If he builds it, they will come

By John Dehaas - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 3:00 PM - 2 Comments

With about 5,500 patients, Darrell Gallant of Saint John, N.B., may be Canada’s busiest family doctor. That’s because Saint John has trouble attracting doctors. There are very few nice homes, he says, near the Saint John Regional Hospital, forcing on-call doctors to spend hours commuting to the suburbs.

Gallant has a solution: his 37-hectare property, with its views of three rivers, a golf course, and pristine Rockwood Park, is a 30-second drive from the hospital. And this spring, he plans to build more than 150 high-end homes on his property in the hopes of attracting top medical talent—last month, there were reportedly 11 vacancies for physicians at the hospital. Gallant says as many as 50 doctors have expressed interest in the development since he began planning it a decade ago.

But if city council goes ahead with its plan for Rockwood Park, Gallant thinks the views from his property would be ruined. The city is eager to increase population density in the park and will soon vote on whether to rezone parts of the park across from Gallant’s potential subdivision, which would allow buildings up to five stories. In that case, he may not build at all. Doctors, he says, don’t want to live across from “a ghetto.”

Though Mayor Ivan Court told Maclean’s that medium-density buildings are unlikely, the report his council acted on recommends more density. Apartment dwellers, according to the report, would “act as stewards,” keeping a watchful eye for people dumping garbage. “That’s such a bag of bulls–t,” says Gallant. “If you put 1,000 people in the park, there’s going to be a lot more trash.” The report also claims that more houses in the park would help the city recoup some of the $5.6 million spent upgrading water and sewage lines in 2004. Gallant is promising millions in tax revenues with his plan—and, of course, a cure for the doctor shortage.

Baby, it’s awful outside

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:54 PM - 4 Comments

Daniel Munoz/Reuters

Being a billionaire mayor in a city like New York means never having to say you’re sorry. That is, until your snow plows leave millions of residents stranded and they have to strap on skis to navigate the streets of Manhattan. And so it was that three days after a raging, thundering snowstorm dumped half a metre on the Big Apple over Christmas—the heaviest snowfall in decades—Mayor Michael Bloomberg fessed up that the city had botched the cleanup job.

It didn’t help that this was the second December in a row the city, along with the U.S. Northeast, has been hammered by wild weather. But the region was far from alone. The same massive storm system plunged 50,000 homes in Atlantic Canada into darkness as snow, wind and floods devastated beaches, parks and tourist sites. The deluge followed a series of brutal storms and Atlantic hurricanes over the past few months that have already heaped misery on residents in the region.

Mother Nature’s fury was felt everywhere. The United Kingdom is suffering the coldest winter since 1683, which along with snowstorms in New York and Moscow forced the cancellation of 6,000 flights. In California a barrage of winter storms caused flash floods and mudslides, while Los Angeles has been buffeted by hurricane-strength winds. Queensland, Australia, is drowning beneath the worst floods in half a century. Continue…

Why BP is one slick investment

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:48 PM - 1 Comment

It’s been nine months since the blowout at BP’s Macondo well sunk a US$350-million drill rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and creating an unprecedented U.S. environmental catastrophe. At the height of the crisis, oil gushed uncontrollably from the sea floor and fears mounted that BP would ultimately become a casualty of the spill’s spiralling costs, so far pegged at US$40 billion.

But as a new year dawns, it looks unlikely that any of the corporate doomsday scenarios will come to pass. With coastlines returning to normal and underwater oil apparently dissolving away, BP’s U.S.-traded shares have climbed by 60 per cent over the past six months, from a low of US$26.75 last June to around US$43 as investors grow more confident the company’s darkest days are behind it. “It’s a recovery story,” says Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James Financial. For investors, that means the possibility of more big returns down the road—some are speculating BP’s shares could reach US$60 later this year, about where they were before the blowout—but there are also still risks.

The biggest question mark is a recent lawsuit filed by the Obama administration against BP and its partners that accuses them of failing to adhere to U.S. environmental laws and safety regulations in the Gulf, where BP is the biggest operator. BP could also face criminal charges under the country’s Clean Water Act, with some estimates of damages as high as US$20 billion if BP is found to be “grossly negligent” in the run-up to the disaster.

Continue…

That’s no way to run a democracy

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:44 PM - 0 Comments

Bela Szandelszky/AP

Commuters in Hungary picked up their morning papers last month and found something unexpected: front pages that were blank. This was no printing error; editors were protesting the country’s new media laws, which have led some observers, including the Washington Post editorial board, to ask whether Hungary is being “Putinized” with media regulations “more suited to an authoritarian regime than to a Western democracy.”

Under the new laws, which have caused an international stir, state television channels and all other public media outlets fall under government control. Also, a state-run council—the National Media and Communications Authority—comprised of members appointed by the governing right-wing Fidesz Party can now impose fines on TV channels, daily newspapers, websites, and magazines. For what exactly? “Unbalanced” reporting or journalism that offends “human dignity” and “common morals.” Though the law is vague, the fines are quite definite: they range from $48,000 for weekly and monthly periodicals, and up to $1 million for television.

Critics warn such regulation will curb freedom of speech and encourage self-censorship. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Budapest needs to make sure not to breach democratic principles regarding the press and welcomed an investigation of the law by the European Commission. This issue is most pressing: Hungary took over the rotating EU presidency on Jan. 1., which caused a Merkel spokesman to remark, “Hungary bears a special responsibility for the image of the European Union in the world.”

Not just a pretty face

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:41 PM - 0 Comments

Giorgio Cosulich/Getty Images; LUCA BRUNO/AP;

Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi may have survived another no-confidence vote on Dec. 14, but he did so with a razor-thin majority. And with many Italians openly contemptuous of their PM, the country looks ready to draw the curtain on the septuagenarian media mogul sooner rather than later. But as an era appears to be drawing to an end, at least one of the former showgirls the PM installed as eye-candy in public office seems set to survive him on the political stage.

Of the five female members of Berlusconi’s 23-strong cabinet, two are former beauty queens who largely owe their political ascent to a favourable nod by the Casanova-in-chief. Over the past years, the prime minister’s penchant for appointing busty twentysomethings as political candidates also landed Nicole Minetti, a 25-year-old dental hygienist and former TV performer, in a key regional council, and a Miss Italia contestant, Barbara Matera, 29, in the European Parliament. The practice, as well as his cavorting with young women, allegedly cost the prime minister his marriage, after his now ex-wife Veronica Lario, 54, herself a former actress who once appeared topless on stage, lashed out at the “shameless rubbish, all in the name of power.”

But to the surprise of many, one of the women has morphed into a political figure with a future. Ridiculed as a bimbo when she was appointed equal opportunities minister, Mara Carfagna, 35, a former TV topless model, has managed to carve out a niche for herself. She is now one of the most popular politicians in her native Campania, and is rumoured to be a credible candidate as the next mayor of Naples. “She’s unlikely to fade away should Berlusconi’s patronage come to an end,” said Marco Tarchi, a professor of political science at the University of Florence. Continue…

U.S. military levels entire Afghan village

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:38 PM - 20 Comments

The decision to pulverize an entire village by Lt. Col. David Flynn, commander of Combined Joint Task Force 1-320th, has ignited a debate over the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. The village in question, Tarok Kolache, was overrun with Taliban insurgents, who had apparently chased villagers out and were using the site for staging attacks. After two failed attempts at clearing the village and multiple U.S. and Afghan casualties, Flynn decided to use bombs and rockets to wipe it out. While the attack apparently resulted in no civilian casualties, an adviser to Hamid Karzai said that it “caused unreasonable damage to homes and orchards and displaced a number of people.” Flynn’s decision has raised some questions about the potential for backlash, and some observers argue that the bombing will hamper the military’s effort to win the loyalty of local, civilian Afghans, whose cooperation is paramount in rooting out insurgents.

Danger Room (Wired)

Where he's been

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:28 PM - 31 Comments

The Prime Minister’s itinerary over the last five years has been compiled and studied by the team at ipolitics.ca.

Together, Ontario and Quebec account for 47.4 per cent of Harper’s domestic travel — 30.6 per cent of it in Ontario and 16.8 per cent of it in Quebec.

British Columbia, host of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, comes next at 12.1 per cent of Harper’s travel, followed by his home province of Alberta at 11.8 per cent. Although the Conservatives have a strong western base, only three per cent of Harper’s travel has been to Saskatchewan and 4.4 per cent of it to Manitoba.

More here.

U.S. authorities conduct largest mob sweep in history

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:22 PM - 4 Comments

More than 120 people were arrested on Thursday in a blanket raid by the F.B.I. targeting mob activity, including murder, racketeering and extortion. Authorities went after seven crime families in New York and New Jersey, arresting around 30 ‘made’ members as well as various associates and small-time functionaries in the early morning raid. This is the largest mob takedown in recent history, and was the outcome of cooperative investigation between multiple agencies, including the Secret Service and the United States Marshall Service.

The New York Times

Bloc calls for ban on kirpan from Parliament

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:21 PM - 41 Comments

One day after security guards at the Quebec legislature denied entry to four Sikhs because some were carrying a kirpan—the ceremonial dagger worn by Sikhs—the Bloc Québécois promised to take up the issue with the House of Commons’ all-party decision-making body. This is the latest chapter in the debate over the kirpan in Quebec, which some Sikhs keep against the skin and under clothing. Bloc whip Claude DeBellefeuille says “it’s not a debate about religious symbols or a social debate above and beyond that. It is really a security question and we have to look again at our practices.” At least one Liberal MP who wears the kirpan in the Commons, the Mississauga-Brampton South MP Navdeep Bains, does not agree. He accused the Bloc of seeking to make political gains from the controversy. “I think it’s fear-mongering at its best,” he said.

CBC News

Clash of the coupons

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

Groupon, the daily-deal website that just turned down a US$5.3-billion buyout offer from Google, has had nothing but success in dozens of countries around the world—but things are different in Australia. The company, which launched in 2008 and now operates in 37 countries, is postponing its formal launch in the outback because of another daily coupon company: Scoopon. According to Groupon CEO Andrew Mason’s blog, Scoopon tried to register Groupon’s trademark in Australia and bought the groupon.com.au URL before his company had the chance.

Domain-name squatting has become a problem for Groupon, but the company offered to buy the address from Scoopon for US$286,000 anyway. Mason says the offer was initially accepted, then turned down, and that Scoopon’s founders are now hoping Groupon will buy them out. Instead, Groupon is suing Scoopon for filing the trademark in bad faith. Mason says it could take more than a year to resolve the suit, but that his company will still offer its daily discounts in Australia under the temporary name of Stardeals. In the meantime, the 30-year-old CEO is asking Australians to show their support by joining Groupon’s Facebook group and posting a note urging Scoopon to accept the $286,000 offer.

Good work, at times

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Thomas Northcut/GETTY IMAGES

While employment in Canada was up in December 2010, one perceived drawback was that the share of part-time workers also jumped. Full-time employment edged up a solid 1.9 per cent over the previous 12 months, but the rate at which the economy added part-time jobs was almost double, at 3.4 per cent. The proportion of part-timers in the working population has been on the rise since the mid-2000s, but the trend has accelerated in the past two years. Economists worry the high share of part-time workers, which neared 20 per cent at the end of 2010, is an unhealthy side effect of the recession. But while about a third of Canadians continue to prefer full-time jobs, according to Statistics Canada, there are signs that fewer work hours are becoming a matter of choice.

A 2010 Telus/Harris/Decima survey found that 89 per cent of Canadians report that offering flexible work hours makes an employer more attractive. After salary levels, the study revealed, it was the most important factor for employees looking for a new job. And creative work arrangements reducing time in the cubicle benefit employers too. In 2009, the Institute for Corporate Productivity found that 78 per cent of U.S. companies thought that offering so-called “flexwork” decreases turnover rates.

The rising ranks of part-timers can partly be explained by a jump in the number of older workers choosing to put off retirement. But it could also be a symptom of an increasingly gender-neutral job market, say experts. In the Netherlands, for instance, scores of young professionals are happily opting for four-day workweeks to dedicate more time to the little ones. And as “daddy days” are reportedly no longer taboo even in high-pressure, competitive environments such as law firms, working part-time is losing the stigma that made it by definition the choice of career-shy women in the past, reports the New York Times.

And as employers compete to attract talented workers—especially generation Y-ers—offering more part-time work options is becoming a must-have.

Life at the northern edge of the map

By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 1:20 PM - 5 Comments

Kennedy Bradshaw/Keno City Mining Museum

James Kennedy Bradshaw was born in the English fishing village of Polperro, Cornwall, around the turn of the last century. When he died in 1981 in Mayo, a Yukon mining hub 400 km north of Whitehorse, he was penniless, without family, destined for oblivion. Except that Bradshaw, who left school at 13 and worked for 30 years as a mechanic and electrician along the Yukon’s fabled Silver Trail, had left behind a lifetime of photographs whose haunting beauty catapults him beyond the realm of hobbyist.

In the 60 or so prints that went on show in Whitehorse late last year (part of a charity auction to benefit the Ted Harrison Artist Retreat Society), Dawson City, Elsa, Keno City and Mayo emerge with all the richness of Manawaka, Lake Wobegon or Winesburg, the fictional outposts that Margaret Laurence, Garrison Keillor and Sherwood Anderson created to anchor their human dramas. Here it’s all real. With Bradshaw’s documentary eye trained on his subarctic world from behind a prized Leica 35 mm, loaded with colour-saturated Kodachrome slide film, the Yukon becomes his perfect muse. “What’s interesting about his photographs is the depth and quality of his description of everyday life,” says Vancouver-based photo artist Roy Arden, who has written about Bradshaw’s work, comparing it to the work of Eugene Atget, a so-called “amateur” photographer who documented fin-de-siècle Paris. “Bradshaw’s got a narrative, almost novelistic approach to his subjects.”

The shots reward the expectations of southerners, then tweak them. A man in muddy coveralls dons a spotless fedora. Miners gathered in a beer hall in conspiratorial bunches cast tough but wary glances at the camera. “He was always taking pictures,” says Laura Crowther, Bradshaw’s neighbour in the town of Elsa in the late 1960s. “When the guys from the shop had their Christmas party, he was taking pictures. You know how guys get together and argue over work, those kinds of scenes? Ken was always laughing, as though he’d caught somebody in the act, pointing a finger in somebody’s face.” The shots are just as often tender. A woman in a floral-patterened dress leans into the telephone as though into a man’s shoulder, rare Arctic oranges on the table behind her. Or the two children amid tar-paper shacks hanging from a fire-engine-red tricycle.

Continue…

Sarah Palin's hold on the Republican party

By John Parisella - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 1:18 PM - 28 Comments

With President Obama’s approval ratings once again cracking the 50 per cent mark, it is interesting to see how a newly emboldened Republican party will deal with its next big quest, the presidency. Ousting the controversial Michael Steele as RNC president was the first step in that process. Establishing its authority in the new Congress will be next.

With the presidential candidate primaries just a year away, Obama is already putting together his campaign team. His inner circle has been revamped significantly with the arrival of a new chief of staff and a new national economic advisor. Obama clearly has his eye on 2012.

On the Republican side, the arrival of the Tea Party is unsettling the terrain. An improving economy and the voters’ desire for more bipartisanship politics is further complicating the political calculation for prospective candidates. The tragic shootings in Tucson less than two weeks ago may not ultimately result in major change, but it is affecting the political discourse and the nature of political debate.

The field of potential Republican candidates includes high-profile personalities who have published books and intervened regularly on everyday issues; there’s even a reality TV star. Yet, no one seems to be on the verge of declaring despite their relative notoriety. Palin, coming off a tough week—some would say a bad week—is in the public eye as much as ever. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has just launched a book tour. Governor Mitt Romney is on a foreign policy tour. Others like Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee have played coy in recent weeks, while Governor Haley Barbour has not yet gotten his footing due to some controversial remarks, and both New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels claim no interest in running in 2012.

The biggest factor for the GOP, though, is the silencing effect Palin is having on the Republican race. She is not a conventional politician. The current controversy about her remarks surrounding the Tucson tragedy shows her to be unpredictable, yet highly vocal and persistent in defending herself. She is clearly appealing to her base. There appears to be an emerging consensus among backroom establishment Republicans that a Palin nomination may not be their best hope for 2012, with Pawlenty, Gingrich, Huckabee, and Christie expressing mild criticisms of late. But so far, even Palin’s most vocal rivals seem at a loss in figuring out how to deal with her.

Q&A: Nav Bains on the kirpan controversy

By John Geddes - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 1:01 PM - 132 Comments

Liberal MP Navdeep Bains is one of the most promient Sikh politicians in Canada, instantly recognizable for his red turban. But it’s a less visible symbol of his faith—the dagger-like kirpan he wears under his shirt on his left side—that is once again the subject of controversy this week.

Four kirpan-carrying Sikh men were denied entry to the Quebec National Assembly two days ago, and in Ottawa the Bloc Québécois quickly pounced on the resulting publicity to call for the federal House of Commons to consider adopting the same prohibition, ostensibly out of concern for security.

Continue…

Not your grandmother's porcelain

By Sara Angel - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Roger Lemoyne

In 1912 the surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp famously declared that painting was dead, in response to the ease with which images could be made using photography and other new technologies. His words marked the start of a 20th-century trend in which art became increasingly incomprehensible, as the brainy ideas behind a creative work trumped beauty or its maker’s skill.

Which makes Shary Boyle, 38, who last month won the $25,000 Hnatyshyn Award for outstanding achievement by a Canadian artist, something of an oddball. Not only is Boyle a virtuoso whose technical abilities could match the 17th-century master Vermeer, her art is personal in an era that favours global meaning, figurative in a world of abstraction, born of emotion instead of cool concepts, of a decidedly female viewpoint in a male-dominated industry, and made from age-old materials like paint and porcelain rather than more trendy mediums such as video.

Yet Boyle is arguably Canada’s most celebrated artist of recent years. Before winning the Hnatyshyn, she was twice a finalist for the Sobey Art Award, which celebrates an artist under 40; she won the 2009 Gershon Iskowitz Prize for a successful artist in mid-career; and she is the focus of two acclaimed exhibitions: Breaking Boundaries, with three other ceramic artists at Toronto’s Gardiner Museum, and Flesh and Blood, a three-city solo show, which opened last week in Montreal.

Continue…

Watchdog doubts government cost-cutting measures

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 12:54 PM - 5 Comments

A report by the parliamentary budget officer details significant problems with the Conservative government’s proposed budget freezes, which would reportedly save $6.8 billion over five years by cutting 11,000 public service jobs. “Overall, there is limited evidence that current plans will meet the President of Treasury Board’s public service attrition target,” the report claims. Of the 10 departments the PBO identified to reveal staffing plans, Correctional Services Canada and the RCMP refused to divulge, and only Human Resources and Skills Development Canada was able to outline a specific strategy on how services would be maintained. Treasury Board President Stockwell Day says these details remain a cabinet confidence until they are outlined in the federal budget.

The Globe and Mail

Mitchel Raphael uncovers grand ambitions and hidden talents

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

ANDREW VAUGHAN/CP

May’s baby book idea
Since becoming leader of the Green party, Elizabeth May has written two books, Losing Confidence: Power, Politics, and the Crisis in Canadian Democracy, and Global Warming for Dummies (which she co-authored with Zoë Caron). Now she is trying to pitch some other ideas to her publisher. There is some interest in a book on Alberta’s oil sands and the need for a national energy strategy. But the book she would really love to write is about motherhood and “how to incorporate children into your life without having to use child care.” May started bringing her daughter, Victoria Cate, to work 14 days after she was born. At the time, she was the executive director of the environmental group Sierra Club Canada and says the office was already baby-friendly before her daughter was born. When she met with Prince Charles on the Royal Yacht Britannia she said he was thrilled to see her baby. That had to be cleared through protocol, though, because, says May, no one before had ever had a meeting with the prince and brought along their baby. When Victoria Cate was two, she was brought to the Oval Office when May met then-president Bill Clinton. If she writes the book, May would like to call it Have Baby, Will Travel. So far she has been told the idea “would make a great article.”

Photo by Markus Fehr

No cookie time for this Martha
Over the holidays Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay travelled with her special rolling pin. Each holiday season she tries to make springerle cookies, which require her carved rolling pin to create impressions on the treats. She uses a recipe found in Joy of Cooking. She had hoped to make them while she was home in Toronto but got too busy, so she brought the rolling pin along when she visited family in Banff, Alta., and Revelstoke, B.C., where again she never had any time for baking. Back on the Hill, Hall Findlay told Capital Diary she recently took time to send a congratulatory note to

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Ted Menzies on his appointment to cabinet as minister of state for finance. Hall Findlay says she was happy to see such a good guy get rewarded. She notes he is seen as not as partisan as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty: when Menzies has to get up in the House “and spout the same party lines, you take it with more of a grain of salt.”

The MP who loves Valentine’s Day
For Newfoundland Liberal MP Siobhan Coady, the holidays ended on Jan. 6., Old Christmas Day. There is a tradition in her family of putting shoes under the Christmas tree on the eve of that day; then Old Father Christmas “comes and fills them with little presents.” This year she got an iTunes gift card, Maclean’s “2010: The Year in Pictures” special edition, and some books. (Gifts are placed inside as well as on top, Coady says.) “It brings a little joy to the end of the season,” notes the MP. Coady is big on holiday celebrations. She is currently working on limericks for Valentine’s Day. Every year she hides prizes in her house and gives out limerick clues on how to find them. Valentine’s Day holds a special meaning for Coady. When she was young, she and her sisters would receive letters from “secret admirers” from all over the world. Only after her father died did she learn that he had orchestrated the whole thing by getting friends in other cities or people travelling to post the letters.

Libby Davies’ singing debut
NDP MP and deputy leader Libby Davies is planning a Valentine’s Karaoke fundraiser at the Russian Hall in Vancouver. The funds will go to getting her re-elected whenever the next election happens. She has selected at least two songs and has a friend teaching her how to sing. The B.C. MP admits her experience belting it out is extremely limited. Says Davies: “I have never really sung live before aside from O Canada and that’s usually with other people.”

NDP planning "aggressive" election campaign

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 12:27 PM - 2 Comments

The NDP is putting the finalizing an election platform and preparing to spend a record amount of money on an “aggressive” campaign. The party’s campaign director, Brad Lavigne, wrote earlier this week to NDP leader Jack Layton—who is on the road this week—to brief him on the state of election readiness. In the memo, Lavigne says the team is “prepared to wage an aggressive federal election campaign at any time.” The note was sent on the same day the Conservatives launched a series of new ads that target the opposition parties and heightened speculation that Canadians could go to the polls within months. Though opposition leaders claim they are not pushing for an election and that timing of the next one is up to the Conservatives, speculation has been heightened that Canadians could go to the polls within months.

Vancouver Sun

Ignatieff's new target

By John Geddes - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 9 Comments

Aaron Harris/Bloomberg/Getty Images

After devoting much of last summer to a bus tour, and part of last fall to holding town-hall style meetings, Michael Ignatieff is hitting the road again to start 2011. But this time there’s a strategic difference: in an 11-day blitz of 20 ridings, the Liberal leader plans to visit only seats his party failed to win in the 2008 election. If that suggests he’s taking the fight directly to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, though, Liberal strategists are stressing a different adversary. Ignatieff’s mini-tour concentrates on ridings where they’re aiming to capture votes, not from the Tories, but mainly from the NDP.

Nine ridings on the tour are held now by Conservative MPs who could lose to Liberals if the NDP vote falls and moves to them, even if the Tory vote holds up. Another two are Bloc seats where an NDP stumble could easily elect a Liberal. And there’s some evidence for the Liberal view that they have a better chance of taking NDP votes in these battlegrounds than the other way around. Alice Funke of the website Pundits’ Guide points to survey data from the 2008 campaign, which shows that NDP supporters who said the Liberals were their second choice were more likely to make that switch by election day than Liberals who named the NDP as their second choice.

But Conservative backers are widely considered least likely of all to waver. Frank Graves, president of the polling firm Ekos, says Harper’s unshakable core support now stands at about 30 per cent, a few points below his party’s steady support range in the polls through 2010. The rest are theoretically up for grabs. “Michael Ignatieff’s challenge,” says Graves, “is somehow uniting those voters in their common distaste—and that’s too weak a word—for Mr. Harper.”

How bout them jets?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 11:55 AM - 115 Comments

The Conservative government has pitched the purchase of 65 new F-35s as a job creation program, as a military recruitment tool, as our best defence against a Russian invasion,  as a necessary escort for planes carrying potentially dangerous cargo and as part of staking our claim to the Arctic. But when Mr. Harper was asked this week by Peter Mansbridge to explain why the country needs these 65 state-of-the-art fighter jets, the Prime Minister responded without invoking any of those reasons.

Will we need them? Look, I know this. We’ve heard these arguments before whenever budgets are tight: “Does the military really need them? We don’t need them today.” Did we know we would be in Afghanistan ten years ago, twelve years ago? Did we know we would be in the Balkans? Did we know we were going to have the Gulf Wars? Did we see the end of the Cold War? We don’t know these things, Peter.

What we do know is that the international situation will evolve. We don’t know what the risks and the threats will be in the future, but we know there will be some. And we know the men and women in the Canadian Forces, air, land and sea, will be called upon to respond. And when they are, we want to make sure they have a range of good, flexible equipment so they can respond safely and do their jobs effectively. And if you look at the level of military spending we’re maintaining in this country, if anything we may remain below where most of our allies are.

Getting too far Inside

By Michael Barclay - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 0 Comments

It’s not unheard of for an undercover police officer to become an agent provocateur, which can lead to dicey legal issues of entrapment. But it’s very rare for the same officer to then offer to testify for the defence, resulting in a dismissal of charges for the people he helped arrest.

That’s exactly what happened to Const. Mark Kennedy of London, who infiltrated a chapter of direct-action environmental group Earth First! in 2003. In 2009, 114 people were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass, with a plan to shut down a coal plant for a week. Many of those charges were dismissed; 20 people were sentenced to negligible sentences earlier this month. The case against the final six defendants was dismissed last week, when the protesters’ lawyer told the British press that Kennedy had converted to the activists’ cause and had offered them evidence that would help their case.

They claim Kennedy was a key organizer and major financier of not only this operation but many others. One of the protesters, Danny Chivers, told the Guardian: “We’re not talking about someone sitting at the back of the meeting taking notes. He was in the thick of it.” Prosecutors denied a link between the revelation and the collapse of the case.

The butterfly effect

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

“A lot of people view butterflies in a way analogous to the canary in the coal mine,” says Arthur Shapiro, an entomologist at the University of California at Davis. “If butterflies are going downhill, something is wrong.” Well, something must be terribly wrong, because butterfly populations are plummeting around the globe. The graceful fluttering of the marsh fritillary and delicate beauty of the Grecian copper could soon be squashed out, and the large tortoiseshell, a spotted orange butterfly once ubiquitous in England, is now classified as regionally extinct.

In Europe, where there’s a wealth of data thanks to a decades-long culture of professional and hobbyist butterfly monitoring, scientists are reporting a 70 per cent reduction in populations across the board. Four of Britain’s 62 species of butterflies have gone extinct in recent years, while a further 19 are threatened and 11 near threatened. North American scientists report similar numbers.

Intensive farming is believed to be the primary culprit in England and Western Europe, where subsidies from governments and the EU support mega-farms that strip grasslands, the habitat for many species of butterfly. “Europe has been inhabited for thousands of years and the natural environment adapted to that,” says Chris Van Swaay, a spokesperson for Butterfly Conservation Europe.

Climate change is also taking its toll, pushing many species of European butterflies north to cooler weather and forcing the mountain butterflies of North America into higher elevations. But, says Shapiro, they can’t keep running forever, and many species require too specialized a climate to run at all.

Continue…

Please join us tonight

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 11:09 AM - 20 Comments

Tonight at 7pm ET Maclean’s and CPAC are presenting a live televised  debate about the state of Canada-US relations.

If you are in DC, please join us at the gorgeous Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue (next door to the Canadian Embassy) — click here to RSVP.

In Canada, you can watch live on CPAC or at cpac.ca.

In the US, the event will be carried live on C-SPAN 2.

Pete Van Dusen will moderate an impressive  panel that will include Paul Wells, Andrew Coyne, as well as:

• Gary Doer – Canada’s ambassador to the United States (and former premier of Manitoba)
• David Frum – Editor, FrumForum.com (and former Bush speech writer)
• Maryscott Greenwood – Senior Managing Director, McKenna Long & Aldridge (and senior advisor to the Canadian-American Business Council and a former chief of staff at the US Embassy in Ottawa.)
• Christopher Sands – Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute (the go-to analyst of Canada-US issues in the Washington think tank community.)
• Pamela Wallin – Canadian Senator (and former Canadian Consul General in New York City.)

I’ll give some opening thoughts but mostly I’m looking forward to a very substantive and provocative evening.

Inside Atlanta when Martin Luther King died

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Charles Kelly/AP

Burial for a King

Rebecca Burns

Less than an hour after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., shot while standing on the balcony of his Memphis, Tenn., motel room, was officially confirmed on the evening of April 4, 1968, the first window was smashed in Washington. Five days of rioting in the U.S. capital eventually killed 12 people and destroyed 1,200 buildings, some only two blocks from the White House. In all, violent disturbances broke out in more than 100 American cities after King’s assassination. But not in the city where rioting might have been most expected: Atlanta, King’s hometown and the site of his emotionally laden funeral. Burns’s book explores why that peace, sometimes stretched to the breaking point, held in her city. Despite palpable tension, the April 9 ceremony—highlighted by the burial procession of King’s mule-drawn hearse and 150,000 mourners—went off without serious incident.

Burns is a former editor-in-chief of Atlanta magazine, and it shows: much of her intricate description of the politicking among Atlanta power brokers, white and black, will be of interest mostly to Atlantans of long memory. Yet that insider knowledge also informs Burns’s persuasive analysis of what made her southern city different from, say, Birmingham, Ala., and her account of how Atlanta’s oh-so-slow desegregation crumbled within days into almost complete institutional racial integration. (White churches that had long struggled over the question integrated overnight under the necessity of accommodating black co-religionists, as did the city’s hotels, still 80 per cent segregated on the day King died.)

And she has a wealth of anecdotes to propel her story along. On April 5, Robert Kennedy, who would be shot to death himself only two months later, on his own initiative sent a technician to install more phone lines in the King home, and promised to help navigate the “protocols” involved in hosting foreign VIPs. “My family,” Kennedy told the grief-stunned King entourage, who had not yet thought through the logistical nightmare to come, “has experience in dealing with this kind of thing.”
Brian Bethune

Beyone the crash: Overcoming the first crisis of globalization

Gordon Brown

The global financial crisis was Gordon Brown’s best shot at saving his faltering premiership of the United Kingdom. He had excelled as chancellor of the exchequer (equivalent to our finance minister) for 10 years while his friend and then rival, Tony Blair, was prime minister. And when Britain’s economy began to slide, Brown’s experience and dour gravitas seemed for a moment to outshine his more obvious flaws, such as a lack of charisma and inability to connect with people. Brown understood the magnitude of the problem and put together a rescue package for British banks, and then pushed world leaders toward similar bailouts.

It wasn’t enough, of course—at least not for Brown’s political career. His Labour Party lost the May election. Brown, though still an MP, has used the time since to write this book about the crisis, its roots, his role in tackling it, and what he believes must now be done to ensure something similar doesn’t happen again. The former prime minister is not a frivolous man, and the book is appropriately serious. It’s also boring. The prose meanders; the reader’s eyes start to wander. Accidentally skip a page and you might not notice.

Still, there is nobility in Brown’s efforts here, as there was in much that he attempted and failed to do as prime minister. Brown could have sold many more copies of a book that recalled his political career and told the story of a decade’s infighting in the Labour Party. Even the odd shot at Tony Blair probably would have been good for a few thousand sales. But there is no political dirt in this volume, and little that’s revealing about Brown himself. We learn what sort of pens he likes to use but not much else. Still, Brown’s arguments about the need for greater international co-operation in financial matters are convincing, and his commitment to social justice appears genuine and firm. Brown wasn’t a successful prime minister, and he’s a not a particularly good writer. This book’s a slog. But it’s hard not to respect the author when you finish it.
Michael Petrou

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