Do you think it's easy to make priorities?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 1:54 PM - 75 Comments

A survey of recent government prioritizing.

Jim Flaherty, December 7. Mr. Speaker, Canada’s economic recovery remains our government’s number one priority.

Leona Aglukkaq, December 7. Mr. Speaker, we continue to make health care a priority.

Stephen Harper, December 7. Mr. Speaker, the priorities of this government, beyond national defence and criminal justice, are pretty obvious. It is preserving jobs; it is making sure Canadian families do not pay taxes that are too high; and it is making sure that we fully fund transfers for health and education to the provinces…

Stephen Harper, December 7. That is why, as this government has looked at its budgetary priorities, maintaining the growth of those transfers for our health care system has been the number one priority of this government.

Peter Kent, December 6. I must emphasize that the safety of Canadians and all people travelling on Canadian roadways remains our first priority.

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Nepalese troops thought to be source of Haiti's cholera outbreak

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 12:58 PM - 0 Comments

The Nepalese army’s chief medical officer has said none of Nepal’s soldiers serving with UN peacekeepers in Haiti was tested for cholera before being deployed. The statement comes after a Nepalese army spokesman rejected a report which suggested the Haitian epidemic was caused by river contamination from Nepalese troops. The medical officer, Brig Gen Dr Kishore Rana, said the UN did not require such a test unless a soldier had cholera symptoms. This contradicts previous statements by the Nepalese army which has maintained that all its troops were given a medical test, which included checking for cholera, before being deployed to Haiti in October. So far, Cholera has killed more than 2,000 Haitians, and the belief that the outbreak originates with UN troops has prompted anti-UN protests.

BBC News

83 killed in Chilean prison fire

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 12:57 PM - 0 Comments

The San Miguel prison in Santiago, Chile was set ablaze by fighting prisoners Wednesday, killing 83 people and injuring at least 14 others. Relatives surrounded the prison as officials read aloud the names of prisoners who had been found alive and some threw rocks and glass bottles at police who were protecting the site. Justice Minister Felipe Bulnes told the media the prison holds 1,960 inmates, nearly twice the 1,100 inmate capacity. “We cannot keep living with a prison system which is absolutely inhumane,” President Sebastian Pinera told the press Wednesday, after admitting overcrowding in the country’s jails. “We are going to speed up the process to ensure our country has a humane, dignified prison system that befits a civilized country,” he added.

Vancouver Sun

China's alternative Nobel

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 12:55 PM - 2 Comments

A Chinese group will hand out the Confucius peace prize tomorrow — a day ahead of the Nobel ceremony in Oslo — in a bid to push back against the Nobel Committee and its decision to award the jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo, who is currently serving an 11-year sentence for incitement to subversion. The group argues that China “should have a greater voice on world peace” because it has over 1 billion citizens, while Norway is small and the Norwegian committee “could be inevitably biased and fallacious”. So instead, they will give the award to a Taiwanese politician Lien Chan who has “built a bridge of peace between the mainland and Taiwan”. This alternative Nobel is the latest in China’s furor over the decision to honour Xiaobo. So far, eighteen other countries have said they will not attend Friday’s Nobel ceremony after China put pressure on diplomats in Oslo not to attend and said there would be “consequences” if they did so.

The Guardian

Report: neither 'excited delirium' nor Taser killed Howard Hyde

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 12:49 PM - 0 Comments

A Nova Scotia judge has rejected a medical examiner’s finding that Howard Hyde, a mentally ill Nova Scotia man, died in 2007 because of excited delirium or Tasering by police. Anne Derrick, the provincial judge who led the 11-month inquiry into Hyde’s death, said in her report Wednesday that it was a struggle with jail guards and the restraint technique they used that may have restricted Hyde’s ability to breathe and caused his death. So Hyde’s death was accidental, the inquiry said. “The only useful approach is to understand that Mr. Hyde died because of physiological changes in his body brought on by an intense struggle involving restraint,” Derrick wrote. “He did not die because he was mentally ill.” A medical examiner had previously concluded that excited delirium, a condition characterized by increased strength, paranoia and suddenly violent behaviour marked by profuse sweating and an elevated heart rate, caused Hyde’s death. The case attracted national attention when Hyde died in jail in 2007 because he had been jolted with a Taser stun gun up to five times by Halifax police some 30 hours before he died.

CBC News

"What others can aspire to"

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 12:42 PM - 47 Comments

Good news can be important too. “There are many success stories,” OECD Secretary-General Angel Guerra said upon the release of the international PISA school-achievement tests this week. “Shanghai, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Finland, Canada: In very different cultural and economic contexts, their education systems have all been able to achieve strong and equitable education outcomes.”

So out of six countries singled out for the kind of achievement “others can aspire to,” Canada gets a mention. The separate video presentation on schools in Ontario, one of four jurisdictions selected by the OECD for a drill-down, is so flattering to that province’s current government that I’m just going to let you see it for yourself.

Obviously there’s still plenty of room for politics. You can argue that other parties, or a given reform, would produce better results. But one specific feature of Canada’s education systems is worth noting, preserving and working to reinforce: the low correlation between socio-economic background and education outcomes. In Canada more than in almost any country, relative poverty doesn’t lock a student into poor school performance, which means it needn’t lock a young person out of a rewarding career. It’s a huge asset.

The post-paper era

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 12:01 PM - 2 Comments

David Eaves writes to the Parliamentary committee studying open data.

There is one arena where politicians need not wait on the government to make plans: Parliament itself. Over the past year, while in conversations with the Parliamentary IT staff as well as the Speaker of the House, I have worked to have Parliament make more data about its own operations open. Starting in January, the Parliamentary website will begin releasing the Hansard in XML – this will make it much easier for software developers like the creators of Openparliament.ca as and howdtheyvote.ca to run their sites and for students, researchers and reporters to search and analyze our country’s most important public discussions. In short, by making the Hansard more accessible the Speaker and his IT staff are making parliament more accessible. But this is only the beginning of what parliamentarians could do to make for a truly Open Parliament. The House and Senate’s schedules and agendas, along with committee calendars should all be open. So to should both chambers seating arrangement. Member’s photos and bios should be shared with an unrestricted license as should the videos of parliament.

Conservative-Bloc Coalition Watch

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 11:42 AM - 54 Comments

The Bloc Quebecois voted last night with the Conservative side to pass the government’s latest budget implementation bill.

Two weeks ago the Bloc and Conservatives united to defeat a Liberal motion condemning the purchase of new F-35s.

Mark Zuckerberg: The anti-hero

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 4 Comments

Jeff Chiu/AP

Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg found himself onstage at a technology conference being grilled about Facebook’s often controversial approach to privacy—no small issue when you’re the CEO of a company that floats on an ocean of deeply personal information about 500 million-odd users. The tough questions, lobbed like mortar shells, clearly rattled the 26-year-old Facebook co-founder and CEO, who is an awkward public speaker at the best of times. Beads of sweat formed on his brow, and his eyes panned the room, as if looking for someone to come bail him out. No one did.

It was both a learning experience and a taste of things to come. Silicon Valley may be in love with Facebook, having determined that it’s no longer a fad and could in fact be “the next Google,” but 2010 was the year Zuckerberg himself was put under the microscope. Who exactly was this fresh-faced King of the Web, who only seemed to wear fleece jackets and rubber sandals, and did he really have our best interests at heart?

Continue…

A Lord resurrected

By Jason Kirby - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 10:20 AM - 14 Comments

Ryan Remiorz/CP

At the end of October, just before a Chicago appeals court tossed out two of Conrad Black’s four convictions, BBC Radio Four’s The Media Show aired an interview with the former newspaper baron.
In the 15-minute spot Black was asked about the state of the media today—“It’s slowly collapsing under the weight of its own substandards”—his take on the proper role of newspaper owners—“The buck stops with the proprietor”—and finally, whether he would ever get back into the news business, to which question he laid down his conditions: “Not as a chief occupation and not in a public company but it might happen.” Black’s response triggered speculation about his eventual return to the industry. But what really stood out was that Black, until recently scorned and easily dismissed as just another white-collar villain, was being asked such questions at all. It was a stunning reversal from a time when it seemed the only thing the world wanted to hear from Conrad Black’s lips was: “I did it.”

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Fruit is not just for dessert anymore

By Julia Belluz - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 1 Comment

Photography Jonathan Lovekin

Fruit usually makes its debut in the third act of a meal. But in Tender Volume II: A cook’s guide to the fruit garden, British food writer Nigel Slater brings apples and pears into the main course, exploring a neglected pairing: fruit and meat.

There’s a good chance you know as much about cooking lamb with quinces as you do about Slater, though he is arguably Britain’s finest food writer. The BBC host and long-time Observer columnist has written a dozen books, including the acclaimed childhood memoir Toast. But while Jamie Oliver has been crusading internationally about eating well, and Nigella Lawson has built a lifestyle brand that rivals Oprah’s, Slater has shirked celebrity-chef culture, even refusing most press requests (including several from Maclean’s). “I put as much effort into keeping a low profile,” he has said, “as most cookery writers do in publicizing themselves.”

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How to get out of this pinch

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Steven Senne/AP

Everybody knows the slogan, “Got Milk?” Pork producers urge Canadians to “Put pork on your fork.” Now, a new report suggests Canada’s lobster industry could do with some better marketing, too.

Though Canada’s lobster business has been plagued by low prices for years, it was hit especially hard during the recession. Last year, prices were at record lows, with some fishermen forced to sell for less than $3 a pound. Canada exports lobsters to 55 countries, but 80 per cent go to the U.S., notes the report, done for the Lobster Council of Canada (LCC). “The increasing Canadian dollar has hammered us hard,” says Geoff Irvine, the LCC’s executive director. (Last year, some fishermen resorted to selling their catch on the online classified site Kijiji.)

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Justin Bieber: A very sweet sixteen

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Wednesday, December 8, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 1 Comment

Photography by KC Armstrong

There are surely a lot of weird things about being a global teen idol. Obsessive fans. The lack of privacy. Growing up in a media hothouse. But the omnipresence of your own mug must rank high among the discomforts. Enter Justin Bieber’s name into a Google image search and you get 19 million pictures. His YouTube postings—everything from shaky home movies to big-budget music videos—have been collectively viewed more than a billion times. His signature bangs and toothy grin adorn posters, books, CDs, T-shirts, key chains, pyjamas, and practically everything else that can conceivably be sold to preteen girls (or their parents). Small wonder that the 16-year-old no longer enjoys having his picture taken.

“I really don’t really like photo shoots,” the Stratford, Ont., native admitted to Maclean’s during a backstage discussion about the perils of fame this past summer. “I hate when I’m standing there for hours at a time just looking at the camera.” Of course, there was a photographer in the room. These days there always is. Bieber is still new enough to the game that he can’t afford to appear sulky, however. Seconds later, the skinny teen was on his feet striking his “best” pose; mouth drawn into a pout, chin down, staring into the lens. “My sex face,” he declared, then quickly corrected himself. “My sexy face.”

Continue…

The Commons: Anyone can be environment minister

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 7:02 PM - 70 Comments

The Scene. Demonstrating their interest in climate change as a matter of great consequence, the official opposition led this afternoon with Michael Ignatieff’s 95th, 96th and 97th attempts to convince the Prime Minister that the government’s spending priorities are woeful and that the Liberal home care proposal is a superior alternative. After the Prime Minister had batted away these entreaties just as he had the previous 94, the Liberals sent up Lise Zarac, a backbencher, to ask about the latest report of the environmental commissioner and his passingly troublesome suggestion that the government lacked anything like a comprehensive plan for what the Prime Minister once termed “perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today.”

And here, in the form of Chuck Strahl, did the government demonstrate the seriousness with which it views our potential apocalypse.

In fairness, John Baird, the government’s part-time environment minister, was away this day—off to carry this country’s banner at climate talks in Cancun. But Mark Warawa, the Conservative who has for four years now held the title of “Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment” and who presently collects an extra $15,834 per annum as compensation for performing that task, was most certainly present. And while Mr. Strahl is certainly a fine performer and seemingly a pleasant enough man, it is unclear what, if anything, he has to do with leading this government’s efforts against what is perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today. Continue…

Elizabeth Edwards dies at 61

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 5:34 PM - 1 Comment

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards, has lost her battle with breast cancer and died at the age of 61. Edwards had suffered from breast cancer since 2004, when her husband first ran for president and became the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee; the couple mutually decided not to reveal the cancer until after the election. Her cancer went into remission but resurfaced incurably in 2007. After her husband ended his second presidential campaign, he admitted that he had been having an affair with another woman, with whom he fathered a child; the Edwardses separated in 2009.

New York Times

Wiki-Irony at the State Dept.

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 4:18 PM - 30 Comments

PJ Crowley, State Department spokesman:

“…the United States is pleased to announce that we’ll host UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day in 2011 from May 1 to May 3 here in Washington, D.C. UNESCO is the only UN agency with a mandate to promote freedom of expression, and its corollary, freedom of the press. The theme for this commemoration will be 21^st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. Obviously, we decided upon this before the latest round of news.

“The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. There certainly is an irony here. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to the exercise of freedom of – for the right of freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor or silence individuals and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age.”

Take that, Pierre Trudeau

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 4:06 PM - 72 Comments

That weekend in Toronto is bestowed an historic epitaph courtesy of the Ontario ombudsman.

For the citizens of Toronto, the days up to and including the weekend of the G8/G20 will live in infamy as a time period where martial law set in the city of Toronto, leading to the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history, and we can never let that happen again,” André Marin told reporters Tuesday.

The full report is here.

Against Branding, Terriers Division

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 3:56 PM - 3 Comments

After canceling Terriers, FX President John Landgraf took the step of holding a conference call with critics to explain the show’s failure. This was unusual, but it’s necessary to maintain the network’s critical respectability: though he didn’t actually say much that was new, he managed to maintain the critics’ feeling that FX is a “quality” network and prevent a critical backlash against the entire network. This is crucially important, since FX has an uneven track record with original drama, and it wouldn’t take that much of a push for it to be viewed as the network that did Season 2 of Damages and makes most of its money off Two and a Half Men reruns. It needs to know that if it launches a new show, critics will take it seriously, and Landgraf is ensuring that by building a positive relationship with the press.

There’s not a lot to say about the substance of Landgraf’s remarks, most of which are studiously uncontroversial. Obviously he doesn’t apologize for canceling it, nor should he. He also doesn’t think the title or the marketing campaign made all the difference, and he’s probably right about that too.

I did want to call attention to how an argument that the show didn’t fit with “The FX brand” soon turns into something that resembles an admission that branding doesn’t matter a whole lot. First he says that research showed it wasn’t considered “edgy” enough for FX, but then he notes that the “subtle charm” of the show wouldn’t really fit in anywhere in the current pop culture climate:”I don’t know if subtlety is something the

American public is buying in droves,” he added. “When I look at ‘Jersey Shore’ and the Kardashians and ‘Sons of Anarchy’ and ‘Walking Dead’… I wouldn’t say that subtlety and nuance describes the most successful kind of pop content in America today.”

The big hit shows on most cable networks (and broadcast networks) tend to share certain characteristics; right now a lot of the big cable hits — the great ones and the bad ones — seem to be characterized by a certain over-the-top quality. (It’s never an absolute rule, or Mad Men wouldn’t be on the air today. But you have to wonder what would happen to a show like Mad Men if it were launched on a network with higher ratings expectations than AMC used to have.) So the issue with Terriers is not that it doesn’t fit FX’s brand, but that it doesn’t fit the brand of current television. This is probably true of many shows that fail; just as good marketing or a good title can only help at the margins, a show that’s unwatched on one network probably wouldn’t get that many more viewers on a network with a more appropriate “brand,” even assuming there is one.

Bruce McDonald rocks Whistler's 10th anniversary

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 2:43 PM - 0 Comments

WFF Celebrity Ski Challenge: (from left) Atom Egoyan, Bruce Greenwood, Bruce McDonald, Steve Podborski (Mike Crane Photography)

Just got back from the 10th anniversary edition of the Whistler Film Festival. I’ve been attending the WFF for the last eight years, more consistently than any festival other than Cannes and the Toronto International Film Festival. Why do I keep going back? Well, there’s an easy answer: it’s the skiing, stupid.  And I have to admit, spending a few hours in alpine heaven before watching movies and going to parties in a village where you don’t see a car for days is an unbeatable combo. The festival organizers encourage you to ski. When you come down from a day on the mountain, they act as if you’ve somehow contributed to their culture, this peculiar chemistry of snow and cinema. On Saturday, I took part in the festival’s annual Celebrity Ski Challenge, a friendly slalom race on a gentle pitch. To qualify, you don’t have to be a celebrity, or much of a skier, and the slope poses no challenge. But there’s something surreal about a festival that had Canadian downhill legend Steve Podborski, one of the Crazy Canucks, showing Bruce McDonald, rock’n’roll daredevil of Canadian directors, how to carve a turn—just hours before McDonald faced a cheering crowd at the world premiere of Hard Core Logo 2, which was followed by a party and an incendiary performance from Die Mannequin, the punk band that’s the subject of the movie. You won’t see that in Cannes.

Over the years, the Whistler festival has matured into something more than a guilty pleasure for ski bum cinephiles; it has carved out a niche as a unique summit of Canadian cinema. Sure, given the option, most of our filmmakers will still premiere their movies at TIFF, where they’ll be guaranteed maximum exposure. But it’s hard to get noticed amid TIFF’s industrial fray. And Whistler throws a singular spotlight on Canadian film. More than half the 68 films showing at WFF this year were from this country. (Full disclosure: one of them was my own 7-minute short, Yesno). In a relaxed schedule of panels, tributes and parties, the event serves as an intimate, high-powered salon for filmmakers, bringing together the BC industry with guests from Toronto, Montreal and beyond. There’s time to hang out. Unlike at Cannes and TIFF, not everyone is there, thankfully. This year, those who were there included directors Atom Egoyan, McDonald and Monte Hellman, actor Bruce Greenwood, screenwriter Jim Sheridan—and George Stroumboulopoulos, who hosted a dual tribute to McDonald and Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop).

'Whistleblower' director Larysa Kondracki, flanked by Borsos jury members Sophie Deraspe and Bruce Greenwood (photo/BDJ)

There are prizes, but the competition feels as casual and friendly as the so-called Celebrity Ski Challenge. Films in the selection compete for a half-dozen cash awards—led by the $15,000 Borsos prize for best Canadian feature, named after the late B.C. director Phillip Borsos (The Grey Fox). This year the Borsos award went to Toronto director Larysa Kondracki for her feature debut, The Whistleblower, starring Rachel Weiss in the true story of a UN peacekeeper who exposes a sex slave trafficking ring in Bosnia. An unusually strong field of nominees also included Maxime Giroux’s Jo is For Jonathan (winning Best Actress for Raphaël Lacaille), Ed Gass-Donnelly’s Mennonite-noir Small Town Murder songs (winning Best Actress for Martha Plimpton), Jacob Tierney’s Montreal-noir Good Neighbours, and McDonald’s Hard Core Logo 2. The freshly minted $10,000 New Voices award for best international feature went to Greek director Athena Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg. And the $2,500 documentary prize went to Marwencol, the latest in a string of festival awards for Jeff Maimberg’s astounding film about an outsider artist who builds a miniature WW II Belgian town populated by refashioned Barbie dolls.

Die Mannequin singer Care Failure at premiere party for 'Hard Core Logo 2' (photo/BDJ)

With three movies programmed—Trigger, Music from the Big House and Hard Core Logo 2—Bruce McDonald was the de facto king of Whistler, a role he wore as comfortably as his signature cowboy hat, graciously deflecting the spotlight back onto his hosts and saying there’s no reason why this festival can’t become “the toppermost of the poppermost.” McDonald, the bad boy of Canadian cinema, seemed to morph into its avuncular godfather. In stark contrast to his co-honoree, Monte Hellman—who showed Road to Nowhere, his first movie in 15 years—he has been remarkably prolific, making a total of four features this year (the fourth being This Movie is Broken). They all involve music, and a shoot-from-the hip, guerilla style of verite filmmaking. But you can hardly say he’s repeating himself. Although it’s nominally a sequel, Hard Core Logo 2 incorporates virtually none of the characters from the original cult hit, except for the wonderfully sardonic Julian Richlings as a record producer. It’s the tale of a punk band, Die Mannequin, whose lead singer is channeling the spirit of the rocker who committed suicide in the original movie (Hugh Dillon). McDonald, who puts himself on camera as the mockumentary filmmaker along with his wife and child, is basically the lead actor in what amounts to a gonzo meditation on the search for emotional maturity. The narrative is reckless and tangential, but that’s part of the charm. Continue…

Bank of Canada holds rates steady, citing weaker growth

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 2:26 PM - 3 Comments

The Bank of Canada opted to hold interest rates steady on Tuesday, citing slightly weaker-than-expected domestic growth and the risk of global financial ripple effects from Europe’s debt crisis. The Bank kept its overnight lending target at 1 per cent for the second consecutive time since October, a move widely anticipated by analysts. The Bank said in a statement that it would have to see evidence that global and domestic recoveries were gaining traction before further withdrawing stimulus to the economy with an interest rate increase. Canada’s third-quarter economic performance of 1 per cent annualized growth was below the Bank’s forecast, which may have prompted it to adopt a more dovish tone despite a higher-than-expected inflation rate at 2.4 per cent.

Reuters

Ottawa announces creation of new Arctic sanctuary

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 12:55 PM - 9 Comments

On Monday, Environment Minister John Baird announced the federal government would give up a potential gold mine of oil riches in Nunavut’s Lancaster Sound, a body of water twice the size of Lake Erie, to designate the area as an environmental sanctuary. The announcement comes after months of controversy and lobbying from environmental and Inuit groups. “Our government is sending a clear message to the world that Canada takes responsibility for environmental protection in our Arctic waters,” Baird said. As well as an important resource for Inuit communities, Lancaster Sound is home to, among other species, seabirds, polar bears, and narwhals.

Ottawa Citizen

"Chronic spy-mania" continues in Georgia

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 12:35 PM - 0 Comments

Last month, Georgian authorities arrested 13 people suspected of spying for Russia, leading Moscow to accuse Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili of suffering from “chronic spy-mania.” Now, the spy-mania continues: Georgia has arrested six more people suspected of being agents for Russia. Officials in the country have also accused the spies of being behind a series of explosions, including one outside the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi in September. Eka Zguladze, deputy interior minister, said the four men and two women—all Georgian citizens—had been recruited by the Russian military. Saakashvili praised the interior ministry for the arrests. “We have managed to prevent very serious terror attacks,” he said. The Russian foreign ministry made no immediate comment, but the espionage claims are expected to ratchet up the tension between Georgia and Russia, which fought a brief but bitter war in 2008.

The Guardian

Please be patient

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 12:34 PM - 76 Comments

The environment commissioner would like to know where the government’s environment agenda is.

The government has not established clear priorities for addressing the need to adapt to a changing climate. Although the government committed in 2007 to produce a federal adaptation policy to assist it in establishing priorities for future action, there is still no federal adaptation policy, strategy, or action plan in place. Departments therefore lack the necessary central direction for prioritizing and coordinating their efforts to develop more effective and efficient ways of managing climate change risks.

In response, the part-time environment minister assures that the government is “working towards developing a Government-wide adaptation framework.”

China urges diplomats to boycott Nobel ceremony

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 12:31 PM - 3 Comments

At least 19 governments, including China, will skip the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony this week, at which the prize will be awarded to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Many of the other absentees are either trading partners or otherwise allied with China. They include: Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Serbia, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Another 44 countries are expected to attend, while Algeria and Sri Lanka have yet to RSVP. The declined invites may be the result of China’s pressure to boycott the ceremony because of the Nobel committee’s choice of Liu, who is serving an 11-year sentence for his writings and a manifesto he helped pen called Charter 08, which calls for democratic reforms. “China has been arm-twisting behind the scenes to stop governments from attending the Nobel prize ceremony, using a combination of political pressure and economic blackmail,” said Sam Zarifi of Amnesty International.

The Guardian