Police blotter

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 5:40 PM - 0 Comments

Newfoundland: Police have finally laid a charge in the case of the truck that went into the sea after being on a wharf in Notre Dame Bay in the early hours of New Year’s Eve. The three men in the vehicle escaped before the pickup sank into the icy waters. One is charged with driving imprudently.

Ontario: Two men reportedly cleaned out a North Bay home, allegedly getting away with $17,000 worth of personal effects after backing up a U-Haul to the home and kicking in the front door. Then the pair loaded power tools, several TVs and other electronics into the trailer and drove away. Police are investigating.

Manitoba: A 20-year-old man is facing 59 counts of mischief after allegedly painting graffiti on everything from bridges to railway cars. Winnipeg police, who reportedly seized spray cans as well as videos and photos during a search of the suspect’s home, say the nearly-two-year-long crime spree caused more than $125,000 in damage.

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Ugandan gay rights activist found murdered

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 5:27 PM - 6 Comments

A prominent Ugandan gay activist was found murdered on Thursday. David Kato was one of several people outed by the Ugandan newspaper Rolling Stone, which published their pictures under the headline “hang them.” Witnesses told the BBC Kato was beaten to death in his home in Kampala. Police, who have a suspect in custody, have said there is no connection between the beating and Kato’s work with his gay rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda (Smug). However, several people have complained of being attacked after their photos appeared in Rolling Stone. The paper’s editor, Giles Muhame, told Reuters news agency he wasn’t promoting violence agains gays. “We want the government to hang people who promote homosexuality,” he said, “not for the public to attack them.”

BBC News

Mitchel Raphael on Helena, Rahim, and their new baby, Zavier

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 5:20 PM - 31 Comments

Rahim Jaffer has a new job

2010 was a tumultuous year for Independent MP Helena Guergis and her husband, former MP Rahim Jaffer. Drug charges against Jaffer were dropped, but allegations of unregistered lobbying consumed the couple’s life. The year ended on a happy note, though, with the birth of their first child, Zavier Rahim Nizarali Guergis Jaffer, on Dec. 15, an important date in the Jaffer family. Both Rahim and his grandfather, Abdul Sultan Jaffer, were born on that day. On the downside, Jaffer quips that he will no longer be able to have his birthday parties at hip clubs like the Mercury Lounge in Ottawa, and that now the parties will be at places like Chuck E. Cheese’s. Jaffer says losing his seat in the last election was a mixed blessing. If he hadn’t suddenly been able to be flexible with his time, he feels he and his wife would not have been able to have a baby. “I get to be Mr. Mom,” jokes Jaffer, who so far has been the one doing more of the diaper duty. After getting sprayed more than once, he says the couple has invested in what Jaffer calls “dunce-cap-shaped cloth cones,” which are placed over the baby while he is being changed.

Half the baby’s room is painted a slightly dark shade of sky blue and the other half is cream-coloured. (Not exactly the blue and white Conservative party branding, but in the same family.) The colours were picked by Guergis. Decals of turtles, tigers and frogs adorn the walls. One of the best gifts they have received, says Jaffer, is a set of Dr. Brown’s baby bottles that slow down the flow of milk and help eliminate gas. Guergis’s mother gave Jaffer The Joy of Fatherhood: The First Twelve Months by Dr. Marcus Jacob Goldman, and it’s been his bible.

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'The door is not closed from the federal government'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 5:11 PM - 18 Comments

The government decides it’s not quite ready to decide on the most important public policy question of our time.

The government says it will give the city’s mayor time to raise more private-sector funding before it considers a federal role. The Conservatives’ top local minister, Josee Verner, told a news conference that the government has yet to receive a proposal that includes private-sector money. ”We do not have everything we need,” Verner said. ”It is important that (Mayor Regis) Labeaume continue (raising funds).”

The Liberals released a comprehensive accounting of their position today.

The price of a dog's day in court

By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 5:00 PM - 5 Comments

Doug Fenwick’s wife Debra Ogilvie has been in counselling ever since a pit bull killed Joey, their Yorkie poo, last November. “It just grabbed our little dog and proceeded to shake. My wife was screaming and kicking it,” says Fenwick, of White Rock, B.C. A postman who saw the attack jumped on top of the pit bull, but it was too late. Joey was dead.

Making matters worse, the couple has now learned that it will take six months and cost the city several thousand dollars before a judge will decide whether to label the pit bull a dangerous dog and therefore order it euthanized. That’s because applications to have a dog destroyed go through the backlogged Provincial Courts system. Paul Stanton, the man in charge of bylaw enforcement in White Rock, says the process to have violent dogs put down needs to be vastly improved. Had it been quicker, he says, the pit bull may have been destroyed sooner—perhaps soon after the first time it attacked.

Following Joey’s death, Fenwick and Ogilvie learned from a woman living down the street that the same canine had “ripped off her dog’s leg” a year earlier. That attack was so violent that the bylaw officer (working for Stanton) banished the dog from town. Stanton says he considered getting a court order to have the dog killed then, but he was advised it would take several months.

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Skating on fake ice

By Alex Derry - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 5:00 PM - 1 Comment

Image source/CP

For some, skating on a synthetic surface is as bad as buying a fake Christmas tree. But running an arena is a costly enterprise, and so with a budget crunch putting several city-run rinks at risk—including eight in his ward—Winnipeg city councillor Gord Steeves wants the city to consider installing the more affordable fake stuff. A report on the benefits and drawbacks of synthetic ice, commissioned earlier this month by the protection and community services committee that Steeves chairs, is due in 90 days.

There is, not surprisingly, a bit of skepticism over making the switch. Thomas Steen, Steeves’s colleague on council and a former Winnipeg Jets forward, has skated on the surface and recently told local reporters that “it’s harder to turn or stop” on it, but he’s not opposed to the idea if the technology has improved. Georges Laraque, a former right-winger with the Montreal Canadiens and Canada’s representative for Super-Glide ice, argues that synthetic ice is “80 per cent like a real ice surface.” Laraque partnered with the Florida-based company following his retirement in 2009, when he noticed that maintenance costs were forcing some municipal arenas in Edmonton to close, leaving nowhere for kids to play hockey. Laraque, the deputy leader of the federal Green party, says that synthetic ice is a “green technology” and a cost-effective way to keep rinks open year-round. Plus, at $20 a square foot, he says, Super-Glide’s synthetic ice, made with a plastic polymer, is a cheaper alternative to the labour-intensive real thing.

For Steeves, it’s less about choosing fake over real ice, and more “a choice between synthetic ice and closing down these arenas.”

Ottawa revokes permanent resident status of Tunisian ruler’s son in-law

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 4:54 PM - 9 Comments

The Canadian government has reportedly revoked the permanent-resident status of the billionaire brother-in-law of deposed Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Belhassen Trabelsi, who arrived in Canada with his family last week, had his status revoked Thursday, according to Radio-Canada, because he did not meet specific residency conditions, including that requiring him to have stayed in Canada for two years over a five-year period. Trabelsi is the reputed leader of a family that ran much of Tunisia’s economy with an iron fist. His sister, Leila, married Tunisia’s then-president in the 1990s. Trabelsi, who is currently holed up in a hotel west of Montreal, is apparently considering applying for refugee status after Tunisia’s transition government issued an international warrant for his arrest.

Radio Canada

New sex scandal allegations involving Italian PM surface

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 4:44 PM - 9 Comments

The sex-crime accusations facing the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, are mounting. Prosecutors now believe that Iris Berardi, a 19-year-old Brazilian showgirl, was underage when she went to Berlusconi’s summer villa in Sardinia in November 2009 and his palazzo near Milan a month later. Documents suggest she attended sex parties hosted by the 74-year old before her 18th birthday. Berlusconi is already accused of paying for sex with a teenage nightclub dancer known as Ruby the Heartbreaker. He is also accused of abuse of office for pressuring police to release Ruby on theft charges. These latest allegations were contained in a 227-page dossier submitted to a parliamentary committee on Wednesday by prosecutors who are investigating allegations that Berlusconi hand-picked prostitutes for wild parties. The dossier contains details about how Berlusconi and his friends were entertained by showgirls seeking career advancement.

The Telegraph

The End: Gilindo Marcocchio | 1909 – 2010

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 4:40 PM - 5 Comments

Illustration by Ian Phillips

Gilindo Marcocchio was born on Dec. 10, 1909, in the small Italian town of Castions di Zoppola, near what was then the Austro-Hungarian border. His father, Antonio, was a cook for a wealthy family who offered to adopt Gilindo. But his parents refused to give him up. By the time Gilindo was 12, though, he was orphaned: his mother Maria died of the flu, and Antonio of a heart attack. After that, Gilindo’s three brothers left Italy in search of work in Canada and Mexico, and the young boy was left to be raised by two sisters, in a modest house they shared with chickens and pigs.

During the First World War, Gilindo had to flee his town and move inland, away from the border area, which was under siege. Just after he crossed a bridge near his home one day, it was bombed by the Germans. Gilindo watched in horror as horses and carriages were tossed into the air, and people he knew perished instantly.

By 16, having survived the devastation that characterized wartime Italy, he joined his brother Isadoro in Windsor. Since Gilindo never attended school, and didn’t know how to read or write at the time, he learned a trade: bricklaying. After five years, when jobs dried up with the Depression, he headed east. In Toronto, during the 1930s, Gilindo worked as a tradesman, and soon became known as Lindy. He helped build Maple Leaf Gardens, and in 1931, attended the first-ever hockey game played there (the Leafs lost to Chicago, 2-1).

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The Week: Good News, Bad News

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 4:25 PM - 0 Comments

Good News

Hopeful signs

U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the target of a Jan. 8 assassination attempt that left six people dead and 11 others wounded, continues to make a remarkable recovery. Less than two weeks after a bullet pierced her brain, the 40-year-old Arizona Democrat is breathing on her own, responding to verbal commands, and has regained movement in her arms and legs. (Her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly told the media she tried to give him a neck rub.) Doctors caution that she has a long way to go, but even such small miracles provide reason to be thankful.

The drips just keep on coming

The whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks is preparing to take on Switzerland’s tight-lipped banks for its next act. The details of the secret offshore accounts of some 2,000 companies and prominent individuals, provided by a former banker now on trial for breaching confidentiality laws, will be posted within weeks, promises founder Julian Assange. It will be interesting to see if any beneficiaries of the public bailouts of world markets have been hiding money away from the taxman.

Ontairy-airy-airy-o

Take a deep breath, residents of Ontario. The air you’re breathing is cleaner than it’s been for many years. The latest report on air quality in Canada’s most populous province reveals the fewest number of smog days going back 39 years. And major pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide are down as much as 64 per cent over the past nine years. The McGuinty government claims the good news is due to environmental policies such as car-emissions testing and the phasing out of coal-fired electricity, although half of Ontario’s air pollution drifts in from the U.S.

Don’t hate me

More great news for the drop-dead gorgeous: you’re beautiful and brilliant. According to new research out of the London School of Economics, physically attractive people—male and female—actually have higher IQs than the average person (13.6 points higher for handsome men; 11.4 points higher for pretty women). The smartness study examined more than 52,000 people living in Britain and the United States. Sarah Palin was not one of them.

Bad News

Cold realities

Winter in Canada has always been the danger season, but this past week provided particularly stark reminders why. In Alberta, two brothers died in an avalanche while backcountry skiing at a provincial park. Another man met the same fate in British Columbia’s Kootenay mountains. And in Toronto, a 66-year-old woman with dementia froze to death in a suburban neighbourhood after wandering away from her home on one of the coldest nights of the year. Residents reportedly heard her cries of distress, but never called police.

Mideast mess

Lebanon is bracing for more political violence after a UN tribunal filed a criminal indictment over the 2005 assassination of prime minister Rafik Hariri. It’s still not clear who investigators are blaming, but suspicion has long centred on the militant Islamic organization Hezbollah. In advance of the charges, the group withdrew from the country’s unity government, causing its collapse. Now there is fear of renewed fighting in the streets, as all factions take to the barricades. Will the price of justice be peace?

Is the shine off Apple?

Few CEOs are as closely associated with their companies as Apple’s Steve Jobs. Rightly or wrongly, the markets, and millions of Mac fans, seem to believe that all the tech firm’s innovations begin and end on his desk. So when the 55-year-old announced he is taking a leave to deal with an undisclosed medical problem (Jobs has had a liver transplant and has been battling pancreatic cancer for years), Apple stock quickly tumbled. Investors, who have flocked to the company—a bright spot in this recession—hope for a speedy recovery.

No sense of security

Airport security screeners are still touching your junk. An 82-year-old British Columbia woman who underwent a mastectomy was forced to reveal her prosthetic breast before boarding a plane, while in Calgary, a four-year-old girl endured a “terrifying” 20-minute inspection that included numerous pat-downs and one confiscated doll. Our advice? Focus on the pilots. An investigation was launched this week after a JetBlue captain lost his backpack—with a loaded handgun—inside New York City’s JFK Airport.

Don’t cross the Red Cross

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 4:23 PM - 2 Comments

A comic pantomime production of Robin Hood in Glasgow allegedly violated the Geneva Conventions when nurse Ima Poltis rushed on stage wearing a hat and tunic bearing Red Cross emblems. According to a letter from the Red Cross, addressed to management at the Pavilion Theatre, unauthorized uses of the sign, “no matter how beneficial or inconsequential they may seem,” would diminish its special significance “and potentially lives may be lost.”

The protection of the symbol for the Red Cross is legislated by the conventions, and improper use—from first-aid supplies to children’s toys or video games—can land offenders in the International Court in the Hague. So the theatre replaced the scarlet crosses on the costume with green ones, following advice by the organization “to avoid pink, orange, burgundy or maroon.” Theatre manager Ian Gordon did not see what all the fuss was about. He told the Express, “While I understand the good work that this organization does,” there are “more pressing matters throughout the world. A small red cross on a stage for four minutes in a panto in Glasgow is unlikely to cost lives.”

The no context zone

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 4:20 PM - 138 Comments

The Conservatives have produced two more clips, these ones based primarily on the fact that Michael Ignatieff once used the word “yes” in a public setting.

The other is here. For the original context of Mr. Ignatieff’s affirmative comment, go to the 3:10 mark of this video. It’s unclear whether Mr. Harper has ever uttered the same word aloud, but in his recent interview with the CBC he did say “that’s right.”

Heading for a record?

By Patricia Treble - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 4:19 PM - 1 Comment

Despite entreaties from their king, Belgium’s politicians still haven’t forged a government, more than 215 days after voters went to the polls. So last week, two Belgians launched a website counting down to the moment, on March 30, when their nation—“with loads of jerk politicians, fries, beers”—will seize the record for having the world’s longest political crisis. “Iraq took no less than 289 days to form a government. Do you think we can do better?,” the website asks. “Yes, we Belgians, we can.”

The nation’s monarch, King Albert II, 76, has pleaded for a solution. “The time has come where true courage is defined by a resolute search for a compromise that unites,” he said in a Christmas broadcast, “not something that exacerbates.” And, as a last resort, the king has also become deeply involved in running the country. Last Monday, as the political instability caused yields to soar on Belgian bonds, Albert II ordered the caretaker administration to cut the budget. The next day he refused to accept the resignation of the latest negotiator, ordering Johan Vande Lanotte to once again try to herd the parties into a coalition government.

The political impasse reflects an increasingly divided and polarized Belgian society. The Flemish, with 58 per cent of the population, speak a Dutch dialect and live largely in the north, while the French-speaking Walloons are in the south. Historically, coal mining and industry kept Wallonia wealthy and powerful, but since the ’80s, that has reversed. Now Flanders is prosperous, thanks to investment by multinationals as well as tourism, while economically depressed Wallonia depends on government handouts. And as the Flemish became increasingly irritated at sending money south, politicians gave the regions more and more autonomy, so that today the communities barely interact. Only one per cent of Belgians marry outside their own linguistic group.

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A crackdown on bloggers

By Josh Dehass - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 4:18 PM - 0 Comments

Considering that Saudi Arabia has jailed bloggers on charges as dubious as “annoying others,” it’s no surprise that most of them post anonymously. But as of Jan. 1, they face pressure to use their real names, or risk being shut down, reports Fast Company. The government also ruled that “news bloggers” are subject to the same strict censorship as newspapers, including a ban against criticizing sharia law or “compromising public order.” The edict also says that only citizens over 20 are allowed to post news, which excludes the 31 per cent of foreign residents, plus youth—two groups that are most often disaffected. But Tariq al-Homayed, editor-in-chief of the royal-family-owned Asharq Alawsat newspaper, says the decision will reduce harmful rumours. “Anybody who wants to challenge the media is welcome to do so, so long as they do this under their real name,” he wrote.

Although Ahmed al-Omran fears the new rules will silence many bloggers, it hasn’t stopped him from posting on his blog, Saudi Jeans. “Today was a huge day for Tunisia,” he wrote on Jan. 15. “The only thing that annoyed me was that Saudi Arabia welcomed the ousted dictator. Here’s to a domino effect all over the Middle East.”

Profanity in Pennsylvania

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 4:14 PM - 0 Comments

“Travellers and residents in Pennsylvania, feel free to break open that swear jar,” trumpets a Web note from the American Civil Liberties Union dated Jan. 10. The invitation came after the ACLU got state police to agree to stop citing the public for cursing, as part of a settlement in a free-speech lawsuit revolving around the enforcement of Pennsylvania’s disorderly conduct statute. The use of offensive language or gestures is one of the “disorderly” acts named in the statute, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court established years ago that swearing is legal as long as it isn’t threatening or obscene. Yet state police continued to pursue foul mouths, issuing 770 disorderly citations over a one-year period for what officers considered to be sanctionable utterings. Verbal execrations, apparently, were deemed punishable even when used at the sight of an overflowing toilet, as a Pennsylvania woman found out three years ago after being fined.

The case that brought about the settlement involved Lona Scarpa, 35, who received a $297 fine for verbally abusing a motorcyclist who almost ran her over. The citation also said Scarpa could get a 90-day jail term. State police agreed to pay a total of $17,319 to Scarpa, her defence lawyer and the ACLU, and to retrain officers.

Bountiful women defend polygamy

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 3:30 PM - 25 Comments

In a case to determine whether Canada’s polygamy laws are constitutional, several women from the fundamentalist Mormon community in Bountiful, B.C. testified in the province’s Supreme Court in defence of plural marriage. The women were unidentified and testified via video link and did not show their faces. One woman, 24, described having a dream about her future husband, whom she married at 17, saying, “I felt like my marriage was a revelation from God because it happened to be the same person I had seen in that dream and I accepted that.” Many of the women who appeared in court were in their teens when they married, and had come to Canada from the U.S. on student visas. A 22-year-old unmarried woman testified that she feels she would have a choice of whether or not to marry. The provincial government argues that polygamy encourages human trafficking and subjugates women. The case arose from the prosecution of Bountiful’s leaders, Winston Blackmore and James Oler, in 2009.

CBC News

Not your average pizza delivery guy

By Joanne Latimer - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 3:20 PM - 2 Comments

FRED CHARTRAND/CP

Here’s the elevator pitch: the Pizza Rider, a culinary superhero, rides across North America on a custom Harley, and stops to help families revive their old-fashioned pizzerias. When he isn’t turning struggling restaurants around, he’s visiting famous pizza haunts, or retracing the history of the pie. “I’m a pizza expert playing a character who is bigger than life, like Batman,” said Dino Ciccone, the London, Ont.-based creator, executive producer and star of The Pizza Rider. “The show has 30 to 40 million potential viewers. I crunched the numbers. Everyone loves pizza.”

For now, the show is in pilot mode. But CBS nibbled after seeing the first episode. In it, Ciccone helps a son and daughter who have inherited a pizzeria in London from their father. “They know the front of the house, but not the kitchen,” he says. “I have to explain how hard their father and grandfather worked to create this legacy. I get them to love pizza again.” CBS offered some suggestions, and Jamie Mitchell, the show’s new producer-director, flew from Hollywood to London last month to reshoot the pilot. “Initially, we thought we might have Dino act like more of a kick-down-the-door kind of guy,” says Mitchell. “But Dino’s a sweetheart. He’s a sexier Emeril Lagasse. Women in L.A. loved him!”

At 53, Ciccone, a jeans and T-shirt type who sports a goatee, is a youthful bear of a man. He was born in Argentina to Italian parents and raised in London, where he delivered pizzas in high school for East Town Pizza. His parents have always made cheese, sausages and wine at home. “They didn’t have a restaurant but they taught me how to cook,” says Ciccone, whose specialty is thin-crust pizza with unusual toppings, like hemp and bitter green salad. “It was like I was living the Food Network at home.” So after a short stint as a London bus driver in the ’80s (“bad back, a few accidents”), and two years in the Canadian air force, Ciccone found his way back to food. In 1990, he bought East Town Pizza with his brother and brother-in-law, and things blew up for him in 1995 when he won the award for Best Pizza in Canada. The following year, he won the “World’s Best Pizza” title. “My secret to winning is simple,” says Ciccone. “I’m very spiritual about pizza. When I make it, I make it like Jesus would be sitting down and eating it with me. Sometimes it takes me three hours to make a competition pizza.”

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Most Boring Logo Ever, Until NBC's Next Logo

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 2:30 PM - 3 Comments

After mentioning something NBC may have have done right, it’s back to talking about all the stuff they’re doing wrong. Today’s entry: NBC/Universal — or “NBCUniversal” as they now want to be called — have unveiled the new, purple, Peacock-free logo for the Comcast era. (Update: Though as noted in comments, this is just the corporate logo; the Peacock will still appear on the network itself.) I would talk more about it, and how logos today really ought to look like something you didn’t design by checking off the simplest options on a computer graphics program, except that every time I look at the logo, I fall asleep.

(Wakes up) What? Who? Where? Oh, yeah. The new logo. Uh… well, I might add, though you’ve probably noticed it already, that “Let’s Make History. Again” is yet another example of NBC’s unhealthy obsession with its own past. No network has “mythologized” itself quite so much except HBO, and that mythology is all very recent (HBO prefers to pretend the ’80s and much of the ’90s didn’t exist). NBC spent the Tartikoff era not just trying to make hit shows, but plug itself as an entity, creating viewer loyalty to the entire network. You had Tartikoff turning up on NBC shows; you had stories about visits to the NBC building — even if, as with Letterman, they were satirical stories. And this idea of NBC as the glorious history-making network has continued after it went downhill, so you get the hyping of a “Tonight Show” brand that no longer exists and endless references to the Thursday night hits of the past. “Let’s make history again” is just a slogan, but it sort of reflects a network’s inability to let go of the past and admit that things have changed.

Where are they now?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 2:22 PM - 36 Comments

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has hired Howard Anglin as his chief of staff.

In recent years, Mr. Anglin stepped forward to defend the Conservative government’s position that Omar Khadr was not a child soldier. In 2008, he testified before the subcommittee on international human rights.

In 2006, he and Alykhan Velshi, currently Mr. Kenney’s director of communications, penned a piece for National Review, in which they stated their objections to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

The rest of Anglin’s writing for National Review is here. His writing for the Daily Caller is here.

On the defensive

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 2:20 PM - 2 Comments

Jacky Naegelen/Reuters

“Don’t kill us, we are at work,” say street signs urging drivers in the small but congested Arab emirate of Qatar not to vent their frustration on the immigrant labourers toiling away at various roadwork sites. After all, these destitute workers will likely be key players in delivering the 12 air-conditioned stadiums and extensive railway system Qatar has promised for the 2022 World Cup.

More than 70 per cent of Qatar’s population, estimated at one million, is made up of immigrants; the large majority are construction and domestic workers, mostly from South Asia, whose working conditions resemble “forced labour,” according to Samer Muscati, a researcher with Human Rights Watch. The migrants find themselves working 12-hour days for some $2,200 a year—up to 50 per cent less than what they were initially told. But burdened by loans to cover recruiters’ fees, they have little choice but to stay and work.

Activists hope the World Cup will bring international scrutiny on the issue, and Qatar is “very, very sensitive to foreign criticism,” especially from the West, said Matteo Legrenzi, professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa. In fact, foreign pressure on labour practices are already working. Georgetown University, for example, which is based in Washington but runs a sister program in Doha, successfully lobbied for safety standards at the construction site of a new 400,000-sq.-foot facility for its Qatar campus. At Virginia Commonwealth University, also in Doha, faculty and students are designing houses for construction workers. And a new residential complex, Barwa City, is in the making, and projected to house 25,000 foreign workers.

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OECD quality of care data: how Canada ranks

By John Geddes - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 1:11 PM - 13 Comments

Lively debate has raged over our cover story last week on health care. Sorting out where Canadian care stands in international comparisons is no simple matter. For anyone with an appetite for data on this subject, I suggest the OECD’s Health at a Glance 2009 document.

The way the OECD separates statistics into categories helps keep different parts of the argument straight. For instance, figures that have to do with society, like those for traffic fatalities and suicides, are gathered under a separate heading from stats that have to do with the health system itself. So are numbers like how many people are overweight or smoke.

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Ottawa spends nearly $40 million on media monitoring

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 1:04 PM - 26 Comments

The prime minister’s department, the Privy Council Office, has spent $3.8 million monitoring what’s said in newspapers, during broadcasts, and on websites since 2008, the most of any department in the federal government. In all, the Conservatives have spent $38.7 million on media monitoring services over the past three years, according to data compiled by the Ottawa Citizen—more than the $29.6 million the federal government has spent on polling over the same period. In 2007, the Tories ran up a record $31 million tab for polling, but spending on public opinion research has since been slashed.

Ottawa Citizen

Free as a bird, and yet …

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 12:20 PM - 2 Comments

Greg Layson/Guelph Mercury

Brutus is naturally grumpy. He lowers his beak, spreads his wings and charges anything that comes near his pond, be it birds, kids or idling trucks (that one left him with a broken leg). The only living thing the swan won’t charge is Lou Maieron, the owner of the fish farm where Brutus landed five years ago and has stayed since. And the animal even hated him, until Maieron fixed his leg following the truck incident. “I’m his buddy now. He comes to me, grunts and I pet his head,” he says.

But the temperamental bird has landed Maieron in court five times. It started in 2009 when a Natural Resources inspector, on site to check Maieron’s fish farm, noticed Brutus. He reported him to a wildlife officer, who fined Maieron $180 for possessing a migratory bird without a permit. But Maieron, a seasoned biologist (and the newly elected mayor of Erin, Ont.—he figures publicity over the incident helped him win), is familiar with the Migratory Bird Act. He says the charge is baseless because Brutus arrived on his own and is free to leave. “Anybody who has ducks or geese visit their property and feeds them, according to this officer, will be charged.” He told the officer he’d buy the $10 permit, but was refused, so he went to court.

The case was initially stayed. The Crown fought that decision and won the right to an appeal, but not a new trial. “Surely you have better things to do,” Justice Norman Douglas told the Crown. But the prosecutor pressed on. The court will decide on Jan. 26 whether an appeal will be heard. Maieron then gets to go on with his life, or prepare for a full trial. “Brutus, ya bastard,” he affectionately tells the swan, ldquo;look at what I’ve got to go through because of you.”

Geography lesson

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 12:11 PM - 35 Comments

As per Scott’s appeal, here is there was video of Defence Minister Peter MacKay denying the existence of the great states of Washington and Oregon. (The video seems, suddenly, to have been disappeared from the Internet. Here is the Star’s account of the flub.)

And here is the inevitable Liberal mockery.