The end of the great stimulus experiment

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 11:02 AM - 69 Comments

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg/Getty

“Finance ministers of the world’s leading economies have been so spooked by the sovereign debt crisis that they have decided they can no longer wait until economies are growing strongly before they remove fiscal stimulus . . . The communiqué of the meeting made clear the G20 no longer thought expansionary fiscal policy was sustainable or effective in fostering recovery because investors were no longer confident about some countries’ public finances.”
—Financial Times, June 5

So the great Policy Panic is over: born of the financial crisis of 2008, expired in the fiscal crisis of 2010. Let Lord Keynes’s body be returned to its grave at last.

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Are the fit tidier?

By Cathy Gulli - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 10:59 AM - 31 Comments

The Kobal Collection

Anyone who’s watched Hoarders, the reality TV show about compulsive pack rats, may have noticed a pattern: many are overweight. New research reveals a link between a well-kept house and physical activity levels. The tidier a home, the fitter the homeowner.

The study, which is under review, examined the relationship between physical activity levels and the condition of participants’ homes and streets. The researchers asked 998 African-Americans aged 49 to 65 of “higher socio-economic status” living in two St. Louis neighbourhoods how often they walked or performed other activities. They examined factors such as traffic and the presence of sidewalks.

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Six dads for my twin daughters

By Julia McKinnell - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 10:58 AM - 4 Comments

Photograph by Steve Simon

Bruce Feiler’s twin daughters were three when he was diagnosed with a rare and deadly cancer in his leg. Feiler’s first thoughts were worries about how his death would affect his girls. Then an idea occurred to him. What if he could find a group of male friends to sub in for him as dad? As he thought about the idea more, he decided each dad should represent a different aspect of his personality. That way, the friends could function as a council, answering his daughters’ questions along the way. The Council of Dads, Feiler’s new book, tells the story of the men who pledged to help.

“I almost didn’t tell [my wife] Linda about my idea. It would be too upsetting for her to imagine, too morbid to consider,” he writes. But his wife embraced the plan. “We didn’t start out with a preconceived number [of dads]—and didn’t care whether the men were fathers themselves. As Linda kept repeating, ‘I want men I can call when I face some challenge and the girls come to me and ask, what would Daddy think of this?’ ”

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Japanese asteroid mission returns to Earth

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 10:54 AM - 1 Comment

The Japanese Hayabusa mission has returned to Earth with the first samples taken from the surface of an asteroid. A recovery team has found the capsule in Woomera Prohibited Range in South Australia, after a dramatic reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere where the main spacecraft was destroyed causing a brilliant light show. “We just had a spectacular display out over the Outback skies of South Australia,” said Professor Trevor Ireland, from the Australian National University, who will be working with the samples. The Hayabusa mission was supposed to return in 2007 after collecting samples from the asteroid Itokawa, however its mission was delayed due to technical difficulties. Scientists hope the samples will give clues about the early history of the solar system and the formation of planets.

BBC News

Pakistan spy agency funding Afghan Taliban

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 10:46 AM - 4 Comments

Pakistan’s senior spy agency, the ISI, is directing, funding, and providing sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban, according to a report from the London School Economics, despite Pakistani claims to have severed contact with the Islamist group it helped found almost two decades ago. “This goes far beyond just limited, or occasional support,” said author Matt Waldman. “We’re also saying this is official policy of that agency, and we’re saying that it is very extensive. It is both at an operational level, and at a strategic level, right at the senior leadership of the Taliban movement.” Waldman, who interviewed nine Taliban field commanders last year, said some Taliban claimed ISI agents had attended meetings of their top leadership council, the so-called Quetta Shura.

BBC News

Crisis States

A new home for Fluffy?

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 10:42 AM - 0 Comments

Harry Potter’s creator, in the process of refurbishing a period house in the suburbs of Edinburgh which she bought at the end of last year, is so far prevailing in her plan to create a new three-bedroom building in the grounds as well as kennels to be situated outside the main house. A nearby resident lodged an objection against the kennels on the grounds of excessive noise but was overruled by planning chiefs who fast-tracked the application. One of her new neighbours, who asked not to be named, said: “The application has been kept pretty hush-hush. The whole property is shielded by large hedges so you can’t really see where this new property would be but, seemingly, it will partly accommodate security guards and guard dogs.” Rowling, who bought the property in the west of the city for around £2 million, is thought to have been attracted by the house’s secluded surroundings. The plans never came before councillors, and were instead approved by officials under “delegated powers”. Work on the new building, which will replace a garage block, is expected to begin within months, once an archaeological survey of the site has been carried out. The council’s report on the plans for the property acknowledges that an objection had been lodged about the kennels but stated: “Potential noise from barking dogs is not an issue that can be controlled under planning legislation.” Rowling, who has three children, will move to the new house from their former home in the Merchiston area of Edinburgh, known as “Writer’s Row” as Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith lived nearby. Neighbours there protested eight years ago when the author submitted plans to raise the height of the boundary walls and install security cameras. The author, notoriously careful about her privacy. also has a country estate on the banks of the Tay and a house in London’s Kensington area with 24-hour security.

Telegraph

Okay, I'll bite

By Paul Wells - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 10:38 AM - 210 Comments

Everyone’s going to be in a tizzy about this today.

I got this from Talking Points Memo, the resolutely Democrat-supporting U.S. blog. And already TPM’s making it clear that the congressman in the video, the Democrat, is the bad guy, because he didn’t just stand there and take his mockery when a couple of kids in Brooks Brothers suits shoved a camera into his face and started interrogating him.

I’m not buying. I don’t know the first thing about this congressman and it’s entirely possible he’s a nasty piece of work. But so what. The kid with the insightful questions (“Do you fully support the Obama agenda?”) didn’t begin to identify himself properly to the congressman. When asked he had no answer. Even today, posting his cheaply earned martyrdom on the web for the world to see, he won’t identify himself or his cause.

If the kid had done this on an airplane in flight, it might be easier to parse the right and wrong here. But it makes no difference that he did this on a street. Nor would it matter if Bob Etheridge were a Republican. If some snot-nosed little ass comes bounding up to a U.S. Congressman in these addled times and starts firing off questions, and refuses to identify himself either before or the grilling begins or when asked, that congressman has my personal permission to break the kid’s nose without ado.

Something else to fight about: big piles of lithium in Afghanistan

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 10:33 AM - 4 Comments

So the Pentagon has figured out that Afghanistan sits on extreme untapped mineral wealth, including lithium used to make laptops and Blackberrys. Not necessarily good news. As the Times points out:

“Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.

The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts.”

Afterall, those diamonds didn’t work out so well for Liberia, Sierra Leone, et al.

Breaking news

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 26 Comments

It is being reported this morning that former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow thinks collaboration between the NDP and Liberals is an idea worth discussing. Mind you, Mr. Romanow concedes this notion is “nothing new.” Indeed, here is part of a dispatch the Canadian Press sent out across the wires in the early morning hours of Sept. 26, 2000.

Retiring Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow says discussions of a merger between the federal N-D-P and the Liberals should be looked at. Romanow spoke to C-T-V-NewsNet after he announced his retirement yesterday as premier of Saskatchewan.

Romanow says he’s not a fan of the up-and-coming Canadian Alliance which he feels embodies fundamentalist American views that “sometimes tend to be judgmental.” Romanow suggests middle-of-road and left-leaning political parties sew together an alliance of their own.

He didn’t say the Liberals and N-D-P should merge. But Romanow says it’s “something people should keep their minds open to.”

Later that morning, the National Post arrived on newsstands with a front page story touting similar comments by Mr. Romanow to a young cub reporter by the name of Paul Wells.

Old Spice man in talks with NBC

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 10:06 AM - 0 Comments

The man on a horse may be coming soon to your television. Isaiah Mustafa, best known for his Old Spice commercials, is reportedly in talks with NBC to land a spot on one of its comedy pilots. Mustafa’s Old Spice commercial was an instant hit after it aired during the Super Bowl and quickly became a viral internet sensation. Mustafa caught the eye of NBC Universal casting executive, Grace Wu, who tried to get him a place in one of the pilots this spring but was unsuccessful. Mustafa is looking to land role in future pilots, until then, he’ll be representing Old Spice as the infamous man on a horse.

YouTube

Variety

Good for businesss: Corporate Social Responsibility report 2010

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 3 Comments

For many successful companies, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is no longer just a boardroom buzzword, but a key to business. So, for the second year in a row, Maclean’s has partnered with Jantzi-Sustainalytics, a global leader in sustainability analysis, to present the country’s Top 50 Socially Responsible Corporations.

While the reasons each company was selected vary—from Gildan Activewear donating more than half a million dollars to Haitian relief efforts, to Loblaw’s commitment to acquiring all of its seafood from sustainable sources by 2013, to Nike making World Cup jerseys for nine national teams out of bottles found in landfills—the underlying goal is the same: make the world a better place. As well as the Top 50 list, which begins on page 42, we look into how CSR might help with major PR problems, like BP’s oil spill, and whether the recession made the business world any less socially responsible.

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Top 50 Socially Responsible Corporations

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 28 Comments

Click on a company name for more details:

Adidas Group
Ballard Power Systems Inc.
BCE Inc.
BMO Bank of Montreal
BMW
Brookfield Properties Corp.
Cascades Inc.
Catalyst Paper
CIBC
Dell Inc.
Direct Energy
Enbridge Inc.
Gap Inc.
General Mills Inc.
Gildan Activewear Inc.
H.J. Heinz Company
Honda
Hewlett-Packard Company
HSBC
IBM Corp.
ING Group
Intel Corp.
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Kinross Gold Corp.
Loblaw Companies Ltd.
L’Oreal
Manulife Financial.
McDonald’s Corp.
Nexen Inc. .
Nike Inc.
Nokia
Oracle Corp.
Puma
RBC
Rio Tinto-Alcan
Scotiabank
Sony Corp.
Stantec Inc.
Starbucks Corp.
State Street Corp.
Sun Life Financial
Suncor Energy Inc.
Talisman Energy Inc.
TELUS Corp,
TD Bank Financial Group
TransAlta Corp.
Transcontinental Inc.
Volkswagen
Westport Innovations Inc.
Xerox Corp.

For the related article and methodology, The Jantzi-Maclean’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2010 click here.

Corporate Social Responsibility: recession proof

By Philippe Gohier - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 5 Comments

With the recession battering the pocketbooks of Canadians across the country, charitable donations took a nosedive. In fact, many charities are running out of cash just when they need it most. According to a survey by Imagine Canada, an umbrella organization representing charities and non-profit groups, 45 per cent of the 1,500 charity leaders polled between November 2009 and January 2010 said the economic downturn had led to an increase in demand for their services, but 48 per cent say they’re having difficulty fulfilling their mission and 22 per cent claim they could have to shut down operations altogether if their financial situation doesn’t improve. And the future doesn’t look any brighter: 51 per cent expect to have a hard time covering their expenses between now and next year.

When the going got tough, Canadians looked out for No. 1. But what of their employers—many of which spent the better part of the past decade touting their new economy bona fides and aligning themselves with causes like climate change and AIDS awareness? While some suspected corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives would be the first items to disappear from corporate budgets amid all the slashing, for the most part, companies stuck to their principles. “We didn’t see any let-up in sustainability programs at companies that already had them,” says Heather Lang, director of research products for Jantzi-Sustainalytics, which compiles the list of Canada’s Top 50 Socially Responsible Corporations. “If anything, there was likely an increase in programs.”

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When things get messy

By Jason Kirby - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Judging from events of the past year or so, it may seem like the best response to a corporate crisis these days is to retreat to the boardroom and pray like hell that someone else gets walloped worse.

Back in the spring, the story of Toyota’s runaway cars looked like it would drag on for months. Then Goldman Sachs conveniently landed in the crosshairs of legislators and securities regulators, taking the heat off the automaker. In turn, the bankers on Wall Street got a reprieve at the expense of the pelicans, fish and residents of the Gulf of Mexico, courtesy of BP.

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The wasted Parliament

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 8:55 AM - 21 Comments

Joan Bryden surveys the results of this session.

As of today, only two appropriation bills — important but routine pieces of legislation that ensure the government has money to operate — have received royal assent after winning approval from both the House of Commons and Senate.

A handful more — including an all-party brokered compromise on refugee reforms and a massive, omnibus budget implementation bill — might yet become law in a last-minute flurry of activity … The Commons is expected to break as early as Thursday but the Senate may sit up to an additional three weeks to deal with legislation the government deems most urgent.

Parliamentary expert Ned Franks says he can’t recall another legislative sitting that has accomplished so little. ”There might have been (but) I have no record of it,” says the political scientist.

That British reaction to Obama, shorter version

By Colby Cosh - Monday, June 14, 2010 at 1:11 AM - 15 Comments

British politicians should certainly be standing up for Britain’s largest corporation in the face of xenophobic attacks on British Petroleum’s management by the President of the United States! This is nothing more or less than an attack on British pensioners whose comfortable retirements depend on shares of good old British Petroleum! BP’s dividends are our lifeblood! Now is not the time for our leaders to be timid in defending a great British CEO and British corporate interests! Mrs. Thatcher didn’t play these sorts of games when the American-owned Piper Alpha blew up! I ask you, what happened to the so-called “special relationship”?

On the other hand, it would be totally outrageous to suggest that Britain bears any collective responsibility for the management of the rig! Are we going to point the finger of blame at British pensioners just because they stood to receive the profits if everything went well, but now that it hasn’t, it’s the Gulf Coast that must suffer? Isn’t President Obama aware of the rudimentary fact that BP is no longer “British Petroleum”, but a global brand? Plus, hello, the owner of the rig was Transocean Ltd.—pretty much an American company, although they’re technically based in Switzerland! But, remember, “BP” is not in any sense British, even though its head office is still in the City!

Look, let’s not get caught up in technicalities! The point is, we don’t necessarily like the tone of these anti-British attacks on a company that, by the way, isn’t even British! The oil was destined for your market! If you want it, maybe you should clean up the mess! But, uh, that’s not to say you should nationalize BP’s resources in the Gulf of Mexico or anything like that! We in Britain would regard that as an act of xenophobic belligerence! Although, again, there’s no necessary connection left between “BP” and Great Britain! That’s just a vestige of history! Pretty much a coincidence! Can’t we just blame the Koreans and move on?

Music: The kid's all right

By Paul Wells - Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 11:05 PM - 4 Comments

Montreal’s Yannick Nézet-Séguin will be the Philadelphia Orchestra’s next music director. The hometown paper provides coverage, at extravagant length, here. The New York Times takes note here. The Washington Post‘s critic blogs here. Montreal’s Arthur Kaptainis tells the Philadelphians what to expect here. These four pieces explain better than I can what a big deal this is.

Now finishing his tenth season at Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain (very much the city’s second orchestra after the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal), he is also music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic and principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic.  Nézet-Séguin is now incontestably the most prominent Canadian conductor in the world and indeed, eclipsed only by Venezuela’s Gustavo Dudamel and New York’s Alan Gilbert among the world’s young conductors. Continue…

Ignatieff: "This party is not for merging"

By macleans.ca - Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 6:45 PM - 20 Comments

Shutting down recent speculation about a possible Liberal-NDP merger, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff told a Grit policy forum in Dartmouth, N.S. that his party is not interested. “This party is not for merging,” he said at the end of a 20-minute speech to about 155 delegates. “I’ve been saying it all along,” he later told reporters. “This party will run as the Liberal Party of Canada, with a positive, compassionate, responsible message . . . and we will win government. Period. That’s what we’re doing. That’s the business I’m in. I’m not in any other business.”

Chronicle Herald

The Backbench Top Ten

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 3:55 PM - 10 Comments

Our weekly, and wholly arbitrary, ranking of the ten most worthy, or at least entertaining, MPs, excluding the Prime Minister, cabinet members and party leaders. A celebration of all that is great and ridiculous about the House of Commons. Last week’s rankings appear in parentheses. Continue…

The rethink

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 11:54 AM - 26 Comments

Steve Paikin talks to Michael Chong about Question Period reform.

The $4-million fence

By Nicholas Köhler - Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 22 Comments

Photograph by Colin O'Connor

Huntsville, a town of 19,000 three hours north of Toronto that, at any other time, rarely locks its doors, has started to look increasingly like a prison. For one thing, a shimmering three-metre silver fence is suddenly snaking across farmland, abutting highways and dissecting dense bush, weirdly incongruous in an Ontario wilderness immortalized by Group of Seven progenitor Tom Thomson, who, as Huntsville Mayor Claude Doughty puts it, “used to hang here back in the day.” The $3.9-million perimeter, erected by a local construction outfit, stands as a great leveller in a region long divided by class—a quicksilver bullet slipping past tony monster cottages (the “cottage-o-cracy,” as one resident calls the upper crust here) as blithely as it does the hillbilly housing a stone’s throw away, all rotting cottages crammed with overturned furniture and bric-a-brac.

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This week has four sketches

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 1 Comment

Our weekly look back at all we saw and heard.

Monday. Struggling to swim in their own reflecting pool
Tuesday. ‘Building costs for the water feature are $57,000′
Wednesday. Sound and fury signifying a lack of anything
Thursday. Lawrence Cannon explains everything

Not Being John Malkovich

By Brian D. Johnson - Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 2:56 PM - 2 Comments

From the sadistic Valmont in Dangerous Liasons to the countless psychos in Hollywood thrillers, John Malkovich has developed a knack for portraying smug, gleeful cruelty. So when he first stepped onstage last night at Toronto’s Massey Hall, the audience could be forgiven for briefly confusing the actor with his character—Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. The occasion was the Canadian premiere of The Infernal Comedy: Confessions of A Serial Killer, the show that opened Toronto’s fourth annual Luminato festival (June 10 – 20). As a crowd-pleasing mix of theatre and opera, high art and shameless showbiz, the piece served as an apt kick-off for Luminato’s multi-media extravaganza. And for those of us who have never seen Malkovich onstage, his star-turn was something to behold.  After the 30-piece Orchestra Wiener Akademie had performed an awkward onstage tuning ritual, and conductor Martin Haselböck had bounded from the wings, warming up the house with some suitably enervating orchestral melodrama, Malkovitch casually sauntered into the spotlight wearing a white suit, black polka dot tie and gleaming smile.  He sucked up the inevitable generous ovation, then proceeded to work the crowd like a cheesy comic on a road tour, wading into the aisles, and tossing out local references to Massey Hall and Quebec. Until his halting Austrian accent sank in—confirmed with a Schwarzenegger gag—for a moment it wasn’t quite clear just what kind of celebrity moment was being celebrated. Were we being warmly greeted by a movie star or a serial killer? A bit of both, perhaps.

The conceit of The Infernal Comedy is that Jack Unterweger is on a book tour from the grave, out to make a buck from the voyeurism of his audience, and dismissing the show’s baroque staging as his publisher’s idea. He defends his murders by saying that, without them, he wouldn’t be who he is and no one would have shown up to see him. Unterweger, as we learn through the actor’s monologue, was sentenced to life in 1976 after being convicted of murdering a teenage girl. His devious good behavior and intellectual output so impressed authorities that he got early parole. When women started turning up dead after his release, he investigated the crimes as a journalist, and even collaborated with police. He went on to many murder prostitutes in several countries, strangling them with their bras, until he was finally caught, hanging himself on the very day he was handed a life sentence without parole, in 1994.  Jack addresses the audience as if they’ve come to see a kind of carnival freak. He makes us complicit from get go. Continue…

This is the week that was (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 15 Comments

From the House yesterday, Laurie Hawn, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of national defence, cites the human rights and international law authority of Don Cherry on one of the more complicated moral questions of modern global conflict.

Mr. Speaker, after spending last week in Afghanistan, I rise today to pay tribute to the men and women of the Canadian Forces, the RCMP, members of the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Canadian Border Services Agency, Corrections Canada and others who are doing tremendous work and delivering results under very difficult circumstances. I want to take this opportunity to remind all members of the House to appreciate the efforts and dedication of the members of our whole of government team who are doing a tremendous job and making Canada proud in a difficult land on the far side of the world.

Our people are doing terrific work and are making a real difference in the lives of the Afghan people. Just the other night a revered CBC sports commentator said, “The one thing soldiers always say to me is, the message that we want to put to these politicians and the people, ‘Hey, be more worried about us, the guys that do it, than the Taliban that is trying to blow us up.’” Grapes get it, our government gets it, the Canadian people get it, and in the words of Don Cherry, I say amen to that.

For four years now, the government has publicly worried that various members of the House hold some sympathy for the enemy. Perhaps now it is time for the government to summon the courage of its convictions and formally pursue these charges. For sure, Mr. Cherry would seem a fine choice to head up such an official inquiry.