Survey: Alberta most hospitable mining centre in the world

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 11:28 AM - 0 Comments

The Fraser Institute’s mid-year survey of mining companies showed that miners believe attitudes toward their industry have worsened since last April in 41 of the 51 jurisdictions surveyed. The report, which ranks mining jurisdictions based on how attractive they are for mining, placed Alberta at the top of the heap, unseating Quebec for the top spot. This is due to an unexpected mining tax hike in Quebec, which now ranks in the third spot. “Unstable tax regimes and instability in general are bad things. And when you raise taxes without consultation, it’s a real killer,” said the Fraser Institute’s Fred McMahon, who co-wrote the survey. The biggest loser, according to the survey, was Australia. Australian miners still face tax hikes following the controversial “super profits” retroactive tax on the resource sector, which was dropped. Five Canadian provinces (Alberta, Quebec, Yukon, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador) ranked in the Top 10, and bottom of the rankings contained Russia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Ecuador and Kazakhstan.

Financial Post

Hey look: Story of the century

By Paul Wells - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 11:19 AM - 0 Comments

From the print edition, my column considers the historian Tony Judt, much noted for his brave stoicism in facing the disease that killed him. I read his big book a few years ago and simply wanted to share two of the stories from it that stuck with me.

The state adrift

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 10:52 AM - 0 Comments

Alex Himelfarb considers the state of the Canadian state.

Erosion of the state through drift or design reduces choice and undermines freedom. Letting this happen in barely perceptible increments, without a real debate about the Canada we want and the role of the state,  undermines democracy. Rather than sterile ideological debates about big government or small government, we should be turning our attention to making government work better as measured not just by GDP but by the well-being of all its citizens and the health of the commons.  As Wolf says, the purpose and role of the state – that’s what our politics should be all about.

Week in Pictures: August 7th – 12th 2010

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 10:23 AM - 0 Comments

How Europe was saved

By Paul Wells - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Wally McNamee/Corbis

Tony Judt died on Aug. 6. He had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease. It settled into his body late in 2008 and, remorselessly over two years, shut it down.

He was a professor in European history at New York University. He wrote a big book about that subject, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 and assorted essays. The essays got him into a lot of arguments. His tone was always calm, but his topic, the pursuit of justice in a horribly flawed world, did not permit him to shy from fights. “The historian’s task is not to disrupt for the sake of it,” he told an interviewer in 2006, “but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly.”

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How serial killer Robert Pickton slipped away

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 8:45 AM - 0 Comments

JONATHAN HAYWARD/CP

Long before Robert Pickton became an infamous household name, but years after he began prowling Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a local advocacy group conducted a survey of the city’s prostitutes. It helps explain how a simple-minded pig farmer—the very definition of the banality of evil—got away with what police now believe is the largest serial killing spree in Canadian history.

The organization, the Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education (PACE) Society, interviewed 183 sex trade workers between 1999 and 2001. It found, not surprisingly, that 58 per cent worked to support a drug habit, and that violent “bad dates” were a frequent occurrence. More than half said they had been robbed while working the streets; 39 per cent said they had been kidnapped or confined; one-third said they had survived attempts to murder them. Remarkably, 40 per cent of those who claimed to have been targets for murder said they didn’t report the incident to police. The survey found a “gulf between acts of violence suffered and acts of violence reported”—indicative of a profound distrust of authorities.

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The man who’s driving Air Canada crazy

By Chris Sorensen - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 8:43 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph Jessica Darmanin /Andrew Tolson

At first glance, Robert Deluce seems an unlikely giant killer. The founder and chief executive of Toronto-based Porter Airlines stands shorter than many of the retro-uniformed flight attendants working his airplanes, and his small-town Ontario mannerisms—unfailingly polite with a tendency to ramble—are about as far away from Bay Street big shot as you can get.

On a recent afternoon, he ambled through the departure lounge of Porter’s terminal at the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport and chatted awkwardly with pilots and other staff, resembling a sort of Columbo of Canadian commercial aviation, minus the scruffy trench coat. And like the fictional TV detective, he is not to be underestimated.

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Joan Rivers has the last laugh

By Shanda Deziel - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 8:41 AM - 0 Comments

Michael Edwards/ Redux

“I’m hot again,” says Joan Rivers. That explains her recent guest appearance on David Letterman, after a self-described ban from late night television since the late ’80s. It’s why the current comedy issue of GQ celebrates her jokes alongside A-list comics Tracy Morgan and Zach Galifianakis. And it’s why people are approaching her on the streets of New York and treating her like a movie star—rather than a C-list TV personality. “I feel like Angelina Jolie,” quips the 77-year-old. “I want to hire six kids.”

It’s all thanks to a new, critically acclaimed documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which opens in Toronto and Montreal Aug. 13 and Vancouver Aug. 20. Two filmmakers, better known for tackling subjects like genocide and wrongful convictions, followed the hard-working comedian for just over a year, as she pounded the pavement with comedy club gigs, home-shopping-channel duties, and any reality show that would have her—all with the hopes of clawing back the career she once had.

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Miss Australia’s technicolour tent
The “national costume” is one of the quainter events at next month’s Miss Universe contest. Trouble is, Australians don’t really have one, so Jesinta Campbell, 18, will represent Oz in what has been called a “national joke,” a “travesty” and a “dingo’s breakfast.” She says she’s proud of designer Natasha Dwyer’s creation, accurately describing it as “incredible.”

Good night, and good luck
After six tumultuous years at the head of the CBC’s English Services division, Richard Stursberg was shown the door late last week. Stursberg was closely associated with the broadcaster’s turn toward more commercial fare, most notably helping bring to air ratings hits such as Little Mosque on the Prairie and Dragons’ Den. But he also oversaw some of the most trying events in recent years, including the 2005 lockout of English-language radio and TV employees, and last year’s wave of layoffs. No reason was given for the departure, which was effective immediately, though rumours have swirled the former head of Telefilm Canada clashed with fellow executives over the Mother Corp.’s long-term strategy. The broadcaster has only confirmed the decision to let Stursberg go “was made by [CBC President] Hubert Lacroix.”

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Same-sex marriage in California: the trap closes?

By Colby Cosh - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 4:23 AM - 0 Comments

Don’t look now, but a twist has materialized in the legal epic of same-sex marriage in California. When U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker struck down the statute implementing the anti-SSM Proposition 8, even sophisticated observers began imagining the familiar capillary process whereby a quarrel migrates upward through increasingly mighty appellate courts.

But wait! Remember what the style of cause was in this lawsuit? That’s right: Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

The plaintiffs were two gays and two lesbians seeking California marriage licenses. The defendants were state officials obeying the dictates of Prop 8, as unwilling legislative automata, from the Governator on down. Those officials have no intention of appealing Walker’s ruling. Indeed, they barely presented a defence of “themselves” in the first place. The advocates of Proposition 8, whose clumsy evidence Judge Walker treated like a speed-bag in his decision, weren’t parties to the suit and didn’t ask to be. They were mere intervenors. So how can they obtain standing to appeal?

This wrinkle didn’t come to the attention of the general-interest press (or to me) until yesterday, when Walker addressed it in his handling of a request for a stay of his decision. The rule is that federal appeal courts, under Article III of the Constitution, can only hear legitimate, non-hypothetical “cases” and “controversies”. This means that intervenors and other observers have to meet a high standard in order to take a decision to U.S. Circuit Court without the aid of one of the original parties—aid that will certainly not be forthcoming in this instance.

Traditionally, in order to gain standing, non-parties have to show that they have suffered a concrete, specific injury as a result of the decision being appealed. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out in 1997 that “An intervenor cannot step into the shoes of the original party unless the intervenor independently fulfills the requirements of Article III.” In no case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court has this happened.

The strangest quirk of all is this: the issue that will decide the feasibility of an appeal by private citizens advocating Prop 8 seems like the same one that came before Judge Walker in the first place. Namely, does the existence of same-sex marriage cause meaningful harm to anybody? Judge Walker, having found that it does not, is naturally skeptical of the intervenors’ ability to proceed. But what’s going to happen if the 9th Circuit turns those intervenors away? Is it quite fair for the judiciary as a class, having thwarted California’s voters, to say “Judge Walker’s ruling that gay marriage doesn’t hurt anybody is impervious to appeal on technical grounds, because gay marriage doesn’t hurt anybody”?

Me, I’m no bleeding-heart small-D democrat. But to the opponents of gay marriage, and perhaps even to unpersuaded moderates, this might seem like sharp dealing. It is one thing for the judiciary to block the will of the majority: hey, welcome to the U.S.A., tenderfoot. This, however, is a case where the judiciary may not only end up obstructing the volonté générale, but elbowing it good and hard in the vitals. Somehow, in California, a majority vote against same-sex marriage will have led directly to the near-permanent entrenchment of same-sex marriage.

This sort of counterintuitive outcome could surely lead to a backlash outside California. Who knows?—it might even create the impetus for an anti-SSM affort at constitutional amendment. The Democratic character of the Congress is a poor assurance of safety for the five (shortly to be six) states which have full, legal gay marriage. That institution still has never won a referendum in the U.S.; its win-loss record stands at 0-31. And the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies nationwide constitutional “full faith and credit” to same-sex marriages, was opposed by just 14 Senators and 67 Representatives not so long ago (1996).

Time and history are on the side of gay marriage. (This is especially true if it represents some sort of fatal Spenglerian decadence.) But it is unclear just how much of each will be needed.

Mourning Mario

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 11:27 PM - 0 Comments

Ottawa tonight mourns the passing of a lovely giant of a man. Condolences and reflections on the passing of Mr. Lague from Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, Paul Martin, Stephane Dion, Glen Pearson, Ralph Goodale, Tim Powers, Paul Wells and Susan Delacourt.

Helena Guergis ok after car crash

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 6:00 PM - 0 Comments

MP Helena Guergis and her assistant, Valerie Knight, have been hospitalized after their car was hit by a vehicle going through an intersection in CFB Borden, 25 kilometers southwest of Barrie, Ont. Guergis, who is five months pregnant, was being driven to a spending announcement to be made by Defense Minister Peter MacKay at a military base in her riding of Simcoe-Grey. Angela Foulds, another one of Guergis’ staff, said that Guergis and Knight are doing fine, but were taken to the Stevenson Memorial Hospital in Alliston for observation.

CBC

This Post May Be For Ontarians Only

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 5:57 PM - 0 Comments

I don’t know how many people outside Ontario watched Polka Dot Door (it did run in the U.S. for a while). Anyone who did watch it will know why this is the news that might just make Twitter relevant again: Polkaroo has a Twitter feed at twitter.com/polkaroo. Where his messages mostly consist of him saying “Polkaroo!” followed by a link to something. Because he doesn’t say anything except “Polkaroo!” and doesn’t need to — he’s Polkaroo, dang it; he doesn’t have to make speeches. He also offers Polkaroo-related visual material on Tumblr.

The resurgence of interest in Polkaroo has taught me that I wasn’t the only person who took a long time to figure out that the Polkaroo was just the male host in a costume, which is why his voice sounded different depending on who was hosting and why the male host always “missed him again.” It’s still embarrassing that I didn’t get it right away, but at least I know I wasn’t alone.

Here we see why Polkaroo is a Canadian hero: he fought against the space program’s anti-Polkaroo bias and proved that even Polkaroos (Polkari?) can be astronauts. That female host — I’m not sure who she is, though I remember seeing her on the show — seems to have a rather unconcerned attitude to the fact that Polkaroos aren’t allowed into the program.

NBC: Easy But Irresistible Target

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 5:26 PM - 0 Comments

The Hollywood Reporter has this look at the NBC 2010-11 schedule. The sharpest joke is the copyright logo.

It’s already been pointed out that making fun of Law and Order and CSI spinoffs (not to mention the multiple NCIS-es we’ll inevitably get) is the second-easiest target in making jokes about current television. (Easiest target: David Caruso’s one-liners followed by the “Yeaaaahhhh!”) The reason it’s an irresistibly easy target is that while many network TV shows are recycled versions of earlier hits, most of them are, at least technically, different shows. The Dick Wolf and Jerry Bruckheimer franchises allowed networks to do similar shows, under the same names, running concurrently with the original (until L&O got canceled), where the main difference was either the setting or the particular types of crimes being investigated. It’s easy to make fun of that — too easy, and the joke is a little played-out by now, but there you go.

1944-2010 | Launa May Lunn

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Team Macho

Launa May Mathias was born on May 10, 1944, in Middleton, N.S., to Florence “Flora” Roberts, a farm girl from Long Point, N.B., and John Mathias, a Welsh naval officer who was stationed in Halifax during the Second World War. John moved the family to Wales after the war, but promised to sail them home soon. He never did.

So, missing her family, Flora split from John, took two of their three children—Launa and Robert—and boarded a ship in 1950 that was headed to Halifax. (Their third child, Anne, stayed in Wales.) In Halifax, she met another naval officer, William Brade, and remarried. The family spent summers at their 1917 farmhouse in Long Point. There was no electricity or running water, but there were plenty of blueberries to pick and cousins to paddle with in their rowboat. Launa loved life on the farm.

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William and Harry confidential

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 4:00 PM - 0 Comments

Shayne Robinson/AP

WILLIAM AND HARRY
Katie Nicholl
In his 1867 book The English Constitution, Walter Bagehot wrote: “A family on the throne is an interesting idea also. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.” A century later, the world witnessed the perfect illustration of Bagehot’s musing: the divorce of Charles and Diana. According to Mail on Sunday gossip columnist Katie Nicholl, Queen Elizabeth II blamed her daughter-in-law for destroying “the mystery that shrouded the royal family.” The “people’s princess” certainly did change the palace game, not least in her determination that her two sons would lead lives as ordinary as possible, a wish the boys have often echoed, as Nicholl shows in her new biography. Whether as tots bashing their toy trucks through royal corridors or young soldiers desperate for a tour in Afghanistan, Nicholl reveals the “heir and spare” to be, in many ways, normal boys. She tapped a legion of friends, teachers and palace aides, many unnamed, to unearth such nuggets as 18-year-old Wills’s campfire confession during his “gap year” in South America that he was “not much interested . . . at all” in becoming king, and the hilarious voicemail greeting Harry recorded on his grandmother’s phone: “Hey, wassup? This is Liz. Sorry I’m away from the throne.”

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What options? (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 3:34 PM - 0 Comments

The Defence Minister explains what he meant when he said the government was considering its options in Afghanistan.

In an email to The Globe and Mail late Wednesday, Mr. MacKay said he was simply discussing all of the options for Canada’s involvement post-2011. “Training in Kabul, police, prison guards, government officials and public servants,” he said. “That’s what we are talking about. … There isn’t anything to add.”

Corrupt bankers sing at Stratford

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 3:20 PM - 0 Comments

Photography by David Hou

King of Thieves is a rarity for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival: a new musical. But it’s based on an old idea. The story of singing criminals in 1928 New York, opening Aug. 12, is what writer George F. Walker describes to Maclean’s as “my own version of The Beggar’s Opera,” John Gay’s 1728 musical comedy about thieves and underworld kingpins. Walker has updated the story from 18th-century London to the eve of an economic crash that’s eerily similar to our own. He’s following in the footsteps of some big names who put their own spin on Gay’s cheerfully nasty satire: most famously, Bertolt Brecht, who rewrote it into The Threepenny Opera, but also Wole Soyinka, whose Opera Wonyosi transplanted it to Nigeria.

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'A path to a widely-embraced resolution'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 3:13 PM - 0 Comments

The National Statistics Council has released a statement responding to the latest steps in the census dance, in part noting the government’s “recognition that the voluntary National Household Survey will not meet the requirements for robust and accurate small-area data (e.g. data related to the use of Canada’s Official Languages) that can only be provided through a mandatory instrument.”

In
 the
 short 
term,
 we
 believe 
that 
there
 is 
an 
opportunity
 by
 making 
the
 National
 Household 
Survey 
compulsory
to:

• Save 
significant 
sums 
of 
money.
• Reduce
 respondent
 burden
 on
 Canadians
 as
 the
 number 
of 
people 
asked 
to
 complete 
the
 long‐form
 will
 be reduced
 from 
30% 
of
 the 
population 
to
 20%.
• Provide 
the 
accurate
 benchmarking 
information
 needed
 to 
ensure
 that 
Stats 
Can
 and 
other 
data 
users
–
public,
voluntary
 or
 private
–
can
 gather
 subsequent
 information.
• Give
 vital 
information 
needed 
for 
small 
area 
or 
neighbourhood
 uses,
 including 
housing, 
health 
and
transportation 
planning.

The
 National
 Statistics 
Council
 is 
eager 
to 
work 
with 
the 
government 
and 
Canada 
on 
an 
urgent 
basis 
to 
achieve
these 
important
 short‐term 
goals.

That's a bit extreme, isn't it?

By John Intini - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY JESSICA DARMANIN

When putting together a gallery show, Kim Dorland usually spends at least $10,000 a month on paint. Sitting in his Toronto studio, the artist points at The Shack, a new piece slated for a solo exhibition in New York City this November. The painting, a 2.4-metre by three-metre board with several pieces of wood hammered into it, swallowed 80 tubes of silver, 100 tubes of black, and 200 tubes of other colours, including brown and green paint. “I was joking with my assistant,” he says, “that I squeezed out $1,300 worth of silver on this tree.”

For Dorland, born in Wainwright, Alta., that’s the cost of doing business. And the investment has paid off. The 36-year-old’s modern landscapes have sold for as much as $48,000, and are showcased in galleries and private collections all over the world. And his work, organizers say, sparked this summer’s inaugural Extreme Painting Festival, a series of group shows at 16 galleries in Montreal (Dorland’s work will be on display at Galerie René Blouin until Aug. 21).

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Iranian woman sentenced to stoning death “confesses” murder on state television

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 2:52 PM - 0 Comments

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s confession to being an accomplice to her husband’s murder on Iran state television was recorded only after she was severely beaten and tortured in prison, according to her lawyer. He also said he is afraid Iranian authorities will act quickly and carry out a death sentence. In the interview, Ashtiani, who previously denied having an affair, describes how she struck up a relationship with her husband’s cousin. She said it was the cousin who came up with the idea to murder her husband. The head of the judiciary of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province told the television program that after Ashtiani had injected an anaesthetic into her husband, his cousin electrocuted him. It was not clear whether the cousin had been arrested. Ashtiani has already received 99 lashes for having an illicit relationship with two men and was sentenced to death by stoning until international outcry deferred her execution last month.

Telegraph

Report: JetBlue flight attendant “hero” started fight

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 2:42 PM - 0 Comments

New reports are now pegging folk hero and former JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater as the aggressor and not the victim in his de-planing meltdown. Slater made international headlines after he deployed the aircraft’s exit slide and fled his job following an altercation with a passenger at JFK Airport on August 9. Slater’s lawyer described a confrontation with an aggressive passenger, which included Slater being slammed in the head with the lid of an overhead bin, as the accelerant that led to the meltdown. But now at least one passenger aboard that flight says it was Slater who acted aggressively when the flight landed and used an expletive with a passenger. Other passengers described Slater as agitated throughout the 90-minute flight from Pittsburgh to New York, and recalled him repeatedly opening and slamming shut fridge doors and the overhead bins.

Toronto Star

Are they too fit to flunk?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 2:40 PM - 0 Comments

Quebec: Two Lévis siblings who failed CEGEP because of what they allege is an unreasonable fitness test are suing their school for $25,000 each. Both had high grades and are physically active, but flunked the test, and thus a required course, despite intense training. The school says the test has a low failure rate and is crucial for keeping students healthy.

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Victoria hospital prepares for Tamil migrants sick with TB

By macleans.ca - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 2:39 PM - 0 Comments

A closed ward at Victoria General Hospital is being prepared for dozens of Tamils on a migrant ship heading toward the B.C. coast who are believed to have contracted tuberculosis during the voyage. An estimated 300 to 500 Tamils are believed to be on board the cargo ship, which has been at sea since last April, but sources told the Toronto Star it is unclear how many of the migrants on board the MV Sun Sea are sick with TB. The MV Sun Sea is a Thai-registered cargo ship and was turned away earlier from Thailand and Australia. All of the migrants, who officials are expecting to make refugee claims, will undergo a rigorous health examination in an isolated area as they disembark. Canadian officials are revealing little detail of how they plan to respond to the incoming voyagers, including what agencies or officials had been dispatched to intercept, board and begin the likely months-long investigation into who exactly is on the ship.

Toronto Star