It’s time to make St. Patrick’s Day a national holiday

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Graham Hughes/CP

Holidays in Canada fall into three general categories. There are holidays that involve presents, holidays that involve candy and holidays that involve alcohol.

And judging from the evidence last week, St. Patrick’s Day has become this country’s most popular and widely celebrated day for raising a toast, far surpassing New Year’s Eve or Canada Day. In the minds of many Canadians, March 17 even appears to have replaced Easter as the true herald of a coming spring—and in ways that have little to do with the self-restraint of Lent. What should we make of this annual outbreak of Irishness?

Bar owners across the country report St. Patrick’s Day is now the most popular event on their calendar. “It’s the biggest one-day sales for us every year,” says Tania Richards, director of sales and marketing for Granville Entertainment, which runs three bars in Vancouver. Pub owner Grant Sanderson of Edmonton notes that “in the last five years it has gone from being a good day to being the best day in the pub business—it’s two or three times as big as New Year’s.” The reason is to be found in the length of time people spend celebrating. Richards observes that New Year’s events typically don’t begin until dinner time, while “St. Paddy’s is a flow of people all day long. It lasts 16 hours.” It’s become common to quit work at lunch to perfect one’s brogue on St. Patrick’s Day.

The same holds for students. Many university professors now debate the wisdom of holding classes on March 17, as attendance drops precipitously. This year herds of well-refreshed students were spotted wandering about in plastic green bowlers and green facepaint (and leaving behind bright-green messes) in many Ontario cities such as London, Waterloo and Peterborough. St. Patrick’s Day parties have become as reliable an indicator of spring on campus as short skirts and final exams.

Of course all this excitement has properly caught the attention of police as well. St. Patrick’s Day is now one of the most important days of the year for scheduled drunk-driving patrols.

How did all this happen?

History tells us the real Saint Patrick was likely born somewhere in Britain around 385. He was kidnapped by Irish pirates as a young man and brought to Ireland. He escaped, studied for the priesthood and eventually returned to organize the Church in Ireland. He died around 461, after a life of poverty and religious dedication. It hardly seems the raw material for a day of good cheer and green beer.

Nonetheless, several centuries of Irish immigration, and those immigrants’ well-earned reputation for conviviality, have turned St. Patrick into the patron saint of all. It probably doesn’t hurt that the middle of March also marks the coming end to a long winter for residents in most parts of Canada. The combination of melting snow and the opportunity to spend a day celebrating this fact has turned a once-obscure ethnic celebration into a rare unifying secular event that all Canadians seem to agree on—like Olympic hockey, only less stressful.

Montreal’s long-standing St. Patrick’s Day festivities nicely illustrate its broad crossover appeal. The annual parade, which dates back to 1824, appears as popular with French-speaking Montrealers and recent immigrants as with Anglos. It is a moment for all to enjoy, regardless of the shamrocks in their background.
Given that Canadians across the country have already voted with their feet, and mugs, to make St. Patrick’s Day more important than other existing public holidays, perhaps we should be making it official.

Many provinces have arbitrarily declared the third Monday in February to be a public holiday. It’s called Family Day in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Manitobans call it Louis Riel Day. Prince Edward Island has Islander Day. While these provinces seem eager to give their citizens a day to relax, February has little to recommend it by way of weather or relevance. So why not simply shift the date to March 17?

Official recognition of everyone’s inherent right to be Irish for one day a year would sanctify the fact many people already take the day off. Combining St. Patrick’s Day with March break would broaden its appeal away from drinking and encourage more family-friendly celebrations. It would also serve as recognition of Canada’s proud reputation as a nation of immigrants. And allow Canadians a glimmer of hope that spring is just around the corner.
They say that if you’re lucky enough to be Irish, you’re lucky enough. On St. Patrick’s Day, that ought to apply to everyone.

Policy alert

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 10:12 AM - 211 Comments

Michael Ignatieff promises student aid.

The Liberal leader’s proposed “learning passport” would provide tax-free grants of $4,000 — or $1,000 a year for four years — for students across Canada to attend college or university. Students from low-income families would qualify for as much as $6,500 over four years, or up to $1,500 a year. The money would be provided through existing registered education savings plans, or RESPs, but families would not be required to make contributions. The funds would be held until the student decides to go to school.

Laurier's limited vision

By John Geddes - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 9:57 AM - 19 Comments

Stephen Harper has been wrapping up his stump speeches with an allusion to Wilfrid Laurier’s famous prediction that the twentieth century would belong to Canada.

Harper goes on: “But even Laurier at his most optimistic could never have imagined what I saw as Prime Minister: Canada, among all the nations of the world, winning the most gold medals in a Winter Olympic Games ever.”

To be fair to Sir Wilfrid, he made his “it is Canada that shall fill the 20th century” remark in 1904, and died in 1919, five years before the first Winter Olympics were held until 1924, in Chamonix, France.

Stephen Harper and constitutional convention

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 9:48 AM - 54 Comments

Tom Flanagan, a former advisor to Mr. Harper, is asked for his opinion on the 2004 gambit.

Asked if Mr. Harper might have had a different motivation for sending the letter to Ms. Clarkson — one other than ensuring that she explored the option of Conservative-led minority if Martin’s government fell — Mr. Flanagan replied: “I can’t see what other point there would have been in writing the letter except to remind everybody that it was possible to change the government in that set of circumstances without an election.”

Meanwhile, John Geddes talks to Don Desserud, who finds Mr. Harper’s understanding of convention to be “odd.”

From the archives: "Nation? You can have it."

By John Geddes - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 8:44 PM - 8 Comments

I read my colleague Andrew Coyne’s impassioned, insightful “Is Canada a nation?” item, and remembered posting on closely related questions back in November 2006, just after Prime Minister Stephen Harper passed his motion on the nationhood of the Québécois. For what it’s worth, here it is:

The word nation does not have a very secure place in the rhetoric of Canadian patriotism, at least not as a label to be applied to the whole country. Arguably the most important early use of the word in Canadian political discourse came in Sir John A. Macdonald’s sage 1856 letter to William Chamberlin, an English Montréaler, on the need to respect the “nationality” of the French Canadians. “Treat them as a nation and they will act as a free people generally do—generously,” Macdonald famously wrote.

There can be no more favourable light than the warm glow of that quote in which to consider Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s motion in the House of Commons, easily passed on Monday, recognizing the Québécois as a nation within a united Canada.

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Hey look, someone in Canada still paying attention to the middle east

By Andrew Potter - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 8:34 PM - 7 Comments

Put that coalition down and chew on Terry Glavin for a bit:

We have to stop wasting time and energy asking ourselves stupid questions about the propriety of regime change, about whether a tyrant’s cruelties meet the threshold for the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, and about whether the fictional “Muslim world” will be upset if “we” intervene in “their” affairs. Whether it is Iran, Libya, Syria, or Yemen, our first questions must be: Who are our comrades? What do they want from us? How can we get it to them? The rest is noise.

Link.

"An odd (!) understanding" of how Parliament works

By John Geddes - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 8:29 PM - 68 Comments

As I did yesterday, I turn to Prof. Don Desserud, the University of New Brunswick expert on our parliamentary system, for insights into what is being said by Stephen Harper about that much-debated episode in 2004—you know, back when he was cooperating, but not coalition-conniving, with Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe.

This time, I asked Desserud about the prime minister’s fuller explanation today of what exactly he had in mind when he signed that joint letter to the governor-general with the NDP’s Layton and the Bloc’s Duceppe.

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Obama and the politics about Libya

By John Parisella - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 6:30 PM - 11 Comments

We all recall how the horrific events of 9/11 created a groundswell of support to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban. Support for overthrowing Iraq also became widespread largely because of the rumours—later proved false—that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ready to unleash on the United States. Since then, Americans have soured on these two seemingly endless conflicts. So we can understand that Americans were not in a rush to intervene when the Libyan crisis erupted.

The current military operation was bound to raise doubts on all sides of the political spectrum. The fact that President Obama must address the nation suggests that Americans are concerned and are in need of some coherent explanation. From the outset, the president seemed the reluctant warrior. Clearly, leading the U.S. to invade a third Muslim country in 10 years was not part of his foreign policy plan.

Obama was initially provided with some cover when rebel forces tried to overthrow Colonel Gadhafi themselves. But once Gadhafi began importing mercenaries, shooting civilians and unleashing his superior weapon advantage, the president was faced with a humanitarian crisis reminiscent of the Rwandan civil war. The pressure to intervene was mounting as other so-called democratic forces were rising elsewhere. Finally, the rebels themselves cried for help.

The preferred course of diplomacy, somewhat successful in the Egypt crisis, began to produce dividends in the nick of time. The UN Security Council delivered a resolution, the Arab League asked for a no fly zone and were willing to help, and European leadership led by France and England resulted in an operation (albeit with heavy U.S. involvement) that halted the potential humanitarian catastrophe. Now there is an indisputable no fly zone with NATO leading the operation. Meanwhile, the rebels are regaining ground and Gadhafi forces are on the defensive.

Unlike the Afghan and Iraq wars, a spirited debate is emerging about Obama’s course of action. Republicans have led the charge but their criticism seems focused on process. John McCain says Obama should have imposed a no fly zone sooner, but the diplomacy was not up to speed and this would have resulted in a third U.S. led invasion of a Muslim country. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates clearly stated: imposing a no fly zone is a military operation.

Other Republican criticism ranges from questioning the end game, to how the U.S. proceeds if Gadhafi is not defeated, to why Congress was not consulted before U.S. aircrafts began flying. These are legitimate questions. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have repeatedly said they want Gadhafi removed. What happens if he stays in power? Other Republicans like Senator Richard Lugar actually question whether it is in U.S. interests to be so involved. Meanwhile, presidential contenders have acted more like pundits criticizing the Obama style and character, rather than behaving like eventual policy makers.

President Obama does have a case in that his approach has avoided the costly unilateralism in Iraq, and the consensus among voters is supportive of an allied approach. It is in line with the Cairo speech calling for political reform in the Middle East and engaging in a multilateral action in support should the need arise. It appears the humanitarian crisis has been averted and the president can take some well deserved credit for it.

This weekend, Secretary Gates said Libya was not in the vital interests of the U.S. The humanitarian nature of the mission is consistently emphasized. As of now, there are no U.S. boots on the ground, which has always been an Obama objective. But as the conversation continues to unfold in America, events are occurring elsewhere in the Middle East. It is hard to predict the outcomes. The overriding question is: Is the Obama administration on the right side of history as the Middle East events develop?

Mugabe digs in his heels

By Patricia Treble - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 5:50 PM - 0 Comments

Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe is again tightening his grip on power, ahead of elections expected later this year. In recent weeks, the government, dominated by his ZANU-PF party, has arrested several leading politicians of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which was forced into an uneasy coalition with the ZANU-PF by neighbouring countries after its supporters were brutalized and murdered during the 2008 election. Six activists, including MDC’s Munyaradzi Gwisai, were released on bail last week, charged with treason for attending a lecture on the pro-democracy protests in Egypt.

No wonder Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC’s leader and current PM, warned last Friday that “dark and sinister forces have engaged in a hostile takeover of running the affairs of the country.” But Mugabe, 84, whose party coffers are enriched by diamonds smuggled out of his impoverished nation, clearly has no intention of ceding control. He’s pressing ahead with plans that require mining companies be majority owned by locals, and on Monday the president signed agreements with China’s vice-premier, Wang Qishan, that will pump nearly $600 million into the government.

Atlantis—in a swamp?

By Erica Alini - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 5:44 PM - 0 Comments

As killer waves wiped away entire towns on the coast of Japan, another city said to have been obliterated by a tsunami thousands of years ago may have surfaced for the first time on archaeological maps. A U.S.-led team of researchers, including three Canadians, says it has located the remains of fabled Atlantis, buried in marshlands in southern Spain. “This is the power of tsunamis—it can wipe out 60 miles [almost 100 km] inland, and that’s pretty much what we’re talking about,” said Richard Freund, a professor at the University of Hartford who led the effort to pinpoint the true location of the legendary city. His team used a combination of satellite imaging, digital mapping, underwater technology, and deep-ground radar to locate the site. Freund claims that the existence of ancient “memorial cities” in central Spain, supposedly built in Atlantis’s image by survivors of the tsunami, offers compelling evidence that what he has found is, in fact, the famous city-state of antiquity.

The only known mention of Atlantis comes from the Greek philosopher Plato, who described it as sitting on an island in front of the “Pillars of Hercules,” as the Straits of Gibraltar were known in the ancient world. That’s why archaeological searches have been focusing on the Mediterranean and Atlantic as the most likely sites.

So much for the age of electric vehicles

By Chris Sorensen - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 5:42 PM - 3 Comments

Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images

With oil prices above US$100 a barrel, it might seem like the age of the electric vehicle has finally dawned. But there remains little practical reason to buy one. Recently, some drivers of Nissan’s electric Leaf reported suddenly running out of juice despite gauges that suggested miles of motoring left on the battery.

Meanwhile, testers at Consumer Reports magazine suggested GM’s plug-in hybrid Volt can cost more to drive than Toyota’s hybrid Prius, despite being twice the price. There have also been complaints over Volt’s uneven cabin heating in cold temperatures and the strain it puts on the battery. Another big issue: finding a plug. Bill Ford, chairman of Ford Motor Co., has noted that most cars prior to the Model T were also electric. “This isn’t a new technology,” he said, adding that drivers of early electric vehicles had few places to charge them. And more than 100 years later? “We have the same issue.”

Netflix vs. the networks

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 5:42 PM - 0 Comments

Now that Netflix has driven video rental companies out of business, it’s going after the television networks. The online video-streaming company made a deal last week to produce its first original series, outbidding HBO and AMC for the rights to House of Cards, producer-star Kevin Spacey’s remake of an acclaimed British miniseries. Netflix reportedly won the rights to the show, featuring Spacey as an evil politician, by ordering 26 episodes up front without even making a pilot.

If the show succeeds, it could allow Netflix to displace cable TV: it doesn’t have the operating costs associated with a regular network, and instead of scheduling the show, it will simply release the episodes online, for people to sample whenever they want. Executives at Time-Warner, which owns HBO, were rattled enough that one of them ran to the Los Angeles Times denigrating Netflix’s chances: “It’s hard to see how that kind of economics can fit into a service that charges $8 or $10 a month, because the math doesn’t work.” Even if that’s true, Netflix may have no choice but to press ahead with its efforts; with Amazon and other companies starting their own streaming services, it can’t depend on other people’s movies and shows forever.

Go boldly

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 5:24 PM - 57 Comments

The Toronto Star makes its demands of the next five weeks.

A country as well-placed as Canada is now should not settle for short-term politicking and stunted ambitions. We deserve a government with the imagination and boldness to take steps now that will ensure we build on the advantages we enjoy, and share them more equitably.

The Globe editors have their own demands.

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 5:17 PM - 0 Comments

Eric Miller/Reuters

Old hat, new hat trick

It was a typical week at the office for Montreal Canadiens defenceman P.K. Subban. Last Thursday, he was hacked by an established NHL star, Vincent Lecavalier. On Friday he scored a goal against the New York Rangers and was challenged to a fight. On Saturday, he was disparaged on national TV by Don Cherry, and on Sunday he scored the first hat trick by a rookie defenceman in the 101-year history of les glorieux. The ebullient Subban is driving his opponents to distraction—not to mention a few prigs in the hockey media. But with each passing game, it’s becoming clearer that P.K.’s detractors will have to adjust to him rather than vice versa. As former Habs GM Bob Gainey put it: “Some of those people should just shut up and play against him.”

Hugo still boss

An autocrat’s work is never done. In between signing trade agreements with China, including a deal involving Venezuela’s state-run oil company, and an extended $4-billion line of credit for its capital of Caracas, Latin American strongman Hugo Chávez found time last week to accuse America of planning to sabotage his re-election bid in 2012, censure the West for its air strikes on Libya—and attack the boom in breast implants in his own country. He pointed the finger at doctors, who “convince some women that if they don’t have some big bosoms, they should feel bad.”

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This week: Good news, bad news

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 5:01 PM - 0 Comments

Good news

After three decades under one-party rule, Egypt held a free election Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

The outsiders

The annual “white pride” march by Calgary neo-Nazis was poorly attended, as about 15 black-clad skinheads turned out to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in their own fashion. The marchers were, as usual, outnumbered by 200 anti-racism demonstrators at a separate downtown event. Dwindling attendance suggests Calgary’s neo-Nazi colony might be succumbing to infighting and, with its leader in jail for uttering threats, legal troubles too.

Run to ground

After nine days at large, William Bicknell, the six-foot-six, 500-lb. convicted murderer, was recaptured by the RCMP in northwest Alberta. Bicknell, who beat a female crime confederate to death with a baseball bat in 2001, overpowered a lone escort during a day trip outside the Drumheller Institution on March 10. He was caught near the remote town of Sexsmith when a female hostage eluded him and phoned police.

If this be suicide

Conservative MPs in and around Quebec City faced pre-election questioning as the Tory government’s decision not to fund sports arena construction appeared increasingly non-negotiable. A group of MPs had set rumours flying last September by strutting theatrically in the uniform of the city’s departed Nordiques, but local hopes—along with those of arena-seekers in Edmonton and elsewhere—were dashed by a final declaration: no Ottawa dough for pros. Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume denounced the decision as “political suicide” for the province’s Conservative candidates. If so, they will have perished in a worthy cause.

Resurrecting the unheard

An Ottawa-born musicologist at the University of North Texas is reviving the hitherto-lost music of composers persecuted by the Nazis. Professor Timothy L. Jackson recovered scores buried in Germany by Paul Kletzki, a Jewish musician who fled in 1938; the first recording of Kletzki’s piano concerto was nominated for a Grammy this year. Jackson also led the rediscovery of Reinhard Oppel, an influential anti-Nazi composer who was forced to join the army at 62 and died in 1941. Oppel’s oeuvre was found in margarine boxes in a garden shed.

Bad news

Knut, the world famous polar bear, died at the Berlin Zoo last week. Tobias Schwarz/Reuters

Are wide lapels next

In a speech to steelworkers in Nanticoke, Ont., Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff took a ’70s line on foreign-investment reviews, suggesting that outside capital should face a “process that is transparent and penalties that have teeth,” including forced asset sales. “If they come to Canada,” Ignatieff said, “they have to play by Canadian rules.” With the government having wound back the clock by blocking BHP Billiton’s purchase of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, protectionism feels like the winner in an election that hasn’t happened.

No mere symbol?

A Calgary man was arrested in the Hoshiarpur district of Punjab for killing his wife with a kirpan, the ceremonial knife orthodox Sikh males are obligated to carry. Gurdial Singh, 57, was visiting India for his son’s wedding when he allegedly slit his wife’s throat during an argument over property. Police said Singh, who is said to have moved to Calgary from India about a year ago, injured another son with the kirpan before fleeing.

News for wildebeests

International institutions, including the World Bank and the German government, are desperate to stop Tanzania from building a highway through the northern tip of Serengeti National Park. Surveyors are already at work on the road, which zoologists say would disrupt the migration of herbivores that has made the wildlife preserve famous. Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete says the route is needed for economic development in poor villages near the park’s rim. The discussion thus has the unfortunate logic of a hostage-taking, but the protection of the Serengeti is worth almost any price.

Sweet and sour

Cocoa traders faced a standoff with Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, who controls the African republic despite losing elections last year. Traders hoping to pressure Gbagbo stopped exporting cocoa from Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer, in January. But the united front is threatened by fears that Gbagbo could seize or destroy cocoa stocks, and one Hong Kong-based trading firm has hinted that it may break ranks. Savour that next chocolate bar a little extra.

Bloc blocks Maclean's UPDATED

By Martin Patriquin - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 3:39 PM - 39 Comments

UPDATE: Gilles Duceppe flak Karine Sauvé just called, apologized, something-something misunderstanding, and all is well. I’m going to get my interview after all. Hallelujah, as Leonard would sing.

Elections are fun, yes? At least, they’re meant to be for us journalistic types, who live and die by the relatively pointless day-to-day piss ups, delightful photo ops (There’s Iggy in Montreal, juggling a bagel! There’s Harper in Brampton with some salami!)  and the talking points that elections entail.

Part of writing about elections, though, is actually gaining access to those who are electioneering—something the Bloc Québécois has apparently decided not to do when it comes to Maclean’s. Or have they? They don’t seem so sure themselves. Read on…

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Harper's version

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 3:17 PM - 88 Comments

Though it’s not reported exactly what question was put to him, Stephen Harper seems to have explained this morning what he meant when he asked Adrienne Clarkson in 2004 to consider her “options.”

“What was the option? The option was very clear. It’s the option we did. Which was as opposition leader I was seeking to put pressure on the government to influence its agenda without bringing it down, without defeating it and replacing it.”

Harper said that at the time, Martin was saying that any change in government policy, no matter how small, would be treated as a confidence measure and he would go to the governor general. “My position was if he did that the governor general should come to us. I would have told the governor general we in fact are not trying to bring the government down. All Mr. Martin has to do is sit down and talk with us. And I’m sure we will find a resolution.”

This, though it would seem to involve dabbling with the confidence convention, is similar to what Mr. Harper said when asked in 2004 about the letter to the governor general and whether he was interested in forming government. Except that at that time, he described the possibility of forming government as “extremely hypothetical.” Both Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe maintain Mr. Harper was interested in the possibility of forming government at the time, despite being one of the “losers” of the 2004 election.

Nonetheless, if this answers the first of those two questions for Mr. Harper, that leaves only the second in need of a response.

The Bruce Carson show

By Martin Patriquin with Aaron Wherry and Colby Cosh - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 3:13 PM - 23 Comments

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

On the chilly autumn evening of Sept. 27, 2010, a gaggle of current and former Conservatives gathered at Ottawa’s Hy’s Steakhouse, the clubby respite of choice for many politicians and their hangers-on. Chief among them: Jim Prentice, then the federal environment minister, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, former Conservative cabinet minister Monte Solberg and party strategist Geoff Norquay. The next day would be all business: Stelmach was set to share the stage with Quebec Premier Jean Charest at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce to deliver a steadfast defence of the Alberta oil sands development.

This night was social, and tongues loosened—a little too literally in one case, as far as some attendees were concerned. At one of the tables pulled together for the occasion sat Bruce Carson, long-time Parliament Hill fixture and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s one-time “indispensable right-hand man,” as Conservative insider Tom Flanagan recently described him. The 65-year-old was there with Michele McPherson, a 22-year-old former escort whom he had introduced as his girlfriend. It was jarring enough for several guests present that McPherson wasn’t dressed for the occasion—”the skirt a little too short and a little too tight,” said one person in attendance—or that Carson was dating a woman roughly the same age as Carson’s own daughter; worse still, the pair couldn’t keep their hands off each other throughout the meal. “People were taken aback” at the display, says the attendee.

Carson’s involvement with McPherson—as we know now—went beyond late-night snogfests in front of well-connected Conservatives. Throughout the last two weeks, APTN News has methodically uncovered the business relationship between the pair, and how Carson allegedly used his prime contacts within the government to try to lure government contracts to H20 Global Group, the Ottawa firm where both McPherson and her mother worked.

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Ignatieff starts filling in the blanks

By Paul Wells - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 3:09 PM - 157 Comments

Perhaps the most interesting news out of Michael Ignatieff’s news conference this morning at Toronto’s Royal York hotel came, not from the candidate, but from his tormentors in the press gallery: of perhaps a dozen questions, only one was about the Liberal leader’s plans, or lack thereof, for an anti-Conservative coalition after the next election. (I didn’t ask any questions at today’s presser. I’ll have some later in the week when he starts rolling out policy.) So it looks like Ignatieff won’t have to spend the next month talking about the coalition and nothing else.

Also interesting were the hints about what the next week holds. Ignatieff is going to roll out a detailed, costed policy proposal every day, starting with something on “learning” tomorrow and ending with the release of a full platform within a week. Few details yet, except this: “Here’s the key thing about it: This electoral program of the Liberal Party of Canada will cost less – it will cost less than the Conservative program. And we will not raise taxes on ordinary Canadian families. And you know why? Because we’ve said no to corporate tax giveaways.”

Of course the Liberals are saying no to corporate tax cuts that were already introduced, in January of this year, from 18% to 16.5%. As former Liberal finance critic John McCallum told reporters while Ignatieff was crowd-surfing in Chinatown, that’s a tax increase. One question facing voters this week is whether the policies Ignatieff will roll out will be worth the tax increase that will help pay for them.

Canada not doing enough to fight corruption: OECD

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 3:08 PM - 11 Comments

A new report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development says Canada isn’t doing enough to prosecute bribery. Only a single case of bribery has been prosecuted since the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act (CFPOA) was enacted in 1999, leading the OECD to believe some instances are going unpunished. It recommends expanding the scope of the CFPOA to cover all international businesses and barring those convicted of a crime from doing business with the government.

CTV News

Lois Lane Movie Plots We'd Like To See

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 2:51 PM - 2 Comments

I have no real thoughts on what kind of Lois Lane Amy Adams will be. I like Amy Adams, therefore the casting is basically fine, but without knowing exactly which version of Lois Lane will be in the movie, it’s hard to know which actress would be most appropriate for the part. It’s a notoriously difficult role to cast, anyway, no matter how they’re portraying her, and an even harder role to write. (Dana Delany was great as the voice of Lois in the Superman animated series, yet by the end of the show’s run Lois hardly even appeared at all.) In most versions of the story, she has no powers, tends to endanger herself recklessly, and frequently gets the worst of the “how can they not notice Clark Kent is Superman” snark.

Since I’m not that anxious to see what Zack Snyder will do with the material (and the studio may not be either, after seeing the box-office receipts for his latest movie) I’m going to dream instead that someone will make a Superman movie based on the most purely entertaining Superman material ever: “Lois Lane” and “Jimmy Olsen” covers from the Silver Age, the ones hyping stories with titles like “Jimmy Olsen, Freak!” The Olsen ones tend to be more far-out and provided a lot of the material for superdickery.com, but the Lois Lanes are my favourite time capsules: they are not only hilariously sexist, but they show just how completely the publishers turned Lois and Lana Lang into Betty and Veronica (I guess Lana was the “Betty” most of the time) in an attempt to crack the Archie and Patsy Walker markets. Hence:

And some others, starting after the jump:
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Near miss

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 2:47 PM - 11 Comments

Not only does this reckless, unnecessary, opportunistic election imperil everything you hold dear, it also deprived Bev Oda her place in the history books.

A parliamentary committee reviewing whether she had misled the House of Commons over a decision to reject an international funding request was unable to adopt its report before Friday’s non-confidence motion vote brought down the government. ”Bev Oda missed becoming a footnote in history by about a millimetre,” said Liberal MP John McKay.

Harper promises tax cut for families

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 1:46 PM - 21 Comments

Stephen Harper unveiled plans for a new tax break while campaigning in the Victoria-area riding of Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca on Monday that would allow parents with children under 18 to split their income. Letting married couples with children to split their income would allow a spouse in a higher tax bracket to shift income to their partner with lower earnings to reduce the rate of taxation. The catch is the cut won’t take effect until the deficit has been eliminated, which the Conservatives say won’t happen until 2015-2016. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff dismissed the pledge, saying it lacked credibility: “It’s like you come to a family and say, ‘I’ve got good news. First, I’m going to cut taxes for the biggest and most profitable corporations in the country and then maybe in five years, if you take a ticket and you’re patient and you vote for us a couple of times, [then] we’ll do something for you’.”

The Globe and Mail

Air Farce's Roger Abbott

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, March 28, 2011 at 1:45 PM - 5 Comments

Update: the CBC will be airing a tribute to Abbott tomorrow (Tuesday, March 29) at 9 p.m.

I was very sad to read about the death of Roger Abbott, one of the founding members of the Royal Canadian Air Farce. He was only 64, and had been suffering from leukemia (which he did not make public) for 14 years. Airfarce.com has a tribute to him, and the CBC has collected some of the reader comments about him and his work.

I recall hearing the Air Farce radio show a few times before the troupe became a regular presence on television, and thinking it was quite funny. Because of that, I thought their TV work didn’t always represent them fairly: like many radio comics, I felt like their work was both looser and sharper when it was unencumbered by props or make-up. (In Canada this goes as far back as Wayne and Shuster, whose work on CBC radio — as well as an LP containing four of their best routines — represented them better than their television performances.) Of course different performers adapted with different degrees of success.

Not that the TV version doesn’t deserve some credit too. It was 1992 when they went into TV full-time, in an era when it was assumed (as now) that Canadians don’t want to watch television about Canada, and that North American viewers in general didn’t want political humour. The TV Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes (launched the same year) were among the shows that helped disprove that, and put us a bit out in front of U.S. television, which — with the exception of the occasional Mark Russell special — was pretty reluctant to do political humour on a regular basis until Jon Stewart came along.

SCTV and Kids in the Hall may represent the best of Canadian sketch comedy, but they are very international in style; SCTV’s performers and writers didn’t have much interest in Canadian material and weren’t going to pretend to (Bob and Doug were, famously, introduced as a take-that to demands for more Canadian content: two caricatures of what Americans think Canadians are). Abbott and the other Air Farce members brought specific Canadian material — political jokes and, as he said in the above clip, jokes based on the differences between one Canadian region and another in this large country — to a national audience, and while they weren’t the only ones to do this, I think they helped take some of the “curse” off Canadian comedy that’s actually about Canada.