An Act of Courage
By Ken MacQueen - Thursday, March 18, 2010 - 2 Comments
Skating just days after her mother’s death, Joannie Rochette delivered one of the Games’ defining moments
Photograph by Paul Chiasson/ Canadian Press
It was late; 11 p.m. had come and gone, and Joannie Rochette, the bronze medal around her neck, was still lingering at Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum, talking about the sudden death of her mother Thérèse. “It feels good for me to talk about it,” she said. An empty arena can be a chill and spooky place, but for Rochette, any rink echoes with memories of home. The audience of almost 12,000, at turns boisterous and weepy, had long since filed out, doubly blessed by two moments of Olympic magic.
First, they had witnessed four minutes of near perfection in the gold-medal skate of Korea’s Yu-Na Kim, the 19-year-old prodigy coached by Brian Orser, one of the finest male skaters Canada has produced. It was fluid and strong and so self-assured that even those unschooled in the intricacies of the sport could see Kim operated at a different level. As the last strains of Gershwin’s Concerto in F faded, and the crowd roared, Kim surprised even herself: she started to cry.
Later, the 19-year-old Kim seemed almost embarrassed by this weakness. She never cries, she said. “Watching previous figure skaters, I always wondered why they cried after their performance,” she says. “I’m really happy. I don’t know why I cried.”
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Quite an introduction
By Paul Wells - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 5 Comments
Between the sometimes-luminous opening ceremonies and the corny clichés of the closing show, Canada presented versions of itself the world had never seen
Photograph by: Amy Sanchetta/AP (left), Tannen Maury/EPA/Keystone (top right), David J. Philip/AP (bottom right)
Careful what you wish for. For two weeks, armchair pop-spectacle producers from coast to coast indulged in one of the most popular events of this Vancouver Olympic season: critiquing the opening ceremonies. Too morose. Too much weird symbolism. Too many Aboriginal dancers.
And, this being Canada, everybody had their own checklist of the excluded. Not enough Ontario (said the Ontarians). Not enough spoken French. Not enough youth, humour, urbanity, what have you.
But what would happen if some cosmic joker actually wrote down the sum of all the kvetching and produced a show that gave Canadian audiences what so many had complained was missing? Okay, you nation of backseat drivers, we’ll give you rappers and phonetic French and rock bands and Michael Bublé until you beg for Aboriginal dancers.
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Your ‘downturn,’ their ‘upturn’
By Mark Steyn - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 8:40 AM - 76 Comments
Still foolish enough to be in the private sector paying for the benefits of the public sector?
Image by Everett Collection
I can’t remember exactly when I first encountered a pop-culture jetpack. Was it James Bond’s, courtesy of Q, in Thunderball? Or was it some comic book? At any rate, I no longer have to wait for mine. Martin Aircraft of Christchurch, New Zealand, have put one into production, for the cost of a top-of-the-line automobile—or about $100,000. It’s not clear to me where you’d be able to fly it, since government air-traffic agencies don’t seem eager to contemplate a world of individual human flight patterns. But still: the Bond jetpack is belatedly here.
Other than that, the future seems unlikely to be quite as futuristic as expected. The problem facing the developed world isn’t so very difficult to figure out. We’re living beyond not just our means but everybody’s means. You can strap on your jetpack, but where would you go? In the United States, Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute calculates that if the federal government were to increase every single tax by 30 per cent it would be enough to balance the books—in 25 years. Except that it wouldn’t. Because if you raised taxes by 30 per cent, government would spend even more than it already does, on the grounds that the citizenry needed more social programs and entitlements to compensate for their sudden reduction in disposable income.
In Canada, the average household’s debt-to-income ratio reached an all-time high in 2009. Credit-card holders at least three months behind with their payments increased by 40 per cent.
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Oh well, whatever, never mind
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 9:30 PM - 67 Comments
Steven Fletcher, minister of state for democratic reform, Monday. “On the issue of the ten percenters, I do not know what the party opposite has against freedom of speech. I do not know what the party opposite has against the rights of Canadians for a public discourse. Canadians have the good sense to know what information they can find valuable. They do not need the Liberal Party of Canada to censor what they see. Canadians can judge for themselves what is relevant to their lives, to tell what information is valuable to them, and also it is an opportunity to see what other parties stand for. Everyone has equal privileges to these ten percenters. It is a way of ensuring that Canadians are informed. It improves public discourse and it is a way to improve our democracy. We live in the best country in the world and the best time in human history to be alive. The Conservative Party is the party that will ensure that Canada remains glorious and free.”
The Prime Minister’s Office, tonight. “We support getting rid of out-of-riding 10 percenters so long as the restriction applies to all parties.”
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Absinthe and logarithms
By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 6:18 PM - 38 Comments
(Reuters) – Christie’s has put a record price tag on an important Picasso painting from his celebrated Blue Period that will be offered for sale in London in June. Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto (The Absinthe Drinker), dated 1903, is expected to fetch 30-40 million pounds ($45-60 million), the highest pre-sale estimate for any work of art offered at auction in Europe.
I don’t know if anyone else does this, but I think about art prices on a logarithmic scale, the way we rate earthquakes and loud noises. Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet (I), which sold for $138 million in today’s dollars, would be an 8.1. The most expensive single works by Jeff Koons or John Singer Sargent are around 7.4. Mary Cassatt’s about a 6½; Borduas or Kurelek, around 5½; and so on, right down to the creators of embroidery samplers at your local craft fair. Logarithms make things like this a lot more comprehensible; they make the whole Great Chain of Being visible, they permit interpolation and prediction, and they run almost from 1 to 10. To 9, anyway, if you assume that there are objets d’art with a hypothetical market value of nearly a billion dollars, which there surely are. It’s not important how much an artwork or an artist’s oeuvre is worth at auction, of course, except that an ounce of revealed preference is worth a ton of gum-flap.
Picasso has a lot of paintings still changing hands between collectors and is therefore always contending for nominal-dollar auction records. It’s interesting to me to find him still doing so 40 years after his death; somebody paid a magnitude-8 price for a Dora Maar painting a few years ago. How much of Picasso’s standing in the marketplace comes from the plain fact that he became synonymous with “painting” during his life—largely on the basis of bluster and myth and populist touches and, above all, surviving the big wars cockroach-fashion—and that, as a result, even dumb people have heard of him and have a shot at recognizing his work? I am inclined to think the answer is “A lot”. Nor does it hurt that there’s a lingering fragrance (or stench) of Old Left romanticism attached to his name.
I don’t mean to suggest that these features of Picasso are not every bit as “real” as his technical gifts or his innovativeness, but when one considers these paintings as equities, as items that will have a certain resale value in the year 2100, the social resonances that accompany the man’s name are bound to fade in memory. I wonder if he will remain an 8. When some Japanese executive pays that kind of price for a good Van Gogh, he’s paying for Van Gogh’s power—acquired by being spiritually injured in a certain way, at a particular place and time—to endow ordinary objects and scenes with a particular beauty and cosmic significance. Van Gogh might not be your particular cup of cadmium, but somebody will definitely still feel that way about those paintings in the future. It’s a lot harder to be sure about Picasso, at least in his various 20th-century incarnations.
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Rights advocate speaks against copyright conviction
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 6:07 PM - 4 Comments
Says Montreal video pirate’s case sets a dangerous precedent
The man formerly known as Canada’s biggest video pirate is serving a two-and-a-half month sentence for violating copyright laws in a case that one civil rights advocate says may jeopardize the privacy rights of Canadians. The sentencing of Gérémi Adam, which was handed down after he was convicted of distributing pirated movies and filming a screening in a Montreal theatre has raised the ire of Chris Brand, co-founder of the Vancouver Fair Copyright Coalition. He says new laws passed by the Conservative government in 2007 that make recording movies illegally a criminal offence go too far. “In order to know that I’m not downloading any works illegally, you have to monitor my internet connection. That’s not the kind of society that I want to live in,” he says. Brand also feels that the maximum six month sentence and $25,000 fine for making illegal recordings are too extreme, and that studios would be better off making movies available online for free instead of pressuring governments to fight downloading. “I’d really like to see the day when the movie studios recognize that a lot of the works that get spread around the internet actually act as free advertising for them and get more people into the movie theatres,” he says.
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The Commons: A good day spoiled
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 6:03 PM - 37 Comments
The Scene. The Prime Minister was having a fine time.
John McCallum asked if the government might commit to ceasing the production of ten-percenters and the Prime Minister took the opportunity to mock Michael Ignatieff’s absence from the House—because, of course, the idea that a political leader would leave Ottawa and travel the country to consult with Canadians is patently hysterical. Asked to account for an increase in employment insurance premiums, he easily mocked the Liberals as reckless and free-spending. Reclining contentedly as he awaited Mr. McCallum’s third question, he tapped out a tune on the arm of his chair.
Gilles Duceppe tried to provoke the Prime Minister on sales tax harmonization and was effortlessly dismissed. Jack Layton wondered if the Prime Minister might commit to a new restriction on prorogation and Mr. Harper thoroughly enjoyed the chance to invoke a Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition. All seemed to be going splendidly, the Prime Minister sporting something of a smirk as he sat and listened.
Then though the NDP leader stood and turned the discussion toward sex, specifically the government’s apparent decision to exclude contraception from its commitment to improve maternal health in the developing world. And here, where normally Mr. Harper would be expected to respond another party leader’s question, the Prime Minister leaned forward and looked down his row to the near corner of his frontbench.
“Bev,” he called. Continue…
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The will of the House
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 5:54 PM - 15 Comments
The NDP’s motion calling for a limit on prorogation has just now passed the House by a 139-135 vote.
Over then to the constitutional scholars to debate what this meaning, its precise significance undefined, one supposes, until some Prime Minister dares test it.
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The politics of IQ
By Charlie Gillis - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 5:41 PM - 19 Comments
Squabbling persists over who’s smarter, liberals or conservatives. Maybe a better question is: who cares?
Grubby as it can be, politics remains at bottom a contest of ideas. One side claims the superiority of its program and values. The other responds in kind, and voters decide which they like best.
Or, in Canada’s case, which they dislike least.
What happens, though, when someone suggests members of one political group are themselves smarter than the folks on the other side?
A recent study out of the London School of Economics did just that, purporting to show among other things that atheistic liberals boast higher IQs, on average, than their religious and conservative counterparts.
Author Satoshi Kanazawa, an “evolutionary psychologist,” then went on to draw some incendiary and fanciful conclusions from his findings: conservatism, he explained, is a very human predisposition based on self-interest—a bred-in-the-bone inclination to care about family and friends rather than the wider world that is genetically unrelated to us. Liberalism, meanwhile, reflects a more evolved willingness to embrace novel ideas and to care about those we don’t see or know, he said; it springs from greater intelligence and awareness, and takes brains to pull off comfortably.
As such, he said, liberals are less likely to need such psychological crutches like God to get through life. “More intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists,” Kanazawa wrote in the study, which was published in the journal Social Psychology Quarterly.
At first glance, the findings looked like a gift to the non-religious left, which in the U.S. at least has a history of claiming intellectual superiority. It is a peculiar form of identity politics, grounded in the notion that brainy sorts are most likely to join a club that would have themselves as members (apologies to Groucho Marx).
Consider the reaction six years ago, when the launch of Air America moved progressive commentators to predict that this liberal answer to right-wing, open-mouth radio would fall flat. Liberals, they theorized, are too smart and open-minded to be Ditto-heads, of course. If that meant sitting still for a daily pasting at the hands of Rush Limbaugh, well, that’s the price you pay for being progressive (they were right: Air America shut for good in January, though its demise probably had more to do with poor management and in-fighting than the IQs of its listeners).
Why then, are liberals running so hard from Kanazawa’s study?
Possibly because the armchair statisticians who lurk the digi-sphere have done such a great job rubbishing both its design and logic. Shockingly, some of these clever people are conservatives, like the Canadian libertarian Neil Reynolds. Others are what Margaret Thatcher might have called squishy, and proud to be so.
These critics are quick to point out that the purported spread between the IQs of progressives and reactionaries is only six points—within the margin of error of many IQ tests. How, they ask, can one draw conclusions about human development over a few millennia based on a sample of 15,000 Americans surveyed in the late 1990s—and adolescent Americans at that?
Liberals may also be troubled by the checkered history of this sort of inquiry. Quite apart from its eugenic overtones, past claims that liberals were brainier than conservatives generally have been proven unfounded or been exposed as hoaxes. Five years ago, the Economist printed a graphic indicating people from U.S. states that voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election were on average dimmer than those from states that went Democrat. Alas, the venerable British magazine was forced to print a correction, admitting it had been sucked in by an internet hoax.
Other studies based on the findings of the U.S. General Social Survey have found virtually no statistical difference between the IQs of people who vote Democrat and those who vote Republican (this blog suggests the “advantage” has been see-sawing back and forth, with the Dems inching ahead by a half-point in ’04).
But most of the suspicion boils down fear over how the theory plays into more deeply cast political identities. That old eastern-intellectual label remains an enduring problem for Democrats in the U.S.—and to a lesser degree large-L Liberals in Canada. The perception isn’t so much that they are smarter than everyone else as that they think they are—and thus feel entitled to tell others how to run their lives.
Small wonder then, that a sworn enemy of the religious right like P.Z. Myers, a University of Minnesota biologist who has waged war against proponents of intelligent design, is warning his blog readers to “stop patting yourselves on the back over this study,” and advising them to “ignore anything with Kanazawa’s name on it.”
Liberals may not be all that much brighter than conservatives, on average. But they’re smart enough, evidently, to know trouble when they see it.
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Evidence matters
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 4:16 PM - 77 Comments
In his YouTube interview last night, the Prime Minister cited “evidence” in explaining his government’s crime policy. Dan Gardner congratulates Mr. Harper, then mocks.
Harper is right that certainty, not severity, deters crime. But that “certainty” is not the “certainty” of getting prison time when you stand in front of a judge to hear your sentence. It’s the certainty of getting caught. Sentencing? Is Harper serious? At the time someone is contemplating a crime, sentencing is a vague notion far away in a distant future that the would-be criminal seldom considers because — please note — would-be criminals tend to be impulsive people who do not consider the future consequences of their actions… even if they know what the sentence for a crime is, which they probably don’t because would-be criminals also tend to be badly educated and poorly informed.
Oddly enough, Mr. Harper’s Justice Department has so far been unable to provide any evidence that suggests mandatory minimums deter crime (or, for that matter, that the sentences it is legislating differ from the sentences that are already being enforced).
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Harper's G8 "maternal health" plan: 0 for 3 and counting
By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 4:07 PM - 105 Comments
See, the thing about the Harper government’s plan to present a maternal and child health initiative at the G8 that wouldn’t include any provision for family planning (let us call it by its names: access to abortion and contraception) is that the Harper government would be presenting it at the G8. Which means that, if they are looking for anything but a fight, the Conservatives need to present a plan that would be compatible with the policies of other G8 countries.
So this morning I called around. Three G8 partners have responded so far: the U.S., the United Kingdom and the European Union (France, the UK, Italy and Germany all attend as individual G8 members and the European Commission kind of hangs around too). I’m waiting on another country to get back to me, but I’m struck by the uniform response of the first three: each declined to put up a government spokesperson or diplomat to speak directly to this morning’s Globe story, but each referred me to specific documents outlining their own policy on maternal and child health. And the documents they pointed to were… eloquent. Here’s the roundup: Continue…
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Mexican strays fly to Calgary
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 3:55 PM - 0 Comments
Non-profit finding foreign dogs a home
A company called Pawsitive Match is flying stray Mexican dogs to Calgary for adoption. About 15 pups arrive every month from La Paz, Mexico, part of an area of the country where there are up to 10,000 strays. “They’re beaten, they’re kicked, they’re thrown out of cars there,” says Mirella Montgomery, head of Pawsitive Match. However, the Calgary humane society, which is full with about 130 dogs ready to be adopted, is urging people to rescue local pets before turning to other countries.
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Maclean's Live Chat with Paul Wells – Chat log
By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 3:52 PM - 18 Comments
Macleans.ca: Welcome to Maclean’s live chat. We’ll start taking your questions at 1:00 pm est. And Paul will start answering around 1:30 pm As usual, keep your questions clean and well thought out. Thanks! Paul Wells: OK, let’s make the magic happen. Hi everyone, Paul Wells here in Toronto (playing hooky from Ottawa for a change). Let’s go to the first question, if I can figure this software out: @RamaraMan: UEFA Champions League Who’ll win today Stuttgart or Barcelona? Paul Wells: RamaraMan, that’s easy. Stuttgart has powerful strikers and a really excellent defense. Barcelona is doomed. Paul Wells: I made all of that up. Onward: Elliott: What is the most interesting topic on which you’ve ever reported? Paul Wells: Elliott, your question’s been up for a while and I thought about it. I really think it was the sovereignty debate in Quebec, which I covered pretty obsessively from 1994 to 2000, first for the Montreal Gazette and then for the National Post. Paul Wells: It had everything: identity politics (the same thing at play in the Middle East or in immigration politics around the world, only (barely) calmer); a real sense that Canada was failing, without it being clear why that was; a national obsession with what Tom Courchene has called “federalism as structure” over “federalism as process” that nearly broke the country up; a constant laboratory of test cases for a reporter trying to learn how to tell when I should report what was being said straight, whether I agreed with it or not, and when to weigh in with my personal opinion. That last, of course, is a hard question for any journalist to handle, and you can draw a pretty straight line between my coverage of the sovereignty debate and my transmutation/degeneration into life as a full-time opinion columnist. ChrisWPG: Afternoon Paul, my question is do you think there is a scandal brewing within the government and its abuse of the Access to Information Act? Paul Wells: I’m gonna go with “no.” I think the government’s handling of the public’s right to information is, in the purest sense of the word, scandalous. This country has laws. The law in question was passed by a Progressive Conservative government — Mulroney’s — whose heritage Harper likes to claim when it suits him. And the law is based on a simple bedrock principle of democracy: people should be able to know how they are governed. This government flouts that principle every day in 100 ways. It’s one reason I get very, very angry at Robert Marleau, the former Commissioner of Information, for spending two years fiddling with his office’s internal organization and then quitting just as he was running out of excuses to hold this government more sternly to account. Paul Wells: But is it a scandal in the sense that it would galvanize public attention and move votes in large numbers? Paul Wells: I think to ask the question is to answer it: Nope. The handling of requests for information is what we call a “process story,” and those don’t normally occupy the centre of public debate because it’s hard to show how they touch people’s real lives. Which is one reason the Harper government is comfortable that it can get away with this kind of behaviour. Holly Stick: How do we switch the emphasis from political gamesmanship to enacting good government. Is the media responsible for the gamesmanship obsession or are they reflecting the concerns of politicians, or other? Paul Wells: The media (a word I dislike because it suggests we’re a monolith when many of us barely know one another) do take a lot of blame for the emphasis on political gamesmanship, but I want to try to help explain why that’s the case. I’ll do that in the next “take.” (I’m filing long answers in bits so you’re not all stuck staring at a blank screen while I compose my thoughts.) So…. Paul Wells: Think about the gradual erosion of the Ottawa news bureaus over the past several years. When I arrived in Ottawa in 1994, I was junior man in a three-person Montreal Gazette bureau. The Hamilton Spec, London Free Press, Edmonton Journal, Vancouver Sun, all had Ottawa reporters. The Globe had dedicated Ottawa beat reporters on every major policy beat. Paul Wells: That’s all gone. The Gazette bureau went from three, to two, to one reporter, then closed. The other bureaus I named are shut. The Globe has far fewer dedicated beat assignments. The big English broadcast networks, CTV and CBC, have the same-sized bureaus today as in 1994 — but they have both launched 24-hour news networks, opening up an infinite new news hole with no new reporters to fill it. (cont’d….) Paul Wells: So every reporter on the Hill is run ragged. They have to cover an Afghanistan briefing at 10, a Supreme Court result at 11, Question Period at 2, blog in the middle of it all, maybe shoot and cut video, and do a standup on their convergence partner’s news network at 6. (cont’d)…. Paul Wells: Now. When you’re running from pillar to post, and you’re alone in your bureau, and you have never had a beat assignment that would allow you to get to know sources and follow the broad and sometimes subtle evolution of a complex story across months and months — and when the Government of Canada has adopted, as an official policy, systematic obfuscation that makes it impossible for you to receive prompt replies to simple questions of fact, what can you actually cover? (cont’d)…. Paul Wells: You can cover the same things anyone would notice when one walks into a crowded room full of strangers: conflict and hot emotion. You can’t know which side is actually right. You can’t know whose position has evolved subtly over time. All you’re likely to be able to grasp is: Who’s furious? Who’s shouting? That’s the best explanation I have for why today’s “media” are so conflict-obsessed, superficial, and schematic. Because it’s all most of my colleagues can write about, given the workload and workplace structure they’ve inherited. OK, on to the next question…. jolyon: Bernier: Is he organizing for leadership or has PMO sanctioned Bernier to be Harper’s wingman? Paul Wells: Jolyon, I would pay good money to know that answer to that one for sure. My best guess is that Bernier has gone rogue. He’s figured out (and I’m told, by people who are close to Harper but not in a position to actually make any decision, that he’s right) that he won’t ever be getting back into a Harper cabinet. So he finally sat himself down, realized he’s several years younger and a damn sight fitter than Harper, and started planning for the après-Harper. He’s already given more policy speeches for a hypothetical 2014(?) Conservative leadership race than Belinda Stronach did when she was an actual candidate in 2002. And yet…(cont’d…) Paul Wells: ..go back to all the hoops Environment Canada scientists have to jump through before they make any public declaration. This government knows how to shut people up. And yet nobody’s shutting Bernier up as he makes speech after speech after libertarian speech. Tout se passe comme si Harper kind of liked having him out there, spewing fiscal-conservative stuff to quell the otherwise very dissatisfied fiscal-conservative base. So for the moment Bernier is a bit of a Schrodinger box: There’s either a leadership candidate or a Manchurian fake rebel in there, and we can’t know for now which it is. Southie: Canada’s Aboriginal community is starting to undergo a demographic shift on the scale of what the baby boomers meant to the general population. Any plans for more coverage of the shifting mindset of Aboriginal leaders and how Shawn Atleo is differing himself from his predecessors? Paul Wells: Southie: No plans, but would it be a good idea to cover the young Aboriginal leaders more closely? You bet. I do have some colleagues here at Maclean’s who are interested in such matters (we got bench strength here like you wouldn’t believe, as anyone who reads past the columnists in any issue of the magazine well knows) and I hope some of them will get room to run on this sort of story soon. Sarah: What did you think of Harper’s youtube interview? Paul Wells: Not much. Crit_Reasoning: From Jack M.: Why must practically every politically conscious, conscientious citizen, regardless of partisan stripe, endure month after month of despair? Was it ever thus? More to the point, will it ever be thus? Are we just doomed to wander around Sinai for the next few generations, minus the manna? Would you ever advise people you liked to get involved in politics? Do you still believe? If so, why? Paul Wells: Hello Jack via Crit_Reasoning. I’ll take the last question first. I have good friends who run for office in every election, for at least the three big non-Bloc parties, and I’m always surprised and worried for them. Their personal lives will never be the same. They will have hundreds like me, and worse, on their ass if they win, mis-hearing something they once said and then throwing it back at them inaccurately and challenging them to account for the non-existent contradiction, and ignoring the answer, and on and on and on; while the party opposite yells at them across the floor of the House. All of that goes on. All the time. (cont’d…) Paul Wells: And yet. I do have friends who run for office. They always seem pretty happy to be giving it a shot. And the ones who win are almost always reluctant to give it up. Not because of the power (they have little); not because of the perks (basically they have staff who make it easy to get from one dingy conference room to another overcrowded reception to another meeting with a furious constituent). But because they do have the feeling of being closer to real change, or the hope of real change, than most people get to be. Many of us, in the press gallery and the public, don’t get to see the best parts. Caucus meetings where ordinary MPs can, sometimes, get a fair hearing from their party leadership and maybe put an issue on the public agenda. Committees where, when they’re not yelling, members get to put partisanship aside and try to reach a deeper understanding. There is less of that sort of stuff than there should be, but it still happens. kcm: Do you have a feeling at all that this gov’t is any more prone to gaming the system than others you have witnessed? Or is it part of an ongoing trend – is it in any way connected to changes in the media and it’s ability to cover in depth? IOW does one lead to the other? Paul Wells: I do think the Harper government is, in some ways, more prone to “gaming the system” than its predecessors. First, a caveat: I’ve seen no evidence that this prime minister or anyone around him is at all interested in seeking personal financial benefit from anything he does. The gamesmanship is all about gaining electoral advantage, or advancing a policy goal against an opposition that constantly has this government outnumbered. (cont’d…) Paul Wells: I believe Stephen Harper would argue that he has to be crafty and sometimes a bit shifty because (a) he’s outnumbered (b) the steady state in Canadian politics is Liberal victory. If things work out the way they’re “supposed to,” Stephen Harper loses. Since he doesn’t want to lose, he has to keep surprising, short-sheeting, pushing observers and opponents onto the back foot (c) he can’t win a fair argument because Communists like me won’t give him a fair hearing. So he has to play fast and loose. (cont’d…) Paul Wells: I honestly believe that analysis sells the Canadian people, Canada’s Parliament, and even the wretches in the Press Gallery short. But I believe I’ve described the prime minister’s honest perception of things, and that’s the best explanation I’ve got for some of his more outlandish behaviour. kcm: Given you’ve painted a gloomy picture of the press being overworked and often lacking time for real context, are there any hopeful signs on the horizon for the profession? Paul Wells: You’re going to hate this answer because it will sound so monumentally self-serving, but most weeks when I pick up Maclean’s I feel a lot better. More broadly, there are plenty of fantastic reporters who buck the general trend. Steve Chase and Campbell Clark at the Globe, a very impressive young crew at the Sun Media (sorry, Quebecor Media) Ottawa bureau, Hélène Buzzetti at Le Devoir, Dave Pugliese covering National Defence for the Ottawa Citizen and reminding us all why it’s important to have reporters with steady beat assignments…I could go on. Cecile: What do you make of the Manning Institute poll last week that Canadians are getting more conservative? Is this wishful thinking, or is the Harper government actually shifting the electorate? Paul Wells: Cecile, I’ve heard some colleagues share concerns with procedural aspects of that poll, but I have none of my own. And I think the broad trend it shows matches my own anecdotal observation: the country’s politics is shifting to the right. Here’s one yardstick out of many: have you looked at the NAC website lately? That’s National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Under Judy Rebick in the early 90s it had absolutely formidable political clout. Now, as far as I can ascertain (I’d be pleased to be corrected), NAC no longer even exists. That’s an omen. Nathalie: I follow you on Twitter and enjoy your insightful commentary. Plus, you’re funny – a bonus. Now: what’s your take on Sarah Palin? What do you think she’s really up to? Paul Wells: I think Sarah Palin is running for President. I don’t believe for three seconds that she will be her party’s nominee in 2012, unless of course she leaves the Republicans to lead some new Mavericky Maverick Party. It’s a funny thing when you’re running for high office: you can convince yourself that profoundly self-destructive behaviour is in your own interest. So Brian Tobin failed consistently to improve his French, even though it would have been pretty easy to knuckle down. And John Manley waited until it was way too late to get into the 2002-3 Liberal leadership “race.” Palin lacks the qualities of even those two, and she ran away from the only job that would allow her to work on those qualities — a governorship — because she thought it would be smarter to run a Fox talk show. This tells us all we need to know about what Sarah Palin thinks is smart. Andrew (not P or C): Do you think electoral reform would actually change the dynamic of Canadian politics? Is it purely a cultural thing or can it be significantly changed by process? Paul Wells: I’m a late, tentative convert to electoral reform, but I do think it could change the way our politics works. Colleague Coyne has talked about how first-past-the-post forces every party to kowtow to the gettable, gullible, median voter, reducing the breadth and range of our political debate. Why am I a tentative convert then? Because I’ve watched how electoral-reform movements tend to attract incurable process geeks who cannot stand to come up with a simple, comprehensible new system when they could come up with a seventeen-finger, revolving-around-Saturn, look-at-me-I-get-complex-voting-systems solution. And voters tend to reject those solutions when asked. So I’m not entirely sure we can get there from here. Tom: Why does this government seem to enjoy so much stability? Is Andrew Coyne right when he says everyone’s scared? Paul Wells: That’s one of the really interesting questions in Canadian politics today. I’ll tell you this much: there’s a lot to be said for the “Conservatives lucky, opposition in disarray” theory, which holds that if the Liberals had two ideas and three organizers they could rub together, the Conservatives would be toast. But I spent a decade listening while geniuses explained to me that Jean Chrétien was a fluke, a lucky moron, and the next guy would show him how the game really oughtta be played. We all know how that worked out. So I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who just won. Harper is not unbeatable. But until somebody beats him, I will cling to my stubborn belief that he is skilled at what he does. AlM: Next question: Andrew Coyne – single or what? Paul Wells: Hey, back off. He’s all mine. DRS in Toronto: Hello there. I’ve waiting over a decade to tell you that your column (for Southam, I believe) about the unfair pressure on Jean Charest to quit federal politics to run for the Quebec Liberal leadership was one of the best pieces of political commentary I ever read. It was so full of good sense I’ve never forgotten it and wish I’d clipped it out. (By the way, why is there so little space on this page to write a comment?) Paul Wells: Because if I give you more space, they’ll never shrink my head back down to a size where I can get it through the doors here. But thank you. @danielblouin: If you had to pick an MP (out of Cabinet if possible) whose point of view on any topic that springs to your mind nobody is listening to – but that everybody should be listening to – who would it be and why? Paul Wells: Mike Chong, the former Conservative Intergovernmental Affairs Minister, will talk your ear off any time you let him about the amazing benefits that could be reaped from running subway systems under the downtowns of most large Canadian cities. He’s got a costed, elaborate program for doing it. He just looks so happy talking about his subways, I am always happy to get him going on it. Andrew (not P or C): What do you think Stephen Harper might do if he actually won a majority? I wonder because there are the competing interests of re-electability and implementing a truly conservative policy platform? Do they spend 4 years pretending to be Liberals and eventually get replaced by the real deal, or get a few of their big pet projects through and spend the next cycle in the wilderness. Paul Wells: I think if Harper won a majority — this will strike many people as a wrong-headed or naive answer, but here it goes anyway — he would not govern in a drastically different manner from the way he’s been governing already. He is obsessed with the idea that conservatism must remain competitive over the very long term — generations, not just the boom-and-bust cycle we’ve seen after Diefenbaker and Mulroney. By his lights, both men were, in part, failures, because they didn’t leave a viable conservative movement behind when they were done. So I think he would still be wary about doing anything to shock the opinion of the broad public (he is always happy to shock the opinion of the Bytown elite, but that’s not always the same thing). I believe he would still, by and large, be an incrementalist. You’re all free to disagree and I suspect many would. DRS in Toronto: If you were an opposition strategist, what strategy would you use against Harper? Personally I’d stop the “hard-hearted meanie” line (which I think Harper actually enjoys, since it fits into his self-image as tough and stern) and go for flat out mockery. In a previous career in Ottawa, I had the (dubious) distinction of watching Harper in small gatherings and even mild teasing could really set him off like a mini-volcano. What would you do? Paul Wells: Pretty much exactly what you’re suggesting. LynnTO: I’ve just noticed that the chord progressions in Mary Jane’s Last Dance (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers) and Dani California (RHCP) are remarkably alike. Is anything in music original anymore? Paul Wells: Nope. When we’re done here, look at this Youtube for proof: Paul Wells:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLMPaul Wells: One more. Always leave ‘em wanting more, and amazingly, we’ve been here for an hour, so this next one will be the last one: Southie: When you were spending time in Europe, what was the perception of how well Canada is governed? Do you think the Foreign perception of Canada has changed much under Harper? Paul Wells: Of course opinions on that question were diverse, but taken at the average, I’d say Canada was always seen as a welcome voice at any discussion. We were welcome, not because we had a big friend (the U.S.), but because we could, at least intermittently, be counted on to defend some big ideas without regard to who those ideas’ friends or enemies might be. Canadians were sometimes seen as flighty — we’d champion a project this week and abandon it the next, and our blessed position in the safest corner of the world made many see us as naive on questions of international security — but Canada was well regarded. I think we’ll get a chance in the runup to the Muskoka G8 and the Toronto G20 to see whether those perceptions have changed. Paul Wells: OK folks, thanks. Those were great questions. Let’s do this again sometime. -
Family planning does not "save lives"
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 3:05 PM - 6 Comments
Foreign Minister explains conservative approach to maternal health
PM Stephen Harper probably thought his offer to champion a global initiative to improve maternal and infant health would earn him some brownie points. And it might have—if not for the pesky issue of family planning. The opposition was up in arms yesterday after Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon affirmed that the Canada-led initiative, which will be unveiled at the G8 summit in June, “does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning.” Cannon’s rationale: “the purpose of this is to be able to save lives.” But many argue that any effort to address women and children’s health must take birth control into account. Katherine McDonald, executive director of Action Canada for Population and Development, explains: “I’m very concerned that [the government is] equating family planning with abortion.” She points out that many childbirth deaths result from complications due to too many pregnancies—or from illegal abortions.
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Climate ads pulled in U.K.
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 2:26 PM - 7 Comments
Advertising watchdog calls them misleading
Nursery rhyme-themed ads commissioned by the British government that ask people to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions are being pulled from print. The ads, which had pictures from popular children’s stories and the headlines “Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub, a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused by climate change,” and “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none, as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought,” were called misleading by the country’s Advertising Standards Authority. The watchdog received 939 complaints about the campaign, and ordered the ads to be pulled because they “should have been phrased more tentatively” since the connection between flooding and drought is difficult to directly link to climate change. Ed Milliband, U.K. secretary for climate change, defended the ads, saying “”We used everyday language which others have used also to say this will happen,” but adding that “we probably should have made clearer the basis of the claim”
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A Canadian iPod tax?
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 2:07 PM - 13 Comments
New copyright bill calls for MP3 player tax, expansion of “fair dealing”
In 2007, the Copyright Board of Canada had a plan that would see a $75 levy placed on music devices exceeding 30GB in capacity, which includes most mid-range iPods and MP3 players. Fortunately for the consumer, that proposal was shot down by a collection of retailers who would see sales drop as a result of the hefty price increase. Now, the levy is back in the form of a private member’s bill introduced by NDP copyright critic, Charlie Angus, a former musician. Bill C-499 would extend the existing private copying levy that was introduced in 1997—which taxes all writable media such as CDs and DVDs—to devices that can reproduce media, like MP3 players and computers. Angus is also calling for an expanded “fair dealing” principle, which would allow non-commercial copying for researchers, innovators and educators. “By updating it, we will ensure that artists are getting paid for their work, and that consumers aren’t criminalized for moving their legally obtained music from one format to another,” said Angus in a release.
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'My bill has a specific objective'
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 1:49 PM - 0 Comments
For those at all intrigued by last night’s sketch, the full debate on Francine Lalonde’s bill begins here in yesterday’s Hansard.
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Toronto man reportedly killed fighting in Somalia
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 12 Comments
Recruited by a banned terrorist group, he died a “martyr”
Last week, the federal government outlawed another terrorist organization: Al-Shahab, a Somali militant group linked to al-Qaeda that has been recruiting fighters from a Toronto mosque. The RCMP and CSIS have been investigating a number of men who allegedly left Toronto to join the group—and if the reports are correct, one of those Canadians has died a martyr. According to a message posted on an extremist website, and uncovered by the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, a Toronto man identified as Mohamed al Muhajiri was killed in a battle with Somali government forces. “Don’t be sadden [sic] but rather rejoice in the news of your dear brother and follow his foot steps and march forth in the ranks of the honest mujahideen, Al-Shabab mujahideen,” the message reads. Canadian authorities have not confirmed the death.
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As Hockey is to Canada
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 12:36 PM - 0 Comments
David Beckham’s injury moves Britain’s Poet Laureate
Carol Ann Duffy immortalizes Beckham’s Achilles heel injury in a poem that compares the former England captain to the classical warrior. In Achilles, tributes to Beckham’s ability with a football are mixed with references to the classical myth in which the warrior is let down by his one weakness—his heel—during the Trojan War. Duffy told the BBC: “He (Beckham) is almost a mythical figure himself, in popular culture. The most tragic image was him being unable to walk and crying on the side of the pitch. It’s fascinating that the injury takes its name from Achilles. The whole point of Greek myths is the combination of triumph and tragedy that we follow in them.” Achilles, greatest of warriors, was dipped in the River Styx to make him invulnerable, but he was held by the ankle, making it the only chink in his armour. The poem, the latest offering from the populist-minded Poet Laureate, follows her poem on the MPs’ expenses scandal and a tribute to the men who fought in the Great War, following the deaths of the last two surviving British soldiers.
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People get readier
By Paul Wells - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 8 Comments
We’re cranking up the Internet machines here at the sprawling Rogers world command centre in beautiful downtown Toronto, Ontario so I can reach out to all of you — much as our Prime Minister did last night — for a Live Online Chat With Paul! Wells! Today! at 1:30 p.m. (Eastern Daylight). Just come back here at that time and join the fun, if any. Topic: Wide open, but probably there will be some federal politics in there somewheres.
UPDATE: And now, here is what’s rumoured to be the link:
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Chilean slums get solar-powered hot water heaters
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 11:53 AM - 1 Comment
Pilot program installed in disparate communities
A new pilot program will see solar water heaters installed in the homes of low-income families in Chile, helping poor families while reducing greenhouse gases, Reuters reports. In Chile, which has very different climate zones and few fossil fuels, coming up with a nationwide energy solution has been a challenge. The program is set to start in Santiago, the capital; Curanilahue, a southern town; and Combarala, in the desert. Jacquelin Marin, who has no hot running water at home, said she never could afford a water heater now; but after she and her shantytown neighbours created a housing committee, they saved up, staged protests, and were finally awarded subsidies from the Chilean housing ministry to start a new project. President of the housing committee Juntas Podemos, said it was hard going without water and electricity at the new site, but ultimately worth it. The first Chilean housing project with these energy saving methods will be called, “We Women Can.”
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'We hope this will minimize any disruption'
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 11:45 AM - 8 Comments
Within a “tranche” of previously undisclosed documents, the Globe finds an unmet pledge to build a prison in Afghanistan and a dispute between Afghan and NATO officials over access to detainees.
The NDS chief also complained bitterly to Canada, Britain and the Netherlands that their follow-up inspections aimed at making sure prisoners weren’t being transferred to torture – an international war crime – were creating problems in the prisons. Unexpected and multiple inspection visits were unwelcome, he wrote, and infringed on Afghan sovereignty.
Mr. Saleh threatened to cut-off inspections and – apparently seeking to appease the NDS chief – the three countries agreed to only conduct joint visits with plenty of advance notice and limit them to once a month at most. “We hope this will minimize any disruption caused by our access to your facilities and allow access arrangements to resume,” Canada, Britain and the Netherlands said in their written response to Mr. Saleh. “As the three main nations who transfer detainees over to NDS custody, we have discussed how best to respond to your concerns,” the letter says.
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New York schools restrict bake sales
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 11:44 AM - 4 Comments
Parents protest regulations aimed at curbing obesity
New York City parents plan to stage a “bake-in” at city hall on Thursday to protest regulation that restricts student bake sales in public schools, the New York Times reports, noting that City Council is planning a public hearing on the matter later this month. School officials call it an effort to tackle obesity in a city where 40 per cent of 1.1 million schoolchildren are overweight or obese; restricting bake sales is “one part of a holistic wellness puzzle, said Eric Goldstein, chief executive of School Food and Transportation for the Department of Education. The rule says PTAs can only hold bake sales once a month or weekdays after 6 pm; otherwise, only fresh fruits, veggies and one of 27 packaged items that meet guidelines can be sold. But parents say the rules promote processed food (reduced fat Cool Ranch Doritos, for example, are included). Others say bake sales united communities and let all parents feel they were contributing, as well as being a successful fundraiser—according to one parent, weekly bake sales at a Queens school raise up to $300 each week, enough to send 11 students to Mexico on a trip last year.
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Worst Irish Accent Ever?
By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 11:31 AM - 16 Comments
Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and in honour of that, I’ll pose this question: what’s the worst Irish accent you have ever heard in a movie, TV show or something else? I find it interesting that when histories of bad accents are written, there usually aren’t that many Irish accents on the lists (though Sean Connery in The Untouchables is usually there), even though the movies have probably had more ridiculous Irish accents than any other. Maybe we’re all so used to terrible Irish accents that they don’t stand out quite as much as, say, Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney accent.
Still, as usual when it came to terrible accents, Marlon Brando managed to make something special of his insane Irish brogue in The Missouri Breaks. Like many of Brando’s accents, it sounds like a parody of a parody of a bad accent. In his essay on bad accents, Joe Queenan wrote: “It is my earnest belief that in using that diabolically wee Irish accent, Brando was attempting nothing short of a linguistic revolution: speaking, not as he imagined a nineteenth-century Irish gunslinger might, but as he imagined a nineteenth-century Irish gunslinger — and, indeed, all Irish people — should.
What’s your own choice for the K.O. Kelly Memorial Accent Defamation Trophy?
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'The purpose of this is to be able to save lives'
By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 11:28 AM - 89 Comments
Lawrence Cannon told the Foreign Affairs committee that contraception won’t be part of the government’s commitment to maternal health in the developing world.
In no uncertain terms, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon yesterday ruled out any kind of family-planning programs being included in Canada’s “signature” initiative at June’s G8 summit – a strategy to improve the health of mothers and young children in poor countries. ”It does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning. Indeed, the purpose of this is to be able to save lives,” Mr. Cannon told the Foreign Affairs committee.
For the sake of argument, here is a USAID fact sheet which states that access to family planning options reduces the number of abortions, limits the spread of HIV and “could prevent 25 percent of maternal and child deaths in the developing world.”
