The Commons: A question of maturity

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 6:43 PM - 63 Comments

The Scene. “Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister,” Bob Rae said quite matter-of-factly. And this being Question Period, the Speaker allowed him to proceed.

“What was supposed to be the Canadian signature initiative on maternal health has been described as completely inadequate by the two major allies, that could get to a microphone, both the United States and the United Kingdom,” Mr. Rae continued. “I wonder if the Prime Minister can explain how such a major diplomatic setback could be occurring in the build up to the G8 which Canada is hosting.”

The Prime Minister stood to put Mr. Rae at ease.

“On the contrary, Mr. Speaker, the initiative on maternal a child health is supported throughout the G8. Of course G8 countries will have different priorities in terms of the specific things they fund. Particularly on the issue of abortion a number of G8 countries have a different position,” Mr. Harper said, without actually saying what his government’s position is.

“Whether it comes to our role in Afghanistan, our sovereignty over our Arctic or ultimately our foreign aid priorities,” Mr. Harper declared, “it is Canada and Canadians who will make Canadian decisions.”

Happy Conservatives leapt to their feet to applaud their leader’s coming-of-age. Indeed, the Prime Minister has surely matured greatly in the seven years since he felt Canada should stand with the Brits and Americans and go charging into war. Continue…

David Mills And the TV Writer's Non-Anonymity

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 6:42 PM - 0 Comments

In another era, the TV writer David Mills, who died suddenly yesterday as a result of a brain aneurysm, would have been another good writer for a number of good television shows, known and respected in the business and little-known outside it. But one of the striking, and perhaps surprising, things we’ve seen in the wake of Mills’s untimely death is that people knew who he was — and how good he was at his job — far beyond the insiders who worked with him. Mo Ryan at the Chicago Tribune rounds up some of the tributes to Mills, including this memorable tribute by Mills’ friend, critic Alan Sepinwall.

As I said, in another era, a television writer who didn’t create a successful show of his own (and even many who did) would not have been known to the general public. Yet Mills, whose own shows were not picked up — except Kingpin – and who spent most of his career writing for the Davids Milch and Simon, established something resembling a fan following, and had a style that fans felt they could identify. He was known, in part, because he used the internet to introduce himself to the public and share his own personal style of writing; as Sepinwall says, Mills started his blog at a time when he didn’t have a lot of other creative outlets. The blog was not a work of brilliance or anything; most TV writer blogs (or, in a previous era, TV writer contributions to usenet) aren’t. But by reading his own undiluted writing, fans could get a feel for his personality and see it in the heavily-rewritten world of other people’s shows.

There are other factors that give fans a better sense of who TV writers are, particularly the fact that writers are usually exclusive to one show at a time (rather than bouncing from show to show; even staff writers, not too long ago, might write scripts for three shows at the company that had them under contract). As fans follow a show, they notice certain names popping up after “written by” and form attachments to the writers of their favourite episodes. Sometimes the following is based on a misreading of what “written by” means — writers who get loved or hated by fans based on episodes that were largely written in the room. But sometimes it’s based on a sense that the writer has a unique sensibility, brings something individual to the table the way Mills broughts something different to NYPD Blue. And sometimes it’s based on the presence of the writer in the online community. TV writers aren’t exactly rock stars now, but they’re no longer anonymous; people know who they are and what they do.

Absenteeism

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 6:34 PM - 9 Comments

As I warned a few days ago, I’m going to be on assignment for a while. Blogging here will be even lighter than usual.

If you get a chance to check out the extraordinary new CD Into Light by the Vancouver chamber choir Musica Intima, you’ll be glad you did. I’ll be writing about it at greater length in a week or so.

Chechen rebel claims responsibility for Moscow bombings

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 5:45 PM - 1 Comment

Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov has claimed he was behind Monday’s metro explosions in Moscow, which killed 39 people and injured 85 others. In a 4 1/2-minute video posted online late Wednesday, Umarov said that he ordered the bombings in response to an attack on Chechens gathering garlic outside of Ingush village on February 11. He also promised that the bombings will continue. This admission contradicts an earlier statement by a spokesman for Umarov’s Caucasus Emirate organization, who denied they had any involvement. Also on Wednesday, two suicide bombers, one wearing a police uniform, killed at least a 12 people and injured at least 23 others in a coordinated attack in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region.

Moscow Times

Washington Post

Meanwhile, at committee…

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 4:46 PM - 7 Comments

A Foreign Affairs official directs blame at the military leadership.

Cory Anderson, a diplomat with three years’ experience on the Afghan file, told a Commons committee today the May, 2007, revamp of Canada’s detainee transfer agreement with Afghanistan was instrumental in improving the ability to track and monitor detainees transferred by Canadian soldiers.

But he went on to criticize the military for repeatedly declining to use close connections to Afghanistan’s intelligence service to make it easier for diplomats to conduct inspections that ensure transferred prisoners aren’t tortured. Mr. Anderson said the revamped May, 2007, agreement resulted in a two-tier system that left Foreign Affairs to fend for itself in monitoring.

More from Canadian Press.

The government responds

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 4:34 PM - 12 Comments

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, with an array of backbenchers positioned behind him to fill the TV frame, began his remarks at about 3:45pm and concluded about an hour later. Derek Lee and Claude Bachand offered brief remarks before the House was interrupted by notice of royal assent.

Here is the prepared text for Mr. Nicholson’s remarks. Continue…

Ignatieff to Harper: Fire Guergis

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 4:19 PM - 8 Comments

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff didn’t hold back in condemning Status of Women minister Helena Guergis earlier Wednesday. Ignatieff accused the Ontario MP of coordinating the letter-writing campaign that had Guergis’s staffers sending anonymous letters of praise about the junior minister to newspapers and magazines (like Maclean’s). “If they have someone make up little letters in my book that’s lying,” Ignatieff said. “And then pretending that you didn’t really have anything to do with it, it was all the staff—that’s lying a second time.” Ignatieff has called on Stephen Harper to fire the junior minister, saying Guergis is not “worthy of the confidence of Canadians.” Along with drawing the ire of members of the opposition, Guergis has reportedly also become alienated from some members of the Conservative caucus after a string of scandals that included a now-infamous tantrum in a P.E.I. airport.

Globe and Mail

CTV News

A most impressionable young man

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 3:38 PM - 2 Comments

Don’t blame Tiger! He was just hanging out with the wrong boys. At least, that’s what the golfer’s former legal advisor is saying: “I told him, ‘Stay away from that son of a bitch [Michael Jordan], because he doesn’t have anything to offer to the f***ing world in which he lives,’” lawyer John Merchant told Vanity Fair. Merchant claims that Tiger only fell from grace after he started hanging out with the likes of NBA partiers Jordan and Charles Barkley. “This is worse than one of Shakespeare’s tragedies,” Merchant bemoaned. Las Vegas nightclub hostess Jamie Jungers confirms that “One of the times [Woods] arrived in town, he texted me, ‘I’m gambling with Charles Barkley. Text me when you’re here.’” Another one of the disgraced golfer’s ladies, Loredana Jolie Ferriolo, says Michael Jordan once made a pass at her when she arrived at a casino in the Bahamas to hook up with Tiger.

New York Post

Skyservice forced into receivership

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 3:17 PM - 2 Comments

The number of Canadian airlines continues to dwindle after Toronto-based Skyservice Airlines shut down its operations Wednesday, forced into receivership by one of its creditors. The airline was founded in 1986 and operated flights for packaged holiday companies like Sunquest Vacations, flying a fleet of 20 planes to destinations in the southern United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. But last year’s recession and a heavy debt load proved too much for Skyservice, which reportedly owed millions to Sunquest. The airline began canceling flights Wednesday morning and said it will do everything possible to minimize the impact on affected passengers. Sunquest has also offered to find replacement flights for customers who were scheduled to fly on Skyservice planes. Skyservice’s shutdown comes near the end of the winter holiday travel season and almost one year after holiday tour operator Conquest Vacations folded its business in 2009. It joins a long list of airline failures in this country in recent years, including Ottawa’s Zoom Airlines, Vancouver’s Harmony Airways, Jetsgo and Canada 3000. Even Air Canada, the country’s largest airline, narrowly avoided a second trip through bankruptcy protection last summer.

Toronto Star

Death penalty dying?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 3:14 PM - 5 Comments

According to a report from the Death Penalty Information Center, American death sentences fell to 106 in 2009, their seventh straight year of decline and the lowest total since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. ACLU leaders attributed the decline to public concerns about wrongful convictions and the high costs of capital punishment. The group’s branch in California—which has the largest Death Row of any state, with 701 prisoners, more than one-fifth of the nation’s total—cited a state commission’s 2008 report that said capital punishment was costing California $137 million a year. It would cost another $95 million a year to cut appeals times to the national average, the panel said. “All California communities would be better served if California opted for permanent imprisonment as a safe and cost-effective alternative to the death penalty,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California. The ACLU report, based on state records, pointed to another long-term trend, an increase in the number of African Americans and Latinos on Death Row. They accounted for more than 65 per cent of the death sentences in 2009 and make up more than 58 percent of the condemned prisoners in the state, compared with 44 percent of the general population, the report said.

San Francisco Chronicle

Newsmakers: Feuds

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 0 Comments

Kevin Smith vs. Southwest
The U.S. airline booted the cult filmmaker off a flight because he was too fat to fit into only one seat. The plane’s employees told the Cop Out director his girth might ruin the experience for his seatmate and prevent “a timely exit from the aircraft.” Smith, a self-proclaimed “fatty,” used his Twitter feed to stir up fan outrage, saying Southwest messed with “the wrong sedentary processed-foods eater!” After hearing from angry Smith fans, airline representatives apologized to him. But they’d never have treated Alfred Hitchcock this way.

White Stripes vs. u.s. Air Force
Rock stars are always protesting when politicians use their songs, but only the White Stripes have the guts to take on the U.S. military. Band members Meg and Jack White decried the U.S. Air Force Reserve’s Super Bowl commercial, which used music eerily similar to their song Fell in Love With a Girl “to encourage recruitment during a war that we do not support.” The air force pulled the ad from its website. Who knew such a powerful fighting force could be defeated by two musicians from Detroit?

Marcia vs. Jan
A planned reunion of the kids from The Brady Bunch was canceled due to sibling rivalry: Maureen McCormick (Marcia) and Eve Plumb (Jan) “did not want to be on the same show.” Plumb is still apparently angry that McCormick’s memoir, Here’s the Story, boosted its sales by implying the two actresses had a brief lesbian relationship. She should bear in mind that the last time she refused to do a Brady Bunch reunion, she was replaced by another actor: Geri Reischl, now known as the “fake Jan.”

Conan vs. NBC
Conan O’Brien’s brief stint as host of The Tonight Show ended with NBC giving him a big cash payment to end his contract, and several episodes featuring expensive props charged to NBC. The catch was, O’Brien could not make disparaging remarks about the people who fired him. But NBC neglected to make such a deal with his sidekick, Andy Richter, who went on Live! With Regis and Kelly to blast NBC’s “short-sighted” planning. Maybe on Conan’s upcoming comedy tour, he’ll be contractually obligated to let Richter do all the talking.

Eric Massa vs. Rahm Emanuel
U.S. Democratic congressman Eric Massa, who resigned his seat for “health reasons” before it came to light he had groped male staffers, claimed he was “set up” by Obama’s ruthless chief of staff. Massa, who voted against Obama’s health care plan, said a naked Emanuel threatened him in the showers at the congressional gym. But when he was invited on Glenn Beck’s show, Massa changed his story, saying he was not forced out. Which can only mean that the Emanuel conspiracy, which has produced so many obsessive articles about Emanuel, has gotten to Massa.

SRC vs. Italians
Radio-Canada aired a comedy sketch in which a stereotypical Italian family, the Jambonis, appears on a game show. The Canadian Italian Business and Professional Association complained to the CRTC and demanded an apology for the “racist” sketch, where the family threatens to put a hit on the host and talk about how influential they are in the Quebec construction industry. CIBPA’s vice-president, Giuliano D’Andrea, argued there must be “limits to freedom of expression.” But don’t take that as a threat.

Helena Guergis vs. Charlottetown
After the federal Tory cabinet minister swore at Charlottetown airport security personnel and said they’d cause her to be “stuck in this s–thole,” an anonymous resident got revenge for the city by publicizing her outburst in a letter, forcing her to apologize. Guergis had been in the P.E.I. capital announcing a federal initiative she claimed would help more women and girls in P.E.I. “reach their full potential.” Which apparently means getting out of there as quickly as possible.

The Fans VS. George Lucas
At last, a movie about how much Star Wars fans hate the Star Wars creator for Ewoks, Jar Jar Binks and more. Alexandre Philippe’s The People vs. George Lucas interviews many disappointed fans, including a band that sings George Lucas Raped Our Childhood. But Philippe, himself a big fan of the original movies, says he still loves Lucas and wants him to “return to his early experimental roots.” You know, like movies about space princesses and robots.

Tiger vs. Charlie

By Patricia Treble and Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 4 Comments

Dirty on the inside

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 2:10 PM - 0 Comments

Calgary Police Chief Rick Hanson says organized criminal gangs are trying to infiltrate the province’s justice system. Hanson’s comments came during a legislative committee hearing into organized crime during which the police chief revealed an investigation is underway into an unspecified incident involving such allegations. “It’s ongoing,” Hanson said of the case, declining to elaborate further. Alberta Justice Minister Alison Redford, however, said Tuesday that no internal investigations are under way within her department and insisted “we are not dealing with situations where there are investigations or reason for investigations to be going on.” The Liberal party’s justice critic, Kent Hehr, concurred with Hanson’s claims, saying “it would be naive to believe that we have not had a dirty police officer or two or a dirty Crown prosecutor.”

Edmonton Journal

Stay tuned

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:48 PM - 8 Comments

When asked Monday night if a response to the detainee document question of privilege was forthcoming this week, the Justice Minister’s office said “stay tuned.” Rumour now has it that the government may respond after Question Period today.

Mr. Nicholson’s office has not responded to a request to confirm that, but either way we should know within the next hour and a half.

Actually… this just in from the Justice Minister’s office:

Please be advised:
The Honourable Rob Nicholson, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, will deliver the Government’s response to questions of privilege raised in the House of Commons following Question Period today.

Thanks.

The fan club

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 1:29 PM - 43 Comments

The Liberals are alleging a letter-writing campaign, formal or informal, on Helena Guergis’ behalf that now includes her executive assistant, her executive assistant’s mother, a constituency assistant, a former riding president and the assistant of a Conservative MP in a neighbouring riding.

CTV reports that members of the Prime Minister’s Office are “praying before Buddha” that Ms. Guergis resigns. It is unclear, at this hour, just how many members of the PMO are Buddhists.

The problem with our MPs is that we need more of them

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 12:26 PM - 32 Comments

Alan Broadbent throws out some ideas for improving our House of Commons.

One of the problems our MPs have with being braver is the fact that their careers aren’t very long anyway. Canadian MPs spend less than five years in the House on average, either being defeated or deciding not to run again. This is far less than in other parliaments around the world. Canada has a relatively large number of ridings that swing between parties, perhaps 25 per cent, so many members are just getting their feet under them when it is time to leave. This doesn’t allow them to master either the parliamentary process or the substance of a key public issue before they go back to private life.

One solution that has been suggested over the years is to increase the size of the House of Commons, perhaps even doubling it. This would allow a riding like Toronto Centre, which is likely NDP in the south end and Conservative in the north end, but elects either Liberals or left-leaning Progressive Conservatives (in the old days), to return one NDP and perhaps one Conservative member who might have considerable longevity.

Guergis in trouble again

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 12:11 PM - 3 Comments

The past couple of months have not been good for Helena Guergis. After an embarrassing outburst at a Prince Edward Island airport last month, during which she reportedly berated airline staffers, the Status of Women minister has landed in hot water again. It has been revealed that one of Guergis’ staffers, Jessica Craven, wrote a series of letters to publications in the Simcoe-Grey riding defending her boss, but failing to disclose her identity. Instead, Craven signed the letters, in which she complimented Guergis and claimed the airport outburst was not newsworthy, as “Jessica Morgan”—apparently using the surname of the man she is in a relationship with. According to Guergis, she was unaware of the letters, and has since had a conversation with Craven. “We did discuss that it was inappropriate. She apologized and assured me that it will not happen again,” she says. But Liberal P.E.I. MP Wayne Easter, who called for Guergis’ dismissal after the airport incident, isn’t buying it. “How could she not know? Any minister or department is always in the media monitoring, on anything that comes up with that departmental name or that minister’s name in it,” he said.

Ottawa Citizen

Should you take a cholesterol drug if you’re healthy?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 12:06 PM - 1 Comment

The U.S. government has approved a new cholesterol drug called Crestor, which targets a new category of customers: those who don’t have cholesterol problems, and will take it as a preventative measure, the New York Times reports. But some wonder if this is a good move, pointing to concern that cholesterol meds, called statins (and already the most widely prescribed drugs in the U.S.) might not be as safe when taken preventively. New research suggests that statins might raise a person’s risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 9 per cent. Under criteria approved by the Food and Drug Administration, an estimated 6.5 million people in the U.S. with no cholesterol problems, and no sign of heart problems, could be candidates for statins, in addition to the 80 million who already meet the guidelines. Crestor says it can be prescribed for apparently healthy people who are older and have one risk factor, like smoking or high blood pressure, in addition to elevated inflammation in the body. But some patients also complain of muscle aches due to statins, even though doctors have typically seen the risks as offset by people who have high levels of “bad” cholesterol.

New York Times

Africa in a bid for giant radio telescope

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 11:48 AM - 0 Comments

Africa and Australia have been shortlisted to host the world’s most powerful radio telescope, which would be able to look billions of years back in time, Reuters reports. The Square Kilometre Array telescope, which will be 50 times more sensitive and 10,000 times faster than any other radio imaging telescope ever built, will eventually consist of about 3,000 antennas. If Africa wins the bid, which will be announced in 2012, half of them will be at the main site on the Northern Cape of South Africa, with the rest in countries including Namibia, Ghana and Zambia. South Africa has already built the first seven antennas of the Karoo Array Telescope in this location. “The SKA will look back into the beginnings of the universe, over 12 billion years ago, when galaxies started to form out of the Big Bang. We will be able to study the evolution of the universe,” project scientist Deborah Shepherd told Reuters. It will scan for alien life in other galaxies and look at the first black holes and stars. The telescope should be fully operational by 2022, and will have a lifespan of at least 50 years.

Reuters

Iranian nuclear scientist defected to U.S.

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:53 AM - 0 Comments

An Iranian nuclear scientist who disappeared in June defected to the United States in a CIA operation, ABC News has reported. Shahram Amiri vanished during a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and has not been seen since. Iran immediately accused the United States of kidnapping Amiri. According to ABC News, however, he willingly defected and has provided information on Iran’s nuclear program to American intelligence services.

ABC News

Inside Russian corruption

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:50 AM - 1 Comment

This brilliant, angry, funny essay on the extremes of Russian corruption comes from an award-winning Moscow-based TV reporter named Andrei Loshak. He starts with the saga of how Russia’s endemic official culture of kickbacks, nepotism and gangsterism finally wore down IKEA’s dogged attempts to import its trademark Scandinavian efficiency and logic. He ends with a cinematic vision of off-the-grid Ural villagers defying the state’s arbitrary repression in an emblematic bid for some sort of dignity and freedom. In between, drunken, destructive police, and the author’s sustaining Russian sense of humour, Loshak’s voice makes this bleak reality feel almost uplifting.

Open Democracy

Pack your bags, honey, we're moving to Oshawa

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:32 AM - 37 Comments

Ouch.

QUEBEC – Quebecers can look forward to paying a new “health contribution” and a 15-per-cent sales tax in 2012 under the budget Finance Minister Raymond Bachand brought down yesterday.

“The initiatives we are announcing today will have little impact on Quebecers’ disposable income in 2010,” Bachand said. “They will take effect gradually, so that Quebecers can prepare for them.”

[...]

But the most innovative measure in a budget that trims government spending and increases what citizens pay will come July 1, when a $25 (per adult) health “contribution” comes into force. [ed's note: yes, innovative. Just like IEDs and colonoscopies...]

This health contribution will increase to $100 in 2011 and $200 in 2012 and 2013, generating revenues of $945 million in each of those years.

Another proposal, still not finalized, calls for a health T4 for taxpayers on which they would list how often in the year they saw a doctor.

At $25 a visit, an adult taxpayer would pay $250 more for health care a year after 10 visits, with a ceiling of one per cent of taxable income.

Bachand hopes to collect another $500 million a year through this measure.

Coupled with the health contribution, these measures would mean an additional $1.45 billion to fund health care by 2013.

Concerns and complaints

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 10:23 AM - 7 Comments

The Globe details the frustrations of two military commanders who found the detainee reporting process to be lacking.

In May, 2007, after allegations that prisoners were being abused, Ottawa toughened its detainee transfer agreement to provide for monitoring visits that allowed Canadians to ensure Afghans weren’t torturing captives. The federal government has held this up as a “robust monitoring system” that ensured it could quickly react to abuse.

But six months later, the Canadian Forces clearly felt monitoring and reports weren’t reaching them. Brig.-Gen. Laroche in his letter lamented “the fact that meaningful investigation reports into previous abuse allegations have yet to be received.” He said this meant there could be a “larger systemic problem” concerning detainees. “This puts this headquarters and indeed the Canadian Forces, in a difficult position.”

Meanwhile, the CBC’s experiment in citizen journalism produces several more redaction curiosities.

Fan mail

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 8:12 AM - 44 Comments

As our Cathy Gulli reports, another employee of Helena Guergis has been found to have penned a supportive letter to the editor—this one received by Maclean’s two and a half weeks ago in response to this story.

Guergis wasn’t aware of her letter either, says Knight, which she penned out of frustration one Sunday morning after reading the magazine article. She doesn’t regret not identifying herself in the letter, and says she was exercising free speech. “People are dying for that friggin’ right.” Nor is Knight concerned about what her boss will think. “I don’t care what [Guergis] thinks of my letter, quite frankly. I mean, it’s a letter. She knows how I feel,” Knight told Maclean’s. “She knows that if I want to say something, you can’t stop me.”

After the jump, the full text of Ms. Knight’s note. Continue…