The Queen has landed and she’s brought Prince Philip too

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 5:02 PM - 3 Comments

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were greeted by royal watchers with umbrellas as they landed in heavy rain in Halifax this afternoon at 2:20 p.m. AT. Later today they will participate in a “walkabout,” and a Mi’kmaq cultural event. Tomorrow they are scheduled to visit visit Halifax harbour to mark the Navy’s 100th anniversary. The royal couple will stop in Ottawa for Canada Day, before flying to Winnipeg on Saturday and Toronto on Sunday.

CBC News

World Cup Week in Review: Week 2

By James Doyle - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 1 Comment

Day 9

Netherlands 1-0 Japan

Japan and the Netherlands each arrived in Durban with a win in the bag. Things started slowly, however, as the Japanese worked to stifle Dutch creativity in a midfield that sorely lacked the influence of injured playmaker Arjen Robben. A tentative first half ended with just one shot on goal apiece, but the Dutch came out gunning after the break, with Robin van Persie finding ways to come to grips with the Japanese defence. The pressure finally paid off in the 53^rd minute when Wesley Sneijder’s strike had enough venom to push past Japanese goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima’s hands and into the net. Fighting uphill, Japan were forced to open up their game, but couldn’t engineer a way back into the contest.

Ghana 1-1 Australia

Brett Holman gave the Socceroos the start they needed after an opening-match drubbing by Germany, firing home a lucky rebound in the 11th minute. But the Australians were to prove their own worst enemy once again, as Harry Kewell was sent off for using his arm to block a free kick on the goal line. Asamoah Gyan converted the subsequent penalty to restore parity. Ten-man Australia stayed strong, and the game became a goaltending duel, with Luke Wilkshire stopped by Richard Kingson after 72 minutes, and keeper Mark Schwarzer denying Quincy Owusu Abeyie a Ghanain winner in the closing minutes.

Denmark 2-1 Cameroon

With a loss each in their opening matches, both Denmark and Cameroon had something to prove in this contest. And Cameroon looked like they had the better of the argument early on, as some thoughtless defending gifted Cameroon the ball in a dangerous area, and Samuel Eto’o gratefully slammed it home. Denmark fought  back, however, in the 33^rd minute when a lightning-quick counterattack ended with a sliding Nicklas Bendtner poking the ball in. The Danes nearly spoiled their progress—another goalmouth giveaway gave Eto’o a chance that slammed into the post—but they eventually sealed their comeback when Dennis Rommdahl streaked through the defence and curled a lovely left-footer around Hamidou Souleymanou.

Denmark left the game with hope that they can still qualify, but Coach Morten Olsen will be furious at the generous defending.

Next: Day 10

Nailing the story right

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 4:46 PM - 34 Comments

A Swedish theologian argues that the idea of Christ’s crucifixion comes from a misinterpretation of the original Biblical account. In it there is no specific mention of a cross—two pieces of wood lashed together—but only of a “staurus,” which, Gunnar Samuelsson claims, is not necessarily a cross but can also mean a pole, and no mention at all of nails. Adds Samuelsson, who has written a 400-page thesis after studying the original texts: “The problem is descriptions of crucifixions are remarkably absent in the antique literature. The sources where you would expect to find support for the established understanding of the event really don’t say anything.” The absence of nails in the Scripture is true enough, although Christ after his resurrection shows the nail wounds to Doubting Thomas, and Christians have always portrayed him as nailed to the cross. That was a long-running dispute between believers and skeptics who pointed to overwhelming evidence that the Romans usually tied their victims to crosses and watched them die from slow asphyxiation, but the discovery, in 1968, of the skeletal remains of a crucified man, complete with iron nail driven through his heel bone, considerably bolstered the Biblical story. Samuelsson’s other claim, that no one at all was crucified, however, is new, and liable to startle other scholars. According to the theologian, ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew literature from Homer to the first century CE describe an arsenal of suspension punishments but none mention “crosses” or “crucifixion” and therefore, “the contemporary understanding of crucifixion as a punishment is severely challenged.” But most experts argue that crucifixion was the general term for those deaths by suspension whether or not crossbeams were involved. Particularly when the victorious Romans were engaged in mass executions—some 6,000 followers of Spartacus were crucified along the Appian Way in 71 BCE after his revolt was put down—a shortage of wood could lead to single poles being used.

Telegraph

Steve Carell: "It's a good time to move on"

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 4:30 PM - 1 Comment

Steve Carell told reporters that the upcoming season of his show The Office, its seventh, will be his last. The star, who had already hinted that he didn’t plan to stay with the show, says that he will fulfill his contract by staying for one more year, and then “it’s a good time to move on. I just want to spend more time with my family.” The U.S. adaptation of the hit British comedy was not a success at first, but Carell’s ascent to movie stardom in The 40 Year-Old Virgin turned it into NBC’s most successful comedy, particularly among young viewers. There has been no indication yet of what kind of changes the show would undergo if it went on without him.

EW.com

This Week's Travel News

By Bruce Parkinson, Takeoffeh.com - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 2:53 PM - 0 Comments

Stop The Presses: There’s Good News For Canada’s Airlines
In an industry where the sky always seems to be falling, Canada’s airline sector is enjoying a period relatively free of turbulence.
As Reuters reported this week, shares in Air Canada and WestJet are both up by more than 20 per cent and analysts see more big gains on the horizon. It’s an impressive turnaround from last spring when Air Canada was on the brink of a second trip into bankruptcy and perennially-profitable WestJet was showing double-digit earnings declines. “Things are a lot better than a year ago. Demand has come back quite a bit in Canada and globally,” said Canaccord Genuity analyst David Tyerman. Even the highly lucrative first-and business-class travel is slowly making a comeback, which is critical for Air Canada, which makes most of its money from passengers in the front of the plane. At the same time, many consumers are still spending cautiously, which is good news for WestJet and its low-cost model. When analyst predictions are averaged, the expectation is that AC stock will reach $3.96 in the next 12 months, more than double the $1.92 its B shares closed at last week. The market expectations for WestJet are not as dramatic, largely because its stock was less battered during the recession as it was one of the few North American airlines to stay profitable throughout. On average, analysts expect WestJet’s stock to reach $16.59 in a year’s time, 29 per cent above its $12.85 close at the end of last week.

Full Steam Ahead Or Cruising For A Bruising?
The cruise industry is placing a very big bet that the global economy will recover. How big? Think billions, lots of billions. The shiny new Norwegian Epic is readying for its inaugural sailing this week. At a cost of $1.2-billion and a passenger capacity of 4,200, Epic is the most eagerly anticipated ship launch of the year, but certainly not the only one. In fact, more than a dozen large cruise ships will take to the water this year, after a similar number in 2009. Besides Epic, major launches this year include P&O’s Azura, Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth, Celebrity’s Eclipse and Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas. In total, this year’s new ships will carry well over 25,000 passengers, who have to be replaced about once a week on average. Will the industry fill all these new berths? The cruise industry’s growth has been phenomenal over the past 20 years, average 7.4% growth each year. And as the market has matured in North America, cruise lines have been aggressive in seeking new markets, especially in the UK and Europe. But still, close to 80% of cruisers are from North America and not everyone is convinced that the North American economy – especially the U.S. portion – is heading back to health. As the Christian Science Monitor recently put it: “Ships are getting bigger and Americans are getting poorer.” The publication pointed to a forecast of 1.6-million personal bankruptcies in the U.S. this year, coupled with an unemployment rate near 10%. Those figures certainly encourage pause for thought, but so far the cruise business seems to have weathered the storm remarkably well – Carnival Cruise Corp. for one just posted a $250-million profit for the second quarter. And the industry continues to generate massive amounts of breathless press. Epic is all over the news this week and on Allure of the Seas, sister to world’s largest cruise ship Oasis of the Seas, made headlines recently when it announced that popular cartoon characters from DreamWorks will form a major part of onboard family entertainment is readying for its inaugural sailing this week Royal Caribbean obviously hopes the allure of cute cartoon Shrek and Donkey will keep the cruisers coming.

Big In Dubai: That’s The Way They Roll
In Dubai, it seems that small is just not an option. Take the Dubai World Central Al-Maktoum International airport: still under construction, the plan is to build the largest airport in the world with five runways, four terminal buildings and an annual capacity for 160 million passengers and 12 million tonnes of cargo. The airport will be ten times the size of the current Dubai International Airport, which ranked as the 15^th busiest in the world in 2009, processing over 40 million passengers. Al-Maktoum saw its first test cargo flight land successfully this week, heralding the beginning of partial operations within a week or so. The airport is part of a $33-billion dollar Dubai World Central DWC project that will take the Emirate’s position as a global transport hub to a new level. The master plan includes six inter-related developments — the world’s largest airport, Dubai Logistics City, DWC Aviation City, DWC Residential City, DWC Commercial City and DWC Golf City. The names aren’t exactly compelling, but the scale of the projects is vast. As a point of comparison, the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, served close to 90 million passengers in 2009, while Canada’s largest airport, Toronto’s Pearson International, handled just over 30 million passengers in 2009.

By: Bruce Parkinson
Bruce Parkinson is a travel industry journalist and regular contributor to Takeoffeh.com as well as sister company, OpenJaw.com

Photo Credits: epic.ncl.com, en.wikipedia.org

Virgin's Second Coming: Will This One Last?

By Takeoffeh.com - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 2:49 PM - 0 Comments

U.S. low-cost carrier Virgin America launched its first international route this week from LA to Toronto, but it’s not the first Virgin to land in Canada.

Sister airline Virgin Atlantic launched service to London from Toronto in June 2001. At the inaugural event, a confident Virgin founder Richard Branson told TakeOffeh’s Nina Slawek: “Toronto is not an easy market but we really do expect in 50 years to still be around.”

A couple of months later the September 11 attacks sent the aviation industry into a spiral. A few months after that, Virgin Atlantic pulled out. While the terrorist attacks certainly contributed to Virgin Atlantic’s departure, the Toronto-London route is fiercely competitive, led by Air Canada and British Airways, with substantial seasonal charter traffic to boot.

On the Los Angeles and San Francisco routes, Virgin America is launching with daily service to Toronto. Air Canada will be the main competition, and as expected, new competition has brought its fangs out. AC has boosted its seat capacity in the Toronto-California market by more than 50% in advance of Virgin America’s arrival and is undercutting Virgin America’s fares with rates as low as $187 one-way, before taxes, between Toronto and San Francisco for weekdays in mid-July.

“Virgin America is a low-cost carrier unlike Virgin Atlantic so I am sure they will have a different strategy,” says airline industry expert Chris Rivers. “It will be tough against AC though, because they will match their prices and they have the formidable Aeroplan.”

As the Globe and Mail reports, Virgin America chairman Donald Carty (who is also chairman of Toronto-based Porter Airlines) says price isn’t the only factor in route success. “Many start-ups have come to the market with the promise to the customer of low prices. That’s great, but the customer wants and expects more. We will be delivering a travel experience, too,” he said.

The Virgin America ‘experience’ earned the carrier a ‘Best Domestic Airline’ rating from Travel + Leisure magazine in both 2008 and 2009. Features include mood lighting, inflight Wi-Fi, a self-serve mini bar and snack trolley and a dynamic entertainment system known as ‘Red.’

It’s a sexy product for sure, but Carty knows Virgin America is in for a fight. “Air Canada isn’t a naive carrier. They will compete and won’t give up turf easily. If we see a strong economic recovery, there is probably room for success on routes for both entities.”

It should also be noted that Air Canada was voted “Best Airline in North America” by readers of Global Travel magazine in its annual survey of business travellers.

Virgin America is hoping for the best, and already looking at Vancouver as a second Canadian destination. Carty sees the opportunity to tap into a large community of Canadians working in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, and the high-tech biz in San Francisco.

Once the G8 crowds clear out of town, Branson will be back for an official inauguration on June 29^th. In true Virgin style it will be a party, with red-hot Canadian hip hop artist Drake among the attendees.

By: Bruce Parkinson
Bruce Parkinson is a travel industry journalist and regular contributor to Takeoffeh.com as well as sister company, OpenJaw.com

Photo Credits: en.wikipedia.org

Forward your funny emails here

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 1:55 PM - 3 Comments

About 85 employees at the Canada Revenue Agency are disciplined every year for making inappropriate use of their Internet connections. In some cases, the offense amounted to simply overusing it. One employee “browsed the Internet an average of three hours and 32 minutes per day” according to documents obtained by Canadian Press; another’s surfing habits consumed nearly 90 minutes of his or her workday. Internal documents from Canada’s tax collection agency also show employees wiling away the work day setting up sports pools, sending chain letters, promoting “illegal substances,” sharing offensive cartoons and running pyramid schemes. A CRA spokesperson says the agency doesn’t believe the problem is any more widespread there than it is elsewhere, “nor would the agency consider the problem as chronic.”

Chronicle Herald

The Royals: Just grin and bear it

By Patricia Treble - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 1:48 PM - 9 Comments

DAVE BUSTON/AP

The nightmare for royal tour organizers is how easily months of exquisitely precise planning can unravel, especially when obvious problems aren’t foreseen. On their 2002 Canadian visit, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip went to an outdoor event. In October. In the coldest big city in the world—Winnipeg. Beside the Red River. Naturally, the temperature plunged to just above freezing.

The royal couple was seated on an exposed platform without so much as a lap rug to keep them from shivering in the wind as they listened to the droning tones of politicians. To add insult to injury, their boat conked out on the Red River and had to be towed to the other shore. “That was interesting,” Elizabeth II said to Gary Doer, then premier. The Times of London translated that queenspeak into “I am not in the least amused.” After that frigid adventure, the monarch decided not to rely on the foresight of tour organizers. At that evening’s event—again outdoors—she wrapped herself in a thick mink coat.

Continue…

Marilyn Monroe is attractive from the inside-out

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 12:34 PM - 0 Comments

Forty-five thousand dollars: the amount paid at auction on Sunday for a set of three Marilyn Monroe chest X-rays from a 1954 hospital visit. Julien’s Auctions, which sold the the X-rays at the Hollywood Legends auction at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, estimated that a view of the inside of Monroe’s chest would fetch only $3,000. Other “Monroe-abilia” sold included a chair from her last photo shoot for $35,000—less than the price of the chest pictures.

Toronto Star

European particle smashes record

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 12:17 PM - 0 Comments

Last weekend, scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) broke their own particle collision record. The scientists say they’ll soon put their American rival, the Tevatron particle accelerator in Illinois “out of business.” The team had successfully increased particle collisions by adjusting the proton beams in the machine so that they had more energy. The LHC is one of the world’s highest-energy particle accelerators which generates 10,000 particle collisions per second. The machine is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Geneva, Switzerland. “The more collisions we get, the closer we get to supersymmetry, dark matter, the Higgs boson and other types of new physics,” said Professor John Ellis to the BBC. The Higgs boson (aka “God particle”) is a sub-atomic particle which supposedly explains why matter has mass.

BBC

Canada’s population surpasses 34 million

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 12:14 PM - 1 Comment

Canada’s population surpassed the 34 million mark in April, according to Statistics Canada. The agency estimates that the population was 34,019,000 on April 1, marking an increase of 88,100, or 0.26 per cent, from Jan. 1. The agency reported that all four western provinces had growth rates stronger than the national average. Statistics Canada reports more than two-thirds (71 per cent) of the first-quarter increase was due to net international migration, while 29 per cent was attributable to natural increase. Both factors increased at a slower pace than the previous year. The drop in Canada’s net international migration was a result of a substantial drop in the net number of non-permanent residents. Non-permanent residents include people from other countries who have a work or study permit, or who are refugee claimants. Non-permanent residents also include family members living with refugee claimants in Canada.

CBC

Porn sites could get “.xxx” domain

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:56 AM - 3 Comments

Porn websites could soon be trading their .com domains for .xxx, pending board approval. On Friday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board of directors approved the new top-level domain—the technical name for the .com, .xxx or .net part of a URL—and sent it on to the next committee. ICM Registry, a nonprofit organization, has been leading the charge to establish the new top-level domain. But final approval may not happen until 2011, says ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush. The ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee, an organization of 100 governments, must take up the issue and offer public policy advice on the .xxx domain. Its recommendations will be considered as part of the approval process, alongside that of the ICANN board. ICANN, the private nonprofit organization that manages the Internet naming system, has jurisdiction over top-level domains. ICM Registry said the .xxx domain is beneficial to the public because it sends an obvious signal that the domain contains pornography, which is desired by some and avoided by others.

CNN

What's good for the Catholic…

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:54 AM - 353 Comments

Here’s a question  for you: imagine that a Muslim school in, say, the north end of Montreal won a favourable court decision to peddle a Muslim-flavoured take on moral and religious education. You know, the usual: homosexuals are evil, women should be modest, pre-marital sex is sinful, and only men can have the privilege to teach the ways of god to the flock. What do you think the reaction would be here in Quebec?

I’ll answer that for you. The province, the same one that became apoplectic when a cabane à sucre deigned to serve pork-free baked beans to a Muslim group, would go absolutely nuclear. “In Quebec, we have laws that protect the rights of the child,” the spittle-inflected Richard Martineau would probably write. (Actually, he did.) “The United Nations convention on the rights of the child, for example, affirms that children ‘must be able to express their opinions on all questions that interest and concern them…’

“But as soon as the question is religion, pffffffft, our lovely laws and nice principles go by the wayside.”

The opposition PQ would denounce the government’s inaction in the face of a nefarious, ever-creeping tide of religious theocracy within Quebec’s educational system. The ADQ would be doubly aggressive in its denunciations, linking the increased religiosity of Quebec to higher immigration rates and a loss of ‘Quebec culture’ and the decline of the French language. The Liberals, stunned as usual, would probably call some sort of commission and, hopefully, push the whole thing off till after the next election.

Here’s the funny part about the above story: it’s all true! Well, except for one little detail. Replace ‘Muslim’ with ‘Catholic’ and you have exactly what happened at Montreal’s Loyola High School.

Continue…

Longest-serving U.S. Senator dead at 92

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:50 AM - 1 Comment

Robert Byrd, the longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate, has died at the age of 92. Byrd represented the state of West Virginia in the Senate for over 50 years, running important committees, serving as the Democrats’ Senate leader for 12 years, and bringing home lots of federal money for his state. Originally a conservative Democrat who joined a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans in filibustering the 1964 Civil Rights Act (and who briefly belonged to the Ku Klux Klan), he moved leftward on racial issues later in his career, getting high ratings from African-American groups. His politics could sometimes be hard to pinpoint: he was one of the most vocal opponents of the Iraq War when most Senators
voted for it, but he also voted in favour of both of George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees. Mostly, however, he was “a  creature and defender of Congress,” always sticking up for the importance of the Senate and defending the types of appropriations and bills that others dismissed as “pork.” His replacement in the Senate will be appointed by West Virginia’s democrat governor Joe Manchin.

AP

G20 countries to half deficits by 2013

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:43 AM - 7 Comments

Over the weekend in Toronto, leaders of the wealthiest G20 countries said they would cut their government deficits in half by 2013, and “stabilize” debt loads by 2016. The move suggests that governments are focusing now on tackling growing deficits and debts following stimulus spending during the recession. The closing statements from the U.S. and European countries showed two different visions of economic recovery—the U.S. was cautious about cutting stimulus spending while Europe was wary of unsustainable debt loads. A “combo deal” that was growth friendly, was reached. However, there was little focus on developing countries and China’s currency wasn’t specifically mentioned.

Wall Street Journal

World Cup: When giants stumble

By Stephen Marche - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:16 AM - 4 Comments

Dylan Martinez/Reuters

Note: this article was published in Maclean’s magazine before Sunday’s game, in which England was eliminated after being defeated by Germany.

The old cliché of soccer as “the world’s game” is only half-right. Everybody plays soccer, that much is true.

The business of the game, however, belongs to a handful of elite European sides who own and control most of the world’s best players and provide the majority of the world’s most exciting games. Even during the World Cup and the Euro Cup, when soccer as business appears to be replaced, momentarily, with furies of unbridled patriotism, the influence of club football is never far away, continually affecting the action of the national teams. The two may seem like separate but not necessarily opposed loyalties. You cheer for your club during the regular season and then you cheer for your country during the tournaments. But the antagonism of the two modes of football is actually quite ferocious. Club football brings down international football and international football makes a mockery of club football.

Continue…

Work: who’s the boss?

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

GETTY IMAGES

Albertans take home the healthiest weekly paycheques, but when it comes to entrepreneurial spirit, nobody measures up to British Columbians, where one in five is his or her own boss.

Crime: Steal Town

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

ROBERT LABERGE/AFP/Getty Images

Overall, crime has been declining steadily. Auto theft, for instance, was down 15 per cent in 2008. Even Winnipeg enjoyed a 44 per cent drop—but it remained Canada’s auto-theft capital.

Money: giving till it hurts

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 2 Comments

istock

Even though Prince Edward Islanders have shallower pockets than most Canadians—P.E.I. has the lowest disposable incomes—nobody digs deeper to help those in need.

Life: now that's a full house

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Thomas Northcut/Compassionate Eye Foundation/GETTY IMAGES

While British Columbians enjoy the most square footage, one could argue Newfoundlanders are the most in need of the extra space—more than half of young adults still live under a parent’s roof.

This Canadian life: battle of the provinces

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 1 Comment

CP Images

Click below for the provincial leaders and basement-dwellers in each of the following categories:

Leisure
Crime
Health
Money
Work
Family Life

TAKE THE TOUGHEST CANADA DAY QUIZ EVER

Health: what's up, doc?

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 1 Comment

Adnan Abidi/Reuters

Where you live affects your well-being, say experts. In fact, those in Canada’s poorest neighbourhoods are 37 per cent more likely to suffer a heart attack than those in affluent areas.

Leisure: look who's tuned in

By macleans.ca - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Robert Kent/Compassionate Eye Foundation/GETTY IMAGES

Quebecers spend less time on the Web than the rest of us, but are more apt to watch TV—supporting a homegrown star system that has long been the envy of English Canada.

The full province-by-province breakdown:

RELATED ARTICLES
Crime: Steal Town
Health: what’s up, doc?
Money: giving till it hurts
Work: who’s the boss?
Life: now that’s a full house

Canada’s greediest man?

By Chris Sorensen - Monday, June 28, 2010 at 10:45 AM - 40 Comments

Rolf Vennenbernd/ZUMA/KEYSTONE PRESS

For much of the past decade, the annual meetings of auto parts giant Magna International followed a rhythm as familiar as it was frustrating: a handful of shareholders would stand up and express outrage at founder and chairman Frank Stronach’s hefty annual pay packages; the Austrian-born Stronach, with the squinted eyes of a gunslinger at high noon, would respond by effectively telling everyone to go to hell. In 2003, for example, Stronach bluntly told reporters “I should get more” when asked whether he deserved the $58.1 million he pocketed a year earlier.

The following year he offered his personal philosophy on why company founders should continue to receive rich pay packages even if they’re no longer occupying the job of CEO—it helps foster an entrepreneurial spirit, he explained­—but not because he felt the need to justify himself to critics. “I could say, ‘Look, if you don’t like it, sell your shares. It’s a free country.’ ”

That, more or less, was where the debate ended every year, much to the chagrin of corporate governance types. Stronach has been criticized for essentially milking the company he founded with the board’s acquiescence. His average annual take-home pay over the past decade was over $41 million, much of it in the form of so-called “consulting fees” calculated as a percentage of Magna’s pre-tax earnings. In 2007, at the peak of the market, he hit a personal best of $70 million. (The next best paid CEOs that year were Mike Lazaridis of Research In Motion, who earned $51.5 million in total compensation, and Royal Bank’s Gordon Nixon, at $44.2 million. Magna’s co-CEOs Siegfried Wolf and Donald Walker earned $13.4 million and $12 million, respectively.)

And it’s not just Stronach’s hefty pay that rankles investors. It’s his tendency to use his clout as controlling shareholder, made possible by the family’s ownership of a special class of multiple voting shares, to periodically grab Magna’s steering wheel as he pursued a host of risky business ideas. They included building a racetrack and casino empire, trying to buy Chrysler, the most troubled of the beleaguered Detroit Three, and selling part of Magna to a Russian tycoon with a murky background. As a result, the company’s stock trades at a significant discount to its rivals—a phenomenon known on the Street as the “Frank Factor.”

So there was a palpable sigh of shareholder relief when Magna said in May that Stronach had finally accepted a management proposal to buy out his voting control. The jubilation initially overshadowed the deal’s jaw-dropping $863-million price tag, which represents a nearly 1,800 per cent premium for Stronach’s voting shares. But even as Magna’s regular shares began to climb, a feeling of bitterness set in among several big institutional shareholders. After all, it was one thing to look past the consulting fees as long as the company was growing and making money, but quite another to allow Stronach a final egregious handout simply for agreeing to relinquish his iron grip.

Faced with mounting complaints, the Ontario Securities Commission decided to hold a hearing on the issue this week. Much of what the regulator is looking at are the technical details of the transaction, including whether the board provided sufficient information to investors before a vote on the deal, scheduled for June 28. Critics are worried that if the transaction is approved without serious changes—a likely scenario judging by the 15 per cent rise in Magna’s stock price on the day the deal was announced—it could send the wrong message to the country’s capital markets, namely that bad behaviour is rewarded. “There’s an enormous premium being paid here,” says Joseph Groia of Groia & Co., a former head of enforcement for the OSC who is now acting on behalf of shareholders’ rights group FAIR Canada in the Magna case. “And in a marketplace with a large number of two-tier share structures, that would set a terrible precedent.”

Of course, it’s not like Magna shareholders didn’t know what they were getting into. Magna and Stronach have a long history of what Richard Powers, the associate dean at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, called “non-best practices” when it comes to corporate governance. Nevertheless, Powers points the finger at Magna’s board for being too timid to offer a recommendation on how shareholders should vote. “That’s why they get paid,” he says. “The only inference you can take from that is they had questions they weren’t willing to raise in front of Frank.”

For its part, Magna has said it is doing its best to satisfy the OSC’s concerns about disclosure, raising the possibility of some sort of compromise. Last week, Magna released two internal reports about the transaction, one of which warned that the proposed deal would be “controversial.” As for why the arrangement was struck in the first place, Stronach, 77, who declined an interview request, has offered only vague references about it being time to let go of the company he started in the late 1950s. He has also said he hopes there will still be a role at Magna for his daughter Belinda Stronach, who served as CEO of the company before entering federal politics (she is currently Magna’s vice-chairman).

It’s a major about-face for a man who has long argued that family-controlled companies are desirable because they’re not as beholden to short-term goals like meeting analysts’ quarterly profit targets, and can instead focus on long-term strategies. Critics, however, say such ownership structures aren’t fair to the company’s real owners—the shareholders—and create opportunities for abuse.

Few investors are thrilled with the idea of paying a massive sum just to see Stronach go away, but not everyone agrees that the regulator should have become involved. If the OSC decides to kill the deal, it could mean the era of Stronach rule at Magna will continue indefinitely, since no one can force him to sell his shares. “I think Frank Stronach is extracting a pound of flesh,” says David Taylor, a portfolio manager at Goodman & Co., which own $5 million worth of Magna stock. “But the beauty of this deal is you get to vote on it. I can’t think of anything fairer than that.” Taylor also dismisses the idea that Magna’s board could have handled things better. “We can all do the math,” he says. “We know the price they are paying per share and it’s a ridiculous number. So the board can do all the analysis and calculations it wants, but it wouldn’t change anybody’s view whatsoever. We know it’s a stupid price.” At the end of the day, he says, the elimination of the dual-class structure should boost the stock from its current price of about $69 to around $100, based on the valuation of Magna’s rivals. “So we’re paying $800 million and change to add $3 billion in value—there’s your analysis.”

Other investors, however, say it’s time to take a stand. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan was previously a big Magna shareholder, but sold off all but one share (to remain involved with Magna as it fights dual-class share structures as a matter of principle) several years ago following Stronach’s decision to sell a big piece of the company to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, an industrialist with close ties to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. (Deripaska sold his shares a year later amid the global economic collapse.) “We had repeatedly spoken to them about the compensation they provide to Mr. Stronach in terms of these consulting arrangements because we didn’t think there was any justification for that,” says Wayne Kozun, the senior vice-president of public equities for Teachers’ investment arm. “We’ve had an issue with that because he’s not actively involved with running the company but he’s getting a life-long annuity of tens of millions a year. And we didn’t like the dual-class shares and the lack of independence of directors either.”

Like other critics, Teachers’ is concerned the deal to buy out Stronach will set a bad precedent, but Kozun says there’s other dangers lurking under the hood. Under the current arrangement, Stronach will get control over Magna’s new electric car division (and another four years of consulting payments) even though he would have a minority financial interest in the undertaking. At present, the project is considered to be peripheral to Magna’s core auto parts business, but if that changes, Kozun says Stronach could once again end up in the driver’s seat. “What they could be setting up here is a new dual-class Magna similar to the way it has existed in the past,” Kozun says. “And then if we wanted to buy out Mr. Stronach, we would have to pay another 1,800 per cent premium.” All of a sudden, $41 million a year is starting to look like bargain.