The Aboriginal perspective

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 23, 2010 at 11:28 AM - 0 Comments

The relationship between the census and Canada’s Aboriginal population, especially those living on reserves, is another matter entirely (see here). But here are a few comments, at my request, from the Assembly of First Nations.

The Assembly of First Nations is aware of and agrees with the concerns expressed by many individuals and organizations regarding the potential negative impacts on policy and funding decisions, as well as the ability to track and compare data, as a result of the decision to change the long form census.

Specific to First Nations, however, there are long-standing concerns with the census methodology and its ability to accurately capture and reflect First Nations demographics and the conclusions drawn from the data. Statistics Canada itself admits that it generally under-counts First Nations and has difficulty with accuracy and tracking for our population.

AFN has a long-standing mandate to support First Nations-led data gathering, ownership and governance (a successful example is the First Nations Regional Longitudinal Health Survey).

The decision to change the long form census only highlights the need for First Nations-led approaches to data gathering.

The Longitudinal Health Survey can be reviewed here.

Facebook hits 500 million members

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 23, 2010 at 11:23 AM - 0 Comments

Six years after it was created in a dormitory at Harvard, Facebook reported on Wednesday it now has 500 million members. The social networking site has grown rapidly, doubling in size from a year ago. The company reported more than 30 billion photographs, links to Web sites and news articles are shared through the site, and its members collectively spend roughly 700 billion minutes there each month. But the website has faced a few setbacks during its rise to the top, including intense scrutiny over changes to its site that encouraged members to make more information about themselves accessible to anyone on the Internet. A recent survey by the American Customer Satisfaction Index showed that user satisfaction with Facebook stood at 64 on a 100-point scale, which placed it in the bottom 5 per cent of the companies covered in the index.

New York Times

Hey look: In which a list is made, with funny remarks interspersed

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 23, 2010 at 11:21 AM - 0 Comments

For my column in the print edition this week, comedy hijinx galore on the general theme of “what do you do after you eliminate the obligatory long-form census questionnaire?”

India unveils $35 computer

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 23, 2010 at 11:18 AM - 0 Comments

India has unveiled a $35 computer aimed at boosting connectivity rates among students and teachers. The low-cost laptop was developed to help colleges and universities achieve their education goals through connectivity, the human resources development ministry said, adding that the price would gradually fall to $10 a piece. According to 2001 census figures, the country’s literacy rate stands at 65 per cent for its billion-plus population. Nevertheless, the country is trying to bring its online market on par with its booming cell-phone business. The country has also announced plans to link up all its 250,000 village councils by 2012 in a bid to plug massive broadband divides between rural and urban communities.

Source: CNN

Federal government reviewing affirmative action policies

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 23, 2010 at 11:14 AM - 0 Comments

The Conservative government plans to review the Public Service Employment Act to ensure hiring is based solely on merit. The Liberals are calling it an attack on affirmative action. “We must ensure that all Canadians have an equal opportunity to work for their government based on merit, regardless of race or ethnicity,” said the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and multiculturalism, Jason Kenney who announced the review yesterday. Under the current act, some positions may be reserved for visible minorities, aboriginals, people with disabilities or women. People who do not meet those criteria will not be considered. However, according to the Public Service Commission of Canada, all four of the “employment equity groups” are now overrepresented in the public service relative to their share of Canada’s population.

National Post

"I'd like to go back. Toronto's nice this time of year," says Black

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 23, 2010 at 10:32 AM - 0 Comments

Today, Conrad Black will know whether or not he is free to return to Canada, after a bail hearing in Chicago before federal judge Amy St. Eve. St. Eve has ordered Black to remain in the U.S. until she reviews his case. Black is currently free on a $2 million U.S. bond posted by his friend. He was freed on bail on Wednesday following a Supreme Court decision that found his fraud charges unconstitutional. (He was sentenced six and a half years in prison for defrauding investors and obstructing justice.) “I’m enjoying my new surroundings,” Black said, adding his preference is to return to Toronto, reported the Globe and Mail. “I’d like to go back. Toronto’s nice this time of year.”

BBC News
Globe and Mail

The American experiment

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 23, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

As has been reported, the U.S. Census bureau tested a voluntary survey several years ago and found the results were both less reliable and more expensive. Here, for the record, is that report in full.

What on earth will my husband think?

By Barbara Amiel - Friday, July 23, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Steve Carrera/Reuters

Last week I stood chequebook in hand at an immense Toronto Toyota dealership, ready to buy the world’s most hideously expensive minivan, and you’d think I had a nasty social disease. I had an appointment to test-drive the box-on-wheels, made after endless email exchanges, but the car wasn’t there.

As for the smart-looking headphoned receptionists chatting to air (or the car lounge lizards hanging around them), I was Grandma Moses. A line of salespeople loitered to the left.

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A real-life Captain Bligh

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, July 23, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Sometimes, when you want something badly enough, you suspend disbelief, hearing only what you wish to hear. Boguslaw “Rob” Norwind knew this instinctively, as misanthropic as he was by all accounts. And so the shadowy owner and skipper of the Discovery Sailing Academy, who also uses the surnames Norwid and Norwid-Niepoko, painted beautiful word pictures in the brochures he distributed to South American hostels and in sales pitches emailed to would-be sailors.

For free spirits like Lisa Hanlon of Nelson B.C., and Josée “Jade” Chabot of Montreal, the lure was irresistible: a sailing adventure in the South Pacific. Norwind promised a ticket to freedom: the chance to earn a Yachtmaster Offshore certificate, qualifying them to skipper commercial, ocean-going yachts. “Our goals are to help you learn how to manage a ship, healthy living, respect for others and self-discipline on the high seas,” Norwind wrote in an email this January to Hanlon, already a seasoned traveller at 22. He promised “a relaxed atmosphere of watching and filming whales, dolphins, turtles and oceanic birds. Sundowners and music will soothe the soul and sore muscles at the end of each sailing day. The camaraderie of the sea!”

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If we’re cutting useless things in Ottawa

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 23, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Finally, the serious business of tearing down the Canadian federal state has begun.

The opening shots in these great battles are always so nondescript. Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow. And in much the same way, the business of cramming the mighty oak of overgrown government back into an acorn starts with a little hedge trimming. And so it is the long-form census questionnaire that forms the first beachhead of the Harper government’s assault on big government.

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 23, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

If they had a million dollars
Montreal rockers Arcade Fire will match donations up to $1 million to Kanpe, a charity rebuilding family life after the Haitian earthquake. “We’re all family in times like this,” said Régine Chassagne, whose parents were born in Haiti. “Please,” her husband Win Butler urged fans, “take our money.”

For better and worse, check
In 1984, Steve Fonyo ran across Canada, raising $13 million for cancer research, an epic achievement for a 19-year-old with a prosthetic leg. His life since, always in the shadow of the late Terry Fox who attempted a similar feat in 1981, has been a train wreck. He was stripped of the Order of Canada last year after a long battle with addictions and multiple criminal convictions. He’d hoped a planned Aug. 28 wedding would signal a turnaround, but that, too, went off the rails when it was revealed last week that his fiancée, Lisa Greenwood, is serving a jail sentence for theft and assault. Victoria-area business people, who had planned to underwrite the ceremony at the city’s Fonyo Beach, where he’d ended his run, rescinded their offer. John Vickers, executive director of the Victoria Truth Centre, who helped arrange the event, said the couple’s “lives are too complicated at this time for a supported wedding to occur.”

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Fake MAD MEN Spoilers

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 5:42 PM - 0 Comments

I have not seen the season premiere of Mad Men yet — I will watch it on Sunday like the rest of you — which means I can’t spoil anything. Matt Weiner’s insistence that critics not give away anything about the show, even stuff that doesn’t traditionally constitute a spoiler, has become one of his defining characteristics in the public mind. (The other is his tendency to put his name as a co-writer on almost every script. I can’t help wondering how his writers feel about that, particularly since most showrunners, even the most hands-on ones, don’t do that kind of “credit hopping.”) I suspect the reclassification of everything as a spoiler is as much a marketing tactic as anything; Mad Men doesn’t have a large audience, and one way to get people talking about it is to withhold as much information as possible, making people curious about what’s going to happen. The more  information is released, the more it starts to feel like it’s a show where not much happens — which, in pure plot terms, is true — and it doesn’t become as tempting to the uninitiated.

However, Weiner’s spoiler-phobia inspired someone (I think it may have been Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune) to invent “fake Mad Men spoilers,” usually referring to events from the year the show is about to cover. So here are some of the fake 1964 spoilers I’ve come up with so far. Other suggestions welcome. In season 4 of Mad Men, we will see the following stories:

- Don creates an ad for Barry Goldwater that can compete with Lyndon Johnson’s below-the-belt “Daisy” ad. He asks Sally to play the part of the girl who gets nuked, but Betty opposes it.

- The gang goes to see the original production of Fiddler On the Roof. Deeply affected by the story of Tevye adjusting to new social realities, Don walks home reflecting on his life while singing “Now I Have Everything” — but does he?

- Allan Sherman asks Don’s firm to create a promotional campaign for his new comedy album. A casual suggestion that he try expanding into less ethnic material leads to the disastrous release of his white-bread “Allan In Wonderland” album, and a heartfelt conversation about the morality of depriving the world of more songs like “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.”

- Peggy and Joan’s trip to the New York World’s Fair ends in disaster.

- After the inevitable Beatles appearance, the gang — having learned nothing from its Ann-Margret fiasco — hires the pop sensation The Ladybugs to make a competing commercial.

It's the 1980s in Canada when it comes to HIV

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 5:25 PM - 0 Comments

The number of annual cases of HIV-AIDS in Canada and the U.S. has grown back to 1982 levels, when the epidemic was rampant in the gay community. Today, delegates at the International AIDS Conference heard that beyond gay men, those being infected now are increasingly IV drug users, and members of visible minority communities, particularly aboriginals and immigrants in Canada. In Canada in 2008, there were approximately 3,300 new HIV infections, and the rates of infection are steadily rising, while they have leveled in the U.S. Dr. Strathdee, who presented an epidemiological portrait of the epidemic in the U.S. and Canada, said inequities in race, ethnic group, gender, sexual orientation and immigration status are drivers of the epidemic. “All this translates into unequal access to prevention and care,” she said.

Globe and Mail

Tony Clement will tell you how many bedrooms he has

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 5:14 PM - 0 Comments

It’s not that the Industry Minister himself considers the long-form census to be intrusive, it’s that other people do.

Clement, who is in England on ministerial business, acknowledged he doesn’t consider long-form questions — such as how many bedrooms one’s house has — as intrusive. ”I don’t, but I’ve heard from Canadians who do,” he said. “I’ve heard from Canadians who are concerned about other questions, like whether someone in the household has a mental or physical incapacity, they’re concerned about questions about the characteristics of their commute to work.”

The embattled minister also said he would fill out the long-form census if he were to receive it, but has to be “respectful” of those Canadians who are concerned about the “very private nature of those questions and give them a chance to opt out if they so choose.”

Another Great British Musician Gone

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 5:05 PM - 0 Comments

This time it’s English tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson, a singer who used his somewhat dry voice with exceptional skill, and was familiar to all classical record collectors in the ’80s and ’90s for his copious discography — he was the tenor in many period-instrument recordings from that era, in parts like the Evangelist in Bach’s Passions. Apart from baroque and classical music, he was also a specialist in Benjamin Britten; here’s a clip of him as the Earl of Essex — he’s the one who enters at 0:17 in this clip — in the big quartet from Gloriana, Britten’s grand opera about Queen Elizabeth I (which he wrote for the coronation festivities of Elizabeth II, and which was coolly received as being insufficiently festive).

1945-2010 | Bruce Malcolm Randall

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Team Macho

Bruce Malcolm Randall was born a blue baby, the youngest of five children, in Toronto on Sept. 22, 1945. Because of his condition, he spent his first 3½ years in hospital isolated from his family, and raised by a nurse. His older brother, John Randall, met Bruce for the first time before his sibling’s fourth birthday. Of Bruce, he says: “He was always a dreamer, always his own boss, always shooting for something big”—perhaps because of those first years spent dreaming his way out of the white hospital room.

When Bruce was about seven, his father, John Sr., bought a farm near St. Catharines and moved the family there from their home north of Toronto. With little experience, he delved into agricultural life, but the experience did not go smoothly. John Sr. also developed a lung tumour and was sent to a sanatorium for nearly two years, so his dream of a country life faded—although it proved to be the start of a family tradition followed not only by Bruce, but his son.

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Getting serious: a choice of substance over showmanship

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 4:40 PM - 0 Comments

ADRIAN WYLD/CP

The announcement that David Johnston will be Canada’s next governor general was a rare occasion when substance and salesmanship meshed seamlessly for Stephen Harper, rewarding the Prime Minister with arguably his best burst of publicity since he sat down at a piano last fall to sing With a Little Help From My Friends.

Selecting the Queen’s representative in Canada is, of course, more important than picking which old Beatles hit to croon at a National Arts Centre gala. Johnston has rightly won wide praise as an irreproachable choice. Most recently as president of the University of Waterloo and, before that, McGill University’s long-time principal, he ranks among Canada’s most respected advocates for higher education.

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Music: The orchestra takes a breather

By Paul Wells - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 4:30 PM - 0 Comments

Faithful readers, if any, have perhaps been wondering since last autumn what on earth the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony sounded like when Edwin Outwater led it through a new piece by the Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry that required the musicians to listen to their own hearts through stethoscopes. Now, thanks to the CBC’s Concerts on Demand website, you can hear it, along with the rest of an entertaining program, here.

When a man is just not up to the job

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments

SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT INC.

On the poster for Salt, Angelina Jolie stares down the camera, a photoshopped femme fatale with witch-black hair and alien eyes. “Who is Salt?” asks the tag line, referring to her character, a CIA spy accused of being a double agent. It might as well say, “Who is Angelina Jolie?” Because that’s the secret that seems buried in her truth-or-dare gaze. For a Hollywood icon, playing a spy is the ultimate tease. Movie star mystique is itself a kind of secret identity, a charade of glamorous subterfuge in the cloak-and-dagger game of tabloid espionage. And espionage suddenly seems to be all the rage.

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Desmond Tutu announces retirement

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 3:53 PM - 0 Comments

Desmond Tutu, known as one of the foremost foes of apartheid and who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his non-violent struggle, announced that he is retiring from public life on October 7th, his 79th birthday. “I have done as much as I can and need time to do things I have really wanted to do,” he told a press conference at St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. “The time has now come to slow down, to sip Rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket, to travel to visit my children and grandchildren, rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses.”

National Post

She just wants to talk

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 3:51 PM - 0 Comments

Helena Guergis is publicly asking for a little chat with the Prime Minister. In the meantime, she seems fairly satisfied with the independence that has been thrust upon her.

I still hold my conservative values and when the House resumes in Ottawa on September 20th I will continue to vote conservative. However, I now have a stronger voice to address the concerns of my constituents. I am free to ask tough questions on matters that are important to the residents of Simcoe-Grey.

A game of High scores and high stakes

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 3:40 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Cole Garside

Virgin Gaming’s Toronto headquarters is filled with summer students, clad in shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops. They have been hired to test video games for the fledgling online service, which essentially allows gamers to bet money on the outcomes of popular console games like FIFA, Madden NFL and Halo, with Virgin Gaming taking a percentage of each jackpot. “Is this a dream job or what, guys?” bellows a beaming Zack Zeldin, 26, the company’s vice-president of gaming operations. He is met with a bunch of sheepish looks. “Look at those grins,” he says.

The truth is that the entire operation feels a bit like a dream come true for the people involved (although perhaps not for parents worried about the bank accounts of their college-aged sons and daughters). Virgin Gaming’s predecessor, Toronto-based World Gaming, had just 40,000 users and was still in a testing phase when a fortuitous personal connection—one of the company’s early investors, Rob Segal, now CEO, had previously helped launch the Virgin Mobile brand in Canada—placed it on the radar of Sir Richard Branson’s people.

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A Chinese spy problem

By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 3:40 PM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

While the spy swap between the U.S. and Russia has dominated headlines, Germany also has an espionage problem. The German federal prosecutor’s office has accused two senior diplomats from Shanghai of spying on members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement for the Ministry of State Security, China’s largest civil intelligence agency.

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Mitchel Raphael on G20 fallout, including a gay Pride homage

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 3:40 PM - 0 Comments

May wasn’t expecting the Queen
The usual sea of red Liberal T-shirts in Toronto’s Pride Parade was diminished by a sea of purple T-shirts on Liberals backing former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister George Smitherman, who is running for Toronto mayor. Liberal MPs marching in this year’s parade included Bob Rae, Carolyn Bennett and Rob Oliphant. All helped carry a giant Canadian flag; Rae and Bennett also carried Israeli flags in solidarity with members of the Jewish community who were upset over the parade entry Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. Armed with giant water guns, Belinda Stronach rode with Rick Mercer on top of the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research truck. The boldest statement at the parade was made by gay media publisher Brandon Matheson, who dragged a man dressed in riot police gear down the street on a leash, an homage to the G20. With Green Leader Elizabeth May in her rickshaw was a recent new member of the Green party, a drag queen wearing a “Queen Mum” sash. May had been told only to “expect royalty.” While Queen Elizabeth II was in Toronto at the time, May notes “I knew [Her Majesty] was not going to show up.” May will be back in Toronto for the Green party’s biannual convention in August. Because the party’s current rules mandate a fixed four-year term for its leader, it has to decide whether it will announce a 2010 leadership race at the convention. May says the feeling is a race would be silly now considering the strong possibility of an election within a year. May says several Green party rules need to be updated now that the goal is to get Greens elected, and not just be policy wonks.

MPs watching lots of YouTube?
Vancouver MP Don Davies, the NDP’s public safety critic, has spearheaded a push to have the standing committee on public safety and national security reconvene in order to look at the events that occurred in Toronto at the G20. “For a billion dollars we were led to believe there would be no violence and a respect for civil liberties,” says Davies, who had two of his constituents detained by police and allegedly roughed up after they were trying to raise awareness around public education. Also on the committee is MP Maria Mourani, the Bloc’s public safety critic. During the G20 she received calls from parents who could not find kids who had gone to Toronto to protest. Now she is getting calls from Quebecers who were in Toronto, complaining about such things as strip searches and being targeted because they were French. “It’s not finished,” says the MP. “More and more witnesses are coming forward. A lot of people feel very humiliated.” She says she has two of her staffers working full-time on post-G20 issues. Don Davies says social media have played a key role in the aftermath of the G20. “The issues have been kept alive and broadened by YouTube,” he notes. Depending on the route chosen by the public safety committee, Davies says he foresees watching a lot of videos, not common in a committee used to just oral testimony. “I think the videos will make it easier for us to investigate.” Davies also hopes to access footage taken by security cameras set up during the event. Davies notes auditor general Sheila Fraser will be looking at the G20 in the coming months.

Taking back the intersection
Large protests over alleged civil rights violations at the G20 continue in Toronto. On Saturday, people “took back” the intersection of Queen and Spadina, where riot police famously held people for hours in the rain. On July 17, Canadians Advocating Political Participation (CAPP) have rallies planned in three cities—Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver. CAPP morphed from the group Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament. While the Toronto and Vancouver chapters have been active since the prorogation rallies, the Ottawa group has been resurrected in response to the recent events.