U.S. Congresswoman Candice Miller on "perimeter security"

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 3:01 PM - 4 Comments

Today Candice Miller, a Republican congresswoman from Michigan who chairs the Border and Maritime Security subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security, held a hearing looking into the GAO report that said the Department of Homeland Security has “operational control” of only 32 miles of the US-Canada border.

You can watch the hearing and read the official testimony at the Committee’s website. I have also archived the written testimony here.

The Chief of the US Customs and Border Patrol, Michael Fisher, said that the way DHS has been measuring “operational control” is “outdated” because it does not reflect partnership (such as with Canadian law enforcement agencies) and does not reflect the heavy use of technology.

After the hearing, I spoke briefly with Rep. Miller, who chaired the hearing, about the Harper-Obama “perimeter security” vision and the GAO report:

Q: What do you expect from the vision on perimeter security? What do you think will come out of it? It seems like a vague notion right now.

A: It is vague. As we think about what our GAO report was about, some of the challenges we have along the northern border from a security, operational control perspective, we always have to keep in mind that Canada is our best ally, our biggest trading partner, our friends and our neighbours, and as we look to border security, we obviously need to recognize that we have a very huge interest, a priority interest in making sure that commerce and passengers can travel across our borders expeditiously. Thickening of the border is an issue we must always keep upmost in our minds.

Q: What results do you want to see out of this vision? How does it translate into changes on the ground?

A: First of all, the US-Canadian agreement called for a working committee. I’m not quite certain who’s going to be on the working committee, and where they are going with their entire work product. We hope – not only myself, but I’m sure other members of this committee and other members of Congress –  will want to have some input into what they’re putting together.

As I say, I think we have to be cognizant of the ability to expedite commerce. For instance, in the sector I’m most familiar with, in the Detroit sector, where we have such a long liquid border with Canada. One of the things that have worked well, that we could expand, I think, is something called Shiprider. That has been a wonderful program between the US and Canada, relatively new, that I think could have a great expansion where both nations feel a great level of security by that.

Q: A big expansion to where?

A: They could utilize throughout the entire Great Lakes basin. Use it more. Use it as a component, perhaps, for measuring operational control.

Q: On that GAO report, is the definition of “operational control” too narrow?

A: That was the thrust of this hearing. One of the things we have found here is that our Customs and Border Patrol is using a different level of measurement than our law has actually called for. That’s what happens with these hearings. All of a sudden you uncover something else that sends you in a different direction. One of my concerns is that they are not weighing as a measurement component, heavily enough on technology. This is something that has to be utilized heavily on the northern border. We’re not going to build a fence.

Q: And they’re not counting what Canada does, yet this is a partnership.

A: For example, Shiprider is a great program and I’m not sure they are using that in their measurement matrix. I didn’t see it in the GAO report.

Q: It sounds like maybe they are missing pieces of the bigger picture.

A: I think so.

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You can follow me on Twitter at luizachsavage

Free condoms are just an app away

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 2:55 PM - 6 Comments

The Health Department of New York City has launched a smartphone application that will locate the nearest place giving out condoms free of charge. “We’re not promoting sex, we’re promoting safer sex,” said Dr. Monica Sweeney, the city’s assistant health commissioner. Drawing from a database of over 1,000 locations giving out free condoms, the app will give a leg up to New Yorkers with iPhones and Android phones.

Reuters

You can't govern a country 140 characters at a time

By the editors - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 2:39 PM - 35 Comments

Chris Wattie/Reuters

As might be expected, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a lot on his mind these days. We know this from recent postings to his Twitter account. Last week, for example, he wished everyone a “Happy Lunar New Year!” Before that he passed along Christmas greetings from “Rachel, Ben, Laureen and myself” and congratulated Ontario-born baseball player Joey Votto on being named National League MVP. Oh yes, he also rewrote the nation’s Internet policy. All in 140 characters.

Twitter is the popular social networking tool that allows users to send out short, frequent blasts of information. Celebrities, sports stars and anyone else who sees a need to provide continual updates on their latest thoughts and activities have flocked to Twitter. Add politicians to this list as well.

Harper has been tweeting since September 2008. Many of his cabinet ministers and parliamentary rivals tweet as well. As a marketing and networking tool, Twitter has become useful, perhaps even necessary, to the business of politics. But is this how Canadians expect their government to make policy? Is it possible to rule a country 140 characters at a time?

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Iranian MPs call for execution of opposition leaders

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 2:03 PM - 6 Comments

222 members of Iran’s 290-seat Parliament calling for the execution of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who remain under house arrest after being detained from attending anti-government protests in Tehran. The Parliament issued a statement on Tuesday calling them “corrupts on earth [who] should be tried.” The term “corrupts on earth” refers to political dissidents, who are usually punished as traitors and executed under Iranian law. U.S. President Barack Obama said in a press conference that he found it “ironic that you’ve got the Iranian regime pretending to celebrate what happened in Egypt, when in fact they have acted in direct contrast to what happened in Egypt by gunning down and beating people who were trying to express themselves peacefully in Iran.” Iranian leaders have attempted to portray the protests in Egypt and Tunisia as a surge in Islamic populism in the face of Western-backed authoritarian governments, similar to Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 that saw the ousting of the Shah and the rise to power of Ayatollah Khomeini. Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the Iranian cities of Tehran and Isfahan on Monday to protest the government. At least one person has been killed.

New York Times

'She has to go'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 1:57 PM - 63 Comments

Ned Franks, the dean of parliamentary scholars, passes judgment on Bev Oda.

“My belief is she has to go. There is no excuse for what she did. She altered a document to misrepresent a recommendation – and then she claimed she hadn’t done it. Those are two of the worst offences a minister can do,” says Dr. Franks. “She may resign but the House of Commons might still find her guilty of contempt of Parliament. The last time somebody was found guilty of contempt of Parliament was in 1913, almost a century ago. It’s a very rare thing.”

Berlusconi to stand trial on prostitution charges

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 1:45 PM - 0 Comments

An Italian judge ruled Thursday that Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi will have to stand trial on charges of paying for sex with an underage prostitute, and abuse of power for trying to cover it up. Berlusconi and Karima El Mahroug, a Moroccan nightclub dancer also known as Ruby Heartthrob, deny the prostitution accusations. The prime minister also denies pressuring a Milan police chief to release the girl from detention, where she was being held on charges of theft. The trial is scheduled to start on April 6, but the prime minister said he has no intention to resign, and accused the judiciary of staging a coup to force him out of office. The news broke just as Berlusconi faces the resumption of two long-delayed trials in Milan on charges of fraud and tax evasion. It is the first time, however, that judges are calling on Berlusconi to defend himself in court on charges related to his private life. Giorgio Napolitano, the Italian head of state, who has the power to dissolve parliament, hinted last week at the possibility that the renewed clash between the prime minister and the judiciary could lead to early elections.

Financial Times

The next steps in Egypt

By John Geddes - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 1:41 PM - 5 Comments

As public protests in Egypt give way to the behind-the-scenes negotiation of a new political order, most Westerners who’ve followed the exhilarating events there over the past few weeks can only wish the pro-democracy movement well.

But Leslie Campbell, the Canadian who has directed the Washington-based National Democratic Institute’s Middle East and North Africa programs since 1996, is among the few outside experts whose experience gives him detailed insight into the challenges ahead in Egypt—and whose job affords him a chance to offer practical help.

The NDI, a non-profit, non-partisan group that supports the growth of democratic institutions around the world, has been active in Egypt since 1995, and opened a permanent office there in 2004. Campbell has forged a direct relationship with Egypt’s political parties, most recently in the run-up to last fall’s rigged parliamentary elections. Among other things, NDI offers training to parties and independent election monitors.

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"There’s no app" for fighting Internet repression, says Clinton

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 1:37 PM - 4 Comments

Popular demand for democratic reform is surging in the Middle East, and restricting citizens’ rights to the Internet will not change that, says U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In a speech at a George Washington University on Tuesday, Clinton says the Obama administration is poised to help dissidents evade Internet restrictions in the name of promoting human rights and democracy in repressive states. “Those who clamp down on Internet freedom may be able to hold back the full impact of their people’s yearnings for a while, but not forever,” read an excerpt from her speech, released in advance by the State Department. “There is no silver bullet in the struggle against Internet repression. There’s no ‘app’ for that. And accordingly, we are taking a comprehensive and innovative approach — one that matches our diplomacy with technology, secure distribution networks for tools, and direct support for those on the front lines.” Central to that approach, officials say, is assisting civic leaders, students, and rights activists in overcoming government controls of the Internet.

Associated Press

Adding it up

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 1:31 PM - 26 Comments

Bruce Cheadle takes apart a recent study that questioned Statistics Canada’s crime data.

Newark asserts that “many of the most common conclusions that are drawn about crime in Canada are in fact incorrect or badly distorted.” ”Serious violent crime is increasing,” the former executive officer of the Canadian Police Association flatly asserts.

While Newark’s report for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute was given prominent coverage by both the Globe and Mail and National Post newspapers, the wider academic community that relies on the data was not consulted. Their reviews are scathing. ”It’s really badly done. It’s embarrassing, actually,” said Neil Boyd, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Tories surge in Ontario

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 12:33 PM - 41 Comments

A new Ipsos Reid poll conducted early this month has Stephen Harper’s Conservatives at 42 per cent in Ontario——up six points since the firm’s poll in January. That puts the Tories far ahead of the Liberals in the largest province, whose suburban ridings could be where Harper seeks to secure his elusive majority. Michael Ignatieff’s party stood at 32 per cent for the Liberals, down eight points from a month earlier. At 15 per cent in Ontario, the NDP’s support was unchanged, while the Green party’s 11 per cent was up three points. Nationally, the poll, conducted from Feb. 8-10, found the Conservatives supported by 39 per cent of decided voters, up by five points, as Liberals suffered a four-point drop to a dismal 25 per cent. The poll comes as speculation grows that the Harper minority could fall on a vote after the budget Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is expected to table early next month. The Liberals have vowed not to vote for the budget is it continues a planned track of corporate tax cuts. That leaves open, however, the possibility of Jack Layton’s NDP voting for it to extend the life of the Tory minority.

Ottawa Citizen

The King of Review-Caps

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 12:19 PM - 1 Comment

Critic Alan Sepinwall was nice enough to leave a comment on an earlier post clarifying something I wrote about him (I updated the post to include the clarification), and this before I had a chance to link to this great Josh Levin article in Slate on how Sepinwall changed TV criticism. Sepinwall was one of a few people who realized that the internet was tailor-made for TV criticism. A movie is a one-time thing, so there’s no particular advantage in reviewing it online; same with an album or a book or a play. But with a continuing television series, the internet can be a platform to review every episode. No newspaper or magazine can review every episode of a show; the closest any magazine comes is Soap Opera Weekly, and even that doesn’t do much more than fill you in on what happened. The modern online episodic review does tell you what happened — though often not much more than, say, a long book review, which will usually summarize the argument of the book before criticizing it — but also critiques the episode and, perhaps most importantly, provides an opportunity for critic and reader alike to speculate on where the show might be headed.

For a long time, the dominant style of episodic review online was the snarky recap as pioneered by Dawson’s Wrap/Mighty Big TV/Television Without Pity. These were pieces that, even if written by fans of the show, could give the opposite impression because they so relentlessly pointed out logic gaps, infantile behaviour by the heroes, and bad fashion choices. My own favourite is the Buffy recap site “Boils and Blinding Torment,” whose stream-of-consciousness style allows you to experience the disappointment of season 7 step by step. At its best, this style was a lot of fun and it wasn’t even, really, about hating the show, though you might get that impression. But it was a way of keeping TV at arm’s length a bit. Almost any TV show has its share of absurd moments if you’re willing to look for them, so the snark style was a way of saying it’s only TV; let’s not treat it with too much reverence.

There’s a place for that kind of thing, and it can be surprisingly fun to step back for a moment and realize how crazy something might seem to someone who isn’t caught up in the show. It also had the slight advantage of focusing attention on discussion of that particular episode, instead of the “what is the plan for the season and the series” type of discussion that eventually bogged down the online commentary — critical and fan alike — about Lost. But eventually it became wearying, and the TWoP style became boring to readers who wanted to pay attention to the stuff that mattered — plot, theme, character — rather than the nitpicky stuff like clothes and hair and whether we’d like these people if we met them in real life.

Anyway, the current style, pioneered by Sepinwall, is for the critic/reviewer/recapper to be covering a show he or she likes, or at least wants to like. More importantly it’s a show he or she takes seriously (even if it’s a comedy) and doesn’t want to mock. Occasionally a mockable show will turn up and a bit of that old TWoP style will resurface; “The Cape” gets a lot of reviews because it’s about something important like superheroes rather than something totally unbelievable like police work. But even “The Cape” gets its due when it turns out an episode that sort of makes sense. A like Fringe, which like much good science-fiction is very ambitious and powerful if you buy into it and totally ridiculous if you don’t, mostly gets reviewed by people who buy into it. The assumption now is that commenters, who are almost as important to this form as the reviewers themselves, are looking for discussion of what the show is trying to do, rather than MST3K-ing it. And so the tone of online episodic criticism, led by Sepinwall, has shifted from keeping shows at a distance to getting very closely involved in them, from refusing to take them seriously to believing in them completely (even when an episode is disappointing, the fans don’t just stop taking the show seriously and start mocking it — not at first anyway). It may lead to some re-evaluation when the show is over and the fans look back at the whole thing — if they look back — but it’s a much more emotionally involving experience than the snarkblogging approach.

Russell Williams’s double life

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 9 Comments

The email lit up Russell Williams’s BlackBerry at 11:18 a.m. It was not an urgent note, but a subordinate at CFB Trenton wanted to make sure the colonel was aware of an “incident” that occurred earlier that morning: a parachutist had broken his leg during a training course. “Injuries of this type are unfortunately a relatively common occurrence,” wrote Maj. Steve Camps. “Media interest is unlikely.”

Williams was not in the office that Friday. He was at his cottage in Tweed, Ont., raping and torturing Jessica Lloyd. A few minutes before 1 o’clock—as his prisoner slept on the floor, her eyes blinded by duct tape—Williams picked up his BlackBerry and typed a reply. “Understood,” he wrote. “Thanks, Steve.”

Seven hours later, Lloyd was dead.

The depth of Williams’s sadistic double life was laid bare in gruesome detail during his recent sentencing hearing. He was, without exaggeration, a monster hiding in uniform—a relentless sexual predator who also happened to be in charge of the country’s most important air force base. But on the first anniversary of his shocking arrest, the full scope of his dual personality continues to emerge. Internal documents from the Department of National Defence, obtained by Maclean’s under the Access to Information Act, provide chilling new glimpses of a killer in commander’s clothing—including the fact that he checked his inbox while holding Lloyd captive. The documents, which include dozens of Williams’s own emails, reveal just how seamlessly he could transform from standout officer to serial murderer.

RELATED:

• Russell Williams’s neighbours—They fished and played cards together. In time, they would become his first victims
• “It’s hard to believe this is happening”—Court hears Russell Williams’s confession, and the pain of his victims
• A new kind of monster—The shocking evidence behind the crimes
• “I have committed despicable crimes”—Russell Williams speaks to his victims
• Col. Russell Williams’ double life?—Top officer facing murder charges commanded Canada’s largest air base, flew top diplomats

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The Lover's Dictionary

By Anne Kingston - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 11:29 AM - 0 Comments

At first glance, Levithan’s new novel looks like one of those twee, gimmicky books sold in bookstores next to the cashier. Its cute cover and text-light format doesn’t summon comparisons to thick-book writers like Jonathan Franzen.

But the compelling tale of a doomed relationship told as a dictionary, one word and its definition per page, pushes novelistic boundaries. More impressively, Levithan takes a hoary narrative—sexual electricity, domesticity, familiarity, tensions, betrayal—and recasts it in a fresh, modern way.

The first person narrative is so intimate as to make the reader feel voyeuristic, like reading the diary of a logophile stranger. Entries echo the roller coaster of love, by turns wry, insecure, funny, coy, poetical, philosophical, bitter and even mawkishly sentimental.

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What of CIDA?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 11:27 AM - 19 Comments

Glen Pearson laments for the Canadian International Development Agency.

In all the focused activity surrounded the CIDA minister at the moment, it is wise for all of us in the drama to remember that a dedicated agency has been maligned in this process and that our only hope for doing something that could be truly lasting, is to restore it to its former usefulness. It is to the Agency’s welfare and betterment that we must look if we seek to undertake our best work as MPs. To bring down or to maintain a minister is a compelling exercise, but to empower an institution, honing it for the coming international challenges ahead – that is building something that will still be functioning long after we’re gone.

The biggest story in the universe

By Kate Lunau - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 11:21 AM - 27 Comments

Tim Pyle/NASA

Just one generation ago, the thought of finding a planet that might support life was the stuff of science fiction. Last week, NASA scientists announced they’d discovered a whopping 1,235 potential planets orbiting faraway stars, using the Kepler space telescope. If confirmed, this would almost triple the number of known planets outside of our solar system (called “exoplanets”), which currently stands at just over 500. “What we’re anxious to learn is whether there’s other life in our galaxy,” says Kepler co-investigator Natalie Batalha. She and other members of the team are trying to learn whether planets like our own are abundant or rare. “The answer will drive all future missions,” she says.

Among Kepler’s haul were 54 possible planets in the habitable zone, where temperatures could allow for liquid water at the surface, which is necessary to support all life as we know it. Five are close in size to Earth, and orbit in the habitable zone of stars that are smaller and cooler than our sun. The rest range in size from so-called “super-Earths” (up to twice the size of our planet) to ones bigger than our solar system’s kingpin, Jupiter. Most of Kepler’s findings still need to be confirmed as actual planets, but it’s almost certain the vast majority of them will be.

The mission’s goal is to find other planets like Earth, but along the way, we’re finding all sorts of things we didn’t expect: like a system of six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star called Kepler-11, packed so tightly together that, according to Jack Lissauer of NASA Ames Research Center, who led the work on Kepler-11, “we didn’t know such systems could even exist.” It’s becoming clear that the universe is much more diverse, and more prolific, than we ever imagined.

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Swamplandia!

By Sarah Weinman - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 11:14 AM - 0 Comments

Toss a rock into the lake that is American literary fiction and among the ripples that emerge are excellent debut novels by young women far wiser than their years. The most exuberant, big-hearted and entertaining of the bunch is most certainly Swamplandia!, which builds on and then zooms past the promise Karen Russell demonstrated in her 2006 short story collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, published when she was 25.

The ensuing years have seasoned and polished this blazing talent, who took the bare bones of her novel from a short story featuring 13-year-old Ava Bigtree, left alone by her itinerant father to watch over her older sister, Osceala, and most importantly, care for the 98 alligators that are the final remnants of a once-thriving theme park on an island off the Florida Everglades. Swamplandia! expands the family canvas further, showing us not just Ava’s struggle through a sinister, River Styx-like underworld to save Osceala from a phantom lover, but also older brother Kiwi’s futile attempts to save the decrepit theme park by toiling, slave-labour-like, at its sleeker, modern, bullying competitor.

Metaphors abound in Swamplandia!: the Bigtrees’ stubborn attempts to hold fast to their legacy, the transcendent power of love, both romantic and familial, and the careless way capitalistic forces encroach on both nature and independent voices are all explored here, brilliantly. But Russell never forgets she has a wondrous story to tell, and imbues her prose style with the assurance and vibrancy of a veteran fiction writer. In the midst of making readers think, Russell also makes us laugh, cry and gasp as she concocts an amazing and undiscovered world and populates it with characters we come to care for deeply. You’ll want to savour the sentences in this literary triumph.

The assassin among us

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 11:02 AM - 31 Comments

Douglas Miller/Keystone/Getty Images

On a muggy Friday in August 1975, as pre-dawn prayers rang out from city mosques, five trucks sped through the still-dark streets of Dhaka on a mission to change history. Each carried a platoon of soldiers toward the lakeside home of Bangladesh’s president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the man who had led the country four years earlier in its bloody secession from Pakistan. The troops may not have been clear on their purpose, but their commanders were. Shortly after 5:15 a.m., a handful of soldiers, led by two officers armed with Sten submachine guns, burst through the gates of Mujib’s compound, shot two guards stationed on the ground floor, and set about searching for the president himself.

At the head of the team were army major Mohiuddin Ahmad and a 24-year-old former major named Nur Chowdhury—part of a cadre of junior officers who had conspired to assassinate Mujib and install a military-backed leader in his place. Chowdhury, who had recently left the military, had joined the plot only two days before the assault on Mujib’s house. But he would prove pivotal in the events that followed: when the president unexpectedly appeared at the top of a staircase, clad in his white kurta with his pipe in his hand, Mohiuddin, according to numerous witness accounts, lost his nerve.
“Sir,” he croaked in Bengali, “please come.”

“What do you want?” Mujib replied derisively. “Have you come to kill me? The Pakistani army couldn’t do it. Who are you that you think you can?”

Mohiuddin repeated his plea several times before Chowdhury arrived at the landing, according to conspirators who later spoke to Western journalists. Rankled by the delay, Chowdhury brushed Mohiuddin aside and unleashed a burst of fire from his Sten gun. The bullets entered the right side of Mujib’s torso, spinning him round and sending him headlong down the stairs, his pipe still clutched in his hand. Thus began an all-out massacre that in Bangladesh remains a day of infamy: going from room to room, the assassins slaughtered seven other members of Mujib’s extended family, from his eldest son Kamal to two of his newlywed daughters-in-law. When Mujib’s wife, Fazilatunnesa, appeared at the top of the stairs, they shot her, too. After finding Mujib’s youngest son, 10-year-old Russell, hiding behind a chair, they hauled him to an outdoor guard shack and dispatched him with a bullet.

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Are the Tories bad for business?

By Jason Kirby - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 9:26 AM - 34 Comments

Blair Gable/Reuters

The announcement from Canada’s telecom regulator that it would end unlimited-use Internet plans unleashed a populist uprising that swept the nation. Hundreds of thousands of irate Web surfers signed an online petition opposing the decision, and the issue was blogged, shared and tweeted to no end. Amidst all that seething, though, only one opinion really mattered. “I will be reviewing CRTC decision forthwith with a view to protecting Canadians & promoting choice,” federal Industry Minister Tony Clement declared via his Twitter account. And with that, a 98-character missive threw the $60-billion telecommunications sector into chaos.

As the weather vane of public opinion swings, so do Canada’s policies toward business. Over the past two years, there have been repeated cases where Ottawa has stunned investors with populist decisions that took precedence over sound policy. The moves raise the question: is the supposedly laissez-faire government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper actually hurting Canada’s reputation as a stable and open market for business and investment? “No one likes risk and these interventions add yet another source of uncertainty when it comes to investing in Canada,” says Stephen Gordon, a professor of economics at Université Laval. “Clearly we’re not Russia, but then again, we’re not the Canada we used to be, either.”

But while critics like Gordon may be concerned, corporate Canada is mostly silent. With tax cuts on the table, instability is a price executives seem willing to pay. Besides, with federal politicians deep into the business of picking winners and losers, companies are keen to stay on the winning side.

No issue has sparked as much public fury as Internet download limits. In its ruling, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ordered that major telecoms, which are required to sell Internet capacity to smaller independent providers, can now charge for usage above certain limits. As it is now, the big providers, Telus, Bell Canada, Shaw and Rogers (which owns Maclean’s) all impose download limits, while independents have been free to offer unlimited access. In response to Clement’s knee-jerk statement, the CRTC has delayed the changes for 60 days while it reviews its decision.

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The paper trail

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 16 Comments

The crucial document in the Oda Affair was first uncovered by Embassy magazine last fall and detailed in an extensive report on KAIROS.

After soliciting feedback from CIDA sections and embassies in the relevant countries, a number of memos and background documents were prepared for Ms. Oda in advance of approving the project. ”CIDA bilateral desks and Canadian posts abroad confirm that the proposed country components of the program are strategically aligned with our country program objectives, or complement these well,” reads one of the backgrounders. ”In Mexico and Guatemala, our embassies initially expressed concern over mining activities, which KAIROS addressed.”

The tone of the memos are such that they categorically endorse the full $7.1-million proposal, saying the entire package of projects would directly and indirectly benefit 2.5 million women and girls and 2.9 million men and boys by teaching “the targeted poor their human and legal rights, together with successful negotiating techniques to obtain fairer shares of local wealth.”

Conservatives celebrate 5 years in power

By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 12 Comments

Tories turned out at the Hard Rock Cafe for a party in honour of staying in power for five years. (L-R) Val Day, Treasury Board President Stockwell Day, Laureen Harper.

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Labour Minister Lisa Raitt.

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Bev Oda is trying SO HARD

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, February 15, 2011 at 6:29 AM - 108 Comments

Like many of you, I have long been dismayed by the meagre entertainment value provided by the federal political scandals in our country.

The U.S. gets Wide Stance: The Larry Craig Story. The U.S. gets a shirtless Republican lothario. The U.S. gets members of Congress impugning gays but then turning out to be gay, or defending family values and then turning out to be adulterers, or claiming to be literate and then turning out to be Sarah Palin.

We get Bev Oda’s paperwork.

At first glance, this scandal doesn’t have a lot going for it. No money stolen. No abs revealed. No action-packed subplot about Aztec gold. And no one I care about involved. In fact, until just recently I was pretty sure that KAIROS was Continue…

Kenneth Mars. Funny? I Think So.

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 11:46 PM - 7 Comments

Kenneth Mars, who just died at the age of 75, played many roles on screen and in voice-over, but I’ll always think of him first and foremost as Franz Liebkind from The Producers, probably the most quotable character in a movie where almost every line is quotable. Amazingly, he was not the first choice for the part: Mel Brooks wanted the young Dustin Hoffman, who had first come to attention in New York for playing a German in an Off-Broadway play. Hoffman got the part in The Graduate (opposite Brooks’ wife Anne Bancroft) so Brooks got Mars, who had done some small theatre parts as well as TV parts, and was either about to or already had done the pilot for the sitcom He & She.

Hoffman was too young for the part of an ex-Nazi, but so was Mars, who was only a year older than Hoffman, though you’d never know how young he was from the completely convincing — yet hilarious — Nazi he played. As Mars himself said, the key to his performance is that you believed he was genuinely crazy and maybe even dangerous, so when he comes into the producers’ office and starts shooting, you believe he’s actually a threat.

Everyone has other favourite Mars roles. I’m fond of He & She just because the show was such a milestone in sitcom history (the flop that paved the way for many hits) and because I like the concept for the character he played — a “drop-in” neighbour who was a fireman in full regalia. Among his many voice-over roles I like his brief performance in Freakazoid!‘s “Candle Jack”, because that epi

What Bev Oda said

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 8:03 PM - 154 Comments

For the context to Ms. Oda’s statement in the House today, John McKay’s point of privilege in December is instructive.

On the specific matter of the signed recommendation from CIDA and the hand-scrawled addition to that recommendation of the word “not,” the document in question is reprinted here. When the president of CIDA, Margaret Biggs, testified before a parliamentary committee in December, she said that the “not” was not on the document when she signed it.

Ms. Oda said today that the “not” was added at her “direction.” But when Ms. Oda testified before that committee, she had the following exchange with Mr. McKay. Continue…

The Commons: This era of shouted fragments and empty sentences

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 5:59 PM - 43 Comments

The Scene. The starry-eyed and shiny new mayor of Calgary—he who is presently hailed as a new kind of political ideal—uses a lovely phrase to describe what he is trying to do: Politics in full sentences. The sentiment contained therein—less a matter of grammar than tone and spirit—seems as much about what politics should be as what it presently is.

As it is, we speak mostly in slogans. The art of political messaging has been so finely tuned that debate is essentially an exchange of sentence fragments—aggrandizing nouns and accusatory adjectives. Sentences and paragraphs exist only to support memorable phrases. Indeed, in relaying the extent of most debates, we needn’t even bother reprinting full sentences. Continue…