Silvio’s messy divorce

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

Remo Casilli / Reuters

A prostitute and an aspiring model may be about to testify against Silvio Berlusconi, in the embattled Italian prime minister’s nasty divorce proceedings that continue to drag his already tarnished reputation further through the mud. Veronica Lario, Berlusconi’s wife of 19 years, has won the right to call witnesses, and is reportedly planning to bring Noemi Letizia, the model who sparked the separation when the PM attended her 18th birthday party, and Patrizia D’Addario, a former prostitute who claims Berlusconi paid her for sex in 2008, before a judge.

Continue…

The lesson of a Jewish cemetery

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 402 Comments

A Jewish cemetery in Cracow, Poland (Tobias Gerber/Laif/Redux)

Thanks to the wonders of globalization, I’m writing this in a fairly decrepit salon de thé off the rue de la Liberté in Tangiers, enjoying a coffee and a stale croissant grilled and flattened into a panini. What could be more authentically Moroccan? For some reason, the napkins are emblazoned with “Gracias por su visita.”

Through a blizzard of flies, I can just about make out the plasma TV up in the corner on which Jimmy Carter, dubbed into Arabic, is denouncing Israel. Al Jazeera doesn’t so much cover the Zionist Entity as feast on it, hour after hour, without end. So here, at the western frontier of the Muslim world (if you don’t include Yorkshire), the only news that matters is from a tiny strip of land barely wider at its narrowest point than a rural Canadian township way down the other end of the Mediterranean.

Continue…

A murder seen by millions, and a fiancé fighting for justice

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 12 Comments

AP Photo/Jacques Brinon

Neda Agha-Soltan’s death at the hands of an Iranian Basiji militiaman during anti-government protests in Tehran last June was watched by millions on the Internet, and came to symbolize an oppressed nation’s struggle for liberty. Excruciating to watch, the beautiful young woman’s final moments, as she looks wide-eyed into a cellphone camera before blood pours from her mouth and she loses consciousness, starkly exposed the Iranian regime’s willingness to use force against its own citizens who were unwilling to accept a seemingly rigged presidential election. Soon her name and face were held aloft on banners in Tehran and around the world.

A college at the University of Oxford named a scholarship after her. An Iranian factory reportedly tried to mass-produce statuettes of her likeness and was shut down.
For Caspian Makan, however, Neda’s death was infinitely more painful and intimate. It broke his heart.

Continue…

Merde, as the minister sees it

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 5:27 AM - 89 Comments

It would not be easy for a Conservative culture minister of Alberta to get a fair shake from the media and his arts-community clientele at the best of times. And this is not, needless to say, the best of times. I’m not going to defend, per se, Lindsay Blackett’s off-the-cuff Wednesday comment at the Banff Television Festival:

I sit here as a government representative for film and television in the province of Alberta and I look at what we produce and if we’re honest with ourselves, why do I produce so much shit? Why do I fund so much crap? Why aren’t broadcasters picking up more Canadian content? It’s because Canadian content isn’t what it should be.

Blackett admits he doesn’t watch much Canadian TV, and judging from the peripheral comments he made in his own defence, it sounds as though he may be unaware that there has been a renaissance in quality and production values. Canada, for example, can now claim to have been the home of several indigenous, watchable situation comedies, which is something we couldn’t say in 1990. Mastery of such an intricate, nuanced format seems to me a rough indicator of artistic progress, in much the same way that having an aerospace industry signals a country’s overall engineering ability.

But Blackett wasn’t talking about Canadian arts generally. He was speaking as somebody who has managerial control of a particular government funding envelope. If you want to pick a fight with him, it seems to me you had better be prepared to demonstrate knowledge of two obvious things. One is the full context of his remark—for which the interested reader had to turn to Sun Media:

After using a four-letter word to describe the quality of some Canadian-made films and TV shows, Culture and Community Spirit Minister Lindsay Blackett said more has to be done to make them better.

And that starts with him.

“I’ll take responsibility here in Alberta,” he said. “We don’t help enough quality scripts get written so they can have quality pitches to go and pitch for a production.”

During a discussion on our country’s TV industry at the Banff World Television Festival, some panellists questioned the quality of Canadian films and TV shows, causing Blackett—sitting in the audience—to wonder aloud, “Why do I fund this s—?”

“It’s a couple of things,” he said. “Our broadcasters, I don’t think, give enough money collectively to Canadian productions versus U.S. productions.”

To change that, Blackett said the provincial government will present new guidelines next week “which will show we’re giving new money and incentive to tell our Alberta stories.”

“And incentive to spend more money on scriptwriting and incentive to have more money spent on mentoring the new people in the industry who come out of school but still need to have the requisite skills on the ground to actually learn their job,” he said.

The money will come from the Alberta Media Fund, said Blackett.

“We’re talking about $880,000 to start with roughly and overall the fund is just under $20 million,” he said.

(Diane Wild, a witness to the scene, offers further observations at her weblog.)

No doubt there’s a very boring argument to be had over how much Alberta is doing overall for film and television, where government support (if any) ought to go, and what form it ought to take. But the attention to scriptwriting displayed here is new, and not obviously irrational. In the past, much of the discussion surrounding the film industry in Alberta has revolved around saving technical jobs by creating a friendly tax environment for Hollywood and other foreign productions. This only promotes “Alberta culture” insofar as artifacts like Unforgiven and Open Range are “Alberta culture”, and with the technical apparatus of filmmaking suddenly subject to Moore’s Law-like downward pricing pressure, one could argue that an ounce of funding for the imaginative side of filmmaking is worth a ton of tax breaks.

The other knowledge that critics ought to be prepared to display is some familiarity with the material Blackett’s department actually funds. I figure you can’t say it’s not crap unless you’ve at least poked it with a stick. Can the indignant Paul Gross, who received $5.5 million from the Alberta taxpayer for Passchendaele, claim intimate familiarity with In a World Created by a Drunken God or Caution: May Contain Nuts or The Last Rites of Ransom Pride? If not, then why is he shooting off his mouth? It would surely be much more sensible for Gross and for like-minded critics to admit that most culture funding inevitably pays for crap—that the arts world is, in fact, a colossal pyramid of crap, inherently necessary to provide the nurturing and elevating environment from which a few items of permanent value might spring.

But that is something the culturati can never admit. Kirstine Stewart, the general manager of CBC’s English television operations, reacted in the Globe to Blackett’s comments by saying “Nobody can ever question the quality of what we do here in Canada, creatively or otherwise.” Surely this is a much more revealing and intriguing comment than Blackett’s. Does she mean that questioning the quality of Canadian television and film is literally impossible? Or just that criticism is inherently objectionable, a malum in se? And at the risk of appearing to take sides, I must ask: which attitude ultimately seems more healthy and likely to encourage improvement—Blackett’s, or Stewart’s?

How can a Bloc MP take this oath?

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 10:53 PM - 169 Comments

Okay, so in order to see the Afghan detainee documents, members of the ad hoc committee set up by agreement between the government and opposition parties (minus the NDP) have to subject themselves to a long list of security measures. They have to sign a confidentality undertaking. They have to get security clearance. They can only view the documents in a “secure location.” They can’t bring staff with them, or any recording device, can’t remove any material or make copies. They can make notes on what they’re reading, provided they leave them on site, and destroy them in six months.

And they have to swear an oath. It’s described as an “oath of confidentiality.” But it’s not only that. Here’s the text:

I, [name], swear (or solemnly affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true loyalty to Canada and to its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and freedoms I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey. I further swear (or solemnly affirm) that I will not communicate or use without due authority any information obtained in confidence during the review of documentation.

The second sentence is the oath of confidentiality. The first is something quite different: an oath of loyalty. Nothing remarkable in that. These are Members of the Parliament of Canada, after all. And the information they are being permitted to see, as the tight security rules imply, is of the most delicate nature. Nothing less than the national security of the country is at stake. Of course you’d only extend that right to people who were loyal to Canada, and had Canada’s best interests at heart.

Except … the Bloc Québécois signed this agreement. As such, it is entitled to nominate a member (plus an alternate) to sit on the committee. If you’re like me, you have a problem with people who are openly dedicated to the destruction of Canada being privy to our most sensitive national secrets. Still, I realize in this benighted country there are those who disagree. There are even people who think the Bloc should be allowed to participate in the executive government (as opposed to the legislature) of Canada.

Fine: except the terms of the agreement says no committee member can see the documents unless they swear to “be faithful and bear true loyalty to Canada and to its people.” Regardless of whether you think there should be such a loyalty test, there it is. Regardless of whether you think it is fair to subject the Bloc to such an obligation, they agreed to it. I’ll put aside my objection in principle to the Bloc seeing any of these documents if the Bloc can explain how they can possibly swear that oath.

“That I will be faithful and bear true loyalty to Canada and to its people”? Is this not an explicit repudiation of their party’s central purpose? If they swear such an oath, then, they can’t possibly mean it. And if they don’t mean it, what good is the oath? If they are taking one part of the oath, as it were, with their fingers crossed, who’s to say they are not doing the same with the other?

How, in good conscience, could the Bloc agree to swear an oath to one thing when it believes the exact opposite? Or never mind conscience: are there no legal consequences for swearing oaths in bad faith? Oaths aren’t just words on paper. They are legal documents. They are intended to ensure people make honest statements, where honesty is a vital necessity, as it surely is in matters of national security. And yet any Bloc MP who takes this oath must, by definition, be lying.

I realize the separatist movement has confronted this question before. It is a constitutional requirement, not only for Members of Parliament but for members of the National Assembly in Quebec, to swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen, and somehow they have managed to work themselves around to doing that. I recall Gilles Duceppe pointing out that there are members of the British Labour Party who don’t believe in the monarchy, and yet are permitted to swear a similar oath before entering their own Parliament. But this is something else again. There is no possible way to square “loyalty to Canada and its people” with membership in a party whose stated objective is to tear that same country, and its people, apart.

In which case, if we permit any Bloc MP to take this oath, it is not only the Blocquiste who would be committing a fraud, but us. And yet the oath speaks of upholding the laws!

ADDENDUM: Here’s the oath Members of Parliament (and of the provincial legislatures) are obliged to swear before taking office, as prescribed by Section 128 of the Constitution Act 1867 and set out in the Fifth Schedule:

I, [name], do swear, that I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

In French:

Je, [nom], jure que je serai fidèle et porterai une vraie allégeance à Sa Majesté la Reine Élisabeth II.

But what do solemn and binding oaths mean in this country? What does anything? We are so used to looking the other way at the Bloc’s sincere and determined enmity that I suppose we will do the same with their mocking professions of loyalty.

"The committee will have access to all documents." So will it?

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 9:00 PM - 22 Comments

Cancel my initial reaction. I think the NDP and this Globe story have it wrong, too. The deal struck yesterday between the government and the Opposition — two of the three opposition parties, that is — providing for disclosure to members of Parliament of previously secret documents related to the transfer of Afghan detainees, strikes me, on closer reading, as acceptable, and in keeping with the Speaker’s ruling on the matter.

That is, I think it is. Parts of it are clear enough. Parts of it, not so much.

Here’s the part that’s clear. There’ll be an ad hoc committee of MPs struck, with one member plus an alternate from each of the signatory parties. They’ll have to sign a confidentiality undertaking, take an oath, get security clearance, meet in camera and so on. But, and I quote:

The ad hoc committee will have access to all documents listed in the House Order of December 10, 2009… [emphasis added]

“All documents” is pretty clear. That’s what the fight was about, that was the principle that had to be established: if Parliament demands to see documents, then Parliament gets to see them. It doesn’t have to be the whole Parliament: the government’s security concerns, everyone agrees, are legitimate, and probably couldn’t be addressed if all 308 members got a copy. But so long as MPs on all sides of the House are given access to all the documents — that is, the government does not get to decide for itself which documents it will release, to whom, and on what conditions — then I think Parliament’s demands have been met, and the Speaker’s ruling affirmed. Provided any limitations are self-imposed, Parliament remains supreme.

What happens then? The committee will look at both the redacted and unredacted versions of the documents, so it can see what was withheld. If the committee decides the redacted material is both “relevant” and “necessary,” it then sends it to a Panel of Arbiters — three eminent judges, acceptable to all parties — to decide “how that relevant and necessary information will be made available to Members of Parliament and the public without compromising national security, national defence or international relations.” Note the language: “how” and “will,” not “whether.”

So that’s pretty good. The committee of MPs gets to see all the material Parliament demanded, without exception. The rest of us see everything except the bits a panel of judges thinks are unsuitable for general viewing, or that the committee thinks is not necessary or relevant. (In fact, the committee would have to be unanimous on both counts, since the agreement also says documents can be referred to the Panel “upon the request of any Member of the ad hoc committee.”)

But does “all documents” mean all documents? Here’s where it gets a little murky. Continue…

The Commons: A bridge too far

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 6:46 PM - 43 Comments

The Scene. The leader of Her Majestry’s loyal opposition very nearly growled at the Prime Minister. And having lamented the agenda, expense and organization of this month’s G8 and G20 summits, he turned metaphorical.

“A bake sale would not be run like this. A children’s birthday party would not be planned like this,” Michael Ignatieff posited. “Canadians have to pay the bill. How is the Prime Minister going to explain to Canadians that he has lost control of Canada’s summit?”

The Prime Minister stood and translated this into terms he could understand. “Mr. Speaker,” he said, “the Liberal Party seems extremely angry that Canada is leading the world right now in terms of the economy.”

“Mr. Speaker, we always cheer Canada,” Mr. Ignatieff responded.

The government side jeered.

“But we cannot cheer $1.3 billion in waste,” the Liberal leader finished.

With the grand and overarching condemnation thus stated, the Liberal leader turned to his assistant prosecutors to explore the specifics. Continue…

Uniforms that never should have made the World Cup

By James Doyle - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 5:19 PM - 16 Comments

(KEVIN JOSEPH/http://www.flickr.com/photos/-kj/2038110635/)

USA 1994: These two efforts from the host of perhaps the ugliest World Cup in history are symbolic of an age when the U.S. really just didn’t “get” soccer.

Next: Mexico 1994

How to answer a question

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 5:17 PM - 50 Comments

From Question Period this afternoon, the definitive moment of this particular moment in our collective history.

Hon. Jack Layton (Toronto—Danforth, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the faulty deal that the Prime Minister signed with the coalition of the unwilling shows why only a judicial inquiry is ever going to get to the bottom of the Afghan torture scandal. The government tried to silence diplomat Richard Colvin, who was trying to blow the whistle on torture. DND officials were sending memos begging to silence him. Why did the government reassign people who were trying to raise the issue of torture? Why did it want to stop Richard Colvin from exposing the truth and reporting on what he saw?

Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC): Mr. Speaker, three political parties worked to get a responsible resolution of this question. Unfortunately, the NDP did not, but why would we be surprised? The deputy leader of the NDP knew full well what she was saying. She made statements that could have been made by Hamas, Hezbollah or anybody else with no repercussions from that party whatsoever. I hope the leader of the NDP will come clean and actually face up to his responsibilities on that question. While I am on my feet, I also hope that he will help us pass a reform of the pardon system, which Canadians have been waiting weeks for.

Rufus, are you googling yourself now?

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 4:43 PM - 17 Comments

Rufus Wainwright performing his new album at the Elgin Theatre

Dear Rufus Wainwright, I know you’re reading this. Why? Because I was there last night at the Elgin theatre when you offered this half-joking confession between songs: “I don’t know about you, but I get sick of reading about myself every day on Google—it’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad.” That was after you had dedicated your song Pretty Things to the Toronto Star. The previous night, your opera, Prima Donna, had its Canadian premiere on that same Elgin stage as part of the same Luminato festival, and the Star promptly slagged it with a one-and-a-half star review, calling it “a dramatic wreck.” For those of us who never found the time to read the Star review, you were good enough to paraphrase the cattiest line— “you can’t get a Louis Vuiton clutch from a Loblaws grocery bag.” You then concluded with a catty swipe of your own, that the Star critic must be “a real label queen.”

You weren’t about to let this go. You went on to tell us that on the afternoon before the concert you just couldn’t resist reading more reviews of the opera, including those from the Globe and Mail, which was fairly complimentary ["paleo-tonal, dripping with Puccini-esque lushness] and The National Post, which was adulatory ["the work of a real composer who understands the proper use of a trained voice and speaks the harmonic dialect of romanticism more fluently than many of the crossover stars who gobble up commissions today"] You didn’t quote those reviews. But you explained your backstage conundrum: “I’m putting on feathers and black eyeliner than I read this National Post review. . . Shit! I have to be happy out there! It doesn’t match my outfit.”

Well, Rufus, if you’re still reading this, you can relax. I’m not a critic. At least not where you’re concerned. I don’t feel qualified to review your opera, which I attended Monday night. I mean, I’ve seen a few operas in my day, including the entire Ring Cycle, and as a film critic I’ve seen a lot of orphaned opera in movies—I know that Ride of the Valkyries is the sound that helicopters make when they set fire to Vietnam—but to be honest, I know my  cappuccino better than my Puccini. And  although I’ve heard some your music and followed your interviews over the years, I had never seen you perform until last night’s concert. So I have nothing to compare it to. But I can offer one or two modest observations, about both the opera, which you composed, and the concert, which you performed.

Loved the cinematic staging of the opera, with those church-high Parisian windows caging the Sunset Boulevard diva who is struggling to make her comeback and can’t get beyond the media interview that’s been set up to promote it. And I was tickled that the journalist who interviews her—a closet singer with seduction in his heart—shows up with notebook, pencil and . . . the score! That’s like me showing up to interview Meryl Streep and pulling a screenplay out my back pocket. I find it works every time. Makes them melt. Unfortunately, this journalist was in no position to evaluate the singing, because I was given a press seat at the back of the Elgin, and a lot of the lower-register vocals never made it that far.

As for last night’s concert, you were the diva. At the start of the show once again we were asked to hold our applause. But this time we were told to hold it until you had completely left the stage at the end of the first act, because leaving the stage was part of the show. You made a melodramatic entrance slow-marching across the stage, trailing your cape, and took your seat at the piano in hushed silence. You then performed your new album  in its entirety—All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu. You didn’t offer  a word or a glance to the audience, which I later learned was utterly out of character. Your voice performed remarkable feats, soaring up and down glissandi, great spiral staircases of vocal ambition,  while your piano often bolted off in other directions entirely. Behind you were hypnotic  images of a giant eye raccoon-painted with mascara; as the lid opened and closed in slow motion, it looked like some some oozing, oil-slicked sea creature. Between songs, you sipped water while we listened to the white noise of the air conditioning and held our applause. That’s when I realized that the applause is not just for the performer, but for the audience. It fills the awkward silence and gives us something to do. By the time you slow-marched off the stage, finally allowing applause, I’d lost the appetite for it.

At the intermission, I ran into some longtime fans of yours who were mortified by what they’d seen. I reserved judgment, said I found it an interesting and daring experiment. One fan said it was like torture, and admitted he almost applauded before he was supposed to  “out of spite.” Then I met a couple of friends who were disappointed because they thought they had tickets to the Rufus opera, not the Rufus concert. The previous night at the opera, no doubt there were some misguided Rufus fans who came to see you and were dismayed that you weren’t onstage. It does gets confusing, all this Luminato exposure coming all at once. Anyway, when you stepped onstage for the second set of last night’s concert—having changed into a comparatively subdued pink-and-orange-flowered suit and shirt—you were (apparently) your old self, joking with the audience and singing some familiar tunes. You were warm and generous and the fans screamed. “Thank you so much for playing along with me in the first act,” you said. “You were very well-behaved, very Canadian.” Later, as if acknowledging that so much Rufus at once might be a bit much, you said, “I really appreciate all the attention that’s been paid to my opera and my show. I will always remember it as a special time in a very dark season.” You were, of course, referring to the death of your mother, Kate McGarrigle, in January. You paid tribute to her in the final song of the night, a number by your mother, which was tender and beautiful. By then, this off-duty critic had been won over. I’d been Ruf-ied.

Rights and Democracy: Sheila Fraser acts to ensure financial transparency

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 3:58 PM - 24 Comments

A little bird told me that, while we all wait for the Deloitte audit of Rights and Democracy that the former board promised us in three weeks, four months ago, that someone else was poking around at the benighted organization: Auditor General Sheila Fraser. I called her office, and media relations manager Ghislain Desjardins confirmed it was so. His note to me, in its entirety:

We expect to submit our annual financial audit of Rights and Democracy financial statements by the end of June (22nd is the tentative date). Rights and Democracy publishes the financial audit in their Annual Report. Click here for 2008-2009 RD’s Annual Report (.pdf). Page 22 for Financial Statements. You should get in touch with Rights and Democracy to see if you can have access to their financial statements before they release them in their annual report. Continue…

The memorandum of understanding

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 3:44 PM - 56 Comments

The official memorandum of understanding on the release and review of documents related to the treatment of Afghan detainees is now out and available here.

The contentious paragraph of preamble has in fact been changed. A sentence has also been added, at the end of paragraph seven (at the bottom of page 3), to the explanation of how the panel of arbiters shall determine what can be disclosed to the review committee and the public when solicitor-client privilege or cabinet confidentiality is raised.

Did Obama just kill cap-and-trade?

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 3:27 PM - 11 Comments

President Obama says his top legislative priority is to have Congress pass an energy bill by the end of the summer. In last night’s Oval Office address on the BP spill and energy policy,  Obama called for new energy legislation but did not utter the words “greenhouse gases” or “cap-and-trade.” (His comments excerpted below.) Some say that in failing to do so, Obama essentially killed the idea of a carbon cap  (if it wasn’t already politically dead).  On the other hand, some environmentalists see a glimmer of hope in Obama’s mention of the energy legislation passed by the house last year, which includes a carbon cap. As with the health care debate, Obama appears to be giving a wide berth to Congress to give him something, anything, to sign before the November elections. This makes it likely that cap-and-trade legislation could go the way of the “public option” for health care. However, there is an important difference. If Congress doesn’t act to legislate carbon emissions, the EPA will try to regulate them. Some argue that would be a more expensive outcome.

Continue…

Scientists’ MS breakthrough

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 3:25 PM - 0 Comments

Currently, multiple sclerosis is diagnosed by brain scans after symptoms of the disease are manifest. But now a team of Israeli doctors and scientists claim to have found “chemical markers” on blood that will allow doctors to test for the disease nine years before the illness hits sufferers.
“We are not yet able to treat people with MS to prevent the onset of the disease but knowledge is power,” said Professor Anat Achiron, of Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Medicine whose findings have been published in the journal Neurobiology of Disease. If doctors can predict the onset of MS early enough, she said, intervention therapies using drugs such as Copaxone or beta-interferon drugs that stave off MS symptoms might be used.

Telegraph

Same old thing, day in, day out

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 3:24 PM - 9 Comments

A survey of British women found most are fed up with the predictable routine of their lives and frustrated with constant work pressures and lack of a social life. Not enough holiday time and having to do housework on top of their jobs were high on the list of reasons for women’s boredom, along with never changing the way they looked and never having enough money. When asked what would improve things, nine of ten answered “a little spontaneity.” More than one-third liked the idea of packing their bags and emigrating to another country, while 31 per cent fantasized about telling people what they really thought of them. A quarter of women would like to walk into work and hand in their notice and the same percentage wished they could radically change their hairstyle. And what’s stopping them? Some 34 per cent of women don’t have the confidence to make the necessary changes to their life to make them happy, while 29 per cent claim not to have the time.

Telegraph

Karla Homolka eligible for a pardon as early as July 5

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 1:54 PM - 96 Comments

Convicted schoolgirl killer Karla Homolka is planning to apply for a pardon and will be eligible to do so on July 5, according to a report by CTV News. Unnamed sources say Homolka could be successful unless the government passes new legislation, currently held up in the House of Commons, that would deny violent offenders the right to apply for pardons. Prime Minister Stephen Harper cited Homolka’s upcoming eligibility as a reason for the reforms. The majority of convicts who apply for a pardon are granted one, and only 800 of 40,000 pardon applications were denied last year. A pardon does not erase a person’s criminal record, but makes it easier for them to get a job and travel abroad. Homolka, who was released from prison in 2005, received a 12-year manslaughter sentence in a plea bargain deal for the rape-murders of Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French.

CTV News

Let us settle this with press releases and leaks

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 1:48 PM - 10 Comments

The final agreement on Afghan detainee documents will apparently not be released, for whatever reason, until it is ready to be tabled in the House. In the meantime, the NDP and Liberals are engaging in an exchange of news releases: the NDP pronouncing shame, the Liberals declaring victory (and pronouncing shame).

Last night, the Liberals sent out a list of corrections to the NDP’s version of events that included an excerpt of the deal. A draft of unknown origin has since been leaked to the Globe, that draft then deemed a failure by an outside expert. Unfortunately, the Liberal version and the leaked draft don’t seem to match on perhaps the most crucial point.

To wit, the leaked draft contains a clause that reads, “Recognizing that Cabinet confidences and information subject to solicitor-client privilege are classes of information that the Parliament of Canada has long recognized are not necessary or appropriate for the purpose of holding the Government to account.”

According to the Liberal side, that clause now reads, “Recognizing that Cabinet confidences and information subject to solicitor-client privilege are classes of information that the Parliament of Canada has long recognized are sensitive and may require protection from disclosure.”

This may or may not matter. But that all of this might be settled with the prompt release of the actual and agreed-upon agreement would seem too obvious a solution.

New estimate pegs BP leak at 60,000 barrels a day

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 1:48 PM - 15 Comments

The largest oil spill in history just got a lot larger. New US government estimates suggest as much as 60,000 barrels of oil a day are flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. The numbers are significantly higher than the previous estimate, which was 25,000 to 30, 000 barrels a day (and dramatically higher than the original BP estimate of 5,000 barrels). BP is currently capturing around 15,000 barrels of oil a day. If the oil flow continues to spew at this rate, BP could be charged with gross negligence and fined up to $258 million per day.

New York Times

Winston Churchill’s cigar erased from poster at war museum

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 1:45 PM - 3 Comments

At the War Experience museum in London, a guest noticed that a poster welcoming visitors to the Winston Churchill exhibit was missing Winnie’s trademark cigar. The 1948 original shows the P.M. making a victory “v” with his fingers and a cigar dangling from his mouth. The museum would never have asked for the alteration, manager John Welsh assured The Daily Telegraph. However, he won’t reveal who chose to remove the cigar.

The Daily Telegraph

Duo pleads guilty in Canadian "honour killing" case

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 1:31 PM - 26 Comments

The father and brother of Aqsa Parvez have pleaded guilty to the young girl’s murder. Aqsa was strangled to death by Muhammad, 60, and Waqas, 29, in the morning of Dec. 10, 2007 at their Toronto-area home for rejecting the cultural traditions of her Pakistani family, including an arranged marriage that was planned for the 16-year-old. According to the National Post, prosecutors say the killing was “a gender-based crime motivated by patriarchal concepts of honour and shame.” After killing Aqsa, Muhammad reportedly declared: “My community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. This is my insult. She is making me naked.” Prior to her murder, the teen had confided in friends and officials at school that she felt oppressed in the house. She once stayed in a shelter in fear that her father would kill her for disobeying his wishes. Tuesday’s guilty pleas to second-degree murder mean automatic life sentences, and both the Crown and defence lawyers have asked for 18 years of incarceration for Waqas and Muhammad before they are eligible for parole.

National Post

Ontario woman injures brain, starts sounding like a Scot

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 1:21 PM - 2 Comments

Sharon Campbell-Rayment was bucked from her horse and hit her head on the ground two years ago. At first, doctors said she’d suffered a simple concussion, but Campbell-Rayment couldn’t speak for days. It was serious brain damage. When she learned to talk again, she couldn’t help but roll her r’s and drop her g’s like Scots do. The strangest thing of all? She now uses the words, like “wee,” and “brilliant,” more than before the fall. The extremely rare affliction is known as “foreign accent syndrome” and only 60 people are believed to suffer from it.

Windsor Star

Principal cuts student’s picture from every copy of yearbook

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 1:16 PM - 2 Comments

The principal of Lake Trail Secondary School on Vancouver Island had staff trim 10th grader Brandon Armstrong’s picture from every copy of the school’s yearbook. Armstrong’s entry for “favorite memory,” read “when Ms. Carpenter spent all the school’s money on a fence instead of new textbooks.” Principal Lori Carpenter told CBC News that students are allowed to state their opinions, but that the excision was justified because the information was untrue. District staff had chosen to build the fence, not her, she said.

CBC News

Obama vows to make BP pay

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 1:11 PM - 1 Comment

In his first address to the nation from the Oval Office, US President Barack Obama vowed that he’d make BP pay for its “recklessness.” “We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long it takes,” he said. “We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever’s necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy.” He also used the opportunity to remind Americans that they must embrace a clean energy future. It’s been nearly two months since the oil spill began, and critics have chided Obama for not doing enough to fix the leak.

Al Jazeera

The angriest men in news

By Philippe Gohier - Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 1:04 PM - 185 Comments

Dozens of reporters squeezed into a cramped room at the Sun’s headquarters in Toronto on Tuesday morning to hear Pierre Karl Péladeau and Kory Teneycke confirm what everyone already knew going in: Quebecor Media Inc. is launching an all-news television network to compete with CBC News Network and CTV News Channel.

The channel, dubbed Sun TV News, is slated to launch January 1, 2011, and promises “hard news and straight talk.” On Tuesday, that “straight talk” mostly took the form of potshots at Sun TV News‘s eventual competitors.

“Canadian TV news today is narrow, it’s complacent, and it’s politically correct,” Teneycke, the former director of communications for the Prime Minister’s Office and now the vice-president of development at Quebecor, told reporters. “It’s bland and boring, and Canadians, as a result, have largely tuned out.” Sun TV News, he said, will be “unapologetically patriotic” and “controversially Canadian.”

Populist sales pitch aside, neither Péladeau nor Teneycke were willing to brand the content they plan to broadcast as “right-wing,” much less endorse the channel’s nickname in the media: “Fox News North.” Still, it’s clear both men see an ideological chasm between what makes it to air on CBC’s and CTV’s news channels and what Quebecor plans to offer. “English Canada today is ill-served by the incumbent specialty news channels,” Peladeau, Quebecor’s president and CEO, said. “As a result, far too many Canadians are tuning out completely or changing their dials to American all-news channels.” To get those viewers back, Péladeau’s channel will offer a distinctly Fox News-like mix of news and confrontational commentary. Just don’t call it Fox News North.

Many hurdles remain before Quebecor can start beaming that “controversially Canadian” content to Canadian audiences, not least of which are the regulatory hoops through which the media giant must jump. The company is currently petitioning the CRTC for what’s called a category 1 license, meaning cable and satellite providers would have to offer the channel to subscribers; category 2 licenses, by contrast, allow cable and satellite companies to ignore the channel entirely. To Quebecor, the difference is hardly arcane: CBC News Network is said to collect $65 million in carriage fees thanks to its category 1 license; CTV News Channel, with its category 2 license, takes in a comparatively modest $15 million.

Péladeau has been a steady presence on Parliament Hill over the past 18 months, gaining access to some of the most senior people in government. In fact, he’s racked up over two dozen lobbying meetings with a mix of government ministers and high-ranking bureaucrats, including two with Stephen Harper in early 2009—back when Teneycke was still working in the PMO. In the meantime, Teneycke’s recruiting net has landed him two prominent press gallery veterans in David Akin and Brian Lilley, with Teneycke promising more additions to the roster soon.

As could be expected, the channel already has its critics in the media. In a widely-circulated blog post, Don Newman, the former host of Politics on CBC, wrote the channel would polarize Canadian political parties by “urging them to be more rabid.” Sun TV News, in Newman’s view, is “the last thing Canada needs.” But at Tuesday’s press conference, the angriest people in the room weren’t the reporters covering the announcement; they were Teneycke and Péladeau, who were all-too-eager to promise to lay waste to their rivals.

“We’re taking on the mainstream media,” Teneycke warned the assembled journalists. “We’re taking on smug, condescending, often irrelevant journalism. We’re taking on political correctness. We will not be a state broadcaster offering boring news by bureaucrats, for elites, and paid for by taxpayers.”

What was once a conservative pipe dream has come a long, long way in a remarkably short period of time. The “Fox News North” project now finds itself bankrolled by one of the richest men in Canada, headed by a former top-tier government official, and on track for a January launch. Apparently, that’s a lot to be angry about.