Tories dismiss NRA, long-gun registry ties

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 4:40 PM - 0 Comments

The Conservative government has dismissed allegations that the American lobbying group, the National Rifle Association, has been involved in efforts to abolish Canada’s long-gun registry. This followed a report by CBC News Monday that stated the NRA has been involved for more than a decade in trying to abolish Canada’s long-gun registry. In response to the news, David McGuinty, Liberal House leader, said Canadian politicians should debate the long-gun registry without the influence of the most powerful gun lobby in the world. He also asked the Prime Minister to disclose details of the “nudge-nudge, wink-wink relationship” between the NRA and Conservative MPs past and present, as well as staffers and party members. “Look, it’s an extremist group,” McGuinty said. “It takes the possession and use of firearms to an extreme level. Everyone knows that.” Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre said the Liberal “conspiracy theory” attempts to “demonize” Canadians who have been already unfairly criminalized by the registry, reports the CBC.

CBC

Jack Layton as Joe Namath

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 4:32 PM - 0 Comments

Without naming names, the NDP leader says the votes will be there to defeat Bill C-391. At last check, the count was tied at 151, with only the NDP’s Niki Ashton uncommitted.

In other news, Jean-Yves Roy, the Bloc MP whose exit was the subject of some speculation, will be in his seat for at least the first vote on C-391.

Barney Gerber

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 3:18 PM - 0 Comments

For me the most memorable role of Harold Gould, the prolific character actor who died a few days ago, was his four-episode arc on Soap as Barney Gerber, an elderly hospital patient who befriends Jodie (Billy Crystal), who’s in the hospital to get a sex change. One of the episodes ended with a massive monologue delivered by Gould, who is trying to cheer Jodie up after his football-player boyfriend dumps him to enter into a sham marriage with a woman. The scene gets some extra tension because Jodie has just swallowed a lot of pills in an attempt to commit suicide, and Barney doesn’t realize it. The script was written by series creator Susan Harris, who wrote or co-wrote all the episodes, and did most of the first season without even a co-writer. Like many Soap actors, Gould also wound up guesting on Harris’s The Golden Girls.

The monologue itself is in a style that is familiar to viewers of Broadway plays, particularly the ’70s Broadway plays of Neil Simon (who was a god to other TV writers hoping to escape TV and write plays). Great art it’s not, but it’s got everything an actor wants to sink his teeth into: tons pathos; uplift; the occasional joke; lots of places for sighs and pauses, and lots of description of things that we don’t actually see, allowing the actor to paint a picture for us. (That, by the way, is why “show, don’t tell” is a silly rule if it’s taken literally: sometimes the most effective moments, comedically and dramatically, come from telling rather than showing, like Kramer telling the story of how he foiled the bus hijacking.) Out of context a Neil Simon/Larry Gelbart type of turn like this can seem excessive, but in the context of regular viewing of Soap it’s an extremely strong scene; one of the first really big emotional moments in the series, with several others to follow, and it’s a very effective moment in context, because you’re at once touched by the speech and in suspense about what’s going to happen to Jodie.

It’s the kind of moment that you could find with some regularity on sitcoms in the ’70s and ’80s, since sitcoms were more likely to include big helpings of drama and to be openly influenced by theatre, rather than trying to disguise their theatrical roots. (The apotheosis of this style, and probably the best example, is “A, My Name Is Alex” from Family Ties, done literally like a stage play on a darkened set.) I have quite a lot of affection for this style, despite the “very special episode” designation, because it’s something you really can’t see anywhere else in TV: a big dramatic moment in the context of what is otherwise clearly a comedy creates the kind of big contrasts of tone and style that I like. A show like Nurse Jackie can have the dramatic moments because we’re never really sure — and to be fair, we don’t really care — whether it’s a comedy or not, but doing it on a show that genuinely is a comedy, complete with an audience that releases its tension by laughing at the occasional joke, makes for a very intriguing mix.

The downside, and why this type of show died out, is that the infusion of drama into a comedy can be heavy-handed and, perhaps worse, magnify any flaw in the writing. The average “very special” moment on a comedy could be transferred to a drama without seeming like it was poorly written; doing it in between jokes, however, can make the audience restless and angry, and make pathos seem like bathos. (That’s also true of serious moments in a lot of Neil Simon plays.) So while “very special episodes” got made fun of, their dramatic writing often isn’t any worse than dramas and is sometimes better; it can just feel worse because it’s out of place. Also, this doesn’t apply to a show like Soap, which spaced its serious moments out so that you never knew exactly when they were coming, but some shows always had a serious speech toward the end — coughNightCourtcough — destroying the surprise value and just making them seem predictable and painful. But I’m still quite happy to see a sitcom surprise us by going serious when we don’t expect it; it’s every bit as legitimate as a drama giving us some unexpected comedy.

What we now know

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 3:17 PM - 0 Comments

Detainee transfers were halted in May 2009 after an Afghan intelligence officer bragged of torture. Two allegations of mistreatment from later that year have now come to light.

Military Police Complaints Commission hearings have resumed and, while testifying, a Canadian general defended Afghanistan’s NDS (“these are not torture chambers per se”). After reviewing new documents, the CBC figures Canada has transferred in excess of 400 detainees to Afghan authorities. The Hill Times reports that the government was preparing in 2007 to deal with difficult questions.

Meanwhile, the Brits have completed their own review of detainee policy and practice.

A modest proposal

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 2:45 PM - 0 Comments

As our Paul Wells reported yesterday, the Prime Minister has broached the subject of an NHL team for Quebec with league commissioner Gary Bettman. And as our Philippe Gohier noted, the proposed arena for Quebec City would be run as a crown corporation. The federal government’s initial contribution to that effort would be $175 million.

The last time Forbes magazine produced valuations for the NHL’s 30 franchises, it put the Edmonton Oilers at $166 million. That was nearly a year ago, but it is unlikely the Oilers have appreciated significantly since, so for perhaps the same amount of federal money that would go toward an arena for a privately owned NHL team, the Harper government could purchase its own hockey team and run that as a crown corporation (or perhaps as a public trust, borrowing from the model of the Green Bay Packers).

The current roster includes a number of young and promising players. With wise management—General Manager Stephen Harper?—the team could be will set-up for sustained success going forward. Indeed, from that standpoint, this would seem a good buying opportunity.

Alternatively, perhaps the Prime Minister could offer to buy any of the six struggling American franchises that are valued at less than the Oilers, with designs on moving that team to Quebec City. In either scenario, why would we settle on owning the arena in which a professional ice hockey team plays when we could own the professional ice hockey team itself?

Yankee, go … get 'em

By Andrew Coyne - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 2:35 PM - 0 Comments

The “revelation” (shock! horror!) that the NRA has been offering advice to Canadian groups opposed to the long gun registry — cough, for a decade — has the Liberals watering at the mouth quivering with indignation. Why, Liberal House leader David McGuinty was so furious at this foreign intervention that he was forced to call a press conference:

McGuinty says the U.S. gun lobby has no business being involved at all in a Canadian debate.

”We are here to say that the National Rifle Association and its members and its leadership should butt out of Canada’s gun registry debate,” he said.

He said the Harper government shouldn’t be paying any attention to an American voice.

”This is a government that is choosing to listen to a powerful foreign influence over our own police, our victims’ groups, our medical experts, in fact the majority of Canadians when it comes to gun control.”

Well, bang on. The last thing we need are powerful Americans coming up here and telling us how we should … What’s that? Oh. Never mind:

Nancy Pelosi’s office insists that the most powerful woman in American politics is not out to target the “dirty oil” from Alberta’s oilsands, but green groups and the opposition Liberals in Ottawa wish she would.

The U.S. House Speaker met Thursday morning with representatives from the Pembina Institute and Environment Defence, two groups highly critical of oilsands production.

“As the main customer of tarsands oil, the U.S. has a leadership role to play where our governments at home are failing,” said Environmental Defence executive director Rick Smith…

Liberal environment critic David McGuinty praised Pelosi and the Obama administration for trying to force change in Canada.

“A customer has come calling and said we’d like to see an improvement in the product we buy,” McGuinty told an Ottawa news conference.

That Harper government: they just won’t listen to powerful foreign influences.

On the ground in post-flood Pakistan

By Julia Belluz - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 1:35 PM - 0 Comments

World Vision President and CEO Dave Toycen in Sukkur, Pakistan

It’s been seven weeks since monsoon rains submerged one fifth of Pakistan’s landmass, displacing more than 20 million people and leaving 1,700 dead. As the deadline for government-matched funding looms on Oct. 2 (following a recently announced three week extension), Canadians have been slow to respond to this humanitarian crisis. (An Angus Reid poll shows that Canada gave Haiti nearly 10 times more than it has donated to Pakistan.) Military officials south of the border have expressed concern about “donor fatigue,” while some say the lack of lending has opened space for controversial Islamic charities—some banned by the government—to step in.

World Vision president and CEO Dave Toycen just returned from Pakistan where the NGO has been setting up medical clinics and distributing relief items, from clean drinking water and food to tents. He gives Maclean’s his view from the ground and talks about the challenges facing NGOs during the worst crisis in the country’s history.

Q: You just flew in from Pakistan. Where did you visit and what did you see?
A: I did a five-day tour of the capital Islamabad, where World Vision’s national office is, and the Sindh province in the south of Pakistan. The number of people who have been displaced and the breadth of the flooding from the river are really overwhelming. There are literally thousands of people in camps dispersed around the countryside.

Q: Was there a particular moment when you were overwhelmed by what you saw?
A: One of the toughest moments was meeting with a family who was receiving some non-food items—beds, towels, food supplies, cooking utensils. As I was talking to the mother, she said, “There’s nothing you can give me that will replace the loss of my 4-year-old child during the flood.” That was a reminder of the loss of life. You realize that it’s not just about the loss of property but that people have lost loved ones.

Q: There’s also a looming food crisis since the floods hit the breadbasket of the country, and farmers lost some 8.9 million acres of farmland.
A: Yes, one of the features of this disaster is that many of the people who have been affected are tenant farmers and some who own their own land. These tenant farmers work for landowners so their concern now is whether there’s a job for them when they get back to their land.

Q: The Pakistani government has been lambasted for not responding quickly enough to the crisis, particularly when President Zardari was on a European tour as the flooding began. What did you find over there?
A: It depends on which province you’re working in because the governments will vary. Pakistan is heavily provincially focused. In Sindh, the government has been engaged in responding to the disaster, though they would be quick to acknowledge that they don’t have adequate capacity to deal with a disaster of this scale. It’s clear that more needs to be done in preparation for a disaster like this in the future but it’s also extremely difficult for any mechanism to be able to cope with a flood like this, partly because monsoon rains come in such a concentrated fashion.

Q: What are the greatest challenges facing aid agencies like World Vision?
A: It’s natural during one of these disasters to begin from a town or city and work out from there. But this means there are still people in outlying areas who have received little or no substantial aid. As NGOs, we’re also facing staff shortages. It would be difficult to get volunteers at this point because there’s a security issue in Pakistan, and we rely mostly on local people. [World Vision has 105 local staff, and an additional 14 expatriates.] The other issue is that even though the rain has stopped in the north, because of the nature of the rivers, there’s a funnel-effect so you have flooding in the south as a great volume of water moves down the country.

Q: There’s been talk of the Taliban threatening foreign aid agencies. Were there any hindrances to getting your work done on the ground?
A: We’ve been focusing on the humanitarian aspect. We’re doing everything we can to work as quickly as we can. There are some conflict issues but we’re talking about children and mothers who are suffering as a result of the conflict so I think it’s important for us as Canadians to reach out when our aid can be so helpful to people who have lost—in many cases—everything.

Q: How does this situation compare to other disaster-hit regions you’ve visited?
A: Pakistan doesn’t have the high number of deaths we saw in Haiti but the number of people who have been affected by the flooding—who have lost homes, livelihoods, land—is far greater. We’re close to 23 million people affected by the floods. So in terms of the simple raw need for human survival, it’s arguable that the situation is even worse than Haiti.

Q: And yet Canadians and the international community have not been as forthcoming with donations. Why is that?
A: It’s been much more difficult. Pakistan is a long way from here—not a neighbouring country like Haiti—and in some ways, it’s a culture that’s less familiar to people. Also, flooding takes time to have impact so it wasn’t a powerful singular act like the quake in Haiti. There’s also the conflict issue: some Canadians feel if they give money it would be stolen or won’t be used in the right way. But World Vision and other agencies have strict parameters to ensure the aid goes to people who need it.

Q: What is the outlook for Pakistan after this flooding?
A: Once the water has receded, the question is how do we get people back to their farming areas, back to their means of livelihood. Further north, some families are eager to return to their lands now that the water is starting to recede. Plus, this disaster hit in a number of areas just prior to harvest so if they don’t get planting by the end of October, they will miss their next crop as well.

Matt Damon and Clint Eastwood: Race, death, and Hereafter

By Tom Henheffer - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 1:30 PM - 0 Comments

Hereafter is an unusual film for Clint Eastwood. It’s a paranormal drama about people in three different places around the world who are forced to come to terms with mortality, a real departure from his more down-to-earth stories examining themes like politics, race and aging. Matt Damon plays a blue-collar worker and reluctant psychic who can speak to the dead, but hates his strange ability. It’s his second film with Eastwood, the first being 2009′s Invictus, where he played the captain of the South African Rugby team in the World Cup following the dismantling of apartheid.  Damon and Eastwood spoke to Maclean’s on the red carpet at Hereafter‘s premiere, and spoke about how the film asks life’s most difficult question, what happens after we die?

HST referendum coming to B.C. next September

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 1:28 PM - 18 Comments

British Columbians will be called to the polls September 24, 2011, to vote in a referendum over the province’s controversial harmonized sales tax. And while the referendum isn’t legally binding, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell has already said he’ll scrap the tax if a majority votes against it. Campbell made the announcement shortly after a legislative committee voted to go ahead with the referendum after receiving a well-publicized anti-HST petition. Campbell says he’s confident B.C. voters will endorse the tax, the handling of which has led to calls for his resignation. But he’s open to shelving it if that’s what voters want. “If people decide they want to get rid of the HST next September, then I guess we’re going to get rid of the HST next September,” he said. “There’s no point in going to the people if you’re not going to listen to them.”

Vancouver Sun

'Democratic renewal is a better investment and a bargain to boot'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Scott Payne talks to Alex Himelfarb about the present and future of Canadian democracy.

But beyond this, many Canadians, of all ages, are finding both local and global ways of engaging in public life, volunteering time and money, developing creative local solutions to social problems, taking responsibility. Public enterprise is bigger than government. Citizens need not and increasingly do not wait for government leadership to get engaged. Interestingly, the evidence suggests that those most involved in their communities are also most likely to vote and participate politically more generally. But of course political leadership is crucial. And I hope it’s not too naive to think that the time may be ripe for just such political leadership – on electoral reform, on the value and meaning of citizenship and on the health of our democracy.

Does Ottawa intend to build an arena in Quebec City or not?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 1:10 PM - 0 Comments

If you thought Stephen Harper had definitively ruled out funding an NHL arena in Quebec City, you’d be wrong, says the Conservatives’ Quebec lieutenant, Christian Paradis. Paradis, the federal natural resources minister, told reporters on Tuesday that Ottawa’s interest in the project is very much alive, provided the arena serves a public purpose and isn’t solely intended for professional sports. Of course, the arena project has never been sold as being exclusively reserved for the Nordiques—the prospect of Quebec City landing the 2022 Winter Games has always been front and centre—so it’s not obvious what clarification Paradis has in fact brought to the issue.

Winnipeg Free Press

Undash those dreams

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 12:47 PM - 0 Comments

Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis says the federal government might still fund an arena in Quebec City.

“We’ve always left the door open, saying that we would evaluate any project that would be submitted,” Paradis told reporters at a global energy conference. ”But one thing is clear: if the project is only about a hockey team or a professional sports team, this is a private matter. It would have to generate tangible benefits for broader things than having only professional sports.”

EU calls Roma deportations a 'disgrace'

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 12:45 PM - 0 Comments

The European Commission has threatened Nicolas Sarkozy’s French government with legal action over the crackdown and expulsion of its Roma population. EU Justice commissioner Viviane Reding accused the French government of duplicity, called the deportations a disgrace, and likened the French government’s policy to Vichy France’s deportation of Jews. “I have been appalled by a situation which gave the impression that people are being removed from a member state just because they belong to a certain ethnic minority. This is a situation I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the second world war,” said Reding, as reported by the Guardian.

Guardian

Vive le transit libre!

By Andrew Coyne - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 12:39 PM - 0 Comments

Transit and traffic are emerging as major issues in the Toronto mayoral election, with rival candidates unveiling proposals to replace streetcars, build a tunnel under the downtown, extend subways or add bike lanes, almost daily. It might be of interest, then, to know what the great urbanist Jane Jacobs, patron saint of the Annex, thought about it all. Here she is in an absorbing interview with Reason magazine, from June 2001:

Reason: People complain that suburbanites are too dependent on cars. Yet the newest suburbs — the car suburbs, not the trolley suburbs — are so heavily zoned and so carefully laid out. The uses are segregated so much — you live here, you work there, you shop here, you play there, you go to school over here. If you didn’t have a car, you couldn’t possibly live in the suburbs — because of the way they’re laid out.

Jacobs: That’s right. Your children couldn’t get to school. And they couldn’t get to their dancing lessons or whatever else they do. You’re absolutely dependent on a car. It’s very expensive for people, especially if they need a couple of cars. It’s a terrific burden. It costs about — somebody figured it out fairly recently — it costs about $7,000 a year for one car. That’s a lot of money, you know.

Reason: I’m a five-minute drive from all the shopping I need, but I couldn’t walk it.

Jacobs: Sure, you want to defend the car in those cases. It’s a lifeline. It’s as important as your water tap.

Reason: You aren’t anti-car, are you?

Jacobs: No. I do think that we need to have a lot more public transit. But you can’t have public transit in the situation you’re talking about.

Reason: You don’t literally mean publicly owned transit?

Jacobs: No. All forms of transit. It can be taxis, privately run jitneys, whatever. Things that people don’t have to own themselves and can pay a fare for.

Reason: You’re not an enemy of free-market transportation.

Jacobs: No. I wish we had more of it. I wish we didn’t have the notion that you had to have monopoly franchise transit. I wish it were competitive — in the kinds of vehicles that it uses, in the fares that it charges, in the routes that it goes, in the times of day that it goes. I’ve seen this on poor little Caribbean islands. They have good jitney service, because it’s dictated by the users.

I wish we could do more of that. But we have so much history against it, and so many institutional things already in place against it. The idea that you have to use great big behemoths of vehicles, when the service actually would be better in station-wagon size. It shows how unnatural and foolish monopolies are. The only thing that saves the situation is when illegal things begin to break the monopoly.

Gentlemen, start your jitneys.

Quebec and the NHL arms race

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 12:36 PM - 0 Comments

You knew that when the smoke of an arena controversy became visible, the sports-as-culture warriors would soon come riding over the hill. David Asper pops up in today’s National Post to observe that most of us accept the idea of government funding for high-culture venues like concert halls, theatres, and galleries. “To define ‘culture’ narrowly, without including sports, is elitist,” he complains. (Strictly for form’s sake, I should offer the riposte: what’s so bad about elitism?) “If we are to have a legitimate definition of our national culture, it must be based on the totality of who we are and what we do. Places where professional sports teams play are no less houses of culture than the opera, the theatre or the art gallery.”

The question you should be asking Mr. Asper is “So what, rich guy?” He is, in my view, quite right; sports are part of our culture. I would even argue that they are a morally elevating part of that culture—a medium for the cultivation and display of courage, duty, justice, and fair play (a crucial, almost defining element of our civilization that is not at all the same thing as “justice”). But that premise is not enough, not nearly, to establish that massive public funding for professional sports venues is proper or necessary.

Turn his argument on its head and set aside high culture: what important cultural institutions don’t we depend on governments to build? Would Asper argue that restaurants don’t define a city or that they aren’t places where highly civilized imaginative pleasures are expressed? Doesn’t a good clothing store or a furniture shop have a clear cultural dimension? A shoe store? Aren’t hairstylists, skate parks, comic shops, Apple Stores, recording studios, and the parlours of small-town piano teachers all enablers of cultural expression? Should all these things be nationalized and paid for by the state?

The relevant fact about live National Hockey League games is not that they are not “culture” but that they are owned by a profit-maximizing cartel which limits access and squeezes every penny it can get out of that access. Here in Edmonton, where the owner of the Oilers is trying to get an arena built at staggering municipal expense, you often hear arguments to the effect of “Oh, we bought an art gallery for a non-profit company, so we can certainly buy an arena for a billionaire.” It already sounds preposterous when you put it in plain English like that, and it’s even sillier if you pause to compare the function of an art gallery to the function of an NHL hockey rink.

I am the last person on earth the Art Gallery of Alberta would pick as a defender, but an art gallery is at least intended to provide a public good in the strict technical sense: it takes assets nominally owned by wealthy people and makes them available, at a low price not set in a profit-maximizing way, to virtually unlimited numbers of people—without affecting the value of the assets. That, in fact, is the historical origin of public art galleries; they were designed to multiply the benefits of a shared cultural heritage by extracting paintings and sculptures from vaults and putting them before the public in a safe, secure, orderly manner.

NHL hockey is simply not a public good according to an economist’s definition. Game attendance, at least, fails both tests: it’s both rivalrous and excludable, in the sense that you don’t get to attend if you don’t have a ticket, and buying a ticket (at a market-clearing price or lower) excludes someone else from having one. That does not mean there aren’t external benefits from the sale of that private good, in much the same way that there might be positive net external benefits from living near a good bakery even if you don’t buy bread. But using public funds to subsidize that good would still constitute a relatively pure transfer (a theft, some might say) from the people who have no use for it to the people who do. It would be like specifically underwriting pumpernickel production on the premise that bread is, in general, a good thing that is an important part of Western culture (as it certainly is).

Asper, of course, doesn’t come close to acknowledging the wider point that subsidizing NHL arenas is ultimately a means of subsidizing a cartel—of using the gullibility and open-handedness of politicians in one city to threaten those in another. Nobody is discussing expanding the league, and further expansion is difficult in principle; even leaving aside the state of the NHL’s overall finances and the current health of the economy, about thirty teams seems to be the natural upper bound for a competitive structure that isn’t organized like soccer (with meaningful parallel competitions and relegation/promotion between divisions). Quebec’s arena proposal is a means of darting ahead in the queue for troubled franchises in other cities, franchises that are ceaselessly seeking their own sweetheart deals for cheap rent, non-hockey revenues, and other subsidies.

This action is understandable, since Quebec has already been cheated out of NHL hockey by a richer urban rival in the past. But the overall effect is to create an inane arms race, a contest to see who can throw the most money at NHL owners and players. It’s bad enough that cities behave in such a sordid, compromised manner; we really don’t need all three levels of government working together to raise revenues and salaries for a private profit-maximizing business.

First Tamil migrant released from detention

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 12:33 PM - 0 Comments

A pregnant woman is the first of 492 Tamil migrants who arrived by Thai cargo ship in Victoria earlier this summer to be released from detention. Lawyers for the woman successfully argued she should be freed in order to care for her three young children. The other detainees who arrived on August 13 aboard the MV Sun Sea are being held due to fears that some may have connections to the Tamil Tigers, an outlawed organization in Sri Lanka. All seek to remain in Canada as refugees.

Vancouver Sun

Shock! Horror! American gun lobby group helps Canadian counterparts!

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

Last night the CBC reported that America’s National Rifle Association has cooperated with Canadian lobby groups opposing the gun registry. The NRA hasn’t spent any money in Canada, but Canadian gun advocate Tony Bernardo says it has given “logistical support” to a Canadian lobby group and “they freely give us anything else,” although he did not elaborate.

How did CBC’s Senior Investigative Correspondent Diana Swain uncover this scandalous bit of information? Bernardo said so in a published interview a decade ago. Continue…

'Not just a game'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 11:35 AM - 0 Comments

Defence Minister Peter MacKay writes to the Citizen to respond to Dan Gardner’s column.

I would like to point out to your readers and to Gardner that Medal of Honour is not just a game. It is a representation of the reality that Canadian Forces members in Afghanistan face every day.

Lantos scoffs at Jewison's claim that Richler saw Brad Pitt as Barney

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 10:03 AM - 0 Comments

In yesterday’s blog, I reported a conversation I had with veteran director Norman Jewison, who told me that about decade ago he was involved with producer Robert Lantos in an attempt to adapt Barney’s Version, and that the book’s author, Mordecai Richler, wanted Brad Pitt to play Barney—the role eventually performed by Paul Giamatti in the movie that premiered at TIFF on Sunday. Brad as Barney? It sounds preposterous, but Jewison swore that was Richler’s dream.

Well, last night I ran into Lantos, who dismissed the director’s claim as pure nonsense. Not only that, the producer insisted that Jewison was never even involved as a candidate to direct Barney’s Version. And Lantos should know: he was the only producer who ever owned the screen rights to the book. “Someone is not remembering things correctly,”  he said. Jewison told me he had tried to persuade Dustin Hoffman to play Barney, while Richler imagined Pitt in the role. But Lantos says he and Richler had talked about casting Hoffman, and that Pitt’s name never came up. (By the time the movie got made, Hoffman ended up playing Barney’s father.)

So the story just gets curiouser and curiouser. Canada’s biggest movie producer is suggesting that its most venerable director is promoting a fictional version of events,  a situation that would not be out of place in Richler’s novel.  At the rate things are going, this blog, like Barney’s Version, will need corrective footnotes.

Meanwhile, for my story on the making of the movie, go to Barney, unbound.

A phony gun battle

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 7:35 AM - 0 Comments

JONATHAN HAYWARD/CP

If he had his way, John Hipwell would spend more time selling guns, and less filling out paperwork. His store in Virden, Man., Wolverine Supplies, sells everything from deer rifles to semi-automatic handguns—a trade that requires him to wade through import permits, sales records and registration certificates on a daily basis. So when Candice Hoeppner, the Conservative MP from a neighbouring constituency, drafted a private member’s bill that would relieve one small part of his burden, Hipwell cheered. Canada’s long-gun registry has been “a waste of time and money,” he says, and Hoeppner’s proposal to shut it down would make life easier for merchants like him. As for concerns about public safety, Hipwell dismisses them with a wave. “The bottom line is that anyone wishing to acquire a firearm is going to have to get a possession and acquisition licence,” he says. “He’s going to get checked.”

It is the least publicized aspect of legislation that has resurrected a stubbornly undead issue, and one worth considering as the bill faces a crucial vote in the Commons next week. Yes, Bill C-391 would be a death sentence for laws requiring gun owners to register every single one of their hunting rifles and shotguns. But if they pass into law, Hoeppner’s amendments will leave the other, arguably more onerous, component of the Canadian Firearms Program intact—namely, the licensing regime through which the government assembles personal information on gun owners themselves.

Continue…

Third world America

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 7:32 AM - 313 Comments

Danny Wilcox Frazier/Redux/ Robert Galbraith/Reuters/ Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

In February, the board of commissioners of Ohio’s Ashtabula County faced a scene familiar to local governments across America: a budget shortfall. They began to cut spending and reduced the sheriff’s budget by 20 per cent. A law enforcement agency staff that only a few years ago numbered 112, and had subsequently been pared down to 70, was cut again to 49 people and just one squad car for a county of 1,900 sq. km along the shore of Lake Erie. The sheriff’s department adapted. “We have no patrol units. There is no one on the streets. We respond to only crimes in progress. We don’t respond to property crimes,” deputy sheriff Ron Fenton told Maclean’s. The county once had a “very proactive” detective division in narcotics. Now, there is no detective division. “We are down to one evidence officer and he just runs the evidence room in case someone wants to claim property,” said Fenton. “People are getting property stolen, their houses broken into, and there is no one investigating. We are basically just writing up a report for the insurance company.”

If a county without police seems like a weird throwback to an earlier, frontier-like moment in American history, it is not the only one. “Back to the Stone Age” is the name of a seminar organized in March by civil engineers at Indiana’s Purdue University for local county supervisors interested in saving money by breaking up paved roads and turning them back to gravel. While only some paved roads in the state have been broken up, “There are a substantial number of conversations going on,” John Habermann, who manages a program at Purdue that helps local governments take care of infrastructure, told Maclean’s. “We presented a lot of talking points so that the county supervisors can talk logically back to elected officials when the question is posed,” he said. The state of Michigan had similar conversations. It has converted at least 50 miles of paved road to gravel in the last few years.

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Put your vintage Nordiques jersey back in the closet

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 10:33 PM - 0 Comments

While the Canadian Press has the Prime Minister merely “playing down expectations,” the Globe goes ahead and declares the dreams of a federally funded pro hockey arena in Quebec City to be dashed tonight.

“I know there are more demands for new infrastructure for the NHL and the CFL here and in many other cities across the country,” Mr. Harper told the crowd who waited in anticipation for his remarks on the proposed arena project. “My friends, we are all great fans of professional sports. But professional sports are first and foremost the responsibility of the private sector. And if there is a role for the federal government, it must be equitable across the country and also affordable.”

'I am Slave'

By Tom Henheffer - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 6:39 PM - 0 Comments

Malia had a happy childhood. A descendant of Nubian royalty, her father was the champion wrestler of her village, and she had a carefree life in her closeknit community in the Sudanese Mountains. Then, when she was 12, the mujahadeen attacked, and like whole generations of African’s before her, she was stood in a line, examined, and sold into slavery. I am Slave cuts between the bright openness of the sandy African plains and the cold dark closet where Malia spends her nights as an 18-year-old domestic servant in London. Without papers, friends or even an understanding of how to unlock a door in a Western house she is trapped; terrified, but forced to veil her fear under a mask of suburban pleasantries or risk once again being whipped and beaten. The audience knows Malia could easily escape by simply running outside and finding a police officer or good Samaritan, but the film brilliantly demonstrates how her stolen childhood and lack of understanding of a foreign land makes it impossible for her to realize how close she is to freedom. Still, I am Slave never strays far from hope. The story is inspired by a true one, and Malia is only one of an estimated 5,000 women enslaved in London alone.

I am Slave premieres at TIFF on Tuesday, Sept. 14, with additional screenings on Sept. 15 and 19

The Jon Stewart Profiles Industry Marches On

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, September 13, 2010 at 5:28 PM - 0 Comments

New York Magazine’s article on Jon Stewart and The Daily Show is a long and good example of a familiar type of article: the “Jon Stewart is the last sane man” piece. It’s written a lot because it’s kind of true. This one even got comments from Glenn Beck, who feels that Stewart doesn’t understand the messages of his show.

One of the writers who features most prominently in the piece, Josh Lieb, was a writer on NewsRadio who became its showrunner in the final season (and is the guy saying “oh, it would be awful!” on one of the commentary tracks to describe what that show would have been like as a one-camera production) . So this means that I might as well accept it: everything has some kind of NewsRadio connection, real or imagined.