Sad morning

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 11:09 AM - 0 Comments

It is being reported that Mario Lague, Michael Ignatieff’s director of communications, was killed this morning in a motorcycle crash. The Globe has a short profile.

Mr. Ignatieff has issued the following statement.

“It is with great sadness that we learned this morning that our Director of Communications, Mario Laguë, was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident in Ottawa.

“A man of many talents and accomplishments, Mario was a beloved member of our staff, and a valued personal advisor to me and the entire Liberal team. A man of great integrity and spirit, Mario served his country in many capacities with honour and dignity. Whether as a public servant under Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, Ambassador to Costa Rica or in his most cherished role as a husband and father, Mario brought a bright light to everything he did.

“While we will miss Mario’s extensive talents, we will miss most of all his warmth, his humour, and his passion for Canada that inspired us all.

“On behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada and our Parliamentary caucus, my thoughts and prayers go out to his family, loved ones and the many, many friends and colleagues that knew him.”

David Cameron's Big Society

By Peter Shawn Taylor - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

British Prime Minister David Cameron has gone to great lengths to convince voters he’s taking his country’s massive $250-billion deficit seriously. Among his more symbolic austerity measures, he abolished limousines for cabinet ministers and, when he visited U.S. President Barack Obama last month, he flew commercial. Cameron is, however, allowing himself one grand, legacy-style project out of his election platform. But he plans to pay for it with found money.

“Big Society” is an intriguing attempt by Cameron to alter the relationship between government and its public by putting a greater emphasis on local participation and problem-solving. “For years there was the basic assumption at the heart of government that the way to improve things in society was to micromanage from the centre. But this just doesn’t work,” he said last month in launching his Big Society plans. “Over the past decade many of our most pressing social problems got worse, not better. It’s time for something different.”

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The trucks are still big. The engines, puny.

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

When Ford unveiled the 2011 Explorer last week, it was hard to say what was the bigger surprise—that the company hauled several tons of dirt, rocks and trees into the heart of New York City for the big reveal, or that anybody even cared. The rugged truck that kicked off the SUV craze in the 1990s has fallen on hard times amid the recession and steep pump prices. Over the last decade, sales have evaporated, tumbling a whopping 88 per cent, from 450,000 to just 52,000 last year. Yet, when the redesigned and retooled Explorer rolled down a makeshift hill outside Macy’s department store, it triggered gushing praise from analysts, investors and prospective buyers. And it was the clearest sign yet the turnaround at Ford has kicked into high gear.

In many ways, the new Explorer is an SUV in name only. It still resembles a sport utility vehicle—it’s roughly the same size as the previous Explorer, the V6 version offers more horsepower than the previous model and it can still tow a 5,000-lb. load. But everything about the way the 2011 Explorer is constructed points to it being a crossover. The vehicle’s unibody design, in which the body and frame are welded together as a single unit, shares more in common with the Ford Taurus car than with the company’s line of body-on-frame pickups. That has helped make the Explorer lighter and more fuel-efficient.

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Trivia

By Paul Wells - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 9:58 AM - 0 Comments

Compare and contrast:

I’ve been mystified by Stephen Harper’s willingness to squander so much political capital on an issue as trivial as the long-form census. Only slightly less so by the media’s piling on, treating this as a matter of great national importance, and by the level of emotional investment so many apparently attach to census-gathering.

The opposition? They’re just reveling in the unexpected bounty of low-hanging political fruit, and Tory self-inflicted injury.

I don’t get it. It’s just not that big a deal – either way.

— Charles W. Moore, New Brunswick Telegraph Journal, today

Stephen Harper seeks to diminish or destroy the Liberal Party to replace them with the Conservatives as Canada’s default choice for government. His greatest challenge is to dismantle the modern welfare state. If it can’t be measured, future governments can’t pander.

— Blogger Stephen Taylor, July 22.

That’s the choice, I suppose. Either what the Harper government is doing with the long-form census doesn’t matter, or it does. Obviously Moore has a lot more company than Taylor does. Indeed, lately Moore’s company includes Taylor: since July 22 this whole business has gotten too hot for Stephen’s liking and in his blog and on Twitter he’s joined the nobody-cares crowd, arguing that this whole business is an invention of the “push media,” by which he means news organizations that cover a story he doesn’t like for longer than he likes.

But clearly Stephen Harper thinks it matters, because he has burned two useful ministers, Tony Clement and Stock Day, rather badly in advancing this little project. Continue…

At war with the oil sands

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments

Rebecca Cook/Reuters/ Colin O'Connor/ TransCanada Corporation

Karl Marx said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The April 20 explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico was certainly an epic tragedy, from the all-but-forgotten deaths of 11 workers on the platform to the eventual fall of CEO Tony Hayward—a man handpicked for the job when his mentor John Browne succumbed to the political after-effects of a refinery explosion. By comparison, the July 26 rupture of line 6B in Enbridge’s Lakehead pipeline system seems a trivial matter. The total volume of crude oil dumped into the Michigan countryside before isolation valves closed the pipe is estimated by Calgary-based Enbridge at 19,500 barrels—somewhere between seven and 13 hours worth of flow from the Horizon wellhead.

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An uncertain recovery

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Paul Sakuma/AP

Judging by the brisk sales of Coach handbags, BMWs and other luxury items, a big swath of consumers has already forgotten about last year’s recession and its lessons about frugality. So why are economists suddenly debating whether we are once again on the precipice of another—perhaps more painful—downturn, creating a rare “double-dip” recession?

The answer, simply, is that the recovery has been as uneven as it was quick off the starting line. For those who didn’t lose their jobs, record-low interest rates provided the necessary ammunition to continue their pre-recession lifestyles. And the stock market followed with some impressive gains—for awhile. But now some economists are concerned about a lack of steady improvement in key U.S. economic data: the housing market remains weak, unemployment is stubbornly high, and recent numbers suggest broader consumer confidence is actually falling.

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Did you see that?

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

REUTERS/Danny Moloshok

Is there anything better than seeing a sporting event live and in person? The New Meadowlands Stadium, home to the New York Jets and Giants, thinks so. It will now offer fans free smartphone applications (which will only work inside the stadium) so users can view updated statistics and video replays, find out which concession stands have the shortest lines, and watch live feeds from other games when the one at hand isn’t exciting enough.

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Thankfully summer will soon be done

By Barbara Amiel - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

DAVIDE MONTELEONE/CONTRASTO/REDUX

No matter how often I tell myself “everything dies,” which everything certainly does—hot water bottles, for example, and I have the scald burns to prove it, and my shoes definitely get to the cremation point—still, I can’t deal with anything dying that belongs to the zoological branch of biology except mosquitoes.

I bury ladybirds and feel perfectly Gestapo-ish if my rain boots squash the worms that come out in the wet. Nothing new about this: I’ve been an animal sentimentalist since I rescued the beetle swimming in my semolina pudding at school. This past week a dead chipmunk in a small copse in our garden destroyed the summer day.

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Mitchel Raphael on the power couple who are heading for Calgary

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

The giant belt buckles just had to go
Ottawa is losing one of its top, not to mention better-looking, power couples. Conservative House leader Jay Hill has announced he will not run in the next election. His wife of 11 years, Leah Murray, one of the capital’s best-dressed women (her taste in footwear is superb), has already moved to Calgary to take up a position with the public relations firm National. The two are having a home built in Calgary, which will be ready in September. When Murray met Hill, he was a rural B.C. MP with the Reform party. He wore black jeans, giant belt buckles (“satellite dishes,” as she called them), bolo ties and he had a toothpick in his mouth. “He was one below [former Alberta MP] Myron Thompson when it came to worst-dressed on the Hill,” says Murray. A month after they met, Hill suggested the two of them go shopping. When the press gallery members saw Hill in his new Harry Rosen duds in the House, they couldn’t believe it. Hill noticed them staring at him and pointed up to Murray, who was sitting in a viewing gallery. The media looked over to her and burst into applause. Over the last several years the two have teamed up for a number of charity events, including selling Afghan silk scarves to help with literacy programs in Afghanistan and selling goats (buttons represented each goat bought) to help with orphanages. Murray was involved with the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s prestigious Politics and the Pen award gala for political writing, which Hill co-hosted last year. She also sat on the gala organizing committee for the Governor General’s performing arts awards and helped bring a large number of MPs to the ceremony. Murray says the two always planned to retire to Calgary, but thought it was best to move their lives and careers there now to build a base for the future. Two of Hill’s three children from a previous marriage live there.

An MP’s starring role in Vienna
NDP MP Libby Davies returned to Canada last week after attending the XVIII International AIDS conference in Vienna. Jet lag prevented her from attending a rally with iconic singer Annie Lennox, but she was the only North American MP to participate in the first-ever politicians panel at the conference. Davies was pleased with the conference’s Vienna Declaration, which endorses drug harm-reduction models like the safe-injection health facility Insite located in her East Vancouver riding. The federal government is still fighting the B.C. government over Insite. On Davies’ first official day as an MP in 1997, she was walking to the Senate to hear the Speech from the Throne beside the health minister at the time, Allan Rock. Seeing her chance to discuss the record number of drug overdose deaths in her riding, she introduced herself and began talking. Rock said he would meet with her, but Davies says follow-up calls and emails went unanswered. Finally, she went and sat in the minister’s office and said she was not leaving until she got an appointment. She got one, and after they met, the ball got rolling on what would become Insite.

Ignatieff’s wife doesn’t get a preview
The Liberal Express, Michael Ignatieff’s cross-country summer tour, rolled into Toronto this week. Stops included the riding of Thornhill just north of the city, which the Liberals lost to Conservative Peter Kent in the last election, and the riding of Trinity-Spadina, which they lost to the NDP’s Olivia Chow two elections ago. In Thornhill, Ignatieff’s wife, Zsuzsanna Zsohar, listened attentively to Iggy’s speech, which was much more passionate than the scripted questions the leader asks in the House. Does her husband do dry runs of his speeches for her? No, said Zsohar. In fact, much of what she was hearing was “for the first time.” One Liberal noted it’s all a dry run for when the next election is called, an opportunity to make sure the team works well together.

Photographs by Mitchel Rapheal

Missions impossible

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

Memo to the next politician who plans a high-profile trade mission overseas: don’t bother. That’s the conclusion reached by Keith Head and John Ries at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business after poring over years of trade data.

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Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of August 9th, 2010)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Carbon capers

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Alex Wong/ Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

There are powerful reasons for the Harper government to wait and see what climate change legislation emerges from Washington before embarking on its own. Moving too boldly to put a price on carbon could disadvantage Canadian industry relative to American competitors, as the Prime Minister has pointed out. Moving too timidly could one day trigger taxes against Canadian exports under proposed U.S. legislation that would penalize countries whose carbon regimes are not “at least as stringent as” America’s.

As a result, the Canadian government has been closely monitoring the progress of climate change legislation and regulatory initiatives in the United States with an eye to copying whatever they turn out to be, an approach dubbed “harmonization.” But watching the U.S. Congress wrangle with climate change is enough to leave anyone cross-eyed.

Continue…

Twirling, twirling

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 9:17 PM - 0 Comments

The lonely (but principled) Industry Minister has announced the government intends to eliminate the never-honoured threat of jail time that is attached to the census, thus resolving one of the government’s primary complaints about the mandatory long-form.

The government continues to plan to make the long-form voluntary, but now, six weeks after announcing the new format, Mr. Clement is concerned the move to a voluntary survey could fail to meet the government’s obligations under the Official Languages Act and so a few questions will be taken off the voluntary survey and added to the mandatory short-form.

This change, Mr. Clement tweets, is on “new advice” from Statistics Canada. This on the same day that, based on newly released documents, the Liberals are charging that Mr. Clement has previously misrepresented the advice of Statistics Canada.

Ambassador in Ottawa calls for a Canadian embassy in Iraq

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 2:55 PM - 0 Comments

Abdulrahman Hamid Al-Hussaini, Iraq’s newly minted ambassador in Ottawa, hopes Canada will re-establish its embassy in Iraq before the end of his tenure. He pointed out that diplomatic relations between Canada and Iraq began in 1962—about a decade before Iraq established an embassy in Canada and Canada opened one in Iraq. But that embassy later closed under then-president Saddam Hussein, and Canada has not attempted to establish a new diplomatic presence in the country. In fact, diplomatic issues in Iraq are now handled by this nation’s ambassador in Jordan. Canada has not explained its lack of presence in Iraq.

Ottawa Citizen

Memos show Conservatives twisted census findings

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 2:48 PM - 0 Comments

Newly released internal government documents show Industry Minister Tony Clement was well aware Statistics Canada had little use for a voluntary census when he was telling Canadians StatsCan was onside with his decision to scrap the mandatory, long-form survey. In an email to the minister’s advisers last March, a StatsCan official wrote that a self-administered survey would provide a low response rate. Clement subsequently gave the impression the respected federal data collecting agency supported the Conservatives’ move to scrap the mandatory nature of the 40-page, long-form survey. The new information comes from confidential government documents that detail the federal government’s effort to manage the messaging and political fallout arising from the census decision, which prompted former StatsCan head Munir Sheikh to resign. Previously secret emails, memos and communications plans were compiled by the government at the request of the House of Commons industry committee, which has been holding hearings on Clement’s decision to rearrange StatsCan’s census-taking. The newly released documents also show the media messaging prepared by the government to handle questions on the new voluntary survey entirely skirted the issue of the quality of the data. Large sections of the documents were blacked out, which Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who requested the documents, called “a serious affront to democracy.”

Toronto Star

UN launches appeal for victims of Pakistan floods

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 2:43 PM - 0 Comments

The United Nations has launched an appeal to help victims of the relentless flooding in Pakistan. The monsoon floods have affected more than 14 million people across the country, and the UN’s humanitarian agency has asked for $459 million for the recovery. More than 1,600 people have died and nearly 300,000 have been left homeless. Food prices have also been driven up as some 1.4 million acres of crops were destroyed in the floods that hit Pakistan’s breadbasket, Punjab. Meanwhile, the Taliban in Pakistan has denounced all foreign aid for flood victims. They have said they will match the latest U.S. pledge of $20 million.

Al Jazeera

B.C. prisons prepare for arrival of Tamil migrants

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 2:37 PM - 0 Comments

The wardens at Fraser Regional Corrections Centre and Alouette Correctional Centre for Women are reportedly preparing for the arrival of an estimated 200 Tamil migrants travelling on board the MV Sun Sea. The prisons are the same ones that were used to house 76 Tamil migrants who arrived aboard the MV Ocean Lady in 2009. The Canadian Tamil Congress claims the migrants are refugees and not threats to national security. “We understand that Canadian security is paramount to everything, including Tamil Canadians,” says David Poopalapillai of the Canadian Tamil Congress. “At the same time, we are cautioning our government and our fellow Canadians to please reserve judgment until we hear from the people on-board.” The Foreign Affairs Department, the CBSA, the RCMP and Canadian Coast guard have not yet confirmed where the ship is.

Vancouver Sun

G20 charge lost in the mail

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 2:28 PM - 0 Comments

Dave Vasey showed up to his court date on July 28 to face charges he violated the Public Works Protection Act during the G20 summit only to find the charges against him had mysteriously disappeared. Turns out they were just “delayed in the mail” and they arrived the next day. Toronto Police spokesperson Meaghan Gray couldn’t say why there was a delay, but did say that they do happen on occasion. “This is not the first time it’s happened,” she said. Though police have time to recharge him, Vasey believes they won’t bother. Separately, Ontario ombudsman André Marin is currently leading an investigation that is looking into the way the government passed and implemented the Public Works Protection Act.

Toronto Star

Worthwhile census submissions (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 1:04 PM - 0 Comments

Mike Moffatt tries to understand Tony Clement’s economics.

If you’re Tony Clement, you go out and buy a 30 million dollar machine that inserts broken glass into the bread. When your customers complain about the broken glass, call them a bunch of freeloaders. After all, they did benefit from years of inexpensive bread. After awhile, you won’t have any more annoying customers to deal with.

Toyota halts exports to Iran indefinitely

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 12:44 PM - 0 Comments

Toyota Motors announced Wednesday it’s halting shipments to Iran indefinitely following international moves to put financial and commercial pressure on Tehran to curb its nuclear ambitions. The world’s largest automaker made the decision in light of U.S. and United Nations sanctions slapped on Tehran in June. The move is largely symbolic, as Toyota exported just 222 vehicles to Iran in May of this year, and a similar number for all of 2008. Iran has consistently denied its atomic energy program is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.

CNN

India could shut down BlackBerry service Thursday

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 12:34 PM - 0 Comments

India may temporarily shut down BlackBerry service in the country if security concerns are not addressed in a meeting on Thursday. India is the latest country that wants access to encrypted Blackberry communications, which have been linked to militant activity, including the Mumbai attacks in 2008 that killed 166 people. The government will meet with telecom operators on Thursday, but it is unclear whether RIM officials will take part in the meeting. A senior Indian government official told Reuters if RIM does not agree to offer access to data, mobile phone operators could be asked to shut down RIM’s Enterprise Email and Messenger services temporarily as a last resort. If enforced, an estimated one million users in India would only be able to use these devices for calls, text messages and the Internet. The responsibility to meet Indian security requirements rests with mobile phone operators in India rather than RIM.

Toronto Star

Superbugs from South Asia reach Britain

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 11:35 AM - 0 Comments

NDM-1, a gene found in certain bacteria, has scientists worried about a possible pandemic of antibiotic-resistant infections. The gene makes bacteria resistant to every drug on the market and hails from South Asia, where it’s known to inhabit Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. A study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal says medical tourism—both cosmetic and otherwise—will hasten the spread of NDM-1 to Europe and North America. Most of the British patients found with NDM-1-positive infections had traveled to one of two Indian hospitals.

Montreal Gazette

Worthwhile census submissions (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 11:25 AM - 0 Comments

Frances Woolley considers the value of history.

I’ve reproduced one of my favourite records here – my great-great-grandmother on my mother’s side, Marian Vandermin. She lived at 5 Peckham Grove – oddly enough very near to where my cousin Jan lives now, and to where I lived as a grad student. The record paints, for me, a vivid picture of her life – she was widowed when she was younger than I am now, and here she is in 1901, a single mom with four children, running a business as a yeast merchant. Her sister-in-law lived just two houses away, and ran the business with her. Thank goodness they had servants – they would never have coped otherwise.

Mecca’s answer to Big Ben

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 11:09 AM - 0 Comments

When this year’s Ramadan begins Thursday, workers will be rushing to get the lights ready for the unveiling of the Royal Mecca Clock Tower in the world’s most sacred city for Muslims. Muslim scholars say the clock will challenge Greenwich Mean Time, because Mecca, Saudi Arabia is the “true centre of the Earth.” Once completed, the clock’s 21,000 green and white lights will flash five times per day reminding local faithful to pray. It’s unclear whether bankers in Dubai will reset their watches, but a manager of the giant hotel and office complex where the clock is located says the goal is for Arabia Standard Time (three hours ahead of GMT) to overtake the standard time set by at London’s Big Ben for the past 125 years.

The Telegraph