Helena Guergis resigns (Updated)

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:41 PM - 65 Comments

Embattled Conservative MP Helena Guergis has resigned from her job as minister of state for the status of women. The MP for Simcoe-Grey has come under fire in recent weeks, most recently over her husband Rahim Jaffer’s business dealings, as well as for a tantrum she threw at a PEI airport. In a statement to reporters, Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed Guergis had indeed stepped down and that former cabinet minister Rona Ambrose would take over Guergis’s portfolio. Harper also said the Ethics Commissioner and the RCMP would be investigating unspecified “serious allegations” involving Guergis that came to the attention of his office Thursday night. In the meantime, Guergis will no longer be welcome to sit with the Conservative caucus.

UPDATE: The CBC has obtained the full text of an email sent out by Guergis in advance of the announcement:

April 9, 2010

This morning, I tendered my resignation as Minister of State for Status of Women to the Prime Minister which he accepted.

The past 9 months have been a very difficult time for me. I have made mistakes for which I have apologised. I want the people of PEI to know that when I spoke emotionally I was speaking about the airport as I would never insult my father’s birthplace. I apologise again. I have worked hard for Canadian women and I am proud of my record of my accomplishments on their behalf.

I will continue in my position as MP for Simcoe-Grey and continue to serve my community.

Sincerely,
Helena Guergis, MP Simcoe Grey

Twitter

CBC News

Helena Geurgis shops at Winners?

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:36 PM - 4 Comments

Elections Canada auditors are going through the campaign expenses of Status of Women Minister Helen Geurgis, and it appears a few of her purchases may be, um, ineligible. She claimed $977 worth under the “other” category following the 2008 election; receipts suggest the purchases include clothing and handbags from the discount retailer Winners. Geurgis also appears to have expensed a considerable amount of jogging gear from the Running Room, according to a report in today’s Ottawa Citizen. It’s not exactly Watergate: given the minister’s previous image as the style-setter of the Tory caucus, she may be most embarrassed by the revelation that her designer-label stuff comes from Winners. But more suggestion of impropriety is about the last thing Geurgis and her husband Rahim Jaffer need just now.

Vancouver Sun

Nova Scotia bishop may have done more than download child porn

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:28 PM - 3 Comments

Raymond Lahey, the Nova Scotia bishop who was arrested last year on child pornography charges, is now accused of sexually abusing a 10-year-old boy. According to a statement of claim filed in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador, the victim, Todd Boland, says he was repeatedly fondled over his clothes in the mid-1980s, while Lahey was the vicar-general of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. John’s. Greg Stack, Boland’s lawyer, said the child porn charges spurred his client to come forward. “An awful lot of victims of sexual abuse just try to bury it in their subconscious,” Stack said. “Any priest or figure like that is a godlike figure, I suppose, having been brought up Roman Catholic.” The lawsuit comes as the Vatican continues to be hammered by new revelations of clergy abuse—and systemic cover-up.

Montreal Gazette

“Last I checked, Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues”

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 11 Comments

If Barack Obama is worried about a conservative backlash against his nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia, the U.S. president isn’t showing it. Obama took a pot-shot at former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin after she criticized the deal as leaving the U.S. vulnerable. “I really have no response. Because last I checked, Sarah Palin’s not much of an expert on nuclear issues,” he told ABC News. “If the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I’m probably going to take my advice from them, and not from Sarah Palin.” The treaty calls for both the U.S. and Russia to reduce their nuclear stockpiles by a third (to 1,550 warheads each) over the next seven years.

ABC News

Moderate drinking helps young people’s hearts

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:13 PM - 3 Comments

New research shows that moderate drinking, generally defined as one or two alcoholic drinks per day, can reduce the risk of heart disease in younger adults, Reuters reports. Heart disease is very rare in men under 40 and women under 50, so it’s been hard to study the effects of alcohol consumption on heart disease risk in these people. But Dr. Alberto Ascherio of the Harvard School of Public Health looked at data from eight studies including over 192,000 women and almost 75,000 men (men’s average age was 50; women’s was 54) and found that consuming 30 grams of alcohol a day reduced the risk of heart disease for women by 42 per cent and cut men’s risk by 31 per cent.

Reuters

Yes, Prime Minister?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:10 PM - 54 Comments

The Prime Minister is apparently due to speak to reporters in the House of Commons foyer at 12:40pm. I’ll be in the middle of a dentist appointment, but I’ll be watching on the ceiling TV as I’m poked and prodded and generally advised on my brushing technique.

Feel free to use the comment thread below to react to Helena Guergis’ departure from cabinet or wonder why Helena Guergis remains in cabinet.

Drinkers of the world unite!

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:09 PM - 5 Comments

As many as 800 employees of the Carlsberg brewery walked off the job this week after being told they’d only be allowed to drink at lunch. A spokesperson for the Copenhagen-based brewer confirmed the free beer that had previously been available in company fridges had been removed and that workers would be limited to the beer available at the lunch canteen. Much of the staff is said to be striking in solidarity with drivers and warehouse workers, for whom the changes mean they’ve lost the right to their three beers a day.

Daily Mail

'How do we measure up?'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:04 PM - 51 Comments

Rarely do the Prime Minister and his speechwriters aim for poetry. That, I’ve always assumed, was intentional: poetry being quite antithetical to his preferred appeal.

Every so often though, he gets a bit ambitious. Here, for instance, is his statement on the occasion of Vimy Ridge Day. Continue…

The funny separatist

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 11:18 AM - 10 Comments

Whatever the merits of his political cause, Gilles Duceppe is foremost among current federal leaders in his ability to tell a joke.

At a poorly advertised and sparsely attended news conference in Toronto yesterday, Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe was asked why he had not scheduled a meet-and-greet with “ordinary Ontarians” during a visit to Canada’s largest city in the midst of a tour of English Canada.

“I’m meeting with people who are organizing things, so I didn’t meet with the Association of Ordinary Ontarians,” he quipped, one of the few times he had to speak English.

John Paul Stevens announces retirement

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 11:17 AM - 0 Comments

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who will turn 90 this month, announced today that he will retire after this term. The bow-tie-wearing Stevens was appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford, but as the last of the liberal “Rockefeller Republican” judges, he has become known as the most liberal justice on the court, frequently organizing other justices in opposition to the conservative majority. Stevens’ retirement will give President Barack Obama the opportunity to appoint his second Supreme Court justice, and will also allow Obama to get his nominee through the Senate before the Democrats’ majority is reduced or eliminated in the mid-term elections. Obama’s first appointment, last year, replaced the Court’s other liberal Republican, David Souter. With the departure of Stevens and Souter, the tradition of liberal Republican justices, which includes such famous figures as Eisenhower’s chief Justice Earl Warren, comes to an end.

USA Today

Not exactly outwitting the cops

By macleans.ca - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 10:17 AM - 2 Comments

Most drivers learn early that spitting out the window of a moving car is a bad idea. But the bumbling crooks identified in this story as “two of Winnipeg’s worst car thieves” apparently never learned the rudimentary physics of that lesson. Both were wearing electronic ankle bracelets imposed as a condition of previous sentences when they decided to steal a car. They cut off the tracking devices and threw them from the window of the speeding vehicle, not noticing when one of them flew, not to the roadside, but directly into the back seat. Thus, police knew exactly where they were; bending or breaking the bracelets sends authorities an instant alarm. One of the would-be thieves is just 18 years old, and has an extensive record. “You hope at some point the light will go on for him and he will realize this is ridiculous,” said a Winnipeg police officer. “Otherwise he’s going to end up doing a life sentence on the installment plan.”

Winnipeg Free Press

Figureheads need not apply

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 7 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

In a contribution to Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis—a collection of essays published shortly after Stephen Harper escaped defeat to a Liberal-NDP coalition in December 2008—York University professor Brian Slattery presents what might be the worst-case scenario for Canadian democracy: a governor general made to deal with an incumbent government that, though defeated in an election, refuses to relinquish power. “It is her role,” Slattery writes, “to ensure that the principle of responsible government is observed and not flouted . . . She is the ultimate protector of the constitutional order.”

Whatever else Michaëlle Jean might eventually be remembered for, this could be her legacy. In negotiating the Prime Minister’s request to prorogue the House of Commons in December 2008, and another controversial prorogation last December, she may have re-established the viceregal as something more than a reminder of Canada’s heritage.

“We’re likely to have minority Parliaments for the foreseeable future,” says Sujit Choudhry, a University of Toronto constitutional law professor. “The governor general is going to find him or herself in the midst of a political thicket quite often. So being thoroughly familiar with the operations of parliamentary government and knowing who to take advice from, and not being afraid to call political leaders on their interpretations of these conventions, I think would be very good.”

Continue…

Revenge of the mistress

By Anne Kingston - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 40 Comments

Alex Coppel/Rex Features/CP; Mike Groll/AP; Jeffery Ufberg/Wirelimage/Getty images

If the past three months are any indication, 2010 will be a red-letter year for marital infidelity—as in scarlet A for adultery. Between mistresses spilling their secrets and philanderers walking the new perp walk of shame, the age-old adultery script is being rewritten. If Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter, was published today, the scorned female protagonist would have a blog, a book deal, even a reality TV show. And that disgracing A she was forced to wear? It would be emblazoned on Reverend Dimmesdale, her higher-profile partner in sin.

This week, Tiger Woods, currently the prime attraction in the new Cheaters Hall of Shame, submitted himself to another round of atonement at the Masters before his return to the links. Fielding reporters’ questions, he admitted “what I’ve done has been terrible to my family” and spoke of the “pain and damage I’ve caused.” It was a reversal of his stance when news of his infidelity broke last November: “This is a private matter and I want to keep it that way,” he said after text messages intercepted by his wife, Elin Nordegren, led to him crashing his SUV outside their Florida house.

Then an unrelenting “mistress” cavalcade —15 at last count—revealed the world’s best golfer had turned his marriage into a public thruway: he risked bringing STDs home by having unprotected sex and, the ultimate indignity, he invited a porn star into his marital bed when Elin was away. The clichéd lines he used to lure them—his marriage was loveless, his wife didn’t like sex—only amplified the betrayal. Within weeks, Woods’s reputation as a stalwart family man and disciplined professional was in ruins. Not only had he violated his marital vows but, seemingly as grievously, he had sullied his public who’d bought into his carefully constructed clean-living image. In January, the golfer staged a televised press conference, at which his wife was visibly absent, to grovel. “I was unfaithful, I had affairs, I cheated,” he said. “What I did was unacceptable, and I am the only one to blame.” He then submitted to the requisite rehab for “sexual addiction.” By then the damage had been done: Elin had moved out with their two children, his commercial endorsements were evaporating, and he had spiralled from hero to laughingstock—from Tiger to “Cheetah.”

Continue…

Finally, an insider’s New Orleans

By Joseph Boyden - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 3 Comments

Photo Illustration by Bradley Reinhardt

The New Orleans of cliché: Bourbon Street as the fog rolls in off the Mississippi, a lone jazzman blowing a plaintive tune on his sax; tourists in garish shirts walking through the French Quarter, drunk on syrupy frozen daiquiris and hurricanes, gawking at souvenir shop windows stuffed with voodoo dolls made in Taiwan and T-shirts reading “I got bourbon-faced on S–t Street”; nubile young women flashing their jiggling breasts as rowdy crowds on balconies shower down Mardi Gras beads. Notice how all the clichés, by the way, are French Quarter-focused?

Certainly there have been many heroic celluloid attempts to capture the “real” essence of this brilliant, mouldy city. Exhibit No. 1: The Big Easy. Dennis Quaid and his awful Cajun accent (by the way, no real Cajun would ever dare live in this town, never mind one who’s a cop) tracking Ellen Barkin through the humid streets filled with, you got it, fog, breasts, and Mardi Gras beads. Exhibit No. 2: Angel Heart and its spinning ceiling fans, wrought iron balconies, and, you got it, voodoo dolls. Exhibit No. 3: do we really need a No. 3? If so, here’s one: K-Ville, a short-lived post-Katrina television police drama that tried (it really did!) to break out of the cliché but only ended up being consumed by it. A crooked NOPD officer who wants to come clean? Come on! Police corruption in New Orleans is so prevalent that it is one of those rare but deserving clichés.

And so when I heard word that the next poor fool of a director/visionary/genius had decided to try capturing the “real” New Orleans, I did the clichéd groan. And when I heard that this fool of a director/visionary/genius was actually basing a central character on one of my very own real-life friends of almost 20 years, a friend who I fondly consider a wastrel, a musical hack, and a drug fiend whose band played at my wedding, I spat my frozen daiquiri/hurricane concoction straight over my proverbial wrought iron balcony and onto the young breasts below. What? Say again.

What?

Other friends assured me, “No, really, this is going to be different. This is going to be it.” What did they mean, “it”? The last time someone would ever try to capture this city in a TV show? Did “it” refer to the Apocalypse? “No,” my friends assured me, “David Simon is making a show about New Orleans.”

David Simon. Writer and producer of such critically acclaimed TV fare as Homicide: Life on the Street, Generation Kill, and, as my friends gushed so hard I worried something vital might spill from their ears, HBO’s The Wire, a show so great, if you are to believe my friends, it makes The Sopranos look like, well, K-Ville.

I’m going to admit something now and just get it out of the way: I’d never watched The Wire. I admit this knowing that I have dropped severely in the estimation of my friends-in-the-know. I have done something unbelievable in not having ever seen a single episode of The Wire. My wife, Amanda, who writes for a living at home like me, who keeps the identical schedule as me, has somehow seen episodes of The Wire. And, of course, she gushes over it.

What do I hear so many of you say? Do I hear you daring to admit that you’ve never seen The Wire, either? A quick online exploration reveals that this series, while critically acclaimed to the point of nausea, was certainly not a record-breaker in terms of viewership for HBO, and certainly not a “hit” by normal TV viewing standards. So what does this mean? That TV can somehow be like literature? Critically acclaimed yet poorly visited? This can really exist in the dog-eat-dog world of popular television?

Hence the question: can someone capture New Orleans, the real New Orleans and not the hackneyed cliché of New Orleans, on film, and for TV? I was invited, as a member of the foreign press (never mind that this city has been my home for well over a decade, but hey, I am Canadian), to a private viewing of the pilot episode of Treme (which airs Sunday, April 11, at 10 pm ET/MT, on HBO Canada). I imagined a small theatre, a group of us in fedoras with our press cards tucked into hatbands, busily scribbling in the darkness of said theatre in a shorthand that shamefully, I’ve never learned.

Instead, five of us foreigners gathered in a hotel room of a nice place on the edge of the French Quarter, squeezed side by side into chairs in front of a rather small television as the very nice HBO representative slipped a DVD into the player and worried about dimming the lights and the appropriate volume. To my left sat a young woman working for a newspaper in Italy, to my right a handsome young Frenchman writing for Le Monde. The group also included a rather serious man from Sweden and a woman who I assumed was eastern European but who never introduced herself. I feared she spoke no English.

For the next 80 minutes, I sat entranced. Okay, maybe I wasn’t entranced for the first while as I tried to get used to the amazing Steve Zahn playing my wastrel friend and while I watched other real-life friends in bit parts, friends I’ve known forever, second-lining down a wrecked just-post-Katrina street. I was also pulled out of the show at times in my worry for my new foreign journalist friends on either side of me. How could they possibly understand what the men on the screen were saying in their New Orleans patois? Shouldn’t the nice HBO woman turn on the closed captioning for them?

But then it took me over, it being the David Simon magic that my hip friends talked about. I felt like I was watching an impeccably filmed home movie of this town that care truly has forgotten. Simon and company introduce us to the storylines of a number of people in this first episode that opens just a few months post-Katrina, New Orleans still a dirty toilet bowl with a scum ring running chest high around it. We’re introduced to a down-and-out white radio DJ, a black trombone player trying to get by on whatever gigs he can scrape up, a Mardi Gras Indian chief who’s returned against the wishes of his children, a white chef trying to get her restaurant back up, and John Goodman as a university professor who bellows to anyone who will listen about how the disaster was man-made and not a natural one.

There are other central characters, believe it or not, and all are introduced with a casual nod as the viewer is swept up into the complications of their world. And get this: not one French Quarter scene and no ridiculous Cajun accents! What impresses me most is that Simon breaks all the rules of formulaic and horrible TV. No car chases, no random violence yet—there wasn’t a single murder in New Orleans for months after Katrina—and certainly no ridiculous plot twists to make us groan out loud. Simon applies the rules of good fiction to his art, it appears: strong character development is key to good story. And we get plenty of that. By the time the 80 minutes were over, I felt like I’d just spent time with people who are going to become good friends in the not-too-distant future. And I felt like someone might very well be getting at least the musical and food-inspired parts of this town very right.

I talked with a number of the actors as well as Simon and co-writer Eric Overmyer. Every one of them seemed genuinely passionate about this city and the future of it. All spoke of New Orleans being a birthplace for so much that is the good America: music, food, cultural tradition. At one point, I almost felt like I’d entered the cult of the Crescent City with all the love flying around.

Certainly, one of the tenets of the show is to do everything possible to get the city right. This includes plenty of local musicians in small roles. And certainly there is a strong feel of this being a real insider’s show. None of the strange customs of New Orleans are explained, including the Mardi Gras Indians or second lines—large gatherings that wander through the streets fuelled by live brass band music and plenty of beer and weed. In fact, the opening episode is often so “insider” that I can’t help but wonder what strangers to this place might walk away with. When I expressed this concern to Simon and Overmyer at different times, both were casual with virtually the same answer: they trust their viewers, and their viewers like emotional payoff. Those who watch the series will absorb a lot of the great city of New Orleans over time. Sounds to me like the same experience of reading a good book.

When I asked David Simon if he thought this show might be a hit, he answered, smiling, “I haven’t had a hit yet, but HBO keeps giving me enough rope.” With that, I understood the man a little better, I think. Of course viewer numbers are important to him, but capturing some truth about this place seems to be his guiding principle. There’s a lot of excitement in town as the airing date fast approaches. And I think it’s a safe bet to say that a lot of us here will soon feel that finally, indeed, somebody got a little something right for once.

Author’s postscript: sadly, on March 30, 2010, David Mills, co-executive producer and a writer of Treme, died on set. This article is dedicated to the man and his work.

It’s like putting a puzzle together

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 65 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick / CP

This being Canada, the most common response to a bill that would move the House of Commons a step closer to representation by population—one person, one vote, the most hallowed principle of democracy—was deep suspicion.

The case for reform is surely beyond dispute: the number of people per seat currently varies from roughly 35,000 in P.E.I. to more than 132,000 in Alberta. The six least populous provinces, plus the territories, have between them roughly the same population as British Columbia, yet are allotted 63 seats to its 36. In no other democracy are such massive anomalies permitted.

Yet no sooner had the Conservatives introduced a bill—their third—to bring these ratios a little more in line (with 30 more seats between them, B.C., Alberta and Ontario would still be under-represented, but no more so now than Quebec) than the caterwauling began. The leader of the Bloc Québécois, Gilles Duceppe, saw the legislation as part of a plot to subjugate Quebec. Less predictably, the noted Université de Moncton political scientist, Donald Savoie, denounced the bill as an insult to Atlantic Canada. “As a Maritimer, I’m deeply offended,” he told an interviewer. “If we keep going down this road, I’m worried about the future of my country.”

Continue…

Masters Round 1: age before beauty

By Colby Cosh - Friday, April 9, 2010 at 1:35 AM - 11 Comments

In the spirit of Augusta National, maybe we should treat Tiger Woods as just another golfer today. Perhaps we all thought there was something unsavoury about Woods making his return in such a stifling totalitarian atmosphere, with the club refusing to bend its rules about television coverage and policing the galleries for the smallest demonstration of adverse sentiment. But you can’t deny it made for good viewing. The almost hysterical reserve of the broadcasters served to put the focus on Tiger’s golf, which remains exquisite despite his brief vacation.

(The one venue of protest was the sky—even Augusta National can’t control that—where planes hired by pranksters appeared trailing banners that read “TIGER—DID YOU MEAN BOOTYISM” and “SEX ADDICT? YEAH. RIGHT. SURE. ME TOO.” These struck me as disappointingly feeble wisecracks for someone to be spending that kind of money on.)

Woods’ 68 is his best-ever first round at the Masters, even though, unlike some players ahead of him on the leaderboard, his position in the next-to-last threesome on the course forced him deal with increasingly chaotic late-afternoon winds and even a smattering of rain during his time in Amen Corner. This didn’t stop him from making everyone else look helpless. Time and time again he’d swoop in on holes other golfers had all but vandalized and play approach shots that were the equivalent of declaring “THIS is how it’s done here, students.”

He posted two eagles, along with three bogeys that no one could reasonably regard as a sign of “rust”. I was most impressed with the birdie on the par-five 13th, where he played his second shot onto a geometrically perfect spot on the rising back surface of the green and watched it back up to within ten feet of the hole. He literally couldn’t have done that more elegantly if he had the ball on a string (not without teleporting so that he had a different angle on it after it landed, anyway). More often than anyone else, Tiger plays shots that are more impressive, even to a near-total golf ignoramus, than flukily putting the ball directly into the hole would be.

But I’m much more happy about the early tentative vindication for my thesis, developed after Tom Watson’s down-to-the-wire battle for the British Open last year, that there might be no such thing as an old golfer anymore. Why should there be? We have LASIK, a growing buffet of anti-inflammatories, and what amounts to cheap consumer bionics now. There’s probably a golf use for Botox, though I don’t know what it would be. (I’m no pharmacist but I suspect it would kill you if you took enough to keep your head still during your swing.) Watson’s Open run followed mere days after he received a double hip replacement. People joked about this, when he led at Turnberry after the first round, as if it were a liability. They’re bound to stop joking and start booking operating-room time any minute now.

Watson himself declared before the tournament that he is too old to stay in contention on a course as long as Augusta. Fans should be aware that it’s only 3% longer than the Ailsa Course he dominated at Turnberry. But maybe he should be taken at his word and expected to succumb to some upstart punk. Like clubhouse leader Fred Couples—who at 50 has the extremely rare distinction of having outlived two ex-wives—or 52-year-old Sandy Lyle, three strokes behind Couples and two behind Watson, whose game has been in the wilderness almost as long as Watson’s was.

Note, too, that Watson’s Open good-luck charm, British Amateur champ 16-year-old Italian Matteo Manassero, is playing at Augusta for the last time before going pro. Manassero shot 71 today, which leaves him T-22nd with Mike Weir and Ernie Els and on pace to make the cut easily. Maybe there’s no such thing as a young golfer either?

Outsourcing the CRTC/CMF Talk

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 9:04 PM - 0 Comments

I don’t have a lot to say about the Canadian Media Fund or the potential cuts to the CBC’s prime-time programming, because I don’t know enough about it to speak knowledgeably (and a lot of this is about what might happen, rather than will happen or has happened). But someone who can speak knowledgeably about making TV in Canada is Will Dixon, who has a post on the real problem that’s getting lost in a lot of the recent reports: while all these issues remain up in the air, so does the TV business, since you can’t put a TV show into production unless you know what the rules are.

This would be a much better post if I could end it by coming up with an easy answer to the problem, but I can’t, so I’ll just leave it there for now.

Today in whatever this is now

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 8:33 PM - 37 Comments

Well then, let’s see what we have.

The Prime Minister’s Office says it is “absurd” to suggest Rahim Jaffer had any access to the PMO to offer. Helena Guergis’ office says Mr. Jaffer is a “private citizen” and this is a “personal matter.” The Conservative party asked Mr. Jaffer to remove its logo from his website. Mr. Jaffer’s business associate is threatening to sue the Toronto Star. Mr. Jaffer was using a parliamentary e-mail address and one of Ms. Guergis’ Blackberries. He squabbled with some Conservative MPs over the caucus’ petty cash. And she is trying to claim socks as an election expense.

Oh, and “bustyhookers” is currently the top trending topic on Twitter.

MPs herd over to eat beef

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 7:38 PM - 2 Comments

The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association were on the Hill and held a beef
reception which had 200 West Block packed. Beef gets MPs and staffers
every time. Below, Liberal MP Mark Eyking.

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Liberal MP Justin Trudeau.

Continue…

Fire chiefs roll into Ottawa

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 7:09 PM - 0 Comments

The Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs arrived in Ottawa and held a
reception at the Delta Hotel. (Left to right) Vince MacKenzie, a Newfoundland fire chief, Liberal MP Scott Simms and Fire Chief Dave Rossiter of PEI.

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Tory MP Laurie Hawn (right).

Continue…

Best thing I read today

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 6:26 PM - 11 Comments

Paul Krugman, channeling Joe Heath:

“The basic picture of the federal government you should have in mind is that it’s essentially a huge insurance company with an army”

'Yeah, those allegations, they occurred, and we're doing the best we can to not have them happen in our custody'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 5:45 PM - 20 Comments

Reports from today’s Military Police Complaints Commission from the Globe, Canadian Press and Sun.

Richard Colvin is now scheduled to testify before the MPCC on Tuesday.

Opening Weekend: Cutting to the chase in 'Date Night' and 'The Wild Hunt'

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 5:18 PM - 1 Comment

Tina Fey, Steve Carell and Mark Wahlberg in 'Date Night'

There are three movies by Canadian directors opening this weekend: Date Night, The Wild Hunt and A Shine of Rainbows. I haven’t had a chance to preview A Shine of Rainbows yet—it’s a family picture directed by Vic Sarin. But I have seen the other two. You could say they’re both chase movies, though they’re from opposite ends of the spectrum. Date Night belongs to that distinct studio genre know as “action comedy,” and is directed by Montreal-born expatriate Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum), now one of Hollywood’s most bankable directors. The Wild Hunt is a low-budget feature debut from Montrealer Alexandre Franchi, who quit a banking career to  become a filmmaker. I’d like to be able recommend Franchi’s gritty little Canadian film over the middle-of-the-road, crowd-pleasing Hollywood blockbuster. But in all good conscience I can’t. The Wild Hunt is a bold, ambitious, uncompromising first feature that pursues an original and eccentric idea to a disturbing finale. Job well done. But I found it a maddening ordeal to watch. Date Night is a silly formula comedy with its own share of frustrations, plus a high quotient of banality, but it’s a lot of fun to see Tina Fey and Steve Carell play husband and wife. For an interview with director director Shawn Levy, check out my piece on Date Night in last week’s magazine: A date? It’s really a ménage à trois. Meanwhile, some details on the two pictures:

Date Night

This is as close as Shawn Levy has come to making a personal film. He dreamt up the idea while on a date night with his wife, at the same restaurant they go to whenever they escape for an evening away from the kids—just like Tina Fey and Steve Carell in the movie. To that extent, though Levy commissioned the script, it was inspired by his own experience, and its domestic moments have a telling ring of authenticity. Up to a point. When the action devolves into an extended car chase, its resemblance to actual human behavior evaporates. Date Night tries to be two things at once: a relatively shrewd relationship comedy and a silly action farce. Those hybrid elements don’t seem designed for the same audience (unless the action is supposed to be for the guys and the relationship stuff for the girls). As for me, I liked the dialogue scenes between the two lead actors, who have genuine chemistry, but got bored during the action sequences, despite the novelty of a car chase that involves conjoined vehicles with locked bumpers. I guess I wanted it to be more of a chick flick. Continue…

Canadians oppose Afghan mission extension

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 4:45 PM - 7 Comments

Slightly more than a quarter, or 28 per cent, of Canadians would support extending Canada’s mission in Afghanistan past 2011, while the mission itself has the support of 36 per cent of Canadians. Meanwhile, opposition to the mission in Afghanistan appears to have hardened. Echoing the results of a poll from last summer, a full 54 per cent of Canadians don’t want Canadian troops involved in the war and 60 per cent oppose extending its end date past July 2011. Opposition to the mission was fiercest in Ontario and Quebec and support was strongest in the Prairies. But while controversy over operations in Afghanistan, specifically detainee transfers, continue to dog the federal government, support for the Conservatives gained 1.4 points over the past week to end up at 33.6 per cent, while the Liberals polled at 27.3 per cent, the NDP at 15.9 and the Greens at 11.7.

CBC News