A day in the life of Michael Ignatieff's election campaign

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 5:45 PM - 0 Comments

Welcome to The Bull Meter

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 5:08 PM - 7 Comments

Every day, we’ll help you cut through the spin, the noise, and the, um, bull, you hear on the campaign trail by fact-checking those claims that make us all raise an eyebrow. To do so, our crack team will be using a rigourously established and soon-to-be world renowned—please don’t fact check this—Bull Scale to measure the truthfulness of these statements. The coveted “No Bull” status will be reserved only for those claims that are 100 per cent true, while the biggest whoppers will be called out using our patented five-bull, “Total Bull” designation.

Lying, equivocating, obfuscating politicians beware!

Heard something that doesn’t sound quite right? Send quotes from the campaign trail to macbullmeter@gmail.com and we’ll tell you just how much bull they contain.

Jack Layton, now in profile

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 4:04 PM - 6 Comments

The NDP objects to the performance of medical procedures in donut shops.

The party’s second new spot is here.

Conservative candidate accused of ageism

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 3:40 PM - 21 Comments

Conservative minister candidate Shelly Glover has drawn the ire of CARP, Canada’s seniors advocacy organization, after saying 68-year-old Liberal candidate Anita Neville is “passed her expiry date.” In an interview with Global News on Monday, Glover said that Neville’s riding of Winnipeg South Centre, which she has represented since 2000, was in need of “some fresh blood, we need some new people who have some new ideas and who are willing to stand up for their constituents.” Glover then made the comment about the Liberal candidate being passed her expiration date. In an official statement made by CARP vice-president Susan Eng, the organization asked Glover to retract her statement and apologize to her and Neville’s constituents. On Tuesday morning, Glover issued statement on the controversy, saying she was not referring to Neville’s age, merely her time as an MP, and criticizing Neville for voting against the Guaranteed Income Supplement, which she said benefits seniors directly.

The Globe and Mail

Duelling war rooms: the Ignatieff RESP plank

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 3:25 PM - 93 Comments

So Michael Ignatieff introduced his “learning passport” scheme this morning at Sheridan College. Very soon after, the Conservative campaign released its critique of Ignatieff’s idea. I sent their press release to the Liberal campaign. Won’t you join me as I watch them argue?

The Policy

$1,000 a year ($1,500 for low-income recipients) from the feds into tax-free savings accounts in the four years before a recipient leaves high school. To be used as payment toward college or university tuition.

The Conservative Response

Verbatim from their war room:

How many students will become ineligible for Canada Student Loans and Canada Student Grants because of Michael Ignatieff’s announcement? Continue…

What he was trying to say

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 3:19 PM - 32 Comments

Stephen Harper was apparently asked today about his comments in 1997 about a future “coalition or working alliance” among parties in Parliament.

“This clip was a clip of me discussing uniting the right,” Mr. Harper told reporters Tuesday. “I don’t think it was any secret we were trying to bring together the Progressive Conservatives, the Reform Alliance and the Democratic Representatives. We were very clear we were looking for mechanisms to bring us together – and we did create a merger as you know.”

He stressed: “I have never attempted to take office without winning an election. The other guys did.”

The TVO interview seems to have occurred shortly after Mr. Harper resigned in 1997 and, as Paul notes, the Democratic Representative Caucus wouldn’t come into existence for another four years. (When Mr. Harper spoke, five parties existed: the Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois, NDP and Reform.)

That aside, his specific comments in 1997 about the future arrangement of our parliamentary democracy seemed to exceed both a simple merger of the PCs and Reform and his contention now that only the party that wins the most seats can form government.

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Harper sought "co-opposition" in 2004: Flanagan

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 3:16 PM - 34 Comments

Tom Flanagan, the former Tory campaign manager and key advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said on Monday that the 2004 “co-opposition” arrangement between his former boss and the leaders of the NDP and Bloc Québécois was seen back then as a potential path to a Tory minority that would not need Canadians’ approval. While Flanagan insisted that the deal was a “perfectly legitimate exercise” that did not constitute a formal coalition, his comments do raise questions about Harper’s effort to brand the opposition parties as coalition-seekers. A 2004 letter addressed to Adrienne Clarkson and co-signed by Harper, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe urged the then Governor General to consider all options before allowing Liberal PM Paul Martin to call a general election. “We respectfully point out that the opposition parties, who together constitute a majority in the House, have been in close consultation,” read the letter. “We believe that, should a request for dissolution arise, this should give you cause, as constitutional practice has determined, to consult the opposition leaders and consider all of your options before exercising your constitutional authority.”

National Post

Policy alert

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 1:42 PM - 53 Comments

Jack Layton promises a cap on credit card rates.

The first policy announcement from the NDP campaign would allow the federal government to regulate credit card interest rates so that they could not be any higher than five points above the prime rate, which the Bank of Canada has currently set at three per cent. That would mean credit card companies could not charge more than eight per cent interest on the monthly bill — the same idea the NDP put forward on the 2008 campaign trail and then introduced in a private member’s bill last year.

NATO forces sink Libyan ship

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 1:31 PM - 7 Comments

NATO forces have destroyed a Libyan coast guard ship and several other smaller vessels that were reportedly launching missile attacks on merchant ships in the port of Misrata, NATO officials said on Tuesday. “The purpose of firing onto the vessel was to stop them from firing into the port, harming civilians and damaging other vessels,” says NATO Lt. Nathan Potter. The maritime skirmish is among the most direct confrontations that has occurred between NATO and pro-Gadhafi forces since Operation Odyssey Dawn began on March 19. Meanwhile, Russia, who abstained from voting on UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorizing coalition operations, has urged NATO not to bomb Libyan ground targets, saying the operation is overstepping its mandate to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and to protect civilians.

CBC News

Japanese government on “maximum alert”

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 1:27 PM - 5 Comments

The Japanese government has declared a state of “maximum alert” over the ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima plant, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced on Tuesday. Workers and technicians at the plant are struggling to repair the reactor cooling systems that were damaged following the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11. Plutonium has now been detected in the soil, and radioactive water is leaking outside the plant. Prime Minister Kan told the Japanese parliament that the situation “continues to be unpredictable,” and that the government “will tackle the problem while in a state of maximum alert.” China, South Korea and the United States say that have detected radioactive material in their airspace.

BBC News

Eating disorders affect older generation

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 1:25 PM - 0 Comments

Eating disorders are generally first diagnosed in young people, but a growing number of women now require treatment at midlife or even older, the New York Times reports. While some of these women had eating disorders earlier in life and relapsed, a significant minority are developing symptoms in middle age. Eating disorders disproportionately affect women, who outnumber men by 10 to 1. Patients of all ages tend to engage in destructive behaviour like binge eating, excessive exercise and laxative abuse, often triggered by a stressful transition. As women get older, they’re better at concealing the problem, and certain symptoms can be attributed to aging, which can make it more difficult to diagnose.

New York Times

The House: 'What is the problem with ambition in public life?'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 12:43 PM - 16 Comments

Rather than simply lament for how little attention is paid to the institution, I thought I’d ask some smart people if they had anything to say in response to my piece about the state of the House of Commons. Over the next little while, those responses will appear here. Next up, Alison Loat.

It seems that few people who become political leaders in this country said they actually wanted the job in the first place. Almost without exception, the MPs we spoke to described themselves as “outsiders” who were cajoled into running for office. Samara’s introductory report on these exit interviews is called “The Accidental Citizen?” because of how accidentally the MPs described their journeys to public life. We might as well have called it “The Reluctant Citizen.”

Most every MP to whom we spoke said they didn’t stand up and ask to run for office. Rather, it wasn’t until someone asked him or her to run that said they even considered it. We heard numerous stories from former MPs talking about how they turned down requests to run numerous times before finally agreeing – often begrudgingly – to run for Parliament.

Read on at Samara’s blog.

Read the rest of this series here.

Mitchel Raphael on Jason Kenney versus Justin Trudeau

By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 12:21 PM - 20 Comments

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

Why this MP needs a lot of coats

Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan keeps boxes of toothpaste at her constituency office. Because she represents Etobicoke North, one of the poorest ridings in the country, she has turned her office into a quasi drop-in centre for those in need. During the winter, she keeps a collection of donated coats because some constituents come jacket-less to her office in freezing temperatures. About 65 people a day come through. (Duncan keeps only one staffer in Ottawa so she can have more in Toronto.) One of those seeking help was particularly memorable: a woman named Linda came in with a crumpled brochure the MP had distributed, which said, “We can help.” Linda had been severely abused by her husband, was terminally ill, and had no official status in Canada. “You said you would help,” she said. Duncan asked Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to give her special status so she could receive palliative care and he did. When Duncan visited Linda in the hospital, she brought her a necklace: “I don’t think she had anything that sparkled in her life.” Linda said she had a gift in return and sang a song to her visitors. Before she died the nurses helped make a recording of her singing, and Duncan helped set up an endowment fund at a shelter in her memory.

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

Jason versus Justin

The next election will be a battle for the hearts of Canada’s ethnic communities. Things have heated up between Liberal immigration critic Justin Trudeau and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. Trudeau attacked Kenney for mixing partisan politics and government business with such things as award certificates. (In 2009, Ottawa Chinese restaurateur Yang Sheng got one “for creating an authentic multicultural dining experience.”) Then when Trudeau evoked his father’s name in question period, Kenney went for blood: “Mr. Speaker, let me tell members what his father did with immigration when we hit a recession, led by the Liberals, in the early 1980s. He slashed immigration to 80,000. Our government has maintained historically high immigration levels during the recession. In terms of social justice, his father’s government refused to apologize to Chinese Canadians for the head tax, to the Ukrainian Canadians for their internment, to Japanese Canadians for their internment, or for the shame of the Indian residential schools, unlike our Prime Minister.” Kenney has spent a lot of time working with ethnic communities who have, he has noted, “conservative values” but who vote Liberal. The minister has mastered the art of eating all sorts of cuisine, including getting out of difficult culinary situations by keeping a napkin in his pocket to help make some delicacies that don’t agree with his stomach discreetly disappear.

Power to 16-year-olds

NDP MP Don Davies recently introduced Bill C-634, a private member’s bill that would see the federal voting age lowered from 18 to 16. Davies says that with voter turnout getting more dismal, a “get them while they are young” approach will hopefully work. Davies notes his main rationale for lowering the voting age is that 16-year-olds work and pay taxes in most provinces. In some, he says, it is even lower. Davies says he took as his inspiration the famous American Revolution phrase: “no taxation without representation.” It’s an idea that has been tried before in Parliament, but Davies hopes this time it will see success.

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

Layton, Chow and the election

Last week pundits were mixed about the chances of an election. On CBC’s The National, the Toronto Star‘s Chantal Hébert thought yes, while Andrew Coyne of Maclean’s said no way. The panellists agreed, though, that Jack Layton was skilled at keeping people guessing which way his party would go. Maybe Layton’s wife provided a clue. Toronto MP Olivia Chow secured her campaign office last week.

RIM’s secret weapon :-)

By Chris Sorensen - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 12:13 PM - 6 Comments

Photograph by Jessica Darmanin

It’s a balmy March afternoon in Toronto and Emma Brun-Hayne is lounging with two friends in Yonge-Dundas Square, the city’s ad-plastered shrine to commercialism. She talks loudly over the din of a nearby street performer’s drum solo while her turquoise-coloured fingernail traces the touchscreen of her new BlackBerry Torch smartphone, in constant search of updates from friends. While teenagers are known for their dramatics, one can’t help but take Brun-Hayne, 19, at her word when she professes her love for the wireless device. “Without my BlackBerry,” she says, “my life would be over.”

In the age of the iPhone and a host of Google-powered phones with cool names like Galaxy and Nexus One, it might seem unusual for someone like Brun-Hayne to be so over the moon about a BlackBerry. After all, it’s the same wireless device that an army of Bay Street bankers and lawyers have clipped to their hips just a few blocks away. But what’s good for the suits—a no-nonsense keyboard suitable for typing corporate emails—also happens to be just the thing for teens’ and tweens’ favourite mobile pastime: sending text messages. Thousands of them.

Or, in the case of BlackBerry, instant messages. There’s a difference. Research In Motion Ltd. originally developed BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, so employees could chat in real time, but it has since morphed into a powerful social networking tool. And some observers argue the feature, despite having roots in 1990s desktop chat tools like ICQ and MSN Messenger, may actually hold the key to RIM’s future success as it fights an increasingly pitched battle with rivals Apple Inc. and Google Inc. “As BBM goes, so goes RIM,” says Kevin Restivo, a senior analyst at research firm IDC Canada. “I’d argue it’s as important to RIM’s future as wireless email, which is, of course, the ‘killer app’ RIM used to become a tier-one supplier of smartphones.”
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Fukushima Daiichi's radioactive legacy

By Jason Kirby - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 12:01 PM - 2 Comments

The Asahi Shimbun/Getty IMages

They’ve been called the Fukushima 50, as well as Japan’s “nuclear samurai.” We don’t know their names, nor their faces. Yet every minute since the twin disasters of a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and nine-metre tsunami rocked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, they have stood as the last line of defence against a full-blown catastrophe. A lone dispatch posted by one of the workers online gave a hint of the terror they face: “Everyone at the power plant is battling on, without running away,” the worker, an employee of Tokyo Electric Power Company, wrote on her blog. “There are people working to protect all of you, even in exchange for their own lives.”

But while the world’s attention is focused on the plight of the workers and the immediate threat from the four mangled reactors at Fukushima, only now is the full scale of what’s occurred sinking in. As the fight to cool the reactors and spent fuel pools drags from days into weeks, it’s clear this crisis won’t come to a tidy end. There will be no definitive “mission accomplished” moment.

History can attest to that. After the No. 2 reactor at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant partially melted down in 1979, it took three years before officials could finally peek inside the superheated core with a tiny camera to survey the damage, and another eight years to safely remove and store its contaminated entrails. When the reactor at Chernobyl exploded in 1986 and sent a radioactive plume across much of Eastern Europe, 20 years passed before the World Health Organization was able to give a full reckoning of the human toll. To this day a 30-km exclusion zone surrounds the plant, an area in which people are legally prevented from living, though some original residents have returned.

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How far can he go?

By Stephanie Findlay - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 1 Comment

Buda Mendes/GETTY IMAGES

Can Recep Tayyip Erdogˇan win Turkey’s upcoming parliamentary elections this June? Just months before the election, Erdogˇan , the leader of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party, a moderate Islamist faction, is campaigning hard. And though it’s his eighth year in power, it’s likely the incumbent prime minister will be victorious yet again.

In Erdogˇan’s favour, the Turkish economy—dubbed the “Anatolian Tiger”—remains strong. The IMF predicts that it will grow between four and five per cent in the next year. But there are trouble signs, A March 7 report by Moody’s said that the Turkish economy has “substantial external vulnerabilities, including a large current account deficit.” Earlier this February, the IMF said Turkey has become dangerously vulnerable to “excessive domestic demand and volatile short-term capital flows.” Still, given the turmoil in Arab states, Turkey and its thriving free-market economy have emerged as a poster child in the tumultuous Muslim world.

But while Erdogˇan may be popular at home, he’s been angering others abroad. Last month, in a bid to stir up nationalist sentiment among voting Turks in Germany, he soured his relationship with Berlin when he told a 10,000-strong crowd in Düsseldorf, “Nobody will be able to tear us away from our culture. Our children must learn German, but they must learn Turkish first.” (Germany is effectively the fourth largest Turkish electoral district, behind Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir; between 1.1 million and 1.3 million Turks live there but are eligible to vote in the elections.) It was not the first time Erdogˇan  has ruffled foreign feathers: three years ago, in Cologne, he declared that assimilation was a “crime against humanity”—irking Germans who say that his words work against integration efforts in Germany and are counter-productive.

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Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination Of Ronald Reagan

By Peter Shawn Taylor - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

This past February marked the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. The occasion was marked by numerous tributes to his legacy as one of America’s most popular and respected presidents. But what if he never had the chance to earn that reputation?

Two months into his first term, on March 30, 1981, Reagan was shot in the lung by deranged loner John Hinckley Jr. while exiting the Washington Hilton. It is a moment well remembered from contemporary news coverage. But Wilber manages to provide a wealth of fresh information on that traumatic event. Chief among the new disclosures is how close Reagan came to dying that day. If not for a split-second decision by Secret Service agent Jerry Parr to change the destination of Reagan’s limousine after the shooting from the White House to the nearest hospital, the president almost certainly would have died. He lost almost half his blood after the shooting and, according to doctors who treated him, even a five-minute delay could have been fatal.

Wilber seems to have interviewed everyone with a story to tell about the assassination attempt and provides efficient sketches of all the major players. But he never lets his focus stray from that single day’s actions. The result is a book that’s taut and well-paced like a thriller, yet still yields numerous small facts and details both fascinating and amusing.

Among the book’s many gems are its sketches of the wild confusion at the hospital following the shooting. As doctors were fighting to save Reagan’s life, Secret Service and FBI agents were fighting over the president’s nuclear weapons launch-code authorization card. Before he is put under anaesthetic, Reagan manages to quip, “I hope you are all Republicans.” And in the operating room, the Secret Service was clearly out of its comfort zone. Parr put his green hospital scrubs on backwards while another agent took off his shoes and slipped the surgical booties over his bare feet. It’s a lively read, 30 years after the fact.

Wootton Bassett goes royal

By Patricia Treble - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Matt Cardy/GETTY Images;

For four years the people of Wootton Bassett, a town deep in the English countryside, have played a solemn role in Britain’s war life. Every time a serviceman is killed in Afghanistan or Iraq, his or her body is returned to the nearby base of RAF Lyneham and then driven slowly through the heart of the Wiltshire town. There, hundreds and often thousands of residents have stood silently as the cortège passes by on its way to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. (Before 2007, the repatriations occurred at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, and the route to the hospital skipped all the local towns.)

The tradition so touched Britain that last week Queen Elizabeth II did something no monarch had done in more than a century: she gave permission for the ancient town to add “Royal” to its name. It is a bittersweet recognition. In September, RAF Lyneham will shut down, and the repatriations will return to Brize Norton. It is now up to Oxfordshire to plan a route that continues the tradition that Royal Wootton Bassett started.

Gadhafi 'will destroy the Libyan people'

By Ruth Sherlock in Benghazi - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 5 Comments

Suhaib Salem/Reuters

Saturday night, rebel-held Benghazi shook with explosions from the air strikes and artillery of pro-Gadhafi forces. Homes on the city outskirts crumbled under the shelling. As plumes of smoke rose into the air and Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s tanks advanced, thousands fled eastward in fear for their lives. “Do we have to wait until Gadhafi kills us all before the world acts? We are very disappointed,” said Adel Mansoura, an air traffic controller escaping with his family. “When we heard the UN resolution, we were very happy and thought we had our freedom, but now we have been left on our own to the killers.”

Almost on cue, coalition fighter jets buzzed the road, firing missiles at Gadhafi’s forces. “If they had delayed by just six more hours, there would have been a massacre,” said Benghazi resident Munir Abdul Rahim, 42. “He came to the city with strong weapons—he was going to destroy the whole of Benghazi. His mandate is to kill the whole of Benghazi: men, women and children,” added Mounir el Adawan, 44, who had sat shuttered in his home. “These are the Gadhafi rules: to rule and control you, or to kill you.”

For now, Benghazi is once again in rebel hands. Outside the coffee shop on the city promenade, elderly men sit in the sunshine drinking cappuccinos and discussing politics. “Today is okay,” says Khaled Feitour, 44. “Now Gadhafi has forgotten Benghazi. He is frightened of the coalition forces. If he attacks, they will attack him. I don’t think he can come back.” There is a sense of relief and gratitude among the residents. “God and the French air force have saved us,” is the phrase repeated across town.

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When I Am Playing With My Cat, How Do I Know That She Is Not Playing With Me? Montaigne And Being In Touch With Life

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Michel de Montaigne’s Essays (a novel literary word in his day—it was his own genius that turned his “tests” or “trials” into an enduring genre) forms a trinity of Renaissance literary achievement with Shakespeare’s plays and Cervantes’s Don Quixote. The non-fiction Essays, first published in 1580, has always been the least known of the trio, but the skeptical and humane French nobleman has always had his admirers, and Frampton’s learned, subtle, and engaging book shows why.

On his 38th birthday in 1571, Montaigne resigned his public offices in a France being torn apart by cruel religious wars, retired to “the sweet retreat” of his well-stocked library, first carving into its ceiling a quotation from the Roman poet Lucretius—”There is no new pleasure to be gained by living longer”—and essentially composed himself for his inevitable, and presumably on-rushing, end. So far, Montaigne was in perfect accord with the prevailing doctrine of Christian stoicism—this world as a vale of tears, a place the soul longs to leave. But then he began to think. And to write, about an astonishing variety of subjects: whether his cat indulged him as much as he did her when they played; what he knew and how he knew it; that he was a Catholic and his neighbour a Protestant primarily because they were born to it; that torture brought out the desired confession more readily than the actual truth; that we owe each other as much trust, tolerance and fellow-feeling as we can muster.

At some later time—he died in 1592—Montaigne scratched out Lucretius’s words; he had moved, Frampton writes, from a philosophy of death to a philosophy of life. And that may well explain the current resurgence of interest in the Essays, which are never more pertinent than when the times echo Montaigne’s own fanaticism-haunted society.

Facing off over tourism

By Cathy Gulli - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 11:55 AM - 1 Comment

There’s an amusing controversy brewing in Nova Scotia, where Minister of Tourism Percy Paris devised a creative way of promoting the province: by starring in a $1.4-million TV ad. During the one-minute spot, the NDP MLA says, “My Nova Scotia is all about wonderful people, warm welcomes and friendly smiles.”

But since the commercial first aired last week, opposition MLAs have criticized Paris for flagrant self-promotion. “This is about the politician, this is about the NDP,” said Chris d’Entre­mont, the Conservative house leader, in the Chronicle-Herald. “This is not about promoting Nova Scotia tourism.” And Tory MLA Allan MacMaster announced plans to introduce legislation banning politicians from appearing in government ads.

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Think tank rankings prove to be controversial

By Peter Shawn Taylor - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 11:55 AM - 2 Comments

There are rankings for universities, safest cities, college sports teams, healthiest countries and nicest places to visit. Now, policy thinkers have their own rankings. And like almost all of the other lists, it’s proving to be controversial.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Society Program recently released a ranking of the leading policy organizations from among the 6,500 think tanks worldwide. While U.S. think tanks dominate the list—the Washington-based Brookings Institution tops the rankings—it has some significant Canadian representation. Ranked 25th in the world and first among Canadian think tanks is the free-market-oriented Fraser Institute. A notable showing was also earned by the Centre for International Governance Innovation, based in Waterloo, Ont., and backed by Research in Motion’s Jim Balsillie, which came 32nd on a separate list that excluded U.S. think tanks.

But there are some equally significant Canadian omissions. Toronto’s C.D. Howe Institute is generally recognized as the preferred outlet for research by Canada’s top academics and boasts an impressive record, particularly in monetary policy, taxation and free trade. And yet, it isn’t anywhere on the lists. “We weren’t aware of this survey,” says William Robson, C.D. Howe’s president and CEO. “But I think we can make a pretty good case for being influential.” Also missing is the Conference Board of Canada, the country’s largest think tank, and the widely cited, left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. James McGann, director of the ranking project, admits that the list—which is determined by a panel of experts who sift through nominations—is still a work in progress, and is planning to tweak it next year in ways that could result in greater Canadian representation.

Betting big on shale gas

By Tom Henheffer - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 11:37 AM - 9 Comments

The Quebec government’s environmental worries have ground to a halt the drills driving shale gas development. But in neighbouring New Brunswick, the lucrative industry is booming with full provincial support.

Earlier this month, Quebec’s environment watchdog published a report recommending a shut-down of shale gas wells in the province until more research into their ecological impact can be conducted. Pierre Arcand, the province’s environment minister, announced a moratorium within minutes of the release. But Bruce Northrup, Arcand’s counterpart in New Brunswick, quickly followed the news by telling reporters that his government would not be enacting any similar restrictions. “We’ve been very clear since day one,” he said. “We’re not putting a moratorium on.”

This stance has angered environmental groups, such as the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, which have been quick to note that drilling in the United States has led to chemical spills and natural gas in drinking water. They say New Brunswick’s industry—which has seen $374-million worth of investment since the province’s natural gas reserves were discovered in 2000, and which could one day produce $225 million in annual royalties—must be halted to give the government time to beef up its regulations.

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Time and tide wait for Mad Men

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 11:21 AM - 10 Comments

The latest twist in the negotiations over the long-delayed fifth season of Mad Men is that most of the issues between the network and studio have been worked out, but the deal has now gotten stuck over advertising and budgeting. The network and the studio want to cut the show’s budget by reducing the size of the cast, and also incorporate more commercials through strategic product placement and, most controversially, a shorter running time (which might also reduce the budget a little). Matt Weiner, a man not known for being laid-back in his dealings with the network, is not taking this lightly. But neither is the network: They’ve announced that they will be doing a fifth season of the show in early 2012, many months after it was originally supposed to come back. They don’t have a contract with Weiner yet, so this is essentially the network saying that the wacky Draper antics are coming back with or without him.

Two years ago the network also wanted to cut the running time of Mad Men, which now runs about 48 minutes per episode — in other words, the length of a TV episode from the ’80s, but without all the stock footage and long shots of people driving cars. Though the network pulled a similar stunt, threatening to go on without him, Weiner stood his ground and got the network to accommodate the longer running times. This time he’s doing a similar thing, holding out to do the show without length or budget cuts, and hoping that the network will back down again. As a fan of long running times for episodes who is frustrated by the ever-shorter amounts of time broadcast and basic-cable shows have to tell a story, I salute him.

Will the network back down this time, though? Mad Men is more popular now than it was then, but AMC is also a more successful network now. Weiner was negotiating from strength two years ago because his show almost single-handedly created his network’s new brand, and because they couldn’t just fire him and do the show without him. (They’ve done that to other shows, as have other networks, but Weiner has made himself famous enough and essential enough to Mad Men‘s reputation that the network would instantly lose all its prestige if they went ahead without him.) He’s still in a strong position because he knows, and AMC knows, that any other network would be happy to have him now. But AMC could argue now that Mad Men is not their biggest hit, let alone the biggest hit on basic cable, and the longer its fifth season is delayed, the more the network can claim it doesn’t really need Weiner.

I still think the fifth season will probably be done on Weiner’s terms, but it doesn’t seem as certain as it did two years ago. The whole “creator as god” meme, which prestige networks depended on in the Sopranos era, seems to be fading away just a little bit. Not every prestige network is like Showtime, where creators seem to be virtually anonymous or submerged by the overall brand of the network. But even HBO creators don’t get as much ink as they used to, and networks are increasingly going for properties that reduce the influence of the showrunner a little bit, like adaptations.

Look at AMC’s recent shows: one show where they fired the creator and replaced him with someone more pliable (Rubicon), an adaptation of a pre-existing property (The Walking Dead) and a remake of a European show (The Killing). Yes, showrunners are still important to them, and producers still want to bring them ideas. But they no longer depend mostly on attracting veteran TV writers with the great ideas they can’t sell to regular networks, like Weiner with Mad Men or Vince Gilligan with Breaking Bad. If they do a fifth season without Weiner and lose their reputation as the place for showrunners to have absolute freedom, then that doesn’t hurt them much any more. At least it doesn’t hurt them as much as letting Mad Men fall off the schedule.

The budget and commercial issues also offer another reminder of the difficulty basic cable networks have in the current environment. They’ve already proven that they can compete with pay TV creatively or surpass it. But they don’t have as much money as networks that get their viewers to pay them directly. This leads to cost-cutting, shorter running times, shows that have to be canceled even though the network likes them (most recently Lights Out on FX). It also means a basic cable network can’t bombard us with promotion as much as the big pay-TV networks do. I’m skeptical that promotion was what did in the recent flops on FX and AMC, but look over at Showtime and you’ll see a network with an incredible promotion machine. So-so shows, but tons of promotion.

Finally, I couldn’t begin to guess how the delay will affect the revival of How To Succeed In Business With Really Trying with Daniel Radcliffe, which was clearly mounted as a response to Mad Men mania (from the same director who brought a Mad Men vibe to a revival of Promises, Promises) and which normally would have been a couple of months into its run when Mad Men started back up.