In memoriam

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 2:27 PM - 24 Comments

The concept of ministerial accountability was born on the morning of May 25, 2010, invoked so as to protect ministerial staff from having to testify before parliamentary committees. It lived a short, but fitful life.

The concept was injured slightly in October when a member of Christian Paradis’ staff resigned after meddling in access to information requests, but Minister Paradis himself went unpunished. It was wounded again days later when Mr. Paradis did not answer questions on the matter in the House. The concept was emboldened somewhat when the official opposition declined a confrontation on the matter, but, sadly, it sustained serious injuries weeks later when Rona Ambrose, rising to answer about events involving Mr. Paradis, explicitly directed questions to the public service. Continue…

Canada and Denmark to share Hans Island?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 2:27 PM - 6 Comments

For 37 years, Canada and Denmark have disputed a tiny, uninhabited island between Ellesmere Island and northern Greenland. Both countries’ militaries have planted flags and in 2005, Canada raised tensions with Denmark when Liberal then-Defence Minister Bill Graham visited the rock. However, sometime next year, that disagreement of ownership should be concluded, Danish Defence Minister Gitte Lillelund Bech has said. “Our staff are working closely and I hope we can have a solution in the next year. I don’t how we will end up but I have seen positive signs from the Canadians and we are also sending positive signs about a common solution,” said Bech, who met with Defence Minister Peter MacKay in Ottawa last week. “To some extent it is absurd to be collaborating in other areas and fighting over an island.”

Canada.com

Dolphins the brainiest animal?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 2:06 PM - 3 Comments

Researchers have found that male bottlenose dolphins can form third-level alliances when trying to mate with a female. A third-level alliance is where a group of dolphins joins another to fend off a rival group. Such alliances are more sophisticated partnerships than even chimpanzees form. Researchers say they place “considerable demands” on the dolphins’ social cognition. In another study, researchers have found that female bottlenose dolphins maintain large networks of relatives and friends to help them have more calves and protect their young.

Washington Post

Male study

Female study

Interpol to hunt Toronto extremist

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 2:02 PM - 19 Comments

A young Toronto man is now being sought by Interpol at the request Ontario Provincial Police, who have been searching for him since he left the country last summer. Salman an-Noor Hossain, 25, a Bangladeshi-Canadian, sparked outrage last year when, on the Internet, he outspokenly advocated for terrorist attacks on Canada and a genocide on its Jewish population. He was charged with two counts of advocating a genocide and three counts of promoting hatred but disappeared before police were able to arrest him. Hossain is now on Interpol’s international database of fugitives, which will bring with it the cooperation police services around the world.

Canada.com

Tories to hit the road

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 1:36 PM - 39 Comments

Before he leaves for the G20 summit in Seoul, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to announce plans for the Conservative Party to embark on a cross country tour. Sources inside the PMO have said that Tory cabinet ministers and MPs will visit small towns to gather feedback about a long-term economic plans. The tour is happening at the same time as the Finance Committee’s pre-budget hearings, causing some to speculate about an upcoming election.

National Post

Afghans overwhelmingly support talks with Taliban

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 1:33 PM - 7 Comments

A poll conducted in Afghanistan this summer by the Asia Foundation found widespread support among Afghans for negotiations with the Taliban. According to the survey, 83 per cent of Afghans would welcome peace talks with armed insurgents, up 12 points from last year. At the same time, the number of Afghans who say they have no sympathy for the Taliban was up nearly 20 points to 55 per cent, with an additional 26 per cent saying they had only a little sympathy. Among the issues that are top of mind for Afghans, the lack of security ranked first, followed by unemployment and corruption.

CBC News

Economists unite

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 12:47 PM - 47 Comments

Mike Moffatt announces the first major plank of the hypothetical Canadian Economists Party’s hypothetical platform: dairy supply management reform.

The cost to such a policy is high – Canadian consumers massively overpay for dairy products while at the same time our ability to enter into free trade agreements is limited by our subsidies to dairy farmers.  The policy represents a wealth transfer from consumers to dairy producers of over 2 billion dollars a year (Source).  I use dairy supply management as my example when I introduce The Logic of Collective Action to my Ivey students.

To what end? (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 71 Comments

In the process of reviewing Harperland, Allan Gregg considers Mr. Harper’s larger goal.

Upon assuming power—and without a moment’s hesitation—Harper abolished an already-negotiated national daycare program and the landmark First Nations Kelowna Accord. Since then, not only has he refused to resurrect or replace these initiatives, but he has also made it clear that he has absolutely no plans for any significant reforms in health care or the environment. In his tenure, he has roundly turned his back on the tradition of federal-provincial decision making and has never bothered to call a single First Ministers’ Conference. In all these cases, Harper did not do anything. But in not doing, he has revealed a vision that is no less clear—and arguably more radical—than Diefenbaker’s un-hyphenated Canadianism, or Trudeau’s Just Society. Harper’s refusal to use his spending power to enter provincial jurisdiction suggests he is a BNA purist who sees little, if any, role for the federal government in social policy.

Interesting Quebecor fact

By Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 10:09 AM - 4 Comments

Quebecor dreams of a Journal de Montréal that has about the same number of journalists as La Voix de L’Est, to cover a city 35 times larger.

-Jonathan Trudel, in this month’s Trente magazine

Staff at Journal de Montréal have been locked out for nearly two years in an acrimonious labour dispute with parent company Québecor. As Trudel points out in his piece, Québecor’s most recent offer would cut the number of journalists from 65 to 17–giving it the journalistic resources of a paper based in Granby (pop 47,637), with the void filled with wire and translated copy from the Sun chain. Oof.

Who is the real Omar Khadr?

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 71 Comments

Michelle Shephard/Toronto Star

In exchange for another eight years in prison—and the chance to be a free man in Canada long before that—Omar Khadr consented to a long list of strict conditions. He cannot sue the U.S. government for damages, regardless of how many torture sessions he may (or may not) have endured inside the barbed-wire walls of Guantánamo Bay. He will never step foot on American soil for as long as he lives. And he is not allowed to profit one penny from public speaking tours or movie deals or anything else that would involve selling his saga to the highest bidder. Any such proceeds, the agreement says, will go straight “to the Government of Canada.”

Khadr has read a lot of books during his stint behind bars (from steamy Danielle Steele novels to Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom), and his pen pals include an English professor at an Edmonton university. But when he signed his name to that seven-page plea deal on Oct. 13, he received a first-hand lesson in the meaning of irony: the same government that spent many years and millions of dollars fighting to keep him out of Canada now owns the exclusive rights to his life story.

Continue…

China's power play

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 15 Comments

Reuters

In the world of prized metals, dysprosium lacked a certain star power. It lies deep in the so-called f-block of the periodic table—that free-floating part near the bottom you never used in high school chemistry—along with the other so-called rare-earth elements with tongue-twisting names like neodymium and lutetium. No one ever set out with mule and pick-axe to find dysprosium. It occurs only as a constituent part of other mineral compounds, which explains why its name derives from the Greek for “hard to get at.”

But in recent months, dysprosium has shed its obscurity to prove that, like oil or diamonds, it can serve as leverage in an international dispute. Its debut took place shortly after Sept. 7, when Japan seized the crew of a Chinese fishing boat that had rammed two Japanese coast guard vessels near the Senkaku Islands, a string of barren rocks jutting from the East China Sea that has been a source of tension between the two countries for centuries. Infuriated by Tokyo’s refusal to turn over the skipper of the trawler, Beijing retaliated in a way no one expected: it cut off Japan’s supply of dysprosium, along with 16 other rare earth metals. Dysprosium and its chemical cousins are the lifeblood of Japan’s vaunted high-tech industries, used in everything from iPhone screens to the electric motor of the Toyota Prius. China, it turns out, produces 93 per cent of the world’s supply of them, having gotten into the market 25 years ago, then flooded the globe with cheaply mined product during the late 1990s. Today, if you want a shipment of dysprosium, you buy it from China.

Continue…

Marijuana dot-com

By Colin Campbell - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 3 Comments

ISTOCK

With California voting this week on whether or not to legalize marijuana, some entrepreneurs have been anticipating a lucrative payoff. It’s not about selling drugs, but rather website addresses that contain the word “marijuana.” One Californian told the New York Times he has registered over 1,000 Internet domain names, including marijuana­pastry.com and icecreammarijuana.com.

Buying and selling domain names has emerged as a big business in recent years (some sought-after addresses, like sex.com, can fetch millions of dollars). It’s also competitive, with domain name firms buying and selling thousands of addresses at auctions. The result of the California vote wasn’t known by press time, but regardless of the outcome, investing in pot-related domain names may prove to be more a long-term investment than a get-rich-quick scheme—a bet that interest in marijuana will keep growing over time, driving demand for pot-related businesses in need of websites.

'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' goes Hollywood

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 2 Comments

James Atoa/ The Everett Collection/ Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Dear David Fincher:

So glad that you’re the one who’s doing the Hollywood adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. At this point, I guess there’s no going back to Larsson’s original title, Men Who Hate Women. People might mistake it for a Mel Gibson movie. Anyway, it’s hard to imagine a more suitable director. You, after all, are a specialist in complicated movies about diabolical predators and men who hate women, from a serial killer freak in Se7en to the Facebook geek in The Social Network. With Zodiac, you’ve already shown you can make an insanely detailed crime thriller about a journalist trying to crack a homicidal riddle. As for casting female targets who fight back, you did a bang-up job with Jodie Foster in Panic Room.

But the whole Swedish thing has me a little worried. When you began shooting in Sweden last month, you made it clear right off the bat that you are not remaking the Swedish-language movie, but doing your own adapation of the novel. You called your approach “Swedish noir” with “an atmosphere reminiscent of Chinatown.” Weird. You’ll have actors speaking English in a dark, creepy Scandinavia that’s more Swedish than Sweden.

Continue…

Conan O'Brien Goes Coco-Nuts

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 12:38 AM - 5 Comments

Here I am watching the first episode of Conan, ready to write some thoughts on it. We’re getting it an hour later than in the States (after the abandonment of the Comedy Network’s ill-fated attempt to move Jon Stewart to 10), so I’ve had to avoid the internet to keep from reading spoilers: will there be guests? Will there be a couch? Will the audience applaud when Conan walks out? I want these things to surprise me.

It was inevitable that there would be some sort of “how we got here” pre-taped bit, but I actually was hoping he’d surprise us and just do a regular opening; the parodic fake-autobiographical opening to a show is so standard that even Jay Leno did it when he came back to “The Tonight Show.” Conan’s opening was much funnier than Leno’s (and even had the device of repeating previous lines we heard in the segment, which he must love since “Marge vs. the Monorail” used it on”The Simpsons”), but it seems to tell us what this show will be like: not a reinvention of the form, just a comfortably familiar talk show hopefully done well. It’s actually very important for the show to give that impression; despite the jokes about basic cable and the lower budget, they want to let us know that we’re not going to be going down a step from O’Brien’s big-network shows. The comfort of familiarity is the best thing they can give us.

That said, it’s fun to point out the slightly different things. The first one, up front, is the idea of having an episode title, an old-timey, lurid title (“Bye Bye Blackmail”) with a title card (complete with copyright logo) and Richter announcing it. I suspect we’ll be seeing more old-timey stuff or references to old TV and old talk shows; O’Brien loves this stuff, and on a network that mostly makes its money showing reruns, there may be less pressure to keep his material up to date.

Now, to the most important thing about a talk show — the set. It’s a regular talk-show set, of course. It’s already been remarked that it looks more like a Tonight Show set than his actual Tonight Show rig, which was more glossy and “modern.” This one looks smaller and simpler, but may offer more opportunity to move around; it looks like the design crew and the camera crew wants to create a feeling of intimacy and close contact with the studio audience, like O’Brien is interacting directly with them.

As we get into act two, with Richter settling down at the couch (an important improvement on Tonight was getting him Continue…

Mary Hart Replaced By Eve Harrington — Sorry, By Nancy O'Dell

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 11:30 PM - 1 Comment

The coincidence of Mary Hart and Vanna White achieving prominence in the same year (they both started in 1982, on Entertainment Tonight and Wheel of Fortune, respectively) has made me sort of link them in my mind and wonder which one would be the first to leave. Now we know that it’s Hart, who is stepping down to be replaced by Access Hollywood host Nancy O’Dell.

Despite the facile All About Eve comparison I tried to make in the subject heading, this isn’t actually that kind of situation at all; O’Dell isn’t being promoted from within, and while she’s younger than Hart, she’s not absurdly young (she’s 44; Hart is 60). All the fun scheming is not between hosts, but between shows: seeing Entertainment Tonight poach its’ competitor’s co-host seems like a rubbing-it-in kind of move, particularly given that ET has more viewers. I feel like pushing Hart away could backfire, since she’s so much a part of the show; she is to ET what Vanna is to Wheel of Fortune, only more so because there’s no male host who’s had the same longevity. On the other hand, that might just be childhood nostalgia talking, since I not only think she’s an essential part of ET, I think Leonard Maltin is too.

And yes, Entertainment Tonight is still popular (on a list of top 10 syndicated shows); it may have more competition than it once did, but there’ll always be a place for softball celebrity-gossip coverage, because, well, people like celebrity stories and they want a show that covers these stories in a manner that suggests celebrities are likable.

One person who will not miss Mary Hart’s voice on the TV: Cosmo Kramer.

The parameters of a debate

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 5:04 PM - 150 Comments

Liberal MP Keith Martin sets out his do’s and don’ts of health care reform.

Don’t allow people to pay to jump ahead of the queue in the public system. Don’t allow people to divert taxes to private services. Everyone will pay taxes and ALL will have access to the public system. This is akin to our education system that has private and public schools. People who pay tuition for their children to attend private schools still pay taxes that pay for public schools….

Do allow people to pay for health care services in completely separate private clinics. ONLY private monies would pay for these clinics and services.

New cigarette warning labels should not be abandoned: editorial

By macleans.ca - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 4:52 PM - 8 Comments

Is the government caving to the tobacco industry? An editorial published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal takes the federal government to task for its decision to focus on fighting contraband cigarettes instead of carrying out a plan to put larger, more graphic warning labels on cigarette packs and enforcing the display of a toll-free number for quitting smoking. The abandonment of the latter plan, the CMAJ suggests, should come with some sort of explanation from Health Canada—who made the announcement in a closed-door meeting with provincial and territorial representatives. In the absence of an explanation, the CMAJ speculates that the tobacco industry lobbied hard against the new labels, which could threaten their bottom line, and the government refocused its efforts as a result. Or, perhaps the policy shift is yet another example of Harper’s government ignoring public health to focus on his law-and-order agenda. Either way, the CMAJ argues that fresh labels are necessary—the current labels have remained unchanged for a decade, and as such the effectiveness of those deterrents has decreased over time.

CMAJ [PDF]

Post-election Washington round-up

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 4:10 PM - 6 Comments

Germany, China, and Sarah Palin all agree: Ben Bernanke is buying too many bonds. Meanwhile, Paul Krugman prepares to launch a new line of bumper stickers that say:  “Whatever you’re doing, it’s not enough.”

Obama goes to India , sells some planes, promises to support India’s bid for a permanent UN seat but declines an invitation to call Pakistan a “terrorist state”. He also lets drop that he is “constantly reading and studying” Gandhi, MLK, and Abraham Lincoln. (How long until someone notes the absence of JC on that list?)

The next Speaker of the House, John Boehner, has said of health care reform, “There’s a lot of tricks up our sleeves in terms of how we can dent this, kick it, slow it down to make sure it never happens.” That’s great, says Ross Douthat, but the election results have otherwise caught Republicans with their policy pants down.

Some defeated Democrats and the NYT are calling on Nancy Pelosi to give up her leadership job for the good of the party.

World Bank president calls for a return of the gold standard, prompting name-calling from the econoprofosphere.

Suze Orman triumphs: Americans continue to pay off debt instead of spending.

And note to on-line  editors who want to drive web-site traffic and reader comments: Tell Americans they are not so special.

From zero to a thousand

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 3:36 PM - 20 Comments

Whatever the Prime Minister said in January, and what the Foreign Affairs Minister dismissed in June, the government is now said to be thinking about leaving a thousand soldiers in Afghanistan—about a third of the size of our current deployment.

Up to 750 trainers and at least 200 support staff would work outside the combat zone at a training academy or large training facility for Afghan soldiers and police officers, the CBC’s James Cudmore reports. They would remain in Afghanistan until 2014 at the latest.

Susan Delacourt wonders where the Prime Minister is at this seemingly important moment.

Conan in exile

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 1 Comment

Photo Illustration by Adam Cholewa

Is Conan O’Brien reinventing the talk show, or is he just the latest washed-up network star to be exiled to cable? Less than a year after the tall, red-haired host was forced out of his job at The Tonight Show (it was the most famous late-night battle since the fight to succeed Johnny Carson, and Jay Leno won both times), he’s coming back on Nov. 8 with Conan, which will run on the basic cable network TBS and in Canada at midnight on the Comedy Network. When he took the job, many observers saw it as a step down for a man who had hosted a major network show since 1993, when Late Night With Conan O’Brien debuted. The person who’s trying hardest to portray this as a step down is Conan O’Brien himself. The obligatory musical group for the new show is called the Basic Cable Band. Brian Kiley, a writer for O’Brien’s shows, told Maclean’s that the staff is planning “jokes about being on basic cable, and that kind of thing,” while another writer, Dan Cronin, adds that they’ll be saying, “What’s TBS? What channel is that even on? We have no idea.” Back when he was an inexperienced talk-show host, O’Brien made fun of his own inexperience; now he’s mocking his exile to cable before the rest of the world can.

Continue…

Art that engages, fantasizes, and tries to go deep

By John Geddes - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 2:58 PM - 6 Comments

Mary Anne Barkhouse, Sovereign, 2007 | National Gallery of Canada

The National Gallery of Canada has just opened a show of recent Canadian acquisitions, filling exhibition space last occupied by the summer blockbuster Pop Life, the Tate Modern’s survey of how the art of Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, to list the big names, plays off celebrity and consumerism—in other words, sex and money.

As I made my way through It Is What It Is, a selection of 82 works by 57 Canadian artists bought by the Ottawa gallery over the past two years, Pop Life kept popping back into my mind. It’s not that I saw much evidence of direct influence. On the contrary, what struck me was the absence in the new work of anything that looks beholden to those global art brands.

Continue…

To what end?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 2:23 PM - 14 Comments

Considering the last two years of American politics, William Saletan makes an observation that is surely just as relevant to the discussion here—for instance, in the ongoing debate over Mr. Harper’s legacy between our Paul Wells and Andrew Coyne.

But if health care did cost the party its majority, so what? The bill was more important than the election. I realize that sounds crazy. We’ve become so obsessed with who wins or loses in politics that we’ve forgotten what the winning and losing are about. Partisans fixate on punishing their enemies in the next campaign. Reporters, in the name of objectivity, refuse to judge anything but the Election Day score card. Politicians rationalize their self-preservation by imagining themselves as dynasty builders. They think this is the big picture.

They’re wrong. The big picture isn’t about winning or keeping power. It’s about using it.

Air Canada forced to reinstate retired pilots

By macleans.ca - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 2:11 PM - 3 Comments

Two Air Canada pilots, aged 65 and 67, who were forced to retire from the airline in 2005 and 2003, are about to go back to work thanks to a ruling from the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. The pilots will be given full seniority, and be compensated for lost wages, plus interest, and minus received pension money. However, the tribunal made clear that this ruling only applies in these cases, and is not a precedent meant to throw out all mandatory retirement provisions at the airline. CARP, the retiree advocacy group, supports the decision, but says it is still lobbying the government to repeal parts of the Canadian Human Rights Act in order to prevent mandatory retirement.

CBC News

Gender gap

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 8, 2010 at 1:37 PM - 20 Comments

As he did with young and old voters, Eric Grenier compares how Parliament would respectively look if only women or men voted.

Women
Liberals 110
Conservatives 108
Bloc Quebecois 53
NDP 37

Men
Conservatives 141
Liberals 93
Bloc Quebecois 52
NDP 22

As John Geddes and I wrote during the last federal campaign, the gender gap can be pivotal.