Canada and Qatar clash over reference to Palestine

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 1:12 PM - 13 Comments

Friction between Canada and the Arab world continues to heat up. Most recently, Qatari officials publicly lambasted Canada for refusing to include a Palestine reference in the final statement of a three-day summit between the G8 and Arab countries last week. Canadian officials were in Doha for the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative, a multilateral program aimed at “enhancing an open and inclusive dialogue between governments and civil society on issues of political and economic reform and human development” in order to create partnerships and foster open dialogue to advance the progress and development of the region, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The Initiative’s main event is a Forum of the Future, which aims to bring together about 20 countries from the North Africa and the Middle East region, G8 members and hundreds of representatives from civil society and business groups. On Jan. 13, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon co-chaired the 7th Forum of the Future. However, a joint statement wasn’t released because, according to the state-run Qatar News Agency, Canada “insisted that the statement should exclude a paragraph on the Palestinian issue.” Canadian officials have said negotiations are still ongoing, but this adds to tensions between Canada and the region, which have been mounting because of the country’s dispute with the United Arab Emirates and its pro-Israel policies.

Embassy Magazine

At least 20 presumed dead in Colombian coal mine explosion

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 1:08 PM - 0 Comments

At least 20 coal mine workers have been killed and six more injured in an explosion at a mine in northeastern Colombia, according to an official at the nation’s mining regulator. Wednesday’s blast occurred in the La Preciosa mine in the Sardinata municipality, trapping up to 30 workers. “They’ve taken eight people out of the mine but it’s not known if they’re alive or not alive,” Yamile Rangel, the mayor of Sardinata municipality, told local radio. This is just the latest in a series of mine accidents in South America since last year. In August, 33 Chilean miners were buried for weeks. In June, a blast killed around 70 miners in Colombia. In November, nine workers were killed at two small coal mines in Colombia’s Cundinamarca province.

Al Jazeera

How gassy

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 12:28 PM - 23 Comments

So: Lucien Bouchard, slight refrain. A long time ago he was Canada’s ambassador to France, then Mulroney’s Environment Minister, then founder of the Bloc Québécois, then near-champion of the 1995 referendum, then péquiste premier, then a lucide and a practicing lawyer and labour negotiator, then… well, you get the idea. Now he’s a salesman charged with getting gas out of rocks. Someone should buy him a cape.

As most of you may know, Quebec is all of a sudden the Saudi Arabia of shale gas. An exaggeration, yes, but apparently we have oodles of the stuff trapped between layers of pesky rock. Trying to sell Quebecers on the idea of tapping the stuff has been, well, an unmitigated disaster on all fronts. The industry association head, former Hydro-Québec President André Caillé, failed to sell the idea of shale gas, and was raked over the coals at several shouty environmental impact meetings throughout the province (for good reason, but more on this in a sec.) The sales job was further pooched by the Charest Liberals, as several advisors and colleagues of the Preem debunked for the oil-and-gas industry just as it looked as though they would be a go. Charest and Natural Resource Minister Nathalie Normandeau swore up and down that a moratorium wasn’t in the cards—only to be Shanghaied by the government’s own Sustainable Development Minister Pierre Arcand last week, who said the shale gas industry “had lost control”, and suggested a moratorium might be necessary. In short, the usual muddy, flip-flop Gong Show.

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Fired up

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 12:21 PM - 59 Comments

Michael Ignatieff’s speech to the Liberal caucus yesterday.

TV: Besides Cops, Lawyers and Doctors, What Else Is There?

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 12:08 PM - 24 Comments

I don’t comment too much on pilot pickups because most of them will never see the light of day. (I want the networks to bring back those summer shows where they burned off the pilots they rejected for the upcoming season.) But on a comment thread on another site, I noticed some understandable frustration that most of the drama pilots fall into the usual categories: Doctor show, lawyer show, cop show. CBS in particular has almost completely given up pretending they care about anything else; no more Jerichos or Viva Laughlins, just more cops, more lawyers, and their highest priority is finding a successful medical show. But most networks are heavily oriented towards crime and doctor shows, with the occasional science fiction or period pilot to leaven the mix. NBC may have ordered a “complex, sprawling” epic ambitious pilot from the creator of Syriana, but it’s still a crime show with cops and criminals when you come right down to it.

So, yes, this can be very tiresome. You look for variety on TV, and what you get is mostly a limited range of shows about a limited range of jobs. But I’m a little more sympathetic to the broadcast networks once I try to think out the obvious follow-up question: what kind of jobs are appropriate for a network TV drama? As I’ve said in the past, most TV dramas are really melodramas — it’s very tough, no matter how ambitious you are, to make a continuing series about ordinary life, because the stakes are too low for 13 episodes a season. Bump it up to 22 episodes or more, as on broadcast TV, and it’s even more imperative to have really high stakes. Meaning that slice-of-life dramas are more or less ruled out. They usually can’t sustain a full season.

That being the case, network dramas need melodramatic situations that can spin off a lot of episodes. But here’s where the choices narrow even farther, because there are other things a network drama needs besides melodrama. There needs to be a setup that can bring in new “cases” every week, not only because the network needs something to promote, but because it provides a self-contained element that new viewers can grab onto — and regular viewers can follow as a diversion in case they’re getting bored with the relationships. (Not every successful show is a serial, but most of them offer something new or interesting in that particular week, which often comes from an outside character wandering in with a case.) And they need to be cases that have some kind of high-stakes, even life-or-death component to them.

Which is why doctors, lawyers and cops are such reliable subjects for a TV series. They have jobs that are about life-and-death issues — mostly death — and allow guest characters and new stories to walk in any time. They spin off stories with clear goals: save a life, win the case, catch the crook. And they are about people who deal with outsiders every day (patients, clients, victims), meaning that guest characters can come in and carry some of the emotional load. All of that makes it much easier to write 22 episodes a year and not run out of big, effective story ideas.

One format that used to be on a level with doctor/lawyer/cop, and was actually more popular than those types of shows when weekly TV drama started, is the Western. Same thing applies there — actually, since so many Continue…

Bye to the books

By Leah McLaren - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 8 Comments

Martin Godwin/Guardian News & Media

Earlier this month, Lauren Smith, 23, graduated with a masters in librarianship from the University of Sheffield. Her timing could not have been worse. “The idea that anyone can free themselves from ignorance through public libraries is an important one for Britain,” she says. “What’s happening now is hacking away at culture for the everyman.”

The “hacking” Smith refers to is the coalition government’s radical spending cuts, which are expected to culminate in unprecedented public library closures across Britain in the coming months.

As local councils reveal their budgets, it is estimated that up to 800 public libraries—18 per cent of the country’s total—could face closure. At present, almost 400 are already on the chopping block. In Doncaster, a down-at-the-heels former industrial centre in south Yorkshire, 14 of 26 public libraries are slated to close. It is especially grim during recessionary times when, according to Smith, research demonstrates that people use public libraries more. “People say, ‘Why do you need libraries now that everyone has the Internet?’ But actually 30 per cent of British homes don’t have home Internet access at all. Many people come to libraries not just to borrow books but to apply for jobs online.”

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The king's (Winnipeg) speech

By Sarah Jennings - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 3 Comments

The defining moment of The King’s Speech, which earned Colin Firth a Golden Globe for best actor, is King George VI taking to the airwaves to address the nation soon after war was declared in September 1939. It’s a personal triumph—the result of years of speech therapy to overcome a debilitating stammer. But private letters at Library Archives Canada in Ottawa reveal that several months before this historic event, the king had broadcast live to Canadians without difficulty.

Charles Jennings (father of Peter, the late ABC news anchor) was the senior CBC broadcaster on the royal tour in the spring of 1939. His accounts of that cross-country visit survive in the letters he wrote home. In one, dated May 24, 1939, he describes the royal cavalcade’s arrival in Winnipeg for a series of receptions and a live broadcast by the king on the CBC.

After dropping off his clothes for pressing on the royal train, Jennings and his technicians made their way to Government House to set up a temporary studio in the living quarters arranged for the royal couple. During what Jennings describes as “probably the most intimate two hours that the king and queen have had since they came to Canada,” they chatted amiably with the royals, and installed a radio in an adjacent bedroom so Queen Elizabeth could listen to the broadcast.

Jennings writes that during the Empire Day speech, broadcast throughout the British empire, “the king was alone except for [private secretary Alan] Lascelles.” Jennings calls the king’s performance “magnificent,” writing that the monarch impressed himself. “He came out afterwards, as pleased as a child,” saying “well, the operation’s over and it was successful.”

The hard road ahead

By Kaj Hasselriis - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Trevor Snapp

With South Sudan’s recent referendum on independence from the North, which is likely to pass when the preliminary results, expected on Feb. 2, are announced, there has been much talk about how the nascent country, with its overflowing oil wells, could be “the new Middle East.” But the road to prosperity in the region isn’t paved—and it’s not even properly marked.

Juba, the South Sudanese city that is about to become the world’s newest capital, has one million people and one road sign. It directs motorists in two directions: the airport or the “ministries,” a stretch that contains most of South Sudan’s government buildings. If you want to go anywhere else, you’re at the mercy of unregistered teenaged motorcycle drivers who don’t know right from left. They give directions to each other according to the tallest trees and how many traffic circles are in between. Figuring out where to go at night is even worse: there are almost no street lights in the whole city.

This is the place that John Kerry, the head of the U.S. Senate foreign affairs committee, is hailing as “the birth of a new nation.” Most of the people in South Sudan are excited, too. More than three million of them voted in the historic referendum that is expected to turn their region into the newest country in the world. But just because South Sudan is about to claim independence doesn’t mean it’s ready to govern. The inconvenient truth is that the undeveloped city of Juba is the most highly developed part of the state. In an area the size of Manitoba, there are fewer than 100 km of paved roads. Most towns are tiny smatterings of mud huts, teeming with hungry children and bored young people. There’s no central electricity grid, no safe running water and no organized justice system. The medical system is rudimentary and there are just a handful of banks in the whole territory. When it’s born, the new nation of South Sudan is likely to join Zimbabwe at the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index.

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Breaking the ice

By Nancy Macdonald - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 3 Comments

Richard Wolowicz/Getty Images

By all logic, we should have long forgotten Dustin Byfuglien. After wreaking havoc in front of the net in Chicago’s run for the Stanley Cup last spring—tying the team lead with 11 goals—Byfuglien, who rounded out the Blackhawks’ first line with captain Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, was shipped to the feeble Atlanta Thrashers in a trade. There, the winger with the body of a linebacker and hockey’s strangest name—pronounced “Bufflin”—made the shock move back to defence. Lunacy, hockey’s talking heads quietly agreed. “Stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” said radio host and former Blackhawk Jeremy Roenick. “I would love to play against Dustin Byfuglien as a defenceman,” he told his weekly audience. “A defenceman? Maybe that’s why the Thrashers are 0-3. It’s crazy. What are they thinking?”

Cooler heads than Roenick agreed the twin moves threw a wet blanket on Big Buff’s rising star power. At best, the abrupt switch to the back end defied hockey logic, and the Chicago star was decamping for a Sunbelt squad that had missed the playoffs every year but one.

But as he gears up for his first All-Star appearance in Raleigh, N.C., next week, Byfuglien—the league’s top-scoring defenceman, Atlanta’s leading scorer, and a leading contender for the Norris, a trophy awarded annually to the league’s top defenceman—has got a lot of analysts eating crow. It’s not the first time. Byfuglien was drafted 245th overall in 2003, at the end of the eighth round, and after he let his weight balloon to almost 300 lb. as a junior, registering a body fat percentage in the high 20s (the NHL average is 9.7 per cent), scouts figured he didn’t have the discipline, drive or passion to make it. Seven years later, he was lifting the Cup over his head, a leader by example, and one of the most highly touted stars to emerge from Chicago’s run.

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How to quit putting things off

By Julia McKinnell - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 15 Comments

Getty images; iStock; Photo illustration by Taylor Shute

People confess to procrastination and then laugh it off, like the 900,000 members of the Facebook group, “I was doing homework then I ended up on Facebook.” For many, though, procrastination isn’t funny. Look at the poet Samuel Coleridge, writes Piers Steel, the Calgary professor who’s becoming known internationally for his insights on procrastination, in his new book The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things off and Start Getting Stuff Done. The poet spent 25 years writing the poem Kubla Khan. His excuses were legendary. For other people, Steel writes, the pain of procrastination “is about diets postponed, late-night scrambles to finish projects and disappointed looks from the people who depend on you.”

The good news is that techniques for treating procrastination exist. “They are scientifically proven. It’s not a question of will they work. They’re vetted,” Steel tells Maclean’s. “I was one of the first guinea pigs for this.”

Steel knows that procrastination is not the by-product of perfectionism, as it was once believed. The theory that “we delay because we are perfectionists anxious about living up to sky-high standards” feels good, he writes, but doesn’t pan out. “Neat, orderly and efficient perfectionists don’t tend to dilly-dally.” Laziness isn’t the problem either, he says. The truly lazy person thinks, “I don’t want to do this. You can force me to do it but I have no desire to do it.” The procrastinator, on the other hand, wants to do the work, “yet finds when the moment of action comes, they keep putting it off.”

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It must be true—some unnamed guy said so

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 9 Comments

CP; Reuters; Photo illustration by Taylor Shute

Have you heard the exciting news? According to the Parliament Hill press gallery, there’s going to be a federal election this spring. Or this fall. Or next spring or later next spring or next fall or eventually. And you can take that prediction to the bank, Canada! (You may want to postdate it.)

Election speculation stories are great because they afford a journalist the opportunity to fill time or space without resorting to obsolete rituals like conveying useful information. They’re certainly easier to write than articles that require boring things like facts and thinking.

Here’s just one example from the recent past: “[Michael] Ignatieff delivered what was being billed by the Liberals as a major speech about Canada on the international stage,” a reporter wrote during the last wave of intense elec-spec. “However, his message about Canada’s place in the world was lost in the all the breathless speculation about an election.”

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Stephen Harper and Canada, a love story (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 55 Comments

After Paul Martin’s campaign mocked Mr. Harper’s response to a question about love of country, Jason Kenney demanded an apology for the attack of Mr. Harper’s patriotism. He then cast aspersions on Mr. Martin’s.

A Tory MP holding up a Liberian flag as a prop ripped into Paul Martin for calling into question Stephen Harper’s love of Canada. The war of words over patriotism continued yesterday, with Paul Martin’s corporate past coming back to haunt him. ”When the prime minister was the owner of Canada Steamship Lines, when he was the president and CEO of CSL, he took down the Canadian flag off those ships and put up flags of convenience for the Bahamas, Liberia and other tax-dodging regimes,” recalled Jason Kenney. “So why is it the prime minister is all full of fire and brimstone when it comes to questioning the patriotism of his opponents, but he’s all too ready to treat the Canadian flag like one of convenience when it comes to protecting his own financial interests?”

Mr. Harper responded himself in a speech to supporters. The following is from Susan Riley’s account at the time. Continue…

"A plodding, dull read": Anne Kingston on the much-hyped 'O: A Presidential Novel'

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 10:11 AM - 0 Comments

Read Anne’s review of ‘O: A Presidential Novel’ in the February 7 issue of Maclean’s

Condo trouble in Toronto

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 4 Comments

Last week, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation reported that the annual rate of housing starts was 171,500 units in December, down from 198,200 the month before—roughly a 13 per cent drop. “It was really the apartment sector that dragged the numbers lower,” says Ted Tsiakopoulos, CMHC’s Ontario regional economist. And in November, building permits dropped 11.2 per cent, according to Statistics Canada. A drop in multi-family dwellings in B.C. was cited as one of the main reasons.

If condo developments are declining in Ontario and in B.C., though, Toronto is a puzzling outlier: it seems like there’s a new condo going up on every block. “The trillion-dollar question is, who’s buying them all?” says Derek Holt, vice-president at Scotia Capital Economics. “The stock of unsold condos overhanging the marketplace is at its highest since the 1990s.” According to George Carras, president of the real estate information firm RealNet Canada Inc., 19,710 new condo units had been sold in the Greater Toronto Area as of Nov. 30, with 15,727 remaining in 2010’s active inventory.

Stephen Dupuis, president and CEO of the Building Industry and Land Development Association of Toronto, calls the city “the envy of North America.” Toronto’s population is growing, he notes, and “our real estate market is strong by historical standards.” Foreign buyers have taken note, buying up condos to rent them out, he says. But housing starts in the condo market are notoriously volatile, Carras says: developers filing for building permits on a 300-unit project, for example, file permits for all 300 units, which creates major statistical variations from one month to the next. Both he and Dupuis say sales are a better indicator and, according to Carras, October was the second-highest month of new condo sales in the GTA since 1998.

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GOP response: America could be next Greece

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 10:44 PM - 5 Comments

The Republican response to Obama speech was given by Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee.

His overwhelming focus was on reducing government spending:

“Speaking candidly, as one citizen to another: We still have time… but not much time. If we continue down our current path, we know what our future will be.

Just take a look at what’s happening to Greece, Ireland, the United Kingdom and other nations in Europe. They didn’t act soon enough; and now their governments have been forced to impose painful austerity measures: large benefit cuts to seniors and huge tax increases on everybody.

Their day of reckoning has arrived. Ours is around the corner. That is why we must act now.”

Republican Address to the Nation 8:30pm
Remarks of Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) – As Prepared for Delivery

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"Out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world"

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 10:29 PM - 3 Comments

Below is the full text of Obama’s State of the Union speech.

His bottom line: “We have to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.”

The speech had echoes of Clinton’s “Bridge to the 21st Century” and Al Gore’s “Reinventing Government.” But then he had to turn around and talk about the deficit. His call for a five-year freeze on federal government spending was immediately dismissed by Republicans who want bigger cuts.

There are calls for education reform, tax reform, immigration reform, government reform, health care reform-reform, and notably, medical tort reform. There were shout-outs to Google, Facebook, and the people of Tunisia.

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery

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Obama's "Sputnik moment"

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 8:40 PM - 5 Comments

What Obama will do in his State of the Union speech tonight:

– Using the tragedy in Tucson to call for cooperation across the aisle — as much a message to his own supporters opposed to Clintonian “triangulation” as to Republicans.

“We will move forward together, or not at all – for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.”

– Call for policies to support innovation:

“Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik¸ we had no idea how we’d beat them to the moon. The science wasn’t there yet. NASA didn’t even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.

This is our generation’s Sputnik moment.”

– Lament disappearing manufacturing jobs and raise the competitive threat of China and India (but not Canada) as an argument for government spending on alternative energy sources and on public infrastructure — such as high speed rail and broadband.

“I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.”

“So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources.”

– Emphasize education (not only as a key to future innovation and competitiveness, but also because he may have political space to work with Republicans to pass legislation on education reform.)

– Call for reform of the tax code — to get rid of loopholes and reduce the corporate tax rate. Argue that Congress should not make permanent the tax cuts for the richest Americans that have been extended.

– Call for a freeze on domestic spending:

“…I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. This would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.”

Gamal Mubarak reportedly flees Egypt

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 6:21 PM - 89 Comments

The son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Gamal Mubarak, has reportedly fled Egypt for the UK with his family. Unconfirmed reports out of Cairo say the younger Mubarak boarded a private jet bound for London with his family and nearly one hundred pieces of luggage. His departure, if confirmed, comes after a day of unprecedented mass protests in the streets of Cairo and other cities throughout Egypt. Over 30,000 people gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest the Mubarak regime, which has run the country for 30 years under a state of emergency and with little tolerance for dissent. One riot police officer has been confirmed killed, and about 600 people were arrested in the Cairo protests. Gamal Mubarak’s departure from Egypt comes on the heels of Tunisian President Ben Ali’s flight from Tunisia following violent anti-government protests in Tunis.

Adnkronos

Duceppe urges Conservatives to invest in Quebec City

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 6:07 PM - 13 Comments

Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe is calling on the federal government to invest a half-billion dollars in Quebec City, including $175 million for the construction of a new NHL-ready arena. Duceppe, who plans to unveil the rest of his budgetary demands on Wednesday, has already said his party would vote against the federal budget if it doesn’t include a $2.2 billion settlement for Quebec for having harmonized its provincial sales tax with the GST. A recent poll shows the Bloc leading the Conservatives by eight points (37 per to 29 per cent) in the Quebec City area, where the Tories have been campaigning aggressively. Conservative candidates took home 38 per cent of the vote in the provincial capital region in the 2008 election while the Bloc took in 30 per cent support.

Le Soleil

Canadian Press

Should the Prime Minister invite the opposition leaders over for tea?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 5:18 PM - 70 Comments

The Liberals and New Democrat are miffed that the Prime Minister doesn’t want to chat with Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Layton respectively. As to the latter, the Prime Minister’s Office figures they already know what he has to say.

“Mr. Layton has made his requests quite publicly,” said Harper press secretary Andrew MacDougall. “We thank him for his suggestions.” … When Layton and Harper last spoke on the phone on Dec. 17, Layton said, Harper expressed a desire to meet with him to discuss NDP priorities for the budget. Harper has not called to set up a meeting, and does not plan to do so, said MacDougall, since Layton has made his positions clear. ”He’s made no secret of the areas he’d like to see government take action on,” he said. “There’s no mystery there. So we know where he stands. We’ll take that into consideration.”

On the one hand, it might be reassuring to see our elected leaders interacting like normal human beings. On the other hand, it would really only matter if those interactions were undertaken seriously with some real possibility of amounting to something.

Advisory panel recommends carbon pricing

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 4:45 PM - 57 Comments

The National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy, a government-appointed advisory panel, has advised the federal government to stop waiting for U.S. action on climate change and put a price on carbon emissions. Canada would enhance its competitiveness by acting now, while waiting for the U.S. to act would be far more costly in the long run, it said in a report. While Canada currently has vehicle emission regulations that match those in the U.S., Congress is unlikely to make progress on climate legislation any time soon given the legislative stalemate between Democrats and Republicans. “Harmonization, where possible and when feasible, makes sense for Canada,” said the Roundtable’s chief executive, David McLaughlin. But “in the face of persistent U.S. uncertainty as to its own climate policy future, Canada will need to look to its own options, in the right way, at the right time.” The National Roundtable recommends that Canada adopt a cap-and-trade system, with an initial limit of $30 per tonne of carbon dioxide emission. Revenue earned from cap-and-trade should be put into a technology fund that would invest in green technologies.

The Globe and Mail

The case of the missing tampons

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 4:00 PM - 27 Comments

Getty images; Photo illustration by Luaren Cattermole

It’s perhaps because of the O.B. tampon’s long-time advertising tag line—“Made for a woman, by a woman”—that it’s disappearance from North American drugstore shelves in the past months has left so many women feeling so utterly betrayed. Compact yet effective, the only tampon available in the U.S. and Canada that requires no applicator, the O.B. commands a small but dedicated following. When it began going missing in September—first the extra-absorbent O.B. Ultra, then all O.B. lines—some women scoured stores and hoarded stock to the point they’re now almost entirely unavailable. Cartons of O.B. Ultra are popping up on eBay at prices pushing US$50 a box.

The shortage has triggered a conversation few women have had even with each other about what feminine hygiene products they prefer and why—one that’s filled online message boards with such crucial debates as the advisability of shipping contraband tampons from Germany or the wisdom of switching to reusable menstrual cups. “It is utterly disturbing to me that a product that has seen me through the decades is now no longer available or affordable,” one woman writes.

If the mystery of the vanishing tampons has some women confused, the lack of communications from O.B. manufacturer McNeil-PPC, a division of Johnson & Johnson, has others enraged. As one Toronto woman says: “If men had to stick something into their penis once a month, this would be a bigger deal.” Johnson & Johnson discontinued its Ultra line but has been cagey about why. A Johnson & Johnson spokesperson tells Maclean’s there have been “no unusual reports of adverse events” related to the Ultra, and calls the move to discontinue the tampon a “business decision.” But the company hasn’t explained why other O.B. lines experienced a “temporary supply interruption,” as it calls the shortage. Meanwhile, an online petition threatens the company with a “girlcott” should it fail to bring back the Ultra. “I wish they all start menstruating profusely, men and women alike who were involved in the decision,” writes one woman. “Karma, hear me!”

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Reports of Maxime Bernier's changed mind were greatly exaggerated

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 3:59 PM - 27 Comments

The maverick from Beauce reassures everyone that he has not wavered in his maverickness.

As I have said and written several times over the past months, I believe that the private sector should be mainly responsible for this type of projects. Moreover, at a time when we have a big budget deficit to eliminate, financing sporting infrastructure should not be a priority. Providing funds to one project in Quebec City would also mean that the government has to fund other projects across the country to be fair to everyone, which would cost huge sums of money. I have not changed my position in any way on this issue.

Mass protests rock Egypt

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 25, 2011 at 2:43 PM - 16 Comments

On the heels of the Tunisian protests that saw President Zine al-Abadine Ben Ali ousted, police struggled to push back an unexpected number of protestors in the streets of Cairo on Tuesday. Such anti-government demonstrations are rare in Egypt, where strongman President Hosni Mubarak has ruled authoritatively for thirty years. The call for a ‘day of revolt’ was organized on Facebook, with tens of thousands saying they would attend. But the turnout was far greater than expected, with police struggling to contain the size and fury of the crowd. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed support for the right of the Egyptian people to demonstrate their right to peacefully protest, but called for restraint from both sides, saying the Egyptian government is “looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.” There are also reports of similar protests in the cities of Alexandria and Ismailya. The Egyptians have similar grievances to the Tunisians, with government corruption, rising food prices and unemployment.

BBC News