The 300,000-word club

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 10 Comments

With the House expected to rise for the holidays any day now, we pause to note that the NDP’s Jim Maloway has officially committed more than 300,000 words to the official record over the past year, more than three times as many as the next most-verbose member. By my count that’s something like 2,600 words per day the House was in session, which is more than 22 of his colleagues have spoken for the entirety of those 117 sitting days.

Mr. Maloway is a constant presence in the House and an eager contributor to debates—perhaps to an odd degree, but mostly, it seems to me, to his credit. The House could probably not withstand too many more MPs of his verbiage, but it is surely better off for every MP who is excited by the process.

A wasted year?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 1:13 PM - 64 Comments

If legislative accomplishments are anything to go by, 2010 hasn’t been a banner year for the Conservatives. According to an analysis done by Le Devoir, the Harper government spent the better part of the past year re-doing the work it scrapped when it prorogued Parliament last winter, with little in the way of results to show for their efforts. Of the 61 pieces of legislation the Conservatives introduced in the House over the last 12 months, 33 were recycled from the previous session of Parliament; and as of right now, 18 of those 33 bills are either at the same stage or further away from being made law than they were before prorogation. In fact, only three of the recycled bills have received royal assent. Among those legislative items that are further behind than they were at this time last year are supposed Conservative priorities, like a bill that would stiffen sentences for drug offences and a proposal to grant police new investigative powers. Counting the three bills that are set to be granted royal assent Wednesday afternoon, the Conservatives will have passed a meagre 11 bills through Parliament over the past 12 months, leading Le Devoir to conclude that “2010 was a total waste on the legislative front.”

Le Devoir

27 dead in Christmas Island tragedy

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 1:07 PM - 2 Comments

A boat carrying asylum seekers sank off Christmas Island this morning, killing 27 people. Of the some 70 people on board, 41 have been rescued, while another man made it to shore by himself. Rescuers plan to continue the search for further bodies. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced she will put her holiday on hold and go back to work to oversee the disaster. “This has been a tragic event, and it will be some time before there is a full picture of what has happened,” she said.

Sydney Morning Herald

Housequakes

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 12:28 PM - 253 Comments

The most interesting sentence in Chantal Hébert’s column this morning is this one: “At 42 per cent, the combined Liberal/NDP score just about matches the Liberal result in Quebec in the last Chrétien campaign in 2000.” That’s what a divided opposition looks like. That spectacle was familiar to Jean Chrétien, who won three majorities against a divided opposition; and it is familiar to Stephen Harper, who repaired the divisions that helped Chrétien and worked hard at aggravating divisions among Liberals and between the Liberals and the NDP.

Chantal’s point is that the NDP and the Liberals are cannibalizing each other’s votes in Quebec, to the Bloc’s advantage. Her point in any other province could have been, and sometimes lately has been, that the NDP and Liberals often cannibalize each other’s votes in other parts of the country too. Her remedy, and she has been strikingly insistent on this point, is that Jean Chrétien and Ed Broadbent had a point several months ago when they started agitating for a formal merger of those two opposition parties.

I think she has a point. As is often the case, history offers great big neon-bright lessons written in letters 14 feet high, which are nonetheless apparently easy to forget.

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Security bill for 2010 Games comes in at $854 million

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 12:23 PM - 6 Comments

The security bill for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver totalled $854 million. Of that amount, $647.5 million (or 72 per cent) was paid by the federal government with the province picking up the rest. The sum is only slightly larger than the $676 million Ottawa spent on security for the three-day G8 and G20 summits in Ontario this past June, but is much higher than the initial estimate of $175 million from when the Games were awarded.

Vancouver Sun

Zuckerberg named Time’s Person of the Year

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 12:18 PM - 0 Comments

Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old founder of Facebook and the world’s youngest billionaire, is Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2010. The announcement was made Wednesday by Time’s managing editor, Rick Stengel, on NBC’s Today show. The magazine said Zuckerberg was chosen “for connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives.” The subject of the critically acclaimed, controversial, and—according to Zuckerberg himself—fictionalized biopic “The Social Network” beat out WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Tea Party organization and the rescued Chilean miners for this year’s title. Only one person younger then Zuckerberg has ever won the acclamation—aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, who was named the first person of the year in 1927, when he was 25.

Time

CBC News

A procedural pursuit of the truth

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 11:05 AM - 3 Comments

Here then an interesting test of the system’s ability to demand and require the whole truth. After Question Period on Monday, Liberal John McKay rose on a point of privilege to assert that International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda had misled the House on the matter of KAIROS.

One is left with a clear impression that the decision to not recommend was made after the minister’s signature had been appended to the document. The minister does not know who put in the interlineations and therefore cannot tell the House who made the decision, when the decision was made and why the decision, approved by the agency and possibly by the minister herself, was reversed.

It is a prima facie case of contempt to mislead members by blaming others for one’s decisions. It is misleading to say that one made a decision when no decision was made. It impairs a member’s core function of holding a government to account. It erodes the doctrine of ministerial accountability.

Jim Abbott, formerly Ms. Oda’s parliamentary secretary, stood after to take issue with Mr. McKay. Bob Rae and Paul Dewar added their thoughts yesterday. The government has asked the Speaker to allow Ms. Oda time to respond before ruling.

Richard Holbrooke's death: can we make do without outsized diplomats?

By John Geddes - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 10:48 AM - 1 Comment

Maybe it’s immature to hope that the determination of powerful individuals, rather than the patient efforts of many, will solve big political problems. But who isn’t at least a bit susceptible to the longing for outsized leadership, especially when the trouble at hand looks truly daunting?

And no challenge has seemed more intractable in recent years than Afghanistan. It’s why I suspect a major opportunity was missed when President Hamid Karzai was allowed to reject the appointment of the blustery and charismatic Lord Paddy Ashdown as UN special envoy to Afghanistan back in 2008. The U.S., Europe and Canada should have insisted Karzai work with Ashdown, who was indomitable as the international community’s overseer in Bosnia from 2002 to 2006.

The death on Monday of Richard Holbrooke, 69, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan since last year, removes another rare personality from the mix. Grant Kippen, the Canadian former chairman of Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission, tells me by email that he met him a couple of times last year, and concurs with the general outpouring on the “significance and enormity” of Holbrooke’s contribution.

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Bombardier's battle royal

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 1 Comment

Getty Images

Once they start rolling out of a final assembly plant in Quebec in 2013, Bombardier’s 110- to 130-seat CSeries regional jets will pit the Montreal aerospace firm against heavyweights Boeing and Airbus for the first time. But Airbus, at least, signalled this week that it doesn’t plan to let Bombardier simply walk in and steal its big customers. The European plane-maker said it’s planning to equip its smaller A320 aircraft—the one that Bombardier’s CSeries will compete against—with newer, more fuel-efficient turbofan engines (Boeing is expected to hold out until its 737s are redesigned). The move appears designed to blunt part of the CSeries’ projected 15 per cent cost advantages over its competitors.

Bombardier has so far downplayed the significance of Airbus’s announcement, noting the $3.4-billion CSeries project has created an all-new aircraft design incorporating lighter, composite materials—in other words, a package deal. “We have a game-changing product and economics that will be in service well before any re-engined competitor arrives to market,” says spokesman John Arnone. But with just three customers so far and firm orders for 90 planes on the books, the challenge for Bombardier remains convincing cash-strapped airlines to open their wallets.

Friends in low places

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 1 Comment

Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

Staying loyal to a major endorser even as he or she makes headlines for marital infidelity may pay off, according to a recent paper published by Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. Nike’s decision to stick with Tiger Woods, despite his sex scandal, led to a profit of $1.6 million in golf ball sales, the research found. By contrast, the sports-gear giant would have lost as much as $22 million by ditching the golfer like other big companies, such as Gatorde, AT&T and Accenture did.

The tarnishing of Woods’s image is thought to have cost the golf ball industry $7.5 million, and it did take a bite out of Nike’s bottom line, turning away some 105,000 golf ball buyers worth $1.3 million in sales. But considering that Woods is credited with converting an estimated 4.5 million customers to Nike over a 10-year endorsement campaign, the shedding of a few angry consumers wasn’t worth an ugly breakup.

Necessary partisanship (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 at 9:35 AM - 14 Comments

Matthew Yglesias makes the case for labels.

Normally, how much you’re willing to pay for a good or service depends on the quality of the good or service in question. But there’s no way to sample the quality of a can of soda without buying it first. So how am I to know whether or not I want to buy that can of Diet Coke? Well it’s simple. I may not have had that can of Diet Coke before, but I have had many other cans of Diet Coke. And I can infer that the Coca-Cola corporation, having invested a great deal of time and money in building the Diet Coke band is going to make a good-faith effort to turn out a consistent product … The rise of recognizable and coherent parties creates some challenges for American political institutions, but the correct response is to tweak the institutions not to spend time wishing for label-free politics.

A plea for decency

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 5:06 PM - 13 Comments

I wasn’t in the House this afternoon on account of other commitments, but I’m told that shortly after Question Period, Speaker Peter Milliken rose to rule on a point of order previously raised by Liberal Derek Lee. Mr. Lee complained last month that a statement by Conservative MP Phil McColeman should have been ruled out of order as a personal attack on Liberal Mark Holland. That the time allotted for statements by members—15 minutes each day normally reserved for noting charitable causes, the accomplishments of constituents and such—was being used to launch partisan attacks was identified as a problem last March by Speaker Milliken, a problem he attempted to addresses with limited success.

The prepared text of Mr. Milliken’s ruling today follows. Coincidentally, in an essay for the current issue of Canadian Parliamentary Review, former government House leader Jay Hill calls for the Speaker to more strictly enforce order upon the proceedings. Continue…

How would an interest rate increase affect your household finances?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 4:50 PM - 18 Comments

Jean Charest wishes you an obedient Christmas

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 4:09 PM - 4 Comments

(Been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve missed you, too.)

The official-looking letter I’ve posted above was sent out to Quebecers purporting to be holiday greetings from Jean Charest. As you can see, the letter is written on government letterhead, bears Jean Charest’s signature, and features the premier’s office phone number at the bottom. As far as hoaxes go, this is pretty well done.

That said, it’s the text of the letter that gives it away. It doesn’t so much mock Charest as paint him as a dark and venal man. And that seems to be the difference between now and Charest’s first few years in office, doesn’t it? Continue…

Necessary partisanship

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 3:56 PM - 21 Comments

Christopher Beam picks apart the No Labels movement. His argument that it’s the incentives that have to change could be copy-and-pasted to the present situation in Ottawa.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of No Labels is to show why labels exist in the first place. They’re so busy talking about what they’re not—not Republican, not Independent, not conservative, not liberal—you never get a handle on what they are. Labels are a useful shortcut for voters who want to know what a group is all about. The lack of a positive mission beyond bipartisanship and civility (which both Republicans and Democrats also call for) makes it hard to know what they really want.

Who Keeps Cool And then Gets Shot? Yogi Bear!

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 3:47 PM - 0 Comments

Yesterday’s big viral video was this spoof of the CGI Yogi Bear, mashed up with The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford. Created by an animator named Edmund Earle, it matched the style of the new movie so closely that many people assumed it had been created by the makers of the film, and sent out onto the internet as a promotional tool. Earle may even have been trying to give this impression, since he put the credits of the real movie at the end of the video; he has since added a caption making it clear that it’s a parody. Warner Brothers has already announced they won’t fight it — the optics would be bad, they’d lose anyway because parody is protected under U.S. law, and they’re getting tons of publicity from it.

I didn’t like the video quite as much as I was expecting to; it’s well-made and all, but when you come down to it it’s still just a “what if these characters re-enacted a scene from a completely different movie” type of video, and that’s not my favourite type of parody. The reason people were able to believe that it might have been an official creation of Warner Brothers is that it doesn’t really say anything bad about the new movie, and actually makes the case that Yogi Bear could work in CGI. So ironically, Earle may have helped the movie he set out to make fun of.

Stem cell transplant cures HIV infection, say doctors

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 2:57 PM - 22 Comments

Doctors who treated a HIV-infected patient suffering from leukemia say a stem cell transplant has left him HIV-free. In 2007, Timothy Ray Brown was treated with bone marrow stem cells from a donor with a natural resistance to HIV infection, which is said to be the reason Brown is now HIV-free. A follow-up report in the medical journal Blood argues that based on extensive test results, “It is reasonable to conclude that cure of HIV infection has been achieved in this patient.”

AidsMap

'The King's Speech' tops Golden Globes

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 2:43 PM - 0 Comments

With today’s announcement of the Golden Globe nominations, the Long March to the Oscars is officially underway. The King’s Speech reaped a total of seven Globe nominations, followed by The Social Network and The Fighter, with six apiece. All three movies are based on true stories of unlikely heroes triumphing over tall odds—though it’s not clear if Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is a hero or villain, which is what makes The Social Network the most compelling of the three pictures. The Social Network has already swept film critics awards in Los Angeles, N.Y., Boston and Toronto. It has clearly emerged as the American movie of the year. But with the Globes announcement by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, The King’s Speech is showing its Oscar pedigree—as a feel-good period drama about royalty and disability, it’s overqualified. The other two films recognized by the HFPA in the Best Motion Picture/Drama category are Black Swan and Inception. Notable by its absence is the Coen brothers’ remake of True Grit, which has figured in the critics awards.

Competing with Colin Firth’s stammering royal and Jesse Eisenberg’s Facebook mogul for Best Actor in a dramatic motion picture are James Franco as a self-amputating survivor in 127 Hours, Mark Wahlberg as a working class hero in The Fighter, and Canadian Ryan Gosling as a blue-collar loser trying to saving his marriage in Blue Valentine. The Best Actress nominees in the dramatic category are: Natalie Portman as a tortured ballerina in Black Swan, Nicole Kidman as a bereft mother in The Rabbit Hole, Jennifer Lawrence as a desperate Ozark Mountain daughter going through hell in Winter’s Bone, Michelle Williams as a wife at the end of her tether in Blue Valentine, and Halle Berry as a mental patient in Frankie and Alice. (If you’re an actress and you want award consideration, you have to suffer.)

The Globes are often touted as a bellwether for the Oscars, but they really serve more as a publicity campaign for the Academy Awards. And a blow-out. The HFPA’s Jan. 16 ceremony, which involves copious food and drink, is Hollywood’s favorite party, far more relaxed that the Oscar’s quasi religious ritual. There’s also a fundamental disconnect between the Globes and the Oscars.  In their Best Picture and lead acting categories, the Globes split the field between best dramatic feature and best comedy or musical. That means more actors get nominated. And more stars show up! This year the comedy/musical slot has produced some hilarious results. Two of the most savagely panned movies of the year—The Tourist and Burlesque—both have nominations. The Tourist is neither a comedy nor a musical; it was billed as a thriller. But the junket whores at the HTPA have never met a superstar they didn’t like. By nominating The Tourist, along with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, they’ve dutifully enriched their guest list. Depp, who’s also nominated for Alice in Wonderland, will be competing with himself.

Also nominated in this category, Paul Giamatti may have a real shot at Golden Globe for his gonzo performance in the Canadian feature Barney’s Version, based on the Mordecai Richler novel. It’s sad, however, to see Barney didn’t get a nod in the Best Motion Picture Comedy or Musical slot, and that Rosamund Pike didn’t get cited for Best Supporting Actress. In other Canadian news, it’s also sad to see that Canada’s foreign-language hopeful, Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, was snubbed by the Globes. Expect Biutiful, starring Javier Bardem, to take that category.

I predict that Colin Firth will win the Globe for best dramatic actor, Natalie Portman for best dramatic actress, and that The Social Network will take director, screenplay and picture, a pattern that may well be repeated at the Oscars. My own organization, the Toronto Film Critics Association also announced its winners today. We echoed other critics groups in awarding The Social Network best picture, along with another four awards—director, script, actor (Jesse Eisenberg) and supporting actor (Armie Hammer). Our best actress award went to Jennifer Lawrence for Winter’s Bone. We also recognized Thailand’s Palme D’Or winner, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, as best foreign-language film  and as one of two runners-up for best picture.  For more on our picks, go to: TFCA Awards.

Oh, did I mention they give out Golden Globes for television? Well, they do. But no matter how much we hear that TV drama is outstripping film, TV folks are definitely poor cousins at the Globes, except for Ricky Gervais who no doubt will be slagging everyone as he returns to host the ceremony—last year he insulted the whole affair and the HTPA, but hey, these foreign press bozos were probably thrilled just to see a star talk about them.

Click here for a full list of Golden Globe nominees.

Tory aide applied to firms to which he leaked information

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 2:03 PM - 36 Comments

Russell Ullyatt, the aide to Conservative MP Kelly Block who was fired after leaking a pre-budget committee report to lobbyists, has testified that he applied for jobs at the five firms to which he sent the confidential information. This revelation comes after the report was shelved because of the leak, meaning the next federal budget—which will trigger an election if voted down—will be written without input from Parliament. “I understood after the fact the gravity of the error that I made,” Ullyat told the House of Commons procedure committee. Four of the lobbyists who received the report from Ullyatt had worked for the Conservatives before, while the fifth has contributed money to the party.  The Tories have come under fire for the party’s close ties with lobbyists before, and tried to curb criticisms with new regulations on lobbying in 2006, but they only applied to MPs, ministers and cabinet staff, not staff to backbench MPs.

The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

Richard Holbrooke remembered

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 1:47 PM - 0 Comments

Leading U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke, 69, died in Washington, D.C. Monday following surgery for a tear in his aorta. World leaders came forward today to praise the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan for his historic work in brokering peace in regions devastated by conflict. Best remembered for bringing about the end of the 1992-1995 Bosnia war—Europe’s bloodiest conflict since WWII—Holbrooke was instrumental in the diplomatic effort aiming to stabilize war-torn Afghanistan. While the Taliban appeared to rejoice at news of his death, Holbrooke’s main opponent in the war in Bosnia, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, expressed “sadness and regret”. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said in a statement: “Today marks the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Accords, the agreement that Mr. Holbrooke brokered to end the war in Bosnia and open the door to stability, and democracy for the people of the western Balkans.” Fittingly, Holbrooke’s last words were: “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”

CBC News

The Telegraph

'King's Speech' and 'Glee' lead Golden Globe nominations

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 1:09 PM - 0 Comments

King’s Speech is the big winner of this year’s Golden Globes nominations—the biopic on King George VI has earned seven, including best dramatic film. The other for best drama nods went to The Fighter, Inception, Black Swan and The Social Network. In the television categories, Glee led the competition with five nominations. Best Actor nods went to: James Franco (127 Hours), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter), Colin Firth (King’s Speech) and Canadian Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine). Best Actress nods went to: Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine), Natalie Portman (Black Swan), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone), Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole) and Halle Berry (Frankie and Alice). Actors from two Canadian productions were nominated for “best actor in a comedy or musical.” Kevin Spacey was nominated for Casino Jack and Paul Giamatti for Barney’s Version. The 68th Annual Golden Globes will be hosted by comedian Ricky Gervais on Jan. 16 in Hollywood.

CBC News

Military choppers airlift motorists off Ontario highway

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 1:06 PM - 7 Comments

A snowstorm in southern Ontario near the City of Sarnia was so bad Monday that military helicopters began airlifting stranded motorists from the roadside on Tuesday around 10:40 a.m. The stretch of Highway 402 between Sarnia and Strathroy was hit by a blizzard Monday that left more than 300 vehicles trapped. One of the men rescued told the Toronto Star that his gas tank was “down to fumes” by the time he was picked up Tuesday morning. The man had left for work in Sarnia around 6:15 a.m. Monday and had been stuck in the same spot on the road since 8:30 Monday morning.

Toronto Star

'How can I escape the insanity of my life?'

By Jane Christmas - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 5 Comments

For many, walking Spain’s hilly 800-km pilgrim’s route is a life-altering experience that resonates long after the blisters are gone | Alvaro Barrientos/AP

Recent research from the University of Innsbruck in Austria revealed that Westerners no longer give a fig about whether their lives have meaning. Tell that to the more than 400,000 people who trod the Camino de Santiago de Compostela (literally, the Way of St. James in the Field of Stars) in the last few years.

Modern-day quests usually begin with the universal complaint: “How can I escape the insanity of my life?” Before you know it you’re trolling the aisles of Mountain Equipment Co-op convincing yourself you’ll be perfectly comfortable hiking through a country you’ve never visited and whose language you don’t speak.

Walking Spain’s ancient 800-km pilgrim’s route with the barest of necessities has become a popular New Year’s resolution. It’s not for wimps, but many a wimp (I am one of them) has been known to hike the entire thing. There are steep hills aplenty—more than you can shake a walking stick at. The trail ends at the Catedral de Santiago de Compostela, where it is said that the bones of Christ’s apostle James (a.k.a. Santiago) are buried. As legions of pilgrims will attest, the Camino is a life-altering experience that resonates years and decades after you’ve pried your hiking boots from your hot, blistered feet.

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How now, brown car?

By Jason Kirby - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 9 Comments

Motoring Picture Library/Alamy

Brown cars. For the better part of three decades those two words elicited rolled eyes, conjured images of gas-guzzling boats, and spelled certain failure for any carmaker that dared go there. No more. “Brown is the new black,” says Michelle Killen, head of external paint design at GM North America. This year, brown-coloured vehicles will account for eight per cent of all sales in North America, says Killen, up from 5.5 per cent last year, and virtually nothing three years ago. The reigning colours of the car industry—white, silver and black—are at no risk of being knocked off the podium, but brown’s popularity is rising fast.

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