How much does medical school cost?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Gaining acceptance to medical school is the first hurdle. The next challenge is paying for it. The figures listed below show first-year tuition for academic year 2010-2011.

Two Canadian tuition figures are listed for schools in Quebec: the first applies for residents of Quebec; the higher figure is charged for students from outside the province. *Tuition for residents of Quebec or New Brunswick.

Want degree, will travel

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON HAYTER

Amie Dmytryshyn did everything right. She volunteered to counsel patients at Vancouver General Hospital on Thursday nights. She spent three days a week assisting a quadriplegic teenager. On weekends, she attended intensive all-day MCAT prep and on weeknights she squeezed in two extra hours of studying to prepare for the exam. She did it all while maintaining an A average in her chemistry-heavy human kinetics program at UBC. “Then I got one letter and my dreams were crushed,” says Dmytryshyn, now 30.

Erik Vakil, 28, was so determined to get in that after being rejected from a dozen programs in 2006, he marched straight back to Dalhousie and retook every class in which he didn’t have an A. The following January, he was rejected again. “It was only after the second rejection that I realized I wasn’t going to get in,” says Vakil. A friend suggested he try Ireland. He stayed up late that same night to finish his application. Weeks later, he was called for an interview with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).

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Getting into law school is harder than ever

By Laura Drake - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTINNE MUSCHI

When Kerry Kaukinen applied to law school last fall, she didn’t think the reason she’d be packing her bags in August would be to move back home.

Kaukinen, who finished a political science degree at Concordia University this spring, didn’t expect schools to fight over her—she knew her 3.4 GPA was a few points lower than the average applicant. Still, her best Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score was in the 90th percentile, and she had been a guard on the national university women’s water polo team, a 20-hour-a-week extra-curricular commitment that was sure to look good on her applications.

She got her first responses in April, and those were rejections. By mid-August, the rejections started to seem like blessings, simply because they were a straight answer. The messages she was getting from other schools were more confusing, but they all boiled down to the same thing: in any other year, yes. This year? Probably not.

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From building bridges to running Bay Street

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

ANDREW TOLSON/ SIMON HAYTER

When Sukrit Ganguly finished his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering and applied science, he set out on a traditional career track in oil and gas consulting. “The job was very technical,” says the 27-year-old, “and required me to work on models all day long.” Bored after a year, Ganguly wanted to try something new. So he returned to the University of Toronto to do a master’s of applied science, this time focusing on applied engineering in banking and setting his sights on Bay Street. “I wanted a job that looked at the bigger picture, and in finance you have to follow what’s going on all over the world,” he says.

The chemical engineer is now working on the trading floor for equity derivatives at TD Securities—on Bay Street. Instead of modelling pipelines and heat exchangers like many of his former classmates, he spends his days structuring financial products, reading international market commentary, and researching the activities of TD’s competitors. And he says an engineering degree was the best possible training for the job. “As an engineer, you’re taught how to solve programs. The finance part I could learn on the fly.”

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Canada's M.B.A. programs: a variety of options at 35 institutions

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Tuition and program length vary considerably—the differences are often determined by the type of program—as do size, diversity and the average GMAT score of incoming students. The traditional M.B.A.—two years, full-time—is no longer the only way to go, with many schools offering part-time studies.

Information is for the 2010-2011 academic year unless indicated otherwise. Enrolment figures are for full-time students. Tuition is shown for the full cost of a program and includes compulsory fees. Tuition can vary depending on length/type of program. Two figures are shown for schools in Quebec and Nova Scotia as tuition is higher for out-of-province students. Sherbrooke program open to Quebec residents only. Regina program is part-time. *2009 figure. †2006 figure.

Source: Canadian universities

Ichiro Ozawa: 'Wily, Machiavellian, amoral'

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Japan, it seems, it set to dump its prime minister. You’d be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu. If scandal-tainted power broker Ichiro Ozawa knocks off Naoto Kan in a challenge for the leadership of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) on Sept. 14, he’ll become the country’s third leader in 12 months. Kan has been in office for all of 90 days. His predecessor, Yukio Hatoyama, who decamped, as he explained, because a “little bird” told him it was time, lasted less than nine months. Indeed, Japan has seen six leaders in four years, its spin-cycle politics spitting out new prime ministers with frightening speed.

“Although I am unworthy, I have decided to run in the leadership election,” Ozawa said last month, announcing his intent. Few pundits disagree. “He’s a wily, Machiavellian, amoral player—and he knows where all the bodies are hidden,” says former Canadian ambassador to Japan Joseph Caron. Three months ago, the 68-year-old veteran power broker was forced out as the DPJ’s secretary-general, the party’s No. 2 position, because of his links to a campaign funding scandal for which he may still face indictment.

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Ranking Canada’s law schools

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW TOLSON

Are a law school’s professors significant contributors to the intellectual life of their discipline? Do a law school’s graduates land the most sought-after jobs in government, the private sector and academia? These are the two questions Maclean’s annual law survey seeks to answer.

All of the data used in the Maclean’s law rankings are publicly available. All focus on law school outputs. Fifty per cent of the overall ranking is determined by faculty quality, and 50 per cent by graduate quality.

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Financial Times Executive M.B.A. Ranking 2009

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Similar to the Financial Times’ regular M.B.A. rankings, the FT’s E.M.B.A. evaluation looks at a variety of performance measures for each school: the career progress of students, faculty quality and the diversity (female and international) of both faculty and students.

Source: FT.com

Engineering's hot fields

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Across 13 disciplines, mechanical, electrical and civil continue to be the top draws, but other fields have grown significantly over the past four years. Environmental and software numbers are up by roughly half, while mining or mineral enrolment has nearly tripled.

Source: Engineers Canada

Canadian M.B.A. schools climb the global ranks

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW TOLSON

Many of Sarah Kaplan’s former students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School asked her the same question when they found out she took a job at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management last year: “Why Canada?”

It’s an understandable question. Wharton, after all, is one of the top business schools in the United States, if not the world. And while Rotman has made significant strides in climbing up the global rankings over the past decade, it is still a long way from being considered in the same breath as Wharton, Harvard and Stanford—the sorts of places where a mere mention of the institution’s name will instantly open doors.

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McGill M.B.A. tuition hike is here—now what?

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROGER LEMOYNE

McGill University and the Quebec government have been locked in a stare-down ever since the school announced last year it would no longer abide by provincial caps on tuition fees for its M.B.A. program. The province promptly kicked up a fuss, and even threatened to fine the school for its insolence. So far, neither side has blinked—even though students are back in class and their tuition bills are in the mail. “We’re still in the same place we were several months ago,” says Peter Todd, the dean of McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management. “We’ve made it clear we’re going ahead.”

The 56 students entering McGill’s M.B.A. program this fall will shell out $29,500 a year for the privilege. That’s about 15 times what Quebec residents will pay in tuition for any other master’s program at McGill, and more than five times as much as out-of-province Canadians. McGill’s M.B.A. fees are hardly out of whack with those of other top-tier programs across the country—Canadian residents beginning their M.B.A. studies this fall at the University of Toronto will have paid about $75,000 in tuition before the end of the two-year program, while those at the University of Western Ontario will be out $68,500 for its one-year program. (Like the University of Toronto’s, McGill’s is a two-year program.) The big difference is McGill didn’t wait for the government’s permission to announce the hike.

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Applications high, success rates low: the stats tell the story

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Gaining admission to medical school is a competitive process. In the table below, Success Rate indicates the percentage of applicants who received at least one offer of admission. Note that success rates for in-province applicants are generally higher than for out-of-province, because most medical schools reserve nearly all of their seats for local students. The grade point average (GPA)—or R score in Quebec’s CEGEP system—shows the average for successful applicants. The medical college admission test (MCAT) is a standardized test required for admission at many faculties.

Statistics on applicants, admissions and success rates are for 2008-2009. MCAT scores are for students entering in fall 2009. GPA scores are for students entering in 2010, except those flagged with an asterisk, which are from 2009. ††All figures for Queen’s are from 2006-2007. †Includes all Maritime provinces. **Located at Lakehead and Laurentian universities. Note: higher international success rates at some universities may be misleading, given that at some institutions the number includes students who applied for positions available under contract with foreign governments or educational institutions.

Source: Office of Research and Information Services, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada; MCAT scores obtained directly from Canadian medical schools.

Toronto and McGill lead the law school rankings

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 20 Comments

Maclean’s law school rankings assess graduates and faculty on key output measures. How successful are grads in landing top jobs? How often is faculty members’ work recognized by other academics?

The law rankings are comprised of two separate rankings: one for common law schools—the law of Anglo tradition and most provinces; and one for civil law schools—a law tradition practised in Quebec. Civil and common law schools were evaluated according to the same criteria.

Two universities appear in both the common and civil law school rankings: Ottawa and McGill. The University of Ottawa’s faculty of law offers two distinct streams, civil and common. Two different sets of numbers were used for the calculations of the two rankings. McGill’s faculty of law occupies a unique position in that it offers a fully integrated common and civil law program. As such, the same set of data was used in calculating the common and civil law rankings.

*Indicates a tie

Bestsellers

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Top-selling fiction and non-fiction titles (week of September 13th, 2010)

Fiction

Non-fiction

LAST WEEK (WEEKS ON LIST)

Canada's E.M.B.A. Programs: for the working professional

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Targeted at people who already have a career but want to take it to the next level by earning an advanced degree, executive M.B.A. programs normally allow their participants to remain at their jobs, pursuing the degree part-time. Tuition, often covered by employers, is generally high.

Information is for the 2010-2011 academic year.  **Tuition differs for international students: $44,025 at Guelph; $39,874 at UPEI; $36,000 at Regina; $53,975 at Royal Roads. UQAM program open to Canadian residents only (tuition higher for out-of-province students).

Source: Canadian universities

Law School: what will it cost?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Listed below are the 2010 tuition figures for first-year students, shown from the least expensive to the most. The numbers do not include other compulsory fees, which at some institutions can add well over $1,000 to the bill.

*Two figures are listed for law schools in Quebec and Nova Scotia: the higher figure is charged for students from outside the province.

Engineering schools still have fewer females

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Undergraduate enrolment at Canadian engineering schools ranges from a few dozen students to more than 4,000 at Waterloo and Toronto. As these 2009 figures show, the number of female students remains low: less than 25 per cent at all but a handful of institutions.

50%

Source: Engineers Canada     *2007 figures

Women outnumber men at most medical schools

By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

The medical schools listed below are sorted by size of enrolment: from the largest, Université de Montréal, to the smallest—and newest—Northern Ontario School of Medicine. These 2009 figures show enrolment continues to increase (up 15 per cent compared to 2006), with women outnumbering men at most institutions.

50%

*Northern Ontario School of Medicine is located at Lakehead and Laurentian universities.

Source: Office of Research and Information Services, Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada

Sexing up Spitzer in TIFF’s year of the doc

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 1:24 AM - 0 Comments

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and his wife, Silda, in 'Client 9'

Today, for the first time, you could feel TIFF hysteria begin to subside. The festival is heavily front-loaded, with meat market of stars and press junkets jammed into the first few days. Now it’s suddenly quieter. Which is fine by me.  At this point, it’s still hard to get a fix on the buzz. No obvious Slumdog Millionaire has emerged from the fray as a contender for the audience award, and there’s no indie sensation that’s come out of nowhere to take the festival by storm. But perhaps it’s just that people like me (the media) have been so intensely preoccupied mainlining movies and interviews that we haven’t found the pulse of the festival. One clear trend is the program’s wealth of sensational female performances—by Carey Mulligan (Never Let Me Go), Hilary Swank (Conviction), Yun Junghee (Poetry), Rachel Weisz (Whistleblower), Rebecca Hall (The Town), Rosamund Pike (Barney’s Version)—and above all by Natalie Portman in Black Swan. I expect hers will be the act to beat at the Oscars. And of all the major films, Black Swan seems to have had the most electrifying impact so far, though it’s not the sort of heartwarming triumph-of-the-human-spirt stuff that wins audience awards. As a hallucinatory melodrama, it’s also an anomaly at this year’s festival, where many of the more compelling films are reality-based—from non-fiction dramas like Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours and Steven Silver’s The Bang Bang Club to documentaries such as Waiting for Superman and Errol Morris’s Tabloid. (Though to be exact, Tabloid is about a real-life soap opera that takes on surreal proportions.)

Some biggest names at TIFF have,  been on hand to promote documentaries—Bill Gates, Bruce Springsteen and Steve Nash. Unlike those heavyweights, the star of Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer didn’t brave the red carpet, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had.  Client 9 is no puff piece, but it’s crucial step in Spitzer’s road to redemption. Spitzer, the so-called Sherriff of Wall St., comes across a ruthless but heroic gunslinger saddled with a tragic flaw and a monumental case of hubris. Long before the economic collapse, he declared war on the fraudulent profiteering of the financial industry, targeting AIG’s insurance scam in his role as New York’s attorney general, then going after state corruption as the state’s governor. For casual observers, who may have only discovered him when the sex scandal broke, the film illustrates how big a superstar he was on America’s political landscape.

Like  Inside Job, another powerful documentary at TIFF, Client 9 sets out to expose the financial system that robbed America blind. Much of the narrative is devoted to Spitzer’s combative campaign—and to showing how his enraged enemies manoevered to take him out. His interview subjects include a contrite Spitzer, who’s reluctant to delve too deeply into his own motives, and the rogues’ gallery of Wall St. tycoons who rejoiced at his downfall.  Although the film does not dig up any  new earth-shattering evidence, it pulls the story’s elements together to make a compelling case that the FBI went out of its way to target him for political reasons—the federal government is not usually in the habit of pursuing johns. Of course, Spitzer was guilty of outrageous hypocrisy, and being a creep. But the film compares that to a much larger atrocity—suggesting that paying for some high-priced sex is no crime compared to destroying America’s economy and defrauding millions of innocent investors.

Ironically, however, the allure of this film lies in the salacious details of the sex scandal that furnished Spitzer’s enemies with such lethal ammunition. Director Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) frames his hard-hitting exposé with erotic eye candy and a nightclub beat, as images of  seductive models and Spitzer’s campaign swim through the neon wallpaper of Manhattan. As the camera scans the website ads of the Emperor’s Club, the escort service where prices start at $1,000 an hour, Leslie Feist purrs Secret Heart on the soundtrack. Even Spitzer’s enemies, the fat cat businessmen who want his blood, are gorgeously photographed. Every frame of this movie reeks of money and sex and gleaming opulence.

Neither Spitzer’s wife nor the spotlight-craving Ashley Dupre, his celebrated one-night stand, are interviewed. But a giggly manager of the Emperor’s Club regales us with tales of his paranoid phone calls. And an actress re-enacts  transcripts of the filmmaker’s interview with “Angelina,” his favorite escort, who would not appear on camera. On their first date, she says Spitzer didn’t want to waste time talking: “I hate to put this crudely, but he was a trying-to-get-his money’s worth type of client and I said I don’t want to see this person again.” But she did.  Spitzer himself, despite his valiant crusade, comes across as a nasty sonofabitch, a man with a mean streak. Unlike Bill Clinton, this is not someone you warm to, and camera doesn’t either. But you do feel that America would be a lot better off if this trigger-happy enforcer hadn’t lost his gunfight with Wall Street by indulging  his own reckless sense of entitlement.

Aglukkaq's message on CCSVI treatment

By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 11:48 PM - 0 Comments

The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Federal Minister of Health (left), speaks with the Honourable Jerome Kennedy, Minister of Health and Community Services for the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, during the annual conference of federal-provincial-territorial ministers of health in St. John's, NL, Tuesday, September 14, 2010. (MARKETWIRE PHOTO/Health Canada)

Thirteen days after she ignited a firestorm with her announcement that the federal government does “not have the evidence to proceed” with pan-Canadian clinical trials investigating CCSVI treatment for multiple sclerosis, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq lashed out at the press who she claims mangled her message. “We needed to clarify the misinformation that was laid out in the media,” she told the scrum assembled in St. John’s, NL, to cover this week’s meeting of federal, provincial and territorial health ministers.

The minister wanted to make clear that her government is “still open” and “never said no” to funding clinical trials on CCSVI, the controversial MS treatment pioneered by Paulo Zamboni to restore blood flow in the blocked neck and chest veins of patients via a routine balloon angioplasty. She also wanted it known the feds and provinces are in sync on the issue: “We are speaking with one voice on MS,” she said.

Aglukkaq’s statement offered a minor rewording of her Sept. 1 announcement that did say “no”—at least for now—to government funding for pan-Canadian clinical trials into CCSVI based on the recommendations of a study conducted by Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in consultation with the MS Society of Canada. That report concluded scientific evidence didn’t support clinical trials but that the situation should be monitored via seven two-year studies into the MS-CCSVI link funded by the MS Society of Canada and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in the U.S. The minister also announced at the time that the government would set up a consult with the study’s researchers.

Exactly how the media distorted Aglukkaq’s message isn’t clear. But it’s understandable—politic even—that she take another run at CCSVI, a topic that has polarized the medical community over the past year and sent a fault line down the health ministers’ confab. In July, Saskatchewan’s government drew a proverbial line in the sand when it announced it would fund clinical trials into CCSVI treatment. On Monday, Jerome Kennedy, health minister to Newfoundland and Labrador, kicked off the meeting with news of an observational study tracking residents before and after they left the country for CCSVI treatment (but would not provide the treatment itself). Yesterday, Alberta’s Health and Wellness Minister Gene Zwozdesky announced that he wants to speed up an “examination” study underway in his province involving patients who’ve undergone CCSVI treatment.

Aglukkaq has suffered slings and arrows of newspaper editorials that condemned the government’s wait-for-research-to-see-if-research-is-warranted position. Her office has been deluged with angry letters from MS patients who feel they can’t wait for the clinical trials required before the government green lights the procedure. Hundreds have traveled offshore to far-flung clinics, cashing into their RRSPs to pay upwards of $10,000 for the treatment. Anecdotal evidence from more than a thousand of CCSVI patients attests to varying degrees of symptom relief. Many report increased energy, improved mobility, increased sensation and improved bladder control and vision.

Zamboni’s approach contradicts entrenched thinking that MS is a neurological condition and autoimmune disorder best treated by drugs. But these drugs, with their laundry list of side effects, also pose huge risks, including fatal brain disease. Even Alain Beaudet, the president of CIHR and chair of the CIHR report, concedes the balloon angioplasty advocated by Zamboni is a “relatively low-risk” procedure. The greatest risk of venous angioplasty is veins collapsing again, he told Maclean’s.

It’s an emotional issue to be sure, one that is extending beyond the country’s estimated 75,000 MS patients to become a metaphor for its health system’s priorities. So vitriolic has been the backlash to the government’s decision that last week the MS Society of Canada was compelled to issue a letter to assure angry members it was committed to CCSVI research. Criticism of the government’s decision mounts. Yesterday, Direct MS, the country’s second largest MS charity, issued a critical analysis of the objectivity of the CIHR report.

Agluukaq said it was “important that we set the record straight for MS patients and their families.” But saying the government is “open to funding” clinical trials into CCSVI treatment does not change the fact the government is not funding clinical trials—just as saying the provinces are all “on side” doesn’t make it so. Liberal health critic Kirsty Duncan questions the government’s “double speak”: “They say we need evidence-based medicine,” she says. “But they are doing nothing to gather evidence.” She believes the government should be collecting data on the hundreds of Canadians traveling out of country for treatment: “If it did, we wouldn’t be looking at the evidence as anecdotal. The only other way to collect data is to do clinical trials, and they’re not doing that.”

Another question mark is the minister’s claim that research results from the seven studies will be available in “a few months.” Yesterday, a MS Society of Canada spokesman told Maclean’s “preliminary” findings from the seven studies are expected in “the early part of 2011”—six months from now at the earliest. (None of the seven studies involve CCSVI treatment; all explore possible links between CCSVI and MS using scanning technology.) If the government is committed to evidence-based medicine, it will have to wait until the studies are concluded two years from now. That’s the blink of an eye in research terms—but not for patients suffering from a degenerative condition in which months can mean the difference between walking and paralysis.

What many MS patients want to know is a simple question: why they’re subject to a double standard when it comes to the right to blood flow. When a non-MS patient is diagnosed with a blocked vein, it’s cleared. If someone requires surgery for a varicose veins in her legs, there isn’t a problem. So it’s perplexing that clinical trials destined to take years are required before MS patients receive similar treatment.

“Time matters,” says Duncan. “People die of this disease. And it has a terribly high rate of suicide.” Many are waiting for the minister to say ‘Yes’,” she says: “But until she actually says ‘Yes’, it’s the same result.”

Of jobs and jets

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 6:18 PM - 0 Comments

Minister of National Defence and Minister for the Atlantic Gateway Peter MacKay checks out the cockpit of the F-35. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

I’ll leave to others, at least for the moment, whether the F-35 contract makes sense in military terms: that is, whether this is the best expenditure of scarce defence funds. I remain to be persuaded either way. But  if the F-35 is so far superior to other planes as the government maintains, and if the benefits in defence terms are worth the extra dollars, then I think the contract can be defended, notwithstanding the absence of competitive bidders. You can’t have a competition for something that’s only made by one firm.

As I say, I’m keeping an open mind on its military merits. All I would suggest is that that is how any such purchase should be assessed — based on its costs and benefits in military terms, and not on the basis of its so-called “industrial benefits.” Indeed, that is the best thing about the contract as signed: it doesn’t have any “industrial benefits.”

That is, not as that phrase is used in procurement jargon: a requirement imposed on the contractor to set aside a certain portion of the subcontracting work for Canadian firms. Remarkably, the government has eschewed any such requirement in the deal — remarkable, both because defence contracts are usually riddled with such protectionist riders, and because this government has not previously shown much aversion to pork-barrelling.

Why are these a bad idea? The same reason as protectionism is generally. You don’t make yourself rich by paying too much for things, any more than you do by selling things for less than they cost to make — as in that other favourite tool of industrial interventionists, subsidies. “Buy low, sell high” is the recipe for prosperity, not “buy high, sell low.” The only reason to require a contractor to source from Canadian firms is if they would not do so willingly; the only reason they would not do so willingly is if the Canadian firms were not the most cost-effective option; and so the effect of such set-asides must be to inflate the cost of the contract. If the government were purchasing from these sub-contractors directly, that would be obvious enough. But it doesn’t change with the intervention of an American aerospace firm as the middle-man.

But what about all the extra economic activity so generated? If the government is going to spend all that money anyway, doesn’t it make sense to spend it in this country, creating jobs here rather than elsewhere? And won’t the extra taxes from all that additional output offset any extra costs?

The key to this enduring fallacy lies in those words “extra”, “additional.” The assumption is that productive resources are somehow called into existence by the government’s willingness to spend money on something. But that’s not the case. They are not created; they are diverted. The resources used to make parts for planes might have been used for other purposes. They are only diverted into aerospace by the availability of subsidy (in this case, the difference between the Canadian subcontractors’ costs and their foreign competitiors). Were there no subsidy, the same resources could be put to other uses, offering higher economic returns — and sending higher tax revenues back to the treasury.

How do I know they would offer higher economic returns? Because they don’t need a subsidy: that is, they offer a greater benefit to society, in terms of the price consumers are willing to pay for them at the margin, than they cost society to make, in terms of the resources they consume in production. Whereas subsidy only becomes necessary where the reverse is the case: where the costs to society exceed the returns. I say “society,” because that’s ultimately what’s involved. We may assign private title to these resourced, but ultimately they are society’s, in the sense that they must all come out of the same pot: one person’s use of a scarce resource leaves that much less for everyone else.

This is as true of labour as anything else. A widget firm is in the business of making widgets, not jobs. Jobs are not the product: they’re the cost. Likewise for military jets. The fundamental objective of the government should be to get the best jets for the lowest price — not to “create jobs.”

A final point. As I said off the top, I don’t know whether the jets are worth the price. Maybe the contract should have been put out to competitive tender. We’ll see. But it’s utterly incoherent of the Liberals to argue, on the one hand, that the government is paying too much for the jets (because of the lack of competitive bidders) and that it is not paying enough (because of the lack of domestic content quotas). Pick one!

Jimmy Smits is Hardcastle Without McCormick

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 5:38 PM - 0 Comments

NBC is premiering the Jimmy Smits vehicle “Outlaw” tonight after America’s Got Talent. Unfortunately, I only got the screener today, so others have beaten me to pointing out that this is one of the most ridiculous pilots in a long time. Everything is hilarious except the comedy bits (Canada’s own Carly Pope as a sexy researcher/investigator who attempts to get laughs by talking about how sexy she is and how everyone wants her for sex). As a ripped-from-the-headlines legal drama, it seems to mostly exist to throw The Good Wife into sharper relief: everything that show did right to keep from seeming exploitative or silly, this show does, and then does again, and does double.

The story of a conservative Supreme Court justice who suddenly turns liberal, quits the court, and starts his own rag-tag law firm to fight all the cases he used to judge is an implausible one, but implausible stories can work if they either a) Embrace their implausibility or b) Ground the premise in a certain amount of reality. There’s not a thing in the pilot of Outlaw that feels remotely real; the main question from moment to moment is what kind of fantasy they’re incorporating. One moment, when Smits is threatened with impeachment by the conservative politicians who put him on the court, is grounded in paranoid fantasy; the resolution of the cases is law-show fantasy where everybody finds the precedent or evidence they need; Smits’s character combines every fantasy of a “maverick,” both in his personal life and straight-talkin’ ways, plus the typical Hollywood fantasy of someone who splits the difference between left and right. (Really, every character is a collection of stereotypical character traits which they feel compelled to announce at every moment.) There’s even Three’s Company-style farce misunderstanding, except making that show look sophisticated. And yet with all this, the tone of the show suggests that they have no idea how silly they are. Say what you will about Hardcastle and McCormick, but that show knew it was silly and acted like a show about a crime-solving rogue ex-judge ought to act. This show, on the other hand, is quite serious except during the comic relief moments, which merely make the “serious” bits look funnier by comparison.

Apart from that, the show offers the expected: middle-aged star surrounded by young, pretty team; lots of intense music (NBC doesn’t pile on the music quite as much as ABC, for those who care about such things), legal jargon delivered as fast as possible — as if it’s Treknobabble, which I guess it sort of is — people who can find any information they want, classified or otherwise; and much bad dialogue like “People lie. Maggots don’t.” But all that is what you’d expect from a mediocre lawyer show. It’s the piling of silly on top of silly that makes this show so promising for those who really look for bad, as opposed to just mediocre, television. Part of me really wants to see this show get even worse as it goes on, just because really terrible shows are as rare as really great ones, and this show has the most potential for epic badness.

Canadians feel variously about thing they only sort of pay attention to

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 4:52 PM - 0 Comments

Two polls this week on popular attitudes toward the business of Parliament—one from Nanos, the other from Pollara. The feelings toward Question Period are predictably sour and there are a couple points where it appears Canadians are generally unhappy with the present state of affairs. Nanos, for instance, finds more are dissatisfied (44%) with the effectiveness of the House of Commons than satisfied (35.4%). Pollara finds more would prefer a majority government (40%) than a minority government (22%).

And yet, go further into Pollara’s data and the attitudes toward our present situation are rather forgiving (with one particular issue of concern). Continue…

Fixing parliament

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 4:49 PM - 0 Comments

There is a flurry of activity this autumn around the general topic of improving procedure in Parliament so decorum will also improve. This month’s issue of Policy Options has a useful cover package on the theme; the IRPP will have a session on the same topic soon. On Thursday the Public Policy Forum has its own shindig. Mike Chong, the Conservative MP whose private members’ motion on Question Period reform is behind much of the current discussion, will figure at both events.

In June of 2009 I wrote my own proposals for fixing Question Period. Two of the ideas I presented there — increasing the length of time allotted for questions and answers, and requiring the Prime Minister to attend only once a week, with other ministers taking questions on other days — resemble parts of Chong’s motion. He’s discarded other ideas and introduced his own. I decided to post the link to that earlier piece as a sort of prelude to the conversations in the weeks ahead.