Sweden, Finland, and Iceland get the cold shoulder

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 3:08 PM - 6 Comments

Critics are accusing Canada of having neglected several key stakeholders when it drew up invitations to talks on Arctic policy. In a prepared statement, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the exclusion of Sweden, Finland, Iceland and indigenous groups, was a mistake on Canada’s part. “I hope the Arctic will always showcase our ability to work together, not create new divisions,” she said. Thomas S. Axworthy of the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation echoed the sentiment in an op-ed in the Toronto Star. While the meeting itself “is another indication that the Harper government is serious about the Arctic—a welcome change from the usual Canadian condition of benign neglect,” he writes, what’s needed is “a strong Arctic Council to handle our great polar challenges, not a weakened council divided into inner and outer rings.”

Toronto Star

Toronto Sun

$6B doesn't equal great Afghan cops

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 3:05 PM - 0 Comments

Western plans to quit Afghanistan rest on the hope that Afghans will one day soon be able to look after their own security. An investigation by Newsweek reveals how unlikely this is. The Afghan National Police are “an inadequate organization, riddled with corruption,” says Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the State Department’s top representative in the region. Despite eight years and more than $6 billion, they are not trusted by their compatriots and are nowhere near being able to protect their country.

Newsweek

What happens to all those points after you're gone?

By Ron Pradinuk, Takeoffeh.com - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 1:55 PM - 2 Comments

You love your Frequent Flyer miles. Collect them. Count them. Admire them. Unfortunately, you can’t take them with you.

Many avid collectors leave thousands of unredeemed reward points when they die. Quite often, those left behind are unaware of them until the next account update arrives – and the value of this asset hits home. With a proliferation of reward programs, Canadians now collect points from retail establishments, gas stations, and drug stores, so it may be worthwhile to understand their value and their restrictions.

With most FFP’s, surviving spouses or children who want to transfer valuable points to their account can do so based on certain criteria. Air Miles and Aeroplan, the two largest Canadian reward programs, require the following:

• With Air Miles, you need a copy of both the death certificate and the will which clearly recognizes that the legitimate heir of the mentioned assets is the same as the person requesting the transfer of said points. In the case of Aeroplan, if it is the surviving spouse requesting the transfer, only a death certificate is required. If a non-spouse heir wishes to receive the miles, they must provide a will or notarized letter identifying them as the chosen beneficiary.
• Air Miles makes it very easy once they have received the required documentation. In my personal experience, the customer service rep was kind and helpful, and effected the transfer with a genuine degree of understanding. There was no penalty imposed as a result of our request.
• Aeroplan’s policy is more cumbersome – and, more expensive. First, a transfer fee of $30 is imposed, which is certainly not outrageous. However, Aeroplan charges an additional one penny per point transferred. So, for example, a minimal account with 30,000 points would engender a $300 extra charge. A serious collector’s estate with 500,000 points would force the spouse to pay $5,000 for ownership of the account.

Outstanding reward points represent major capital, totaling the largest overall currency in the world. As a standing liability carried over from year to year, airlines are understandably eager to terminate accounts. And given the grief of a surviving spouse, he or she may not care to investigate the process. That’s why it pays to understand program policies for passing on points to a survivor while you can.

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

Photo Credits: Petar Neychev



It remains to be seen

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 1:53 PM - 18 Comments

Glen Pearson considers the weekend.

I’ve already spoken to some of my MP colleagues who were there in Montreal and I detect a bit more authenticity in their voice. The speeches galvanized them; the public participation alerted them; and Michael Ignatieff’s speech at the conclusion called on them to put the trite and political things aside and fight for issues that truly matter.  But that was in Montreal, not Ottawa, and it remains to be seen if the Liberal party can enact what they discovered about themselves this weekend and keep it alive in that most partisan and skeptical of all political spaces. Yet for one brief three-day period we witnessed the enemy, and it was us. Perhaps the true genius of it all was that we accepted all that criticism in good spirit, looked inward at our own shortcomings, and came out of it a little wiser as to our faults as public servants. The truth set us free in Montreal; now we’ll see how it does in Parliament.

'Hold to clarify my amended response is the one I want used no figures'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 1:37 PM - 7 Comments

Ministerial aide Ryan Sparrow helpfully suggests a new slogan for the next Conservative re-election campaign.

Bureaucrats calculated the value of the advertising campaign and prepared an answer the same day. Before making it public, however, they consulted Mr. Sparrow and other political officials on the proposed response. “The ad appeared on national networks, aboriginal and ethnic networks. The total TV media buy was approx $4,536,000. The Olympics package had a net cost of $1,849,829.00,” the chief of media relations, Patricia Valladao, said in an e-mail to Mr. Sparrow and two other ministerial aides, Michelle Bakos and Ana Curic.

Mr. Sparrow answered by telling the bureaucrats to “amend the response,” to simply say: “One 30-second TV ad was created in support of Canada’s Economic Action Plan. The ad started running the week of January 18th and will end with the Olympics. The ad highlights key government programs available to Canadians who have been affected by the economic downturn: extended EI benefits, retraining opportunities, apprenticeship grants and self employed EI benefits.”

Banks to increase mortgage rates

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 1:34 PM - 6 Comments

In April 2009, the Bank of Canada rushed to aid an ailing economy, fixing its key lending rate at a paltry 0.25 per cent. Since then, the economy has indeed begun to recover, and the stock market has rallied. But don’t get too comfortable. On Monday, Royal Bank and TD Canada Trust announced that they will increase several mortgage rates by up to .6 per cent; the new rates go into effect on Tuesday. This will be the first time since last October that Canadian mortgage rates have been hiked. And more banks are expected to follow suit. All this has forecasters predicting that the central bank will move up its key lending rate as soon as this summer. Mark Carney, Bank of Canada’s governor, warned just last week that Canada’s inflation rate was higher than anticipated.

CBC News

Do you support Quebec's ban on the niqab?

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 1:29 PM - 124 Comments

Canada 150: Towards a new Liberal-NDP coalition?

By Paul Wells - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 12:26 PM - 366 Comments

I regret that my account of a campaign-closing 2008 interview with Stéphane Dion merely quotes the then-Liberal leader to the effect that the NDP platform was “not realistic” because of its “old-style socialist” overtones, without quoting the specific element of the platform that Dion found so unappealing. So you’ll have to take my word for it: What Dion specifically didn’t like was Jack Layton’s decision to pay for his promises by cancelling future cuts to corporate income taxes that had not yet taken place. Dion, you’ll recall, preferred to pay for his promises with a tax on carbon that was only partially compensated with income-tax cuts.

At the time, those were the two big, important, structural differences in policy — the only two, if I recall correctly, although readers are welcome to remind everyone of other differences in the reopened comment board below — between the two largest national left-of-Harper parties. Layton’s big populist play (and sop to the auto unions) was to shy away from a clear, simple tax on carbon by employing a variant on the cap-and-trade shell game. Dion’s attempt to hang onto some corporate street cred, despite his Green Shift, consisted of insisting that corporate tax cuts proceed as Harper had announced.

After this weekend, those big structural policy differences between the Liberals and NDP no longer exist. Continue…

Why the Tories love Canada Post

By John Geddes - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 12:05 PM - 23 Comments

Photographs by Andrew Tolson

When the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development issues a judgment on a country’s economy, governments, businesses and unions often snap to attention. The prestige of the 30-nation, Paris-based club of leading democratic economies is such that its typically pro-competition prescriptions tend to be held up by those who like them as gospel, and denounced by those who don’t as too dangerous to ignore. So when the OECD issued its latest “Going for Growth” report—a yearly compendium of advice for policy-makers in member countries—its provocative call for the Canadian government to sell off the post office seemed bound to ignite another heated round in the on-again, off-again debate over the future of Canada Post.

The OECD couldn’t have been more blunt in calling for decisive change in Canada’s mail business. Under the heading “Reduce barriers to competition in network industries,” the report urged: “Liberalize postal services by eliminating legislated monopoly protections and privatizing Canada Post.” Although that proposal might sound radical, it’s not out of step with international developments. Postal services in Germany and Holland were privatized years ago, and the services in Scandinavian countries and New Zealand opened up to competition. With those examples to guide them, in line with their avowed pro-market bent, the governing Conservatives might have been expected to embrace the OECD recommendation as a chance to advance a smaller-government agenda.

Instead, silence in Ottawa. The OECD’s March 10 report prompted an annoyed response from the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. But from the government and the opposition parties, nothing. And that surprisingly inert reaction suggests the extreme trepidation with which Canadian politicians view the post office. It’s not as if privatization isn’t a live subject: the government plans to sell off the reactor division of Crown-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., and, in the wake of his budget last month, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said he expects to announce other privatizations within the next year. Yet the government signalled that Canada Post isn’t going on the auction block. “We’ll continue to ensure that Canada Post remains on a firm financial footing to maintain its universal service,” said an aide to Rob Merrifield, the minister of state responsible for the postal service.

Continue…

What Sidney Crosby's Olympic goal meant to Paul Henderson

By Paul Henderson - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 11:55 AM - 18 Comments

I wasn’t watching the game when Sidney Crosby scored to win the gold medal for Canada. My wife and I speak at marriage conferences and we were doing one in Victoria, B.C., at the time. We had given a speech all through the first period, but had a break over lunch, so I watched the second and third periods, or what I thought was going to be the end of the game.

When the U.S. tied it up, I had 120 couples waiting for me to talk. I told them before we started that if anyone’s got a radio or an iPod, to not say a word if the U.S. scores. But if Canada scores, please yell it out.

About 15 minutes into the talk, a lady yelled out, “Crosby’s just scored for Canada!” We went nuts and cheered. It was the first time in my life I ever led a singalong when we spontaneously started singing ‘O Canada.’

Continue…

Junk food as addictive as cocaine?

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

High-calorie junk food might be as addictive as cocaine or nicotine, according to a new study that found over-consumption of these foods can trigger responses in the brain that mimic addiction. Studying rats in a lab setting, researchers found that high-calorie foods could turn them into compulsive eaters, Reuters reports. They also found lower levels of a dopamine receptor, a brain chemical that allows the feeling of reward, just as has been reported in humans addicted to drugs. For the study, researchers from the Scripps Research Institute in Florida fed the rats fatty food like cheesecake, bacon and sausage, as well as healthy food. One group ate a balanced healthy diet; one got healthy food, and access to high-calorie food for one hour per day; another group got healthy meals and unlimited access to high-calorie foods. The rats in the third group developed a preference for high-calorie food and quickly became obese.

Reuters

The more things change

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 11:46 AM - 0 Comments

When the Booker prize switched from retroactive award in 1971, to a prize given for the best novel in the year of publication, the award date was also changed, from April to November. That meant most novels published in 1970, were never considered for the prize. They were “lost.” Peter Straus, the Booker’s unofficial archivist, considered this an injustice, remedied with a one-off prize. Any novel published in Britain in 1970 and still in print would be considered, and the judges for the contest would, like the books, all be 40 years old. They would draw up a shortlist of six, and the public would then vote for the winner. Journalist Rachel Cooke enjoyed her experience as a judge, which gave her, she writes, the perfect opportunity to read genre books she would not otherwise have picked up: the briny Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian and Len Deighton’s Bomber, which brilliantly describes the progress of an Allied air raid over 24 hours in the summer of 1943. The 21 surviving books—those that had stayed in print—proved that just as many historical novels were published in 1970 as now, even though at Booker prize time, critics always complain that not enough books with contemporary settings are being written. In the end, the judging panel of 40-year-olds crafted a six-book shortlist with three historical novels: The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard, a tale of Naples just after the war; Troubles by JG Farrell, set in Ireland after the First World War, where Major Brendan Archer is visiting his fiancee at her home, the crumbling Majestic hotel (in Farrell’s deft hands, a beautiful metaphor for the wider crumbling of empire); and one of the most famous historical novels of the 20th century, Mary Renault’s Fire From Heaven, the first volume of her trilogy about Alexander the Great.

The Guardian

Access-to-Information request on Rights and Democracy ignored

By Michael Petrou - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 11:42 AM - 18 Comments

Let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that Canada’s Access to Information Act is a legally-enforceable piece of legislation that is relevant to how this government and bureaucracy comport themselves.

Here, then, is section 7:

“Where access to a record is requested under this Act, the head of the government institution to which the request is made shall, subject to sections 8, 9 and 11, within thirty days after the request is received,

“(b) if access is to be given, give the person who made the request access to the record or part thereof.”

As readers of this space may recall, last November I filed an access-to-information request to the Privy Council Office asking for a copy of a performance evaluation report on the now deceased president of Rights and Democracy, Rémy Beauregard. Continue…

Behind the Moscow subway bombing

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 10:03 AM - 1 Comment

Russian authorities took little time saying that female suicide bombers from the Northern Caucasas are suspected of carrying out the morning attacks that killed at least 36 people and injured dozens more. This BBC backgrounder explains why there are so many Chechen women willing to kill themselves to inflict terror. Russian soldiers fighting in Chechnya have left countless women widowed, or killed their sons, brothers or fathers. They have also raped many who afterward find it hard to live a normal life. Post-traumatic stress disorder is reportedly widespread among Chechen women. And Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov is thought likely to use female suicide bombers.

BBC News

What Mischief You Twins Get Into

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 10:02 AM - 0 Comments

Thanks to a commenter on my “bad sitcom-within-a-sitcom” post for finding that this is online again: probably the most elaborate entry in this subgenre was one of the last episodes of Newhart, where Michael creates a sitcom called “Seein’ Double,” starring Stephanie as identical twins (with a double on hand, Patty Duke style, for many of the shots). The best thing about it, by far, is Newhart’s performance: his character has been forced by his contract to be in this terrible show, so his every expression and inflection indicates that he hates the lines he’s saying. The way he shakes his head, winces and grimaces, and the seething repressed rage he projects, turns what would otherwise be an overlong sketch into something memorable.

Also this may contain the last Wayne and Shuster reference in U.S. prime-time.

"Breaking" News

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 9:46 AM - 1 Comment

Something else that occurred to me about Breaking Bad last night, while watching a scene with Bob Odenkirk’s sleazy lawyer: the show demonstrates how a distinctive, stylized visual approach can compensate for a low budget. I don’t know how much money Breaking Bad has to work with, but I’m assuming it’s less than a big network show or HBO drama; it certainly seems that way if you look close enough. Normally, we don’t look that close, because the show’s visual style (courtesy of cinematographer Michael Slovis) makes it look good, or at least interesting, no matter where they’re filming. And it also could allow for a show to get away with shooting less footage, which is a necessity if it’s not to go over budget. The very distant, unusually-lensed master shots are part of Breaking Bad‘s look, but it also gives them something to cut to in the middle of a scene, allowing them to re-cut a scene without having to go back for retakes. That, at least, was what I thought was happening in a scene where a cut to a master shot was accompanied by an actor’s overdubbed voice; this is a classic technique for stitching a scene together on a low budget. It works for Breaking Bad because the show has such a strong look that the long shots are interesting to look at. Without that, the same technique would just look cheap, as it does on many other shows.

Also, here’s an article from the Boston Globe which uses Bryan Cranston as the first in a series of examples of actors who have escaped typecasting. The article is heavy on condescention toward network television, particularly in its expression of amazement that Ray Romano is good. (Men of a Certain Age is a good show, but the only people who are surprised by Romano’s abilities are the people who didn’t understand Everybody Loves Raymond to begin with.) But it is true that cable shows are better able to avoid typecasting of actors, and one of the reasons for that is necessity: to compete with the higher pay and longer seasons of broadcast networks, cable networks can offer a well-known actor a type of part that he wants to play but could never get on a broadcast network.

Behind the Moscow subway bombing

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 29, 2010 at 9:16 AM - 0 Comments

Russian authorities took little time saying that female suicide bombers from the Northern Caucasus are suspected of carrying out the morning attacks that killed at least 36 people and injured dozens more in Moscow. This BBC backgrounder explains why there are so many Chechen women willing to kill themselves to inflict terror. Russian soldiers fighting in Chechnya have left countless women widowed, or killed their sons, brothers or fathers. They have also raped many who afterward find it hard to live a normal life. Post-traumatic stress disorder is reportedly widespread among Chechen women. And Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov is thought likely to use female suicide bombers.

BBC News

Cherry to Corsi: 'Get off my lawn'

By Colby Cosh - Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 10:55 PM - 20 Comments

It must be 2010; I’m watching Don Cherry talk about Corsi numbers on TV [fast-forward to 5:00 in the video above]. Granted, he’s denouncing them, but a) he has a couple of good points, and b) that’s what old guys do when they’re confronted with statistical innovations. Read your Kuhn.

Ron Maclean didn’t do a very good job of explaining the Corsi stat (yes, it was invented by Jim Corsi), and he picked a slightly inopportune occasion to bring it up with Grapes sitting next to him. As this Globe & Mail primer explains, Corsis are essentially a more powerful extension of the plus-minus stat you see in the newspaper; they count not only the goals for and against while the player is on the ice at even strength, but all shots directed at the net either way (goals, shots on goal, missed shots, and blocked shots).

Everybody knows plus-minus isn’t a very robust or accurate way of measuring a player’s contribution, and Corsi numbers mitigate some of the disadvantages of only counting goals. You’re counting a lot more events per game—scoring chances, loosely speaking–which gives you more statistical power and leaves luck and contextual factors with less relative influence on the stat. You’re also factoring out the quality of the goaltending behind (and in front of) a skater.

That doesn’t mean Corsis are a perfect means of understanding or isolating a player’s contribution. Shifts in hockey aren’t like a batting order, in which everyone must take his turn. Some players are out there with inferior teammates, some players are shielded from the toughest competition, and some players provide value just by chewing up a lot of minutes. Context is important, and in hockey we may never be able to correct advanced stats for context as well as we can for hitters in baseball. (That’s why stats in hockey aren’t very advanced. We’ve really only just gotten around to expressing events as rates in the simplest possible way. The guy who did this for baseball was born 186 years ago.)

The biggest easily-measurable influence on Corsi numbers—easily measurable thanks to the work of Gabe Desjardins—is where a player tends to start his shifts on faceoffs. A guy who is rolled out for a lot of defensive draws is going to have a worse Corsi rating through no fault of his own—indeed, he is penalized for being trusted by his coach. In that sense, Ryan Johnson was a bad choice for Maclean to pick on, and Don Cherry’s outburst of skepticism was entirely appropriate. Desjardins’ site also tracks “zone starts”, so we know that Johnson, who has the league’s worst Corsi rating, is one of the league’s most disadvantaged regular skaters zone-wise. Through the games of March 28 he’s been sent out for only 78 offensive-zone faceoffs but 165 in his own end. Which is why he’s near the very bottom of this list.

Like Desjardins himself, I am less impressed by the subtly different argument actually made by Cherry—that it’s unfair to penalize Johnson for blocked-shots-against that he himself has blocked. Insofar as Corsi numbers are measuring any ability, it’s the ability to not have to block shots in the first place—to help your team promote the puck out of your end and into the enemy’s defensive zone. The counting of blocked shots has a problem similar to the counting of double plays turned by a team in baseball; they correlate negatively, if at all, with the winning of games. An individual blocked shot might have a positive value—though even that’s certainly not true in every case—and you want players who are willing to block them. But it’s better not to give up lots of opportunities for blocked shots.

And, hell, it’s better still not to be a low-talent, high-grit player who has to block them to keep a job. Even Don Cherry knows that.

Ignatieff's "party of the network"

By John Geddes - Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 8:00 PM - 64 Comments

Michael Ignatieff’s wrap-up speech at his Liberal thinkers’ conference in Montreal aimed to push the listener out the door with two quite separate impressions in mind.

By announcing tax and fiscal policies, he tried to leave them with the notion that this Liberal leader is decisive. By wrapping up the whole affair in a bow called “network government,” he tried to convey a sense that the ideas floated over three days fit in one package.

Neither thrust was entirely convincing, but neither was a complete dud.

Continue…

Day 3, epilogue

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 5:27 PM - 40 Comments

Here is video of Michael Ignatieff’s closing remarks. The speech itself will neither change the course of human history, nor is it likely to doom him to political failure. That’s my expert analysis.

Shanghai surprise: selling education and urbanism to Asia

By John Geddes - Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 2:50 PM - 2 Comments

Even in this image-saturated era, pictures of far-off places still have the capacity to make our eyes widen.

When Dominic Barton, managing director of the global consulting firm McKinsey & Co., flashed before-and-after slides of Shanghai at the Liberal thinkers’ conference in Montreal this afternoon, the room let out a collective gasp: the fusty skyline of only seven years ago replaced by the glint of sky-scraping boom.

Since it’s the story of the age, you’d think we’d have long since absorbed the magnitude of China’s transformation. Apparently not. Barton’s talk kept looping back to our failure to grasp its “scale.” His point was that we know Asia is growing, but we haven’t yet assimilated the size of the cities, the problems, the chances to make a lot of money.

“When we’re talking about the urbanization and change that’s going on, you have to see it to feel it,” he said. “And I think as Canadians we have to have more people seeing it, the actual scale of what’s going on.”

In a wide-ranging presentation, he highlighted two ripe economic opportunities for Canada that I don’t think government policy now gives us the best chance of exploiting: education and city-building.

On education, he was particularly strong. At any given time, Barton estimated, a billion Asians need education services. Their home countries don’t have anywhere near the capacity. For example, India needs to train an estimated 50 million a year at the vocational school level, and is able to handle about four million.

Barton is no doubt right when he says Canadians don’t comprehend that enormous demand for schooling. “This doesn’t mean adding a secondary campus to Simon Fraser University or UBC,” he said. “We’re talking about an opportunity to educate five to seven million people in Canada, or taking our capability and doing it over there.”

Actually, I’m sure most Canadians would think adding a second campus to a university or two—Barton’s example of thinking way too small—would be big stuff. Provincial education departments are not generally oriented toward fostering an export service industry. Maybe this is an area where Ottawa could play a networking role (something Liberals are talking about in Montreal this weekend), bringing together provincial educational policy with federal trade and economic strategy.

Then there’s the need to build cities—not buildings, cities. “China is going to have 250 cities with over a million people in it by 2030,” Barton said. Just to put that in context, Europe today has 35. Many of these cities are not yet built.”

He noted that there are no companies, in Canada or anyplace else, whose business is designing and building efficient cities. He sees no reason Canadian governments and entrepreneurs couldn’t step up to the plate.

It’s a stirring concept. And yet I wonder if we are ambitious enough in what we demand of our own cities to take on this epochal challenge. A small case to consider: why is Winnipeg’s new Manitoba Hydro Place, a showcase for energy-efficiency designed by Toronto architect Bruce Kuwabara, working with the German energy consultants Transsolar, so unique?

We need to demand urban planning and building codes that make that sort of design commonplace. It’s not just about how we want to live; it’s about what we’ve got to sell. Listen to Barton: “Chinese governments, mayors and so forth, are very worried how are we going to [build urban infrastructure] with the resources we have and without boiling the planet—they actually do worry about that type of thing.”

So should we.

Barack Obama in Afghanistan

By macleans.ca - Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 2:20 PM - 0 Comments

With health care out of the way, President Obama now seems to be focusing on other priorities, including a war he inherited and has committed to. He arrived in Kabul on Sunday for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, calling for “progress on anti-corruption and good governance practices,” and asking Karzai to continue the talks in the United States in May. Obama is expected to meet with tens of thousands of troops, at a time when U.S. casualty rates are double than they were the year before. The trip is short and Obama will be back in Washington on Monday.

Robert Fowler wakes up the Liberals in Montreal

By John Geddes - Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 12:05 PM - 107 Comments

Given that Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler was kidnapped in Niger and held in Al Qaeda’s rough hands for four months before being released last spring, his speech at the Liberal thinkers’ conference in Montreal this morning might well have been entirely coloured by his recent ordeal.

Instead, Fowler delivered a fierce, proud address anchored, not in that personal drama, but in his professional experience through three decades as a federal public servant, a diplomat-mandarin. When he did remind his audience of the kidnapping, it was to deftly accent his broader point.

And that point was barbed. Fowler charged the Liberals in the room with standing for little or nothing when it comes to foreign policy. He was even harder on the absent Conservatives, accusing their government of abandoning a Canadian legacy in the world, and, more specifically, of adopting an “Israel, right or wrong” policy that has undermined Ottawa’s credibility abroad. He asserted that there’s an “iron-clad link” between a failure to push for a fair resolution the Israel-Palestine problem and the rise of Islamist terrorism.

Continue…

The problem isn’t just with Toyota

By Andrew Potter - Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 9:07 AM - 26 Comments

Photograph by Sandy Huffaker/ Bloomberg/ Getty

When it comes to Toyota’s problems with sudden unintended acceleration, it is starting to look like 1986 all over again. It was in November of that year that the CBS show 60 Minutes aired its infamous report on a similar problem in Audi vehicles, featuring footage of the accelerator on an Audi 5000 moving toward the floor as if by magic. It wasn’t magic, though: CBS had engineered that touch of automotive Ouija-boardery through a can of compressed air and a hose drilled into the transmission.

Eventually it was determined that unintended acceleration was caused by “pedal misapplication,” a.k.a. drivers pressing the gas when they meant to push the brake. But not before the Audi brand was so thoroughly trashed that sales didn’t recover for a full decade and a half.

There is no question something is wrong with Toyota’s cars—the company has admitted as much, though it claims the problem is not electronic but mechanical, caused by ill-fitting floor mats in some models and sticky pedals in others. But figuring out how serious the problem of sudden unintended acceleration is, and how widespread it might be, has been hampered by the workings of the unholy trinity of consumer affairs scandals: sensationalist journalism, rank opportunism, and good old-fashioned human-powered idiocy.

Continue…