Scenes from the G20 courthouse

By Stephanie Findlay - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 5:47 PM - 0 Comments

Over 300 people crammed into a Toronto courthouse on Monday to face charges related to last June’s G20 protests. The judges went through the cases rapidly, withdrawing charges against dozens of people and remanding other cases to a later date.

The alleged ringleaders, including Mandy Hiscocks, Alex Hundert, Leah Henderson and Jaggi Singh, were in and out of the courthouse in little time. Their court dates—along with those of another core group of 17 accused—were among those that were remanded. Peter Rosenthal, the lawyer representing Jaggi Singh, said he’d “never seen so many remanded for one court date.”

The back half of the first floor hallway courtrooms was filled with francophone Quebecers, with one courtroom holding proceedings in French while another was designated as bilingual. “People got arrested for having a Québécois license [plate],” said Jacynthe Poisson, a student at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal). Poisson was charged with conspiracy to commit an indictable offence and was among about 90 people who were arrested Saturday morning while they were sleeping in a gymnasium at the University of Toronto.

Vanja Krajina, 22, is among those who won’t have to return to the cramped courtroom. Krajina was arrested at the corner of Queen and Spadina while walking by herself to meet her boyfriend. She was charged with conspiracy to commit an indictable offence and was also facing explosives charges, which she says were due to her having saline solution for her contact lenses in her bag. Those charges were dropped today.

Others weren’t so lucky. Alison Peters, 24, was charged with obstructing a police officer and unlawful assembly. She could have settled for a $50 fine, but insisted on fighting the charges. “I was being trampled by horses,” she said. “That’s when I was arrested.”

Police officers were stationed throughout the building and in the courtrooms, patrolling the hallways with batons and plastic handcuffs. Despite the heavy security presence, the mood was mostly festive. Jason Dippel, a supporter of the protesters, was handing out cupcakes, while other activists set up a buffet. “We want to provide food and comfort for people,” says Katie Bell of the Toronto activist group 24/7 G20. Bell says the food was arranged through private donation.

One police officer who worked at the detention centre where the activists were held dismissed those complaining of mistreatment as “mouth pieces.” He said detainees at the film studio-cum-jail ate better than he did, were given water if they needed it, and had access to thousands of dollars’ worth of trackpants, sweaters and socks to keep them warm. The officer, who didn’t want to be identified, now consider their ordeal as “a big joke.”

Australian algebra

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 5:24 PM - 0 Comments

However loopy matters were here in the early winter of December 2008, we can now look with some pity upon the Australians, they now embarking on their own version of the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

At the moment, with the final count of last weekend’s election still being tallied, the incumbent Labour government has been declared the winner of 72 seats, one short of a majority. The Liberal-National coalition has been declared winners in 70 seats. Of the four seats that remain in doubt, three are leaning toward the coalition, the other to Labour, meaning the two sides could end up tied.

The coalition leads the Labour side on the primary popular vote by a count of 44% to 38%. But Australia’s electoral system also has a two-party preferred ballot and on that count Labour leads the coalition by a count of 50.7% to 49.3%. Continue…

Upper floors of Vancouver’s city hall sit empty

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 4:55 PM - 0 Comments

Vancouver’s grey art deco city hall building has been housing a secret for more than a year: the top seven floors of the 11-storey tower are completely empty. Last summer, the entire engineering department moved into a newly built 86,000-square-foot commercial space that the city has leased for $41 million over the next 10 years. The city spent another $7 million to outfit and move the department. The move came in the same year the city laid off 158 people and raised taxes to cover a $61-million shortfall in its $961-million budget. This and another move involving the social development, housing, and cultural affairs departments were done in the absence of a master plan. As for the vacant floors, plans for the future aren’t certain and the city hasn’t yet approved a budget for repopulating at least five of the seven empty floors.

Vancouver Sun

Police chiefs show support of federal long-gun registry

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 4:52 PM - 0 Comments

Canada’s police chiefs are planning a large public relations campaign to show their support of the federal long-gun registry, which the Conservative government wants to scrap. A draft report obtained by CBC News before the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police in Edmonton shows the chiefs want to publicly support the gun registry, which they say is effective and efficient. Toronto Police chief Bill Blair acknowledged “legitimate concerns” about the $1 billion initially spent on setting up the registry, but said it now costs only about $4 million a year to operate. “It’s a little frustrating quite frankly, because there’s a lot of ideology mixed up in this,” Blair said. “I think a lot of resentment around the gun registry comes from historical concerns [from] when the registry was set up.”

CBC News

A lot of stuff Peter Gzowski just made up

By Brian Bethune - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 3:40 PM - 0 Comments

Bryce Duffy/CORBIS/ Richard Pierre

In the last two decades of the 20th century, Peter Gzowski was as close to a Captain Canada as this country has ever seen. He had his loud detractors, to be sure, and many more who simply wouldn’t have recognized their Canada in his radio universe. But the 350,000 Canadians (and thousands of Americans) who tuned in to CBC’s Morningside every weekday from 1982 to 1997 were enthralled. The everyman hemming and hawing, the hesitant delivery of perceptive questions, the boyish enthusiasm and curiosity—whether addressed to the world yodelling champ (a Canadian, naturally), Leonard Cohen or a prime minister—drew them into Gzowski’s richly imagined nation. One fan named her dog Gzowski, while others wrote the host letters about deeply personal matters (“How are you? Last time I wrote I was just getting over that awful miscarriage”) or lamenting that his retirement would mean the end of “the glue holding Canada together.”

Back then, Rae Fleming was one of those listeners. A grad student caring for a dying parent, isolated in a tiny Ontario town, he used to silently thank Gzowski every morning at 9:12 “for saving my sanity.”

Continue…

And now, algebra

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 3:32 PM - 0 Comments

In keeping with today’s theme, here is Mike Moffatt sorting out the time cost of the new census.

We haven’t considered the x variable, however.  It could be that the long-form census will only be filled out by people who are particularly efficient at filling out the form.  This would mean that the value of x under the old system is higher than the value of x under the new system.  But of course, this would also mean that we’re admitting that the new system provides a biased sample, and is therefore unreliable!

In other words, the changes to the census have either increased the administrative burden on Canadians or provide near worthless data or both.  Increasing the time cost of the census to Canadians by over 20% should not be ignored.

Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegen make divorce official

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 2:50 PM - 0 Comments

Tiger Woods is officially single. The golfer and his now ex-wife Elin Nordegen were officially divorced on Monday, some nine months after a bizarre car crash prompted a steady stream of revelations about Woods’s extra-marital affairs. Terms of the divorce weren’t released, other than the fact Woods and Nordegen are expected to share custody of their two children.

Associated Press

Gun registry math (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 2:36 PM - 0 Comments

While police chiefs prepare to campaign for the preservation of the long-gun registry, Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner, sponsor of C-391, issues a press release saluting the “vast majority” of police officers who oppose the registry. To wit.

“This survey proves what I have been saying all along – that the CACP and the CPA do not, as they claim, speak for Canadian police officers on this issue,” said Candice Hoeppner.  “As I have met with police chiefs and front-line officers this past year, I have repeatedly said that police support for maintaining the long-gun registry is far from unanimous; in fact, it seems that the opposite is true – police support to end the registry is overwhelming!…

“Canadian Police Association President Charles Momy appeared at committee this spring and referred to a survey demonstrating police support for the long-gun registry – a survey that he admitted involved just 400 officers,” Hoeppner commented.  “This new survey involved over 2600 officers and strongly contradicts Mr. Momy’s position.  It seems obvious that a survey sample of 2600 is far more reliable than a survey of 400.”

The survey to which Ms. Hoeppner assigns her finding of reliability was conducted by an Edmonton police officer. From the release announcing his findings, he seems to have placed a notice of some kind seeking replies in a police magazine. In the fourth paragraph of that release, Constable Randy Kuntz is said to be “first to admit the survey is not scientific.”

When Charles Momy, president of the Canadian Police Association, appeared before the public safety committee in May he referenced a survey conducted by the RCMP. Of the 408 respondents, 74% said the registry had aided their work. This would seem to be that survey.

Illya Darling

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 2:31 PM - 0 Comments

After last night’s Mad Men (the first episode this season on which Matt Weiner didn’t take a writing credit, though that might be less a reflection on the episode and more a sign that the WGA was awake that week and willing to crack down on credit-hopping), no one will look at these ads — which were all over comics in the mid-to-late ’60s — the same way again.

A part of our heritage

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 1:17 PM - 0 Comments

The Ottawa Citizen considers the anti-semitism of some Canada’s more honoured public servants, including a prime minister, a cabinet minister and a governor general.

All these figures, including Whitton, were “very prominent and important in their day,” said Robert Bothwell, an eminent Canadian historian at the University of Toronto. If their recognition is meant to represent what Canada was, Bothwell said in an e-mail to the Citizen, “then all these people should be commemorated.

“As the war museum controversy some years back should have demonstrated, history is not a series of pleasant bedtime stories, pre-sanitized so that only the worthy appear in order to make our hearts thump with a patriotic pit-a-pat.”

On the ‘mosque’ at Ground Zero

By John Parisella - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 12:38 PM - 0 Comments

Wanting to grasp a firsthand understanding of the debate surrounding the Park51 Muslim community centre (a much more accurate term than a mosque), I visited the site and was greeted by two young pro-mosque demonstrators arguing in favour of religious tolerance and First Amendment rights. They were articulate, passionate, and answered all my questions. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a leading supporter of the project, would have been proud. Gradually, opponents began to show and peacefully voiced their displeasure with the project. Meanwhile, some of the faithful were praying inside the existing building.

I then made the two-block walk from the Park51 site to Ground Zero. Let me point out that, from the site itself, there is no direct view of Ground Zero. Even once constructed, there would be no direct view of Ground Zero, even from the roof. When you walk to the closest intersection, heading west to Barclay street, you arrive at a corner where you can see construction cranes at Ground Zero. It is at this point that you grasp the proximity of the proposed project and you can better comprehend the opposition to the project. But you can also readily understand the dilemma facing not only New York City, but all of America. The issue is no longer local and it may even have global ramifications, as people everywhere have come to be interested in how the battle plays out.

Continue…

Gun registry math

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 12:32 PM - 0 Comments

When Bill c-391, an act to repeal the long-gun registry, came to a vote on second reading last November, it was passed by a count of 164-137. Those 164 votes in favour included 143 Conservatives, 12 New Democrats, eight Liberals and one independent.

C-391 is now due to return to the House for a final vote when the House returns this fall and the vote seems set to be very close.

How close? Well, let’s see. Continue…

With a little help from his friends

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 12:27 PM - 0 Comments

Three years after J.K. Rowling released her last Harry Potter novel, she has finally been dethroned from the top on the richest writers’ list. The new champion, somewhat controversially, is American James Patterson, who—with a posse of five co-authors—cranks out up to eight new novels a year in genres ranging from thrillers to teen romance. According to Forbes magazine, one in every 17 books sold in the U.S. Is written (or co-written) by Patterson. Last year he brought in $70 million, and a new $100-million contract with publisher Hachette calls for 17 more books to be ready to go by the end of 2012. Vampire queen Stephenie Meyer came second, while horror master Stephen King—who once called Patterson a “terrible writer” of “dopey thrillers”—was No. 3. The rest of the top 10: veteran romance novelist Danielle Steel; Ken Follet; King’s arch rival, Dean Koontz; Janet Evanovich; John Grisham; Nicholas Sparks; and Rowling, who doesn’t have to write new books to stay in the first rank—as children grow into readers, they get Harry Potter novels along with their Narnia books.

Toronto Star

Afghan war video game stirs anger

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 12:22 PM - 0 Comments

UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox is urging retailers not to stock the video game “Medal of Honor,” which permits players to assume the positions of Taliban insurgents attacking NATO forces in Afghanistan. “At the hands of the Taliban, children have lost fathers and wives have lost husbands,” Fox said. “I am disgusted and angry. It’s hard to believe any citizen of our country would wish to buy such a thoroughly un-British game.” EA, the game’s creator, says it merely reflects that “every conflict has two sides.” But this is enough of a departure from standard computerized games—which typically use made-up settings in unidentified countries—that it has the attention of the Muslim and Arab world. Al Jazeera has been running a video report showing in-game footage of a Taliban soldier using a cellphone to detonate a bomb.

The Guardian

Most Quebecers want Jean Charest to resign

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 12:14 PM - 0 Comments

Jean Charest’s name continues to be mud. A new Leger Marketing poll suggests 57 percent of Quebecers believe the premier should step down. Though this may sound like good news for the Parti Québécois, which would likely win an election tomorrow afternoon, the same poll says Quebecers have about the same regard for PQ leader Pauline Marois. What’s more, 40 percent of respondents say they are undecided, suggesting a wide-ranging malaise with politicians in general throughout the province. Indeed, an Angus Reid poll suggests more voters believe former Justice Minister Marc Bellemare’s allegations of favouritism in the selection of judges—even though Bellemare himself has contradicted himself many times.

Montreal Gazette

La Presse

At war over recognition

By Michael Petrou - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Getty Images

“We have to throw them out,” said Wladyslaw Gomulka, deputy prime minister of Poland’s Soviet-backed provisional government, in May 1945. Gomulka was referring to ethnic Germans living on Polish land. There were millions of them. Some were colonists who had arrived during the war and took land previously belonging to now-slaughtered Poles. Some found themselves on newly Polish territory when borders were shifted west at the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945. Most had been there for generations. Almost all were “thrown out.”

And not only from Poland, but also Czechoslovakia, Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. More than 10 million Germans were ethnically cleansed as the war on the eastern front turned against Germany, and in the months and years following the end of hostilities. Many who were not thrown out were killed—as many as 700,000 between 1943 and 1947. Those who survived arrived in Germany poor and resentful. Today, almost 70 years later, they and their descendents, who constitute a powerful political lobby in Germany, have secured government support for a documentation centre to commemorate their plight at the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

Continue…

A bicycle built for three (plus groceries)

By Sarah Elton - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 11:36 AM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW TOLSON

For passersby, the sight of a man pedalling an odd-looking bicycle down busy Spadina Avenue in Toronto must have seemed more apparition than reality. People stared as they passed John Dimaras and his two passengers, a friend and his young son, sitting on a padded bench inside the large plastic compartment set between the two front wheels. They were out for an evening ride and to drop off the friend before heading back for bedtime.

Dimaras is one of a growing number of Canadians who have bought a cargo bicycle this summer so they can move about with both packages and passengers. In Vancouver, Mark Wilson, manager at Rain City Bikes, has sold twice as many of the oversized bicycles as he did last year. In Calgary, a city where sprawl is a barrier to commuting by bike despite the city’s network of trails, interest is growing, said Sean Carter, owner of BikeBike. “It’s got people thinking about how they can reduce their car usage. Maybe you can’t go car-free, but you can go car-light,” he said.

Continue…

Marathon court hearings for G20 defendants begin in Toronto

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 11:23 AM - 0 Comments

Hundreds of people charged with offences related to the protests during the G20 summit began filing into the Ontario Court of Justice in Toronto for marathon court hearings that got underway Monday morning. A makeshift pre-screening table was set up outside the court to process the 303 people scheduled to appear in court. The defendants are being split into groups according to when and where they were arrested, with some of the more high-profile cases expected to be postponed for another day. The Toronto Community Mobilization Network, an activist umbrella group, is organizing a protest calling for the charges to be withdrawn at Toronto Police headquarters later Monday.

CBC News

Trapped Chilean miners still alive three weeks after collapse

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 11:16 AM - 0 Comments

Thirty-three Chilean miners trapped for nearly three weeks are still alive in an underground shelter, but officials say it could take nearly four months to dig them out. Rescue workers drilled a small hole to serve as an umbilical cord to the trapped miners, and pulled a handwritten note out of the mine on Sunday that read, “We are fine in the shelter, the 33 of us.” The workers have been trapped since the copper and gold mine caved in on August 5, but workers will have to proceed slowly to drill a larger shaft because of the mine’s depth and instability caused by the collapse. Rescue workers now plan to use the hole to send plastic tubes containing glucose, hydration gels and food down to the miners to keep them alive while they dig a new shaft to extract them.

CNN

Australian election ends in dead heat

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

With more than 80 per cent of votes counted, the Labor Party and the Conservative coalition appear to have won the same number of seats in Australia’s national election, leaving three independents and a single Green MP as kingmakers. Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s Labor Party and Tony Abbott’s conservative coalition are both expected to end up with 73 seats, three short of the 76 required to form a majority government. While the lone Green MP’s support is expected to go to the centre-left Labor Party, it’s unclear who the three independents will choose. Experts say it could take longer than a week for negotiations between the independents and the two parties to wrap up. The Liberal party, which leads the Conservative coalition, currently has 39.3 per cent of the popular vote, with Labor at 38.5 per cent and the Greens at 11.4 per cent.

The Australian

Björk leading push to block Canadian takeover of Icelandic power plant

By macleans.ca - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 10:54 AM - 0 Comments

Singer-songwriter Björk Gudmundsdottir has become the unofficial leader of opposition to the Canadian takeover of a key power plant in her native Iceland. The geothermal power producer HS Orka hf was scooped up by the Swedish arm of Vancouver company Magma Energy during Iceland’s banking crisis in 2009 when a plunge in the island nation’s currency made foreign investment very attractive. Björk is not alone in her opposition—17,000 voters have signed a petition demanding the deal be reversed and 85 per cent of respondents to a July 21-28 Gallup poll agreed they “would like to regain the rights to their energy source.” “Why not let the people of Iceland decide?” Björk told Bloomberg News. “We are asking the government to stop the sale and organize a national referendum on how Icelanders feel about whether access to their energy sources should be privatized or not.” Magma offered to sell a majority stake in the power plant to Iceland’s government on August 21. Industry Minister Katrin Juliusdottir said she is now examining the offer.

Financial Post

Hard to get (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 10:18 AM - 0 Comments

Last month, a number of individuals from a number of organizations co-signed a letter seeking a meeting with the Industry Minister to discuss the government’s changes to the census.

I dropped a note to Al Hatton—the president of the United Way, whose name, phone number and email were provided at the bottom of that letter—and am told the group did not get a meeting with the minister. They were told, I am told, that the minister’s schedule did not permit a meeting and that it was suggested they instead appear before the industry committee. (One of those who co-signed the letter, Don Drummond, was a witness at the first day of committee hearings.)

Scott Pilgrim loves Toronto

By Jaime J. Weinman - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Adam cholewa; Paul Hillier

The disappointing fifth-place box-office opening of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World means that Universal probably shouldn’t have spent $60 million on a Michael Cera movie. But most of all, it means things aren’t looking good for the future of U.S. films set in Canada.

Scott Pilgrim, based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels, takes place in Toronto just like the books do; the filmmakers shot all around the city to retell the story of a Canadian slacker (Cera) who becomes a video-game-style action hero when his new girlfriend’s ex-lovers try to kill him.

Continue…

The Harper government and the Insite flim-flam

By Paul Wells - Monday, August 23, 2010 at 8:47 AM - 0 Comments

Many of the comments under John Geddes’ astonishing story about the RCMP’s protracted attempts to make up new “facts” about Vancouver’s Insite safe-injection centre suggest readers are having trouble understanding what, precisely, went on here. And the reaction from other news organizations — there’s been none — suggests our colleagues prefer to believe there’s nothing new in the story.

And yet Geddes lays it out with crystal clarity. What’s at stake is not a simple matter of opinion about whether injection sites are a good idea. It is (1) an exhaustively-documented attempt by elements in Canada’s national police force to create a bogus “academic” argument against Insite. Then (2) an attempt by senior RCMP officers to reverse course and atone for that burst of academic vandalism. And finally, (3) a decision from the RCMP’s highest echelons — or from someone in government outside the RCMP — to stifle the belated atonement, instead letting the sham record stand. The first part of that story has been told before. The rest is new, and devastating. Let me try to walk you through it. Continue…