, Avatar’s prototype of 3-D spectacle is the biggest game-changer since Star Wars launched the arms race of sci-fi blockbusters 33 years ago. But what’s revolutionary about Cameron’s film is not its firepower. The real feat is how it uses cutting-edge technology to bring back a kind of old-fashioned movie magic.

Despite the guns and spears that occasionally poke through the fourth wall, what has Avatar audiences spellbound is not the frontal assault of 3-D, but the enchantment of being drawn into a world that softly envelops the senses. It’s akin to the childhood wonder of discovering a classic Disney cartoon. I went back to see Avatar a second time, and was struck that the 3-D was most effective when the action slowed to a virtual standstill. There’s a scene in Pandora’s bioluminescent forest where jellyfish-like spores from the moon’s sacred tree float down to tickle the blue limbs of the story’s avatar hero. Which sounds ridiculous on the page. But it’s a Tinker Bell moment of transcendent beauty. You can sense the collective awe in the theatre—time has stopped and we’re in the movie.

It’s as if Cameron, a veteran deep-sea diver, has transformed the screen’s flat rectangle into an aquarium and asked us in for a swim, with 3-D glasses serving as scuba gear. The flying sequences are exhilarating—and oceanic, as Na’vi natives ride bareback on giant birds that swoop over cliffs like manta rays grazing coral reefs. But Avatar’s stereoscopic vision goes beyond optics. With performance-capture technology that erases the line between live action and animation, the actors teleport their performances into another dimension; they, like their characters, drive avatars.

The flattest thing about the movie is the script. Cameron’s saga of a Marine who goes native in an alien world, leading an aboriginal revolt against U.S. military invaders, is a humourless pastiche cobbled from virtually every hoary, heroic myth Western culture has to offer. Avatar wants to be Dances With Wolves, Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey all at once. But in a world of wall-to-wall irony, the film’s earnest sentiment comes as a tonic. The state-of-the-art anachronism feels weirdly fresh, as if the entire movie is an avatar—a high-tech Trojan Horse hiding a 19th-century colonial romance.

And that’s all part of its industrial alchemy. Cameron never liked nuance. Fuelled by Wagnerian ambition, his righteous anti-war epic wrestles our emotions to the ground with operatic force. We’re drawn into a jungle paradise only to see it destroyed in a Goya-like pageant of horrific beauty. It’s profoundly sad, and the depth of the 3-D drives home the tragedy with a visceral impact. The second time I saw the film, I found myself constantly on the verge of tears, as if the screen was exerting a tidal pull on the heart.

What’s most remarkable about Avatar is how Cameron created technology in order to demonize technology. In the process, he has reversed the engines of a blockbuster culture geared to loud, fast special effects. His movie proves that 3-D works best as an immersive medium: with the detail of that third dimension, the film’s violent action scenes tend to get too busy. Avatar plays like a movie by a man at war with himself—a gun-loving tree-hugger addicted to machines who, like the hero who goes native, wants to fight his way back to the garden. Now that he’s found it, action movies may never be the same.

"The police can't restore order in Haiti and for the most part don't try"

By Michael Petrou - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 10:34 AM - 32 Comments

Michael Petrou reports from Port-au-Princ

I’ve been in Haiti since Friday. Much of what I’ve seen and heard will appear in the print edition of this week’s magazine, but in the meantime here’s a very brief rundown of the trip so far.

On Thursday night I flew into Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. There I hooked up with Rahul Singh and his team from Global Medic. Global Medic is something Singh, a Toronto paramedic, started 10 years ago after a collapsed marriage sent him backpacking around the world. He ended up in Nepal, worked for an NGO there, and was appalled by the bureaucracy and waste that’s rampant in so many international development organizations. He wanted Global Medic to be different. It doesn’t have a bureaucracy to speak of. Its overhead is low. Its staff of medics, doctors, and engineers are volunteers. And its goals are simple: bring clean water, medical aid, and food to people in disaster zones as quickly and efficiently as possible.

It helps that Singh could sell ashes to the devil. People give him free stuff because he makes you believe in what he does. He scored a free flight to Dominican Republic for his team of seven on its way to Haiti from a charter airline, which also lugged all their water purifying systems and medical gear. He hired a bus and jeeps in the Dominican Republic and drove them all to Port-au-Prince. We arrived around 3 p.m. By nightfall, one of the doctors on Singh’s staff, Michael Howatt, was amputating gangrenous limbs on a table at an outdoor field hospital, cutting with shaving razors instead of scalpels. By noon the next day, they had set up a water purification system and were pumping out clean drinking water to thousands.

Global Medic has an annual budget of a few hundred thousand dollars. The Canadian International Development Agency, by comparison, spends one hundred million dollars a year in Haiti alone. This doesn’t mean that Global Medic is popular with other, bigger and more established NGOs.

“They are what we call a cowboy organization. They come and do something flashy,” says Bogdan Dumitru, a security officer with Care Canada. “We could have distributed all our stockpiles and grabbed a bunch of journalists, and it would be great. But that’s not the point.”

Dumitru says the responsible thing to do is to coordinate aid efforts with other organizations, especially the United Nations. Doing otherwise, he says, risks creating a “holy mess” if word gets out that there is fresh water in one part of the city but not in others.

To be frank, it’s not a convincing argument. Care, which already had a presence in the country before the quake, planned three water distributions Saturday. One was successful. They gave water purification packets to 600 people. They say they had to work through a local committee that had a list of people designated as water recipients. The same day Global Medic delivered clean water to 25,000. There was no riot or even disorder in the lineup of people waiting. And they trained Haitians in the neighbourhood to take over the purification system when Global Medic leaves.

A police officer patrols Port-au-Prince downtown to discourage looting (AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo)

“If you look at the other NGOs, not to be critical, but they go in with clipboards,” says Singh. “When they fill up that clipboard with notes, they’ll go back and start bringing in what people need. Our job is to come in and be an expert, efficient, and immediate solution.”

International development types are welcome to fight this one out in the comments section.

I SAW THE FIRST dead body minutes after arriving in Port-au-Prince. Today, three days later, I can’t count them anymore. They’re everywhere, and some died much more recently than the earthquake. Vigilantism and score settling are on the rise. The police can’t restore order and for the most part don’t try.

I was in Port-au-Prince two years ago. Today, the city has turned into something I could not have imagined then and cannot accurately describe now. How many horror-infused anecdotes are necessary to convey what’s happening here? People carry toothpaste in their pockets so that they can re-apply a smear on their upper lip when the stench of death becomes too much. Body parts stick randomly out of the rubble, blistering in the sun. Is that enough?

I remember visiting the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince two years ago. Then, the overcrowding flooded my senses, and it took me a few minutes to trust my eyes, with men packed together tighter than animals in a stockyard. During the earthquake, the prison burned and crumbled. Some 3,000 prisoners forced their way out and onto the streets. I walked in to the prison Sunday, kicking open a gate and stepping over the razor wire that clung to my pant cuffs. It was like visiting the abandoned set of a horror movie. The cells were busted open, but inside dozens of hammocks crafted from scraps of cloth hung between bars and bunks to mark the tiny piece of air where men were once forced to carve out a place to sleep. Four dead bodies lay swelling in the prison yard. It’s impossible to tell how they died.

Aid is coming slowly. On Sunday, the joint Canadian and Norwegian Red Cross field hospital still hadn’t arrived. A handful of Canadian nurses and doctors did their best providing basic first aid to patients who lay on disintegrating mattresses and moaned under a field of tarps.

At the Canadian Embassy, mid-afternoon Sunday, Canadian Forces Captain Mark Peebles said that the Disaster Assistance Relief Team reconnaissance unit had sent its report back to Ottawa in the last “24 to 48” hours but that an order to deploy DART in full had not yet been given.

The embassy’s compound was filled with cheerful journalists and Canadian citizens waiting to be evacuated. The grounds are shaded, and there is a tennis court. There is also a small medical tent, but staff there are sufficiently underwhelmed: a man who appears to be suffering only from loneliness is attended to with compassion and time. Elsewhere in the city bodies are burning in ditches for lack of a place to bury them. It’s like stepping into a different world.

Bureaucrats' pensions more costly than they say

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 10:23 AM - 10 Comments

Everybody knows that federal public servants—from senior mandarins to lowly government minions—get better pensions than most private-sector workers. But now the C.D. Howe institute says the $140 billion the government budgeted last year for paying out those pensions in the future isn’t nearly enough. Instead, the private think-tank argues the liability should be $198 billion. It’s an arcane argument over how the cost of financing pensions is calculated. But the debate has real impact on the national debt.

Ottawa Citizen

Great moments in Canadian innovation

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 9:30 AM - 85 Comments

Richard Foot reports that in no other similar democracy has a prime minister prorogued Parliament to avoid trouble.

It turns out, no other English-speaking nation with a system of government like ours — not Britain, Australia or New Zealand — has ever had its parliament prorogued in modern times, so that its ruling party could avoid an investigation, or a vote of confidence, by other elected legislators.

Only three times has this happened, all in Canada — first in 1873, when Sir John A. Macdonald asked the governor general to prorogue Parliament in order to halt a House of Commons probe into the Pacific Scandal. Lord Dufferin gave in to the demand, but when Parliament reconvened Macdonald was forced to resign. No prime minister dared use prorogation to such effect again, until Stephen Harper convinced Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean to suspend Parliament in 2008, so the Conservative party could evade a confidence vote. A little more than a year later, he did it again.

The politics of disaster (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 25 Comments

Joan Bryden considers the last week in Ottawa.

The Hill has become a hub of frenzied government activity aimed at speedily alleviating the tragic plight of Haitians devastated by a catastrophic earthquake.

The normally media-averse Harper government has treated journalists to a steady stream of ministerial briefings, announcements of military, humanitarian and financial aid, photo-ops of the prime minister meeting with ministers, military commanders and Haitian-Canadians, making a donation to the Red Cross and coordinating disaster relief in phone calls with world leaders.

… altruism and political opportunity are inevitably and inextricably linked when a government is dealing with a calamity of this magnitude. Doing the right thing can pay political dividends. Doing the wrong thing – or even doing the right thing but communicating it badly – can sink a government.

Caption Challenge Vol. 2, No. 3

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 5:39 AM - 69 Comments

Go.

Canada to send 1,000 extra troops to Haiti

By macleans.ca - Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 1:12 PM - 0 Comments

At least one person was killed when police in Haiti fired on looters in Port-au-Prince. Looting and violence are quickly spreading through the streets of the Haitian capital, as Canada prepares to send an additional 1,000 to help with the relief effort. Defence Minister Peter MacKay made the announcement Sunday, telling reporters the soldiers are trained specifically to crowd control and how to respond to this type of deteriorating situation. Meanwhile, rescuers are still pulling surivors from the rubble caused by Tuesday’s earthquake, though aid efforts have been hampered by the deteriorating security situation. “A measure of law and order on the streets is absolutely vital,” said Sir Nicholas Young, the chief executive of the British Red Cross. “These are desperate people in desperate circumstances and the sooner we get a reliable pipeline of aid out to them the better.”

Toronto Star

Agence France-Presse

CBC News

Times of London

Canada’s Olympians No. 4: Scott Niedermayer

By Charlie Gillis - Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 10:40 AM - 1 Comment

L ate last February, after a disappointing road game in Detroit, Scott Niedermayer strode through the basement of Joe Louis Arena to find a hockey legend waiting for him at the door of the Anaheim Ducks team bus. Steve Yzerman is a Hall of Fame centre and former captain of the Red Wings. But on this night he was speaking in his capacity as executive director of the Canadian men’s national team, and his message was blunt: he saw Niedermayer as a key leader—a potential captain, even—of the team that would carry Canada’s gold medal hopes at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.

It was all but a guarantee of a spot on the team. This some three months before an evaluation camp in Vancouver where, officially, coaches and managers would start assessing the talent. But where Niedermayer was concerned, Yzerman wasn’t about to stand on process. Twice in the previous two seasons, he knew, the stylish defenceman had contemplated hanging up his skates altogether; in 2007, Niedermayer had spent a half-season considering his future, before returning to the Ducks in the New Year and resuming his usual stellar play.

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Cashing in Pat Robertson's "pure gold"

By Colby Cosh - Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 4:51 AM - 137 Comments

Hey, isn’t it a little early for Rex Murphy to be going after soft targets like Pat Robertson in the National Post? And isn’t intellectual hygiene a desirable thing even in the pursuit of such small game? I understand that no sensible Christian of any denomination would endorse Robertson’s Wednesday remarks suggesting that Haiti is cursed because it bought its independence by bargaining with the devil. But to make Robertson’s remarks the occasion for catcalling at the irreligious really seems like going over the top. Rex writes:

He, Robertson, fulfills every agitated secularist’s caricature of a “dedicated” Christian. If Pat Robertson didn’t exist, Richard Dawkins (with a little midwifery from Christopher Hitchens) would have to give birth to him.

Well, golly, Rex, that’s as may be, but Dawkins and Hitchens didn’t have to invent Pat Robertson, now did they? They found the world with him already in it. I’m afraid all of us, believers and infidels, must deal with the Christianity we’ve got.

Murphy goes on to complain that “Robertson’s outburst is pure gold for the ‘enlightened’ secularist view our age holds of the Christian outlook. It will continue to be mined in the late-night monologues, stuff the op-eds of ‘progressive’ papers, and will serve as justifying illustration for the demeaning hostility that is a marked feature of much modern thinking on faith.” Perhaps though carelessness on the part of the author, this has been stated in such a way that the most rabid atheist could agree unconditionally with it, and add that “The demeaning hostility will continue until it is no longer deserved.”

Since Murphy felt the need to lash out at an innocent third party while carrying on an intramural fight between Christians, I suppose one might point out that even the wicked Pat Robertson is entitled to just treatment at the hands of his critics. In talking about the “curse” he believes Haiti lies under, Robertson was referring to a genuine event in the annals of that country’s revolutionary struggle—the 1791 Voodoo prayer for liberty in the Bois Caïman. As some liberal and perhaps even “secularist” observers have pointed out, this aspect of Haitian history is something of a legitimate problem for traditional Haitian Christians. It might even be a problem for a sincere Catholic who took the trouble to inquire into it! Would Rex Murphy, squeezed into 18th-century breeches and sent by time machine to the Bois Caïman, have happily pledged his life to the destruction of the “pitiless” “white men’s god”? Freely inquiring minds want to know!

One way or another, we cannot find Robertson guilty of “telling [Haitians] the earthquake was their own fault”; as fantastic and irresponsible as his account is, it lays the blame at the feet of the country’s long-dead founding fathers, and there is nothing wrong with or cruel about that in itself. As one old philosopher might have said here, sufficient unto the day is the evil of Pat Robertson. We need not invent more.

The art of the politic

By Andrew Coyne - Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 8:38 PM - 113 Comments

I’ve posted this before somewhere, but for various reasons it feels appropriate to post it again. it’s from Vaclav Havel’s Summer Meditations, about his experiences as president of Czechoslovakia, later the Czech Republic.

Journalists, and in particular foreign correspondents, often ask me how the idea of “living in truth”, the idea of “anti-political politics”, or the idea of politics subordinated to conscience can, in practice, be carried out. They are curious to know whether, finding myself in high office, I have not had to revise much of what I once wrote as an independent critic of politics and politicians. Have I not been compelled to lower my former “dissident” expectations of politics, by which they mean the standards I derived from the “dissident experience,” which are therefore scarcely applicable outside that sphere?



There may be some who won’t believe me, but in my second term as president in a land full of problems that presidents in stable countries never dream of, I can safely say that I have not been compelled to recant anything of what I wrote earlier, or to change my mind about anything. It may seem incredible, but it is so: not only have I not had to change my mind, but my opinions have been confirmed.



Despite the political distress I face every day, I am still deeply convinced that politics is not essentially a disreputable business; and to the extent that it is, it is only disreputable people who make it so. I would concede that it can, more than other spheres of human activity, tempt one to disreputable practices, and that it therefore places higher demands on people. But it is simply not true that a politician must lie or intrigue. That is utter nonsense, spread about by people who – for whatever reasons – wish to discourage others from taking an interest in public affairs.



Of course, in politics, as elsewhere in life, it is impossible and pointless to say everything, all at once, to just anyone. But that does not mean having to lie. All you need is tact, the proper instincts, and good taste. One surprising experience from “high politics” is this: I have discovered that good taste is more useful here than a post-graduate degree in political science. It is largely a matter of form: knowing how long to speak, when to begin and when to finish; how to say something politely that your opposite number may not want to hear; how to say, always, what is most significant at a given moment, and not to speak of what is not important or relevant; how to insist on your own position without offending; how to create the kind of friendly atmosphere that makes complex negotiations easier; how to keep a conversation going without prying or being aloof; how to balance serious political themes with lighter, more relaxing topics; how to plan your official journeys judiciously and to know when it is more appropriate not to go somewhere, when to be open and when reticent and to what degree.



But more than that, it means having a certain instinct for the time, the atmosphere of the time, the mood of people, the nature of their worries, their frame of mind — that too can perhaps be more useful than sociological surveys. An education in political science, law, economics, history, and culture is an invaluable asset to any politician, but I have been persuaded, again and again, that it is not the most essential asset. Qualities like fellow-feeling, that ability to talk to others, insight, the capacity to grasp quickly not only problems but also human character, the ability to make contact, a sense of moderation: all these are immensely more important in politics. I am not saying, heaven forbid, that I myself am endowed with these qualities; not at all! These are merely my observations.



To sum up: if your heart is in the right place and you have good taste, not only will you pass muster in politics, you are destined for it. If you are modest and do not lust after power, not only are you suited to politics, you absolutely belong there. The “sine qua non” of a politician is not the ability to lie; he need only be sensitive and know when, what, to whom, and how to say what he has to say. It is not true that a person of principle does not belong in politics; it is enough for his principles to be leavened with patience, deliberation, a sense of proportion, and an understanding of others. It is not true that only the unfeeling cynic, the vain, the brash, and the vulgar can succeed in politics; such people, it is true, are drawn to politics, but, in the end, decorum and good taste will always count for more.

Social unrest grows in Haiti

By macleans.ca - Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 4:57 PM - 0 Comments

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon says Canada has located 53 previously missing Canadians in Haiti, bringing the total number of missing Canadians down to 1,362. The Canadian death toll in Haiti climbed to six on Saturday, 196 Canadians were being evacuated from the country. In leaving, the Canadians joined a mass exodus out of Port-au-Prince, with thousands fleeing the devastated city to find shelter in the countryside. “I have lost all my money,” Yves Manes told Reuters, ”but I will give my clothes, I will give anything, to get out of here.” According to a report in Britain’s Telegraph, many in Haiti’s capital are turning to violence as food and water supplies dwindle. “In one particularly shocking incident, a looter was spotted hauling a corpse from a coffin at a city cemetery so that he could drive away with the wooden box,” the paper reported. “There were reports of armed gangs setting up roadblocks to demand money and essential supplies from passing lorries and the UN said that the poor security situation meant it could not reach outlying areas with aid operations.”

CBC News

Reuters

The Telegraph

Greg Thompson steps away

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 2:20 PM - 44 Comments

The Veterans Affairs Minister announces his departure from cabinet and eventual departure from politics.

“I want to leave on my own terms and with a good record,” Thompson said as he sat is his small constituency office on Milltown Boulevard in St. Stephen. ”I’m one of the few members of Parliament who never had to take back a statement, who never had to apologize, and who never insulted individuals or groups in this country. I’ve always played by the rules that I believe elected politicians should play by, and I have been always very respectful of the political process.”

An MP's job "isn't to kill time in Ottawa"

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 6:40 PM - 23 Comments

Steven Blaney delivers the goods.

Via Jean-François Lisée over at our French-language sister site comes video evidence the Conservative script for explaining last December’s prorogation still has a few holes in it. During a panel discussion alongside opposition MPs on Radio-Canada this past Monday, Steven Blaney, the chair of the Quebec Conservative caucus, was forced to rely on the escape hatch of last resort: make things up as you go along.

Blaney baldly stated bills that were on the order paper would be “automatically re-activated” once Parliament comes back and that shutting everything down simply “prevents debates from going on forever.”

Of course, as his fellow panelists were all too eager to point out, and as everyone with even a passing interest in these things is seemingly aware, that’s patently untrue. (Though, to give Blaney credit, it’s true that prorogation prevents debates from dragging on, if only because it prevents them from taking place at all.) Blaney’s baffling ignorance of parliamentary procedure should perhaps come as no surprise given his other justifications for his extended winter vacation:

* “Stephen Harper is showing leadership.”

* “Our role as parliamentarians isn’t to kill time in Ottawa, it’s to deliver results… Right now, it’s to consult with our people on the budget, solve constituent issues, take care of immigration cases.”

* “What [constituents] want is a government and parliamentarians that deliver the goods.”

As Blaney so succinctly put it, “don’t take Canadians and Quebecers for a bunch of idiots.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

'Every ordeal is an opportunity'

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 5:29 PM - 0 Comments

In a posting for her Citizen Voices website, Michaelle Jean has written of Haiti and its citizens, invoking their enduring resilience and expressing hope for the future. “Its people,” she writes, “have survived decades of dictatorships, military oppression and coups d’état, and have fought relentlessly to reclaim their rights and freedoms.” She lauds relief efforts and also casts forward, calling for a lasting solution to Haiti’s myriad troubles. “We must all come out of this ordeal having grown,” she writes, “but we can only do so if this tragedy gives rise to a project that will allow Haiti to not only survive, but to fully control its destiny.”

Citizen Voices

Hope for Haiti

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 5:21 PM - 27 Comments

The Governor General writes of the Haitian people.

Every ordeal is an opportunity to rediscover what is essential and to learn from what has happened to better resist and return to life. This is what my grandmother told me and I have always thought she was speaking on behalf of our ancestors, that this was key to the Haitian people’s much-talked about resilience and inextricably linked to the country’s history.

“It haunted me for a great number of years”

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 4:40 PM - 0 Comments

Former residents of a Manitoba group home have received an apology from the province’s family services minister, Gord Mackintosh, for the harsh treatment they were subjected to while staying at the facility. The apology was prompted by a 63-page report into the matter by former provincial ombudsman Barry Tuckett. The residents say they suffered emotional harm from the home’s strict militaristic operating style, as well as the 1977 murder of a woman that several of the boys called “mom.” The report found that Henry (Red) Blake operated the home with structure, control, and discipline, but that his methods were one-dimensional and he ran it like a military environment. Its recommendations include individual healing plans for former residents, some of whom are now in their mid-40’s. The minister has promised at least half the former residents would benefit from grief counseling and other assistance. Blake’s wife, Phyllis, was shot and killed in Dec. 1977 by a boy planning an escape.

Winnipeg Free Press

Going out with a bang

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 4:32 PM - 0 Comments

The death of Guatemala City lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg came close to toppling his country’s government. In a video recorded just days before his death and posted to YouTube, Rosenberg not only predicted his looming assassination, he blamed it on the Guatemalan president. “If you are watching this message,” he intoned, “it is because I have been murdered by Alvaro Colom.” Turns out, Rosenberg’s apparent murder wasn’t a murder at all, but an elaborate suicide. Depressed over turmoil in his personal life, Rosenberg hired assassins to ambush him near his home and posted the video online, figuring it would render him a martyr. Conservatives in Guatemala rallied against the government, but Colom nonetheless held onto to power.

The Guardian

Informant: “The money did not play any role in my motivation”

By Michael Friscolanti - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 3:53 PM - 5 Comments

A Muslim businessman who was paid millions of dollars to help police bust a group of Toronto terrorists defended his hefty compensation for the first time today, insisting he was motivated by his “moral and civic duties as a Canadian citizen,” not dollar bills. “I was not in dire need of money,” said Shaher Elsohemy, testifying in a Brampton, Ont., courtroom Friday morning. “I had two side businesses and worked as an Air Canada flight attendant. The only time money was actually discussed was when the RCMP asked me to relocate and explained what that entails—leaving your house and your businesses behind. The only motive I had was based on my moral and civic duties as a Canadian citizen, and nothing but that.”

As first reported in Maclean’s, the RCMP paid Elsohemy $4 million to infiltrate a core group of “Toronto 18” suspects who were plotting a triple bomb attack in southern Ontario. The lucrative deal between the Mounties and their prized informant included cash, cars and homes for him, his wife, his daughter, his parents and his two brothers, all of whom abandoned their former lives in the name of national security and are now living under false identities.

It was Elsohemy who gained the trust of the group’s ringleader, shared his deadly plan with police, and helped the men purchase what they thought was three tonnes of explosive fertilizer. When the delivery truck arrived on June 2, 2006, the cops swooped in—and Elsohemy vanished into the witness protection program.

Three of the four bombing suspects have since confessed and pleaded guilty, including the linchpin, Zakaria Amara, who yesterday issued a public apology to “fellow Canadians” during his sentencing hearing. The 24-year-old—who at one point in the proceedings sobbed uncontrollably—said he has abandoned the radical Islamic ideology that fueled his murderous fantasies, and now feels “lucky” that the RCMP arrested him when they did. The fourth bombing suspect, Shareef Abdelhaleem, is fighting the charges in court. Which means that for the first time in almost four years, the undercover mole once known Shaher Elsohemy has emerged from the shadows to tell his side of the story.

Credible and well-spoken, Elsohemy has already spent four days on the witness stand, providing a damning blow-by-blow account of his dealings with Abdelhaleem. Bolstered by hours of police wiretaps, he has portrayed his one-time friend as Amara’s loyal underling, the man with envelopes full of cash and dreams of seeing downtown Toronto covered in “blood, glass and debris.” (By the time Elsohemy entered the picture, Amara had built a remote-controlled detonator and selected three targets: The Toronto Stock Exchange, the Toronto headquarters of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and an unnamed military base.)

Many fellow Muslims have attacked Elsohemy’s credibility, accusing him of cashing in on a concocted story. A traitor, they call him. The $4-million rat. But today, as prosecutor Iona Jaffe finished questioning her star witness, she offered him a chance to finally set the record straight. “To what extent did the money you receive motivate you to assist the police?” she asked, without mentioning the actual dollar figure. “The money did not play any role in my motivation,” said Elsohemy, a stocky, bald man wearing a dark suit and a blue tie. “The first time money was ever discussed was on the 15th of the April, and by then I had already worked with CSIS for nothing, uncovering the plot and providing valuable information.”

The timeline of events certainly suggests that Elsohemy was assisting the authorities, free of charge, long before compensation was ever discussed. Canada’s spy service first contacted him in December 2005, and during a subsequent meeting an agent showed him a series of photographs, including one of Shareef Abdelhaleem, a friend he had once vacationed with in Morocco. By then, the RCMP was already investigating a number of Abdelhaleem’s associates, including Amara, but CSIS was also conducing its own separate surveillance. (It is an important but often misunderstood distinction: CSIS collects intelligence to protect national security, while the Mounties collect evidence to be used at a criminal trial.)

According to Elsohemy, CSIS asked him in January 2006 to keep an eye on his friend—and an unnamed associate “working at a Canadian Tire gas bar” who turned out to be Zakaria Amara. Elsohemy obliged, and asked for nothing in return. Abdelhaleem introduced Elsohemy to Amara, and as the weeks wore on, Elsohemy voluntarily passed along snippets of information to his CSIS handlers, including the fact that Abdelhaleem—a computer programmer who earned a six-figure income and drove a convertible BMW—had grown obsessed with violent jihad videos and fighting alongside insurgents in Afghanistan.

Already aware that Amara had built a detonator that could be triggered with a cell phone, CSIS asked Elsohemy to “dangle” the fact that he has a university degree in agricultural sciences, and may be able to get his hands on ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the same explosive substance used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings. His ruse included telling Amara that his “uncle” owns a chemical plant.

On April 8, 2006, at a restaurant near the gas bar, Amara laid out his sinister plot for the first time. Three U-Haul trucks. Three targets. “Kicking ass like never before.” He then handed Elshoemy a piece of paper with two ingredients listed on it: Nitric Acid and Ammonium Nitrate. As far as Amara knew, he had just placed an order for the chemical brew he needed to build his bombs. What he didn’t know, of course, was that Elsohemy handed that piece of paper directly to CSIS.

A week later, CSIS handed Elsohemy to the RCMP.

The Mounties were anxious to use him as an “agent,” a paid source who is obligated to testify at trial. For Elsohemy, the stakes were suddenly much, much higher. As officers wrote in one briefing note dated April 21, “by being exposed as a person assisting the police” he “will be subject to possible serious retaliation from some of the other members of the Islamic community, some of whom will view [his] actions as being that of a traitor to Islam.”

Elsohemy was not just worried about his own safety. He knew that the rest of his immediate family was also in danger, and, like him, would have to leave everything behind and disappear into the witness protection program. So before he signed on the dotted line, Elsohemy wanted to make sure the family was properly compensated—not necessarily for his undercover work, but for having to upend their entire lives.

At the start of negotiations, Elsohemy originally demanded a package worth $15.4 million that would ensure a “comfortable lifestyle” for everyone. His offer included $900,000 for a new house, $500,000 for the loss of his business, $250,000 for his parents, $125,000 for each of his two brothers, and $40,000 to cover his wife’s “dental work.” According to that RCMP briefing note, his “position was that the value of the investigation, i.e., stopping the terrorist attack, would be worthy of that amount if there was no damage to life or property.” The Mounties disagreed, saying his co-operation was worth “more in the line” of $2.5 million. “[He] was less than thrilled about our offer,” the memo reads. At one point, the Mounties asked Elsohemy to sign a 30-day contract worth $20,000—and nothing in the way of protection. He refused.

But by the first week of May, both sides had settled on an acceptable arrangement that included a $500,000 “pure award” for Elsohemy, plus approximately $3.5 million worth of additional compensation for he and his family. A portion of the deal included $215,000 worth of debt repayment ($50,000 for Elsohemy, $40,000 for his parents, $100,000 for his older brother, and $25,000 for his younger brother).

On the witness stand Friday, Elsohemy compared his deal to what an employee might receive from his company if he were asked to move to another part of the country. He also made clear that during the three weeks he was exchanging figures with the Mounties (from mid-April until early May) his covert work never wavered. “That did not affect my work on the investigation,” he insisted. “I did not threaten to leave the investigation. I did not stop. I did not hold any information back.”

Four years later, Elsohemy does not have to hold back, either. After so much time in hiding—forced to lie low and keep his mouth shut while strangers shredded his character—the man who thwarted a very real bomb plot on Canadian soil had his chance to tell the truth: he went undercover to save lives, not to line his pockets.

Life as he once knew it is no more. His name has changed, his travel agency is gone, and not even his closest friends know the city he now calls home. The same is true for his whole family, six others in all. Put it that way, and $4 million doesn’t sound quite so appealing. “They asked for his help, and as a regular citizen he helped,” says one of Eslohemy’s old friends, who did not want his name published (and who still receives the odd phone call from a blocked number). “The only thing that bothers him is that he did his part, he helped, and in the end he gets crap for it. Everybody is giving him crap for it.”

Perhaps those people should listen to Iona Jaffe, a Crown attorney on the case. During Thursday’s sentencing hearing for Zakaria Amara, she asked the judge to visualize, at that very moment, what was happening at the Toronto Exchange Tower, one of the group’s targets. “People are going about their days, riding in the elevators, shopping in the concourses, or grabbing a coffee at one of the many coffee shops in the area,” she said. “If everything had gone according to plan—the plans Mr. Amara had terribly crafted—the lives of all those many people would have been forever changed. They would have been forever changed because many of those people would have been killed by the explosions Mr. Amara planned.”

“Why are those people feeling safe today?” Jaffe continued. “It’s not because of Zakaria Amara. It’s not because his plans were amateurish. It’s not because he backed away from his plans, realizing the massive error of his ways. It was because of one thing: police intervention.” And a police agent named Shaher Elsohemy.

“He has no regrets,” says another of his former associates. “But he will be glad to get his testimony over and done with. He wants to get on with his life.”

Wherever that is.

There will be poetry

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 3:48 PM - 11 Comments

Beware the wrath of creative writers.

People interested in contributing to Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament should send a poem of no more than 75 lines by e-mail (preferably as a Microsoft Word attachment) to: harper@mansfieldpress.net. Submissions will not be accepted after midnight Tuesday January 19 to ensure timely editing, production and distribution.

"We run the risk of riots"

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 15, 2010 at 3:23 PM - 0 Comments

The U.S. plans to send up to 10,000 troops to Haiti by Monday to help with the massive relief effort after an earthquake destroyed much of the country’s capital. In the meantime, Defence Minister Peter MacKay says Canada ishelping keep the peace in Haiti amid growing concerns the country could descend into social chaos. Reports of looting have started to emerge as supplies grow increasingly scarce in the devastated country. According to The Guardian, “groups of men with machetes roved the ruins seeking supplies of food or water; others used corpses as roadblocks, a macabre sign that the capital had reached breaking point after four days of apocalyptic scenes.” Brazil’s Defence Minister, Nelson Jobim, has ominously warned that “as long as the people are hungry and thirsty, as long as we haven’t fixed the problem of shelter, we run the risk of riots.” Meanwhile, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes estimated 30% of buildings throughout Port-au-Prince had been damaged by the quake, with the figure rising to 50% in some areas, and the Pan American Health Organization says the death toll could climb as high as 100,000. The UN currently has about $310 million in pledges for the relief effort, but plans to launch an appeal to for $550 million later Friday.

Canada.com
The Guardian
Times of London
BBC News