'The way in which this case has been handled… has been unfortunate'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 5:18 PM - 57 Comments

And so the long and twisted tale of how and why an organization called KAIROS came to have an application for government funding rejected has achieved an entirely new level of spectacle with Bev Oda standing before the House this afternoon to simultaneously apologize, accept responsibility and maintain her innocence.

Her statement, delivered shortly after Question Period, below. Continue…

Four charged in MLA expense scandal

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 3:07 PM - 9 Comments

One sitting and three former Nova Scotia MLAs have been slapped with a slew of charges ranging from fraud to breach of trust to theft for filing fraudulent expense claims. Former MLAs Richard Hurlburt, Russell MacKinnon, David Wilson and sitting independent MLA Trevor Zink are scheduled to appear in court on April 20th. “Frankly, I’m not just disappointed, I’m angry about it because we all have to live with the consequences,” said premier Darrell Dexter. “It just becomes much more difficult to bring people into public life.” The premier refused to comment on the individual MLAs, or say whether he thinks Zinck should resign his seat.

Halifax Chronicle-Herald

How Gandhi, MLK and Facebook inspired a revolution

By John Parisella - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 3:05 PM - 18 Comments

History buffs and proponents of nonviolent protest never fail to be inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King in their respective struggles against colonialism and prejudice. They mobilzed and through peaceful means overthrew an intolerable status quo and brought revolution and change to their countries. In the past week, we have been witnesses to the events in Egypt that brought down the 31-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Thousands of protesters peacefully stood their ground for 18 days until the inevitable happened. Gandhi and King would have approved.

Of course, the events were not entirely without violence as over 300 people were reportedly killed and countless others injured. But the violence was not the work of those clamoring for change; it came from repressive elements within the Mubarak regime. What this revolution illustrated was how the courage, the discipline and the will for freedom was able to triumph over tyranny and repression.

We do not know how this revolution will ultimately turn out. The military, while respected, has produced every ruler in Egypt since 1952. Now that it is in charge, it has suspended the constitution and ended the emergency measures of Mubarak. It has embarked on a process with members of the civil society that is expected to lead to a new constitution with free elections. The revolution, with no real identifiable charismatic leadership, represents a shocking and game changing development in the Arab world—not unlike the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is not surprising that other autocratic states in the region seem concerned and Israel, the only real functioning democracy in the area, is cautiously observing future developments.

In the United States, it appeared that events in Egypt and their extent were not anticipated. The American political class, however, showed reserve and restraint. President Obama and his team acted in a responsible and wise manner, supporting the goals of the revolution and nudging Mubarak out in a way that it remained an Egyptian moment and not one instigated by a meddling American administration. The Republican leadership on foreign policy matters—including John McCain, Lindsay Graham and John Boehner—has supported the way the White House conducted itself.

While the US government cannot be accused of interference, it is fair to say that American ingenuity and innovation played a pivotal role in the success of the protesters. Facebook and other social media such as Twitter are being attributed a major role in mobilizing the masses and maintaining the resistance. There may not have been a Gandhi or Martin Luther King leading the charge in the crowd , but there was technology that paved the way for the vision, the goals and the opportunity which led to a peaceful and victorious outcome . That in itself is sufficient enough to worry the other goverments in the region. Again, I assume Gandhi and King would have approved.

John Parisella is currently serving as Quebec’s delegate-general in New York City.

Watching Iran free itself

By Michael Petrou - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 2:29 PM - 7 Comments

Live updates here.

China hoards grain as food prices rise

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 2:27 PM - 16 Comments

A recent runup in food prices is frustrated by China’s tendency to hoard wheat, corn and rice, one economist warns. China’s hoarding is an “aggravating concern,” says Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. At present, China holds 41 per cent of the world’s stockpiles of primary grains, but consumes just 21 per cent of the global supply. Weinberg explains: “This is an important enough mismatch to affect our view of the world’s supply and demand balance for these critical crops.” China’s hoarding wouldn’t be of great concern, Weinberg says, if worldwide grain production were “normal”—but floods in Australia and dry weather in other grain producing regions has squeezed supply.

Ottawa Citizen

Hundreds of thousands turn out for anti-Berlusconi marches

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 2:19 PM - 3 Comments

Hundreds of thousands of Italians marched against the country’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in protests held across Italy on Sunday. The rallies, mobilized by women campaigners, were the biggest sign to date of the level of popular disgruntlement with Berlusconi’s scandal-ridden government. The success of the initiative, dubbed “If not now, when,” surprised organizers themselves, who said around one million people gathered in the piazzas of over 200 towns across Italy. The 74-year-old prime minister stands accused of paying for sex with an underage prostitute and abuse of power for trying to cover it up, claims he denies. On Tuesday a Milan judge will decide whether to proceed to trial.

Financial Times

China overtakes Japan, becomes world's no. 2 economy

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 2:17 PM - 3 Comments

Japan lost its spot as the world’s second-largest economy to China. Hit by an export slump, depressed auto sales, and falling cigarette purchases due to a new tobacco tax, the Japanese economy contracted in the last four months of 2010, ceding its 42-year reign as the world economy’s number 2 to the People’s Republic. Pressure is mounting on Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan to restart economic growth, but the government is struggling with persistent deflation, staggering public debt, and low approval ratings among Japanese voters.

Wall Street Journal

Vancouver hotel, fast food restaurants drenched after prank

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 2:15 PM - 5 Comments

The North Vancouver Hotel sustained more then $100,000 in damage after eight guests were tricked into flooding their rooms by knocking the pins out of fire sprinklers. Two unknown pranksters, calling themselves “Bobby” and “Michelle Green,” used an untraceable web service to phone the rooms and tell guests that a dangerous gas leak would ignite within minutes unless they released the pressure through their sprinklers. Similar calls were also made to several North Shore fast food restaurants. The incidents are similar to ones perpetrated by a Canadian web-group called PrankU or PrankNet, which has convinced hotel guests in the U.S. to consume their own waste and destroy rooms by setting off sprinklers, smashing walls, and throwing TVs out of windows.

Vancouver Sun

Immigration to Canada hits record high in 2010

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 2:03 PM - 26 Comments

Canada welcomed a record number of immigrants in 2010, according to a report by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. The report indicates that 280,636 new permanent residents were admitted—the highest reported number in over 50 years.”Canada’s post-recession economy demands a high level of economic immigration to keep our economy strong,” said Kenney. The immigration minister also noted that the swell of immigration will reduce wait times for other applicants and help meet labour market needs.

CTV News

Martin Amis finds someone new to insult

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 1:59 PM - 3 Comments

British novelist Martin Amis, renowned for his inability to play well with others, has once again annoyed a slice of his fellow authors. Children’s literature, he recently remarked on the BBC’s new book program Faulks on Fiction, requires an author to be “conscious of who you’re directing the story to.” That, he said, “is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable. I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write.” So far, an arguable point, but in true Amis fashion—this is the man who in 2009 claimed model-turned-memoirist Katie Price’s books sold because, “all we are really worshipping is two bags of silicone”—the author of Money and The Pregnant Widow went on to add his opinion of a kid-lit writer’s job requirement: “If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children’s book.”

The Guardian

Revolution. There’s an app for that.

By Brian D. Johnson - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 1:46 PM - 3 Comments

Courtresy Visit Films

In the early days of the Egyptian uprising, the most common fear dampening the jubilation in the streets of Cairo was that the revolt could meet the same ugly fate as the Iranian uprising of 2009. Now, with uncanny timing, a new documentary chronicles in vivid and harrowing detail just how Iran’s liberation movement was crushed in the wake of a fraudulent presidential election. The Green Wave, which opens Toronto’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival (Feb. 22 to March 4), is a new breed of documentary, one that is a product of what it portrays—a wave of digital democracy that has allowed protest to go viral in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt.

Directed by Iranian expatriate Ali Samadi Ahadi, the film is composed of myriad images from cameras and mobile phones in the thick of the action, intercut with an animated narrative in the style of a graphic novel, along with interviews of prominent Iranian exiles. In Iran, severely restricted access prevented the world media from delivering the kind of on-the-ground reportage we’ve seen from Egypt. So the filmmakers created a pair of fictional student protesters—composite characters drawn from hundreds of blog entries—and dramatized their stories with animation.

As a genre, the animated documentary was pioneered by two previous films about conflict in the Middle East, Persepolis (2007) and Waltz With Bashir (2008). Another innovative doc, Burma VJ, used a collage of clandestine amateur videos to chronicle Burma’s 2007 protests and the vicious crackdown that followed. Now, with its hybrid of vibrant graphics and ultra-vérité cellphone footage, The Green Wave combines those two techniques to produce yet another mutation of the ever-expanding documentary form.

Continue…

Girding for battle with the provinces

By John Geddes - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 1:35 PM - 20 Comments

Stephen Harper’s admirers and detractors argue over most things about him, but they agree he’s no pushover. To his fans, he’s admirably resolute. To his foes, plain mean. Yet on a key dimension of federal politics that has traditionally brought out the pugnacious side in prime ministers, Harper has seemed to be neither. Five years into the job, and his approach to the provinces has been mostly conflict-adverse and conciliatory. He’s bought peace by boosting transfer payments by billions, defused explosive issues, and avoided policy clashes. Only Newfoundland’s Danny Williams was a persistent source of friction, and he helped smooth the waters late last year by quitting.

But the Prime Minister’s unusual run of relative peace with the premiers might not last much longer. Among close watchers of federal-provincial relations, expectations that the two levels of government are headed for strife are nearly unanimous. The key reason: most of the major deals covering Ottawa’s transfer payments to the provinces are slated to expire in three years. The terms are so contentious, and the money so vital to the provinces, that talks to replace them must ramp up soon. “This could very possibly be the most intense and challenging period in federal-provincial relations since the Charlottetown and Meech Lake period,” says Matthew Mendelsohn, director of the University of Toronto’s Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, referring to the wrenching constitutional conflicts of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

If that sounds extreme, consider the stakes. The current relationship between Ottawa and the provinces rests on two fiscal arrangements, both of which left little reason for most premiers to do anything but smile broadly. In 2004, then-Liberal prime minister Paul Martin agreed to hike payments to the provinces to fund health care by $41 billion over 10 years. Harper’s 2007 budget injected another $39 billion over seven years into a wide range of provincial transfers, under terms particularly welcomed in Quebec and Ontario. “Spread money around,” says Mendelsohn. “It’s a long-standing federal approach to regional conflict.”

Continue…

Elwy Yost's Son Talks JUSTIFIED

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 1:16 PM - 6 Comments

“Justified,” now in its second season in the U.S. (Super Channel will have it later this month in Canada), is one of the most entertaining dramas on TV, and the best Elmore Leonard series since the lamented “Karen Sisco.” Graham Yost (Speed, Boomtown) has done a really good job with it, particularly when it comes to creating guest characters: many dramas have serious trouble creating one-shot or even recurring guests, once the backbone of the TV drama, because so much time is spent on the huge regular casts. But Justified has offered the kind of eccentric, memorable characters and guest actor showcases an action show ought to have, particularly the Alan Ruck character in “Long In the Tooth,” which is often seen as the episode where the show really came into its own.

Yost has an interview about the show with Maureen Ryan, where he mentions, among other things, that he basically had to darken up the show a little bit to FX’s John Landgraf would put it on the air. There are all kinds of stories that have floated around about HBO giving writers notes forcing them to make shows darker or more confusing, and it makes sense that FX would do that in a milder sort of way: if a cable network is very brand-conscious, they don’t want a show to seem too much like it could run on a regular network. Or, God forbid, USA.

Another thing Yost addresses is the thing every showrunner has to address in an interview at some point: standalones vs. arcs. Justified has settled into a fairly familiar pattern where the first part of the season consists more of standalone adventures and the rest of the season has fewer self-contained stories. You’ve seen this on everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Justice League Unlimited: the stories that need to be fully wrapped up in one episode are usually crowded into the first batch, followed by an almost soap-opera structure in another batch of episodes. This is a structure that works, when done right (i.e. not in Buffy season 7, which abandoned a pretty good batch of standalones for a pretty bad bunch of serialized stories), but there’s sometimes a tendency to assume that the first few standalone episodes are just filler until we can get to the “real” part of the season, the overarching plot. An example is Alan Sepinwall’s comment on Justified‘s first season:

After a terrific pilot episode, “Justified” stumbled a bit with too many disposable, standalone episodes in which Raylan dealt with bad guys totally unrelated to the season’s main plot. Some of those episodes were quite good, but overall there was a sense of marking time until the story arcs kicked in, and the season’s second half was unsurprisingly much stronger than its first.

Whether episodes work or not is a matter of taste, of course, but I don’t agree with the idea that an episode needs to be inextricably linked to the season’s main plot in order to be important. (The most important unit of TV is not the season but the individual episode, anyway; viewers may not always know which season something is from, or where a season begins and ends, but they always know that an hour-long episode is an hour long.) Once a show concentrates completely on an ongoing story, it tends to give short shrift to anything that doesn’t “matter” to that big story, which often happens to be the stuff that is most fun: guest characters, shifts in tone and structure from episode to episode, unusual plans to defeat the bad guys. Guest characters can even be the most moving, if their arcs within the one episode where they appear are handled properly; a guest can change, grow and die without as much fanfare or trouble as a regular. If a show concentrates too much on the arcs, that sometimes can mean we sit around waiting for something to happen; it also can mean that the episodes blur together too much in terms of style, but I’ve talked about that before.

(Update: See Alan Sepinwall’s reply in comments. It’s not that he objected to the presence of standalones but that most of them were, in his opinion, not as good as “Long in the Tooth” and tended to fall into a repetitive pattern, using the Elmore Leonard formula once a week instead of the once a year that his novels come out. This is indeed the biggest problem with making a good standalone — how to make one that isn’t exactly like the last one.)

Justified certainly seems to be moving more in the serial direction; as Yost tells Ryan, this season has a smaller number of standalone episodes before the serial story kicks in. But he hasn’t lost sight of the fun of a good standalone, and I hope he doesn’t as the series goes on:

I actually love doing stand-alone episodes because I love creating that really satisfying single hour. Because you know, you have two audiences. You’re got the people who are sampling and then you’ve got the people who get invested. So the people who get invested want the big story. Right? And the people who are sampling don’t want to feel lost.

The feeling was in the first season, the first seven or eight episodes needed to be more standalone while we built the framework for the serialized arc, then we could just go into that. Our feeling was with this season was that we could really, in terms of standalones, [do those in] the first four episodes. After that, everything is pretty much… I wouldn’t say [fully serialized], but there’ll be different facets [of the big story in each episode].

Which is great, but I don’t want to lose out on wondering what new creeps and eccentrics Timothy Olyphant can meet next week, and how next week will be different from this week. (I think Yost knows how to do a show without losing these things, so I’m not worried.) Some of the most interesting, exciting and moving parts of any TV show come not from the regulars, but from the star’s interaction with characters who don’t need to come back next week.

We've been misled about how to grieve

By Nicholas Köhler - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 1:15 PM - 14 Comments

Corbis; Getty; Redux

Many years ago, Nancy Moules, a pediatric oncology nurse who specializes in grief, got a call from a family member of one of her clients, a woman in her late 20s whose six-year-old daughter had died of leukemia a month or so earlier. The relative told Moules the woman was carrying an urn full of her daughter’s ashes everywhere she went; that if you met her for lunch she’d get a table for three; that, in a nutshell, the family was concerned about how she was coping. Sure enough, when Moules later met the client for lunch, they ate with the ashes at the table. “So, are you wondering why I invited you out?” Moules asked. “Oh no, I know,” the woman said. “Somebody phoned you, they’re worried about me. They think I’m crazy.” Moules probed further: “Do you think it’s crazy?” she asked. “No,” said the woman. “F–k them.

This is the last human, physical connection that I have to her and I’ll put her down when I’m ready to put her down.”

For Moules, who now lectures on grief as a nursing prof at the University of Calgary, the young mother’s story helps illustrate the sometimes paradoxical relationship many of us have with the emotions accompanying a loved one’s death. “There’s all these cultural expectations of grief that are contradictory,” she says. “One is, ‘Get over it, you should be over it by now!’ And the other is, ‘What’s wrong with you that you aren’t continuing to feel it? Didn’t you love the person?’ And we turn all those judgments inward.”

Continue…

Tunisians overwhelm Italy’s immigration system

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 1:08 PM - 2 Comments

The Italian government has appealed to the European Union for aid after an influx of about 6,000 Tunisians refugees arrived on Italian shores following the political upheaval in their homeland. Italy has declared a humanitarian crisis, and has asked the EU’s border enforcement agency, Frontex, to intervene. Meanwhile, Lady Catherine Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, is in Tunisia to discuss the issue with the country’s interim administration. The Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, has suggested that Italian police be sent to Tunisia to help stem the tide of migrants to Italy. Economic conditions in Tunisia remain dire, and many seek to escape the extreme poverty by fleeing to Europe, despite the hopefulness that came from revolutionary uprising, which resulted in President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s ouster.

Al Jazeera English

Protests continue in Egypt

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 12:07 PM - 1 Comment

Protestors continue to demonstrate in Egypt, even as Hosni Mubarak has stepped down from the presidency and the military council has dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution. Police joined hundreds of bank, transport and tourism workers in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to demand better pay, vowing to “honour the martyrs of the revolution,” even after the military had cleared protestors out of the square on Sunday. The tourism sector alone accounts for 6 per cent of Egypt’s GDP, and has been hit hard during the unrest throughout the country. The military council has urged all Egyptians to return to work after 18 days of mass protests sent Egypt into civil chaos, crippling its economy and resulting in the deaths of over 300 people. It has also committed to overseeing a peaceful transition in government for six months or until elections are called, and has said that the peace treaty with Israel will be kept.

BBC News

Ottawa to review TMX-LSE merger

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 12:05 PM - 0 Comments

Industry Minister Tony Clement is reviewing the “applicability” of the Canadian Investment Act to the proposed $7-billion merger between Canada’s TMX group and the London Stock Exchange after concerns were raised about foreign ownership of a Canadian asset. Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan questioned whether the merger would be in the province’s interests, calling the TMX a strategic asset for Canada that would be controlled by Middle Eastern powers if the deal went through. The ruler of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, would be the biggest shareholder of the new exchange. Brett Wilson, chair of Prairie Merchant and a judge on CBC’s Dragon’s Den, also expressed doubts about the merger. “I’m not sure if it’s a net benefit to Canada,” he said. Liberal finance critic John McCallum said Canada should amend the Investment Canada Act “to provide more transparency, enforceability and a clearer process for evaluating net benefit.” Although the federal Liberals have not yet taken an official position on the merger, they have pressed the Tories to define what strategic assets classify as a “net benefit” in the wake of the government’s overturning of the BHP Billiton’s takeover bid of the Saskatchewan-based Potash Corp.

The Globe and Mail

'We are all proud to share basic principles'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 11:42 AM - 91 Comments

Conservative backbencher Steven Blaney—with the public support of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney—has introduced a bill that would ban so-called “veiled voters.”

Blaney said it’s not an issue of religion. ”I think we are all proud to live in this country,” he said. “We are all proud to share basic principles… one of those basic principles is transparency through our democratic process.”

The government side has known since 2007—after some schooling from commissioner Marc Mayrand—that the current electoral law does not include an absolute demand on visual identification before voting. In 2009, the government abandoned plans to change that. At that time, Elections Canada noted that the apparent problem had not resulted in any apparent issues during the 2008 general election. Continue…

The first step is denial

By Erica Alini - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 11:13 AM - 4 Comments

Robin Hammond/PANOS;

Since taking office 2½ years ago, Russia’s drug czar Viktor Ivanov has been shuttling between Moscow, the United States and Europe, to make the case that NATO’s counter-narcotics approach in Afghanistan is “misguided” and the cause of a 40-fold increase in opium production that threatens to turn Russia into a nation of heroin addicts. Just over a year ago, Ivanov, director of Russia’s Federal Service for the Control of Narcotics, was in Washington telling an audience that the war in Afghanistan created the “perfect conditions for the rise of a global narco-state,” of which Russia is the “main victim.”

But Russian NGOs and health professionals are questioning whether Afghanistan is their country’s main drug problem, or just the government’s No. 1 scapegoat. Anya Sarang, president of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice, which advocates harm-reduction policies, says that most of the addicts her organization sees throughout the country have switched from heroin to homemade substances synthesized from opium-based pharmaceuticals like codeine tablets. She says these rough toxic mixes are behind the rise among narcotics users of thrombosis, a condition in which a clot develops in blood vessels, and osteonecrosis, a disease that leads to the breakdown of bones.

Continue…

T-shirt trouble

By Jasmine Budak - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 11:04 AM - 1 Comment

Reed Saxon/AP

Last week, American Apparel named a new chief financial officer, the latest in a string of short-lived executives tasked with saving the sinking clothing chain once heralded for its ethical manufacturing and trendy cotton basics. John Luttrell is a seasoned retail CFO who previously held posts at retailers Old Navy and Wet Seal Inc. But the veteran faces some extraordinary challenges at American Apparel. The shakeup comes one week after the company negotiated a break on loans with some of its lenders, narrowly fending off bankruptcy.

For the last two years, the L.A.-based firm has fallen far from its perch as retail’s edgy wunderkind. In July, it was dropped by its auditors over concerns about the reliability of its 2009 annual report, and later was nearly delisted from the New York Stock Exchange—all amid consistent quarterly losses. Company debts have mounted to more than $130 million. Luttrell’s job will be to cut costs and boost sales within AA’s current business model of fair wages and in-house manufacturing.

“I don’t think the new CFO can make any real change as long as the company founder is still there,” says David Ian Gray, principal with DIG360 Consulting in Vancouver, referring to Montreal-born Dov Charney. “[Luttrell] can maybe make some improvements, but not any deep change.” The infamous Charney still holds a majority stake in the company. His reputation as an exhibitionist who uses risqué ads to sell AA has long overshadowed his progressive labour and immigration ethics, which put his company on the map in 2004. “He’s definitely a detriment to a positive AA brand,” says Gray.

American Apparel’s near collapse has been blamed on a number of factors: Charney’s controversial persona, the costs of his fair-trade manufacturing model, hasty store expansion and a stagnant product line. Though stocks have climbed above penny territory with Luttrell’s appointment, analysts agree that Charney should step aside as CEO, while there’s still a slim chance of salvaging the brand.

Arcade Fire wins Grammy

By macleans.ca - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 10:47 AM - 0 Comments

Arcade Fire, the Montreal-based indie band, won the top award, Album of the Year, at the 53rd annual Grammy Awards. The group’s 2010 release was its most successful to date, landing it on many best-of lists and getting three separate Grammy nominations. The band’s success was so widely celebrated that even Kanye West, usually seen interrupting award shows to say who should have won, Tweeted that Arcade Fire’s victory gave him “hope” and that “I feel like we all won when something like this happens.” Arcade Fire’s own Twitter reaction on its collective Twitter account was simply: “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD. Thank you EVERYONE.”

LA Times

The Liberals should pick a side, any side

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 10:46 AM - 176 Comments

Ryan Remiorz/CP

The difference between them and the Conservatives, the Liberals would like you to know, is all about “values.” That is, it’s about “priorities.” I mean to say, it’s about “your Canada” versus “Stephen Harper’s Canada.” Indeed, the Liberals have three favourite examples of how the two parties’ values diverge, which they will rhyme off for you at the least provocation. In a phrase, they are: fighter jets, prison cells, and corporate tax cuts.

I refer, respectively, to the proposed purchase of 65 F-35 fighter jets at a cost of $9 billion, plus a projected $7 billion in maintenance costs over 25 years; the addition of 2,700 new prison beds, with the construction of several new jails planned for the longer term, at a cost of—well, no one seems to know, exactly; and a three percentage point cut in corporate tax rates, from the current rate of 18 per cent to 15 per cent by 2012, which the Liberals claim would cost $6 billion a year in foregone revenues.

There isn’t any doubt about where the Liberals would like you to think they stand on these. “Instead of spending $16 billion on untendered stealth fighters and…borrowing $6 billion more to give tax breaks to the largest corporations,” the Liberal website proclaims, “Liberals want to address the economic pressures facing Canadian families when it comes to family care, pensions, learning and jobs.”

Continue…

More Montreal Love

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 10:37 AM - 6 Comments

“I just want to say thank you, merci, to Montreal, Quebec, for taking us and giving us a home and place to be in a band.”

-Win Butler, after winning the Grammy Album of the Year (!) last night.

I liked Midnight Poutine’s take on the city that birthed Fire: “[W]e live in a city where you can live, work, play music, and have a half-decent bottle of wine at the end of the day.”

Image: Lucy Nicholson, Reuters

Why Laureen Harper might need a professional lobbyist

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 10:29 AM - 3 Comments

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

For the second year, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami presented A Taste of the Arctic, this time in  the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Canada. While there were long lineups for the muskox, halibut and shrimp stations, the one featuring seal meat was less popular. Evan Solomon, host of CBC’s Power & Politics, claimed the seal meat was delicious, if hard to taste because of the heavy sauce. ITK president Mary Simon arrived with her leg in a cast. (Ottawa is plagued with leg injuries: not only is Treasury Board President Stockwell Day in a cast, Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn injured his leg in a snowmobile accident.)

The keynote speaker for Taste of the Arctic was former governor general Michaëlle Jean, now a UNESCO special envoy to Haiti. This was Jean’s first official event since stepping down as GG. Jean, who has bought a house in Ottawa, is happy she was able to stay there for work as it allows her daughter to continue at her school and keep her same friends. Also in attendance was Nick Javor of Tim Hortons, who noted that the company recently opened three kiosks (offering a limited menu) in Nunavut.

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

The entertainment included Inuk singer Elisapie Isaac. During Isaac’s set, which closed the evening, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq starting rocking out on the dance floor and got people moving. Laureen Harper was so impressed with the singer she quipped she was going to “lobby” Heritage Minister James Moore to have Isaac perform for Canada Day on Parliament Hill. Mrs. Harper joked she might have to hire a professional lobbyist because last year she tried to recommend a band she saw in a bar but nothing happened.

How can I be cool if…

Last week, Liberal MP Massimo Pacetti received his new BlackBerry Torch, the latest handheld device to offer both a keypad and touch-screen option. Pacetti was told by the Commons telecommunications department he was the first MP to get the Torch, which made him feel pretty hip—until he was also told senators had been getting Torches since the end of 2010.

Liberal conspiracy theory

There was much grumbling by Liberals on the Hill when news hit that Rocco Rossi, the former national director of the Liberal party who helped recruit Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff into federal politics, was going to run provincially for Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives in Ontario. At the same time, federal Liberals say quietly that should the Ontario Liberals be defeated before the next federal election it would bode well for them because Ontario would be looking to balance provincial and federal power. Was Rossi’s move all part of some secret plan?

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

In the last election, Liberal MP Justin Trudeau took the riding of Papineau from Bloc MP Vivian Barbot. With election fever in the air, Barbot, who still works on the Hill  for her party, says she plans to go for round two against Trudeau, but only if there’s an election before she turns 70 on July 7.

Harper’s card to Helena

Officials in the PMO say that when they told Stephen Harper that Helena Guergis and Rahim Jaffer had a baby, the PM instructed his staff to send a card, which they did, sometime in December. (A recent item in Capital Diary had Jaffer reporting he did not get any congratulatory message from the PM.) Jaffer explains that when he and Helena collected items, including flowers from Green party Leader Elizabeth May from Guergis’s Hill office on Jan. 18 (the day Capital Diary went to press), there was no card from the PM, but that one arrived a few days later. It was much appreciated, he says. Apparently there are no hard feelings: his wife, he notes, has put out signals she would be willing to come back to the Conservative party if the PM invited her.