Anatomy of a Twitter smackdown

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 4:51 PM - 114 Comments

Earlier this morning, National Campaign Chairman for the Conservative Party Guy Giorno questioned a quote attributed to Stephen Harper in a Liberal attack ad. The quote read, “It’s past time the feds scrapped the Canada Health Act,” which appeared in an August 26, 2010 article in the Globe and Mail. Giorno pointed to David Somerville as the source of the quote, which CBC reporter Laura Payton later verified by digging up the source document: a June 1997 issue of Bulldog. The following is a selected timeline of the tweets that unfolded between dueling war rooms and fact-hungry reporters.

http://twitter.com/#!/cpc_giorno/status/59982830750539776

http://twitter.com/#!/cpc_giorno/status/59994441963941888

http://twitter.com/#!/cpc_giorno/status/59999069505986560

http://twitter.com/#!/laura_payton/status/59999232425332736

http://twitter.com/#!/liberal_wire/status/60009793695387649

http://twitter.com/#!/cpc_giorno/status/60017430621204481

http://twitter.com/#!/cpc_giorno/status/60016344015450113

http://twitter.com/#!/CBCTerry/status/60015164543614976

http://twitter.com/#!/cpc_giorno/status/60016129397108737

http://twitter.com/#!/liberal_wire/status/60016145389977600

http://twitter.com/#!/jasonlietaer/status/60016759058604032

http://twitter.com/#!/laura_payton/status/60031174394912768

http://twitter.com/#!/kady/status/60033226424586240

http://twitter.com/#!/wicary/status/60033695192584192

http://twitter.com/#!/cpc_giorno/status/60048484665004032

The battle between Obama and Ryan

By John Parisella - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 4:18 PM - 28 Comments

Outside of the rhetoric and the partisanship, it is fair to say that the debate about the deficit and the debt is shaping up as a classic one over the role of government and the kind of country Americans want to build for their children. On the one side, Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has been rightly commended for his audacity and courage to put his proposals forward at great risk. And, on the other, President Obama has finally made it clear where he stands and where he wants to take the country.

Both men acknowledge the need for important and drastic cuts in spending. They both recognize that the current path is unsustainable. The deficit is right now hovering at about 10 per cent of GDP and the debt is over 90% of GDP. Where Ryan and Obama differ is on the solutions. Ryan wants an overhaul of major entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, and wants to repeal Obama’s healthcare reform. The Bush tax cuts would become permanent under Ryan’s plan, which also calls for a reform of the tax code.

Obama’s approach keeps the major entitlement programs intact, but puts in place mechanisms to produce operational cuts. Elsewhere, Obama is promising to eliminate the Bush tax cuts on those earning over $250,000, calls for important cuts to defense spending, and also proposes to reform the tax code. Obama has made a compelling case for the kind of country he believes Americans want—compassionate and fair. In so doing, he may have re-energized his supporters who have found him far too compromising of late.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of six senators is working on a compromise solution. Its work will be inspired by the compromise spirit that prevented last week’s government shutdown, the contrasting Obama/Ryan visions, and the conclusions of the president’s debt and deficit commission led by former chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former senator Alan Simpson. This will all be added to the mix just as the Republican presidential nomination process kicks in.

The initial reactions seem to pit right against left, red against blue, small against big, and rich against less rich (i.e.the middle class). Media pundits reflect these assessments. It is highly likely that the battle lines are now drawn for the debt ceiling debate in the coming weeks, the 2011-2012 budget negotiations between the White House and the Republican-controlled House, and the 2012 presidential election.

As matters stand, Obama’s approach seems to have more potential with the electorate, which generally favours the longstanding entitlement programs. Ryan’s desire to make the Bush tax cuts on the rich permanent and to turn Medicare into a voucher program, opening the way for private insurers, makes it more daring but far more controversial and less voter-friendly.

The Republicans in the House have endorsed Ryan’s approach,  which will place an obligation on the GOP presidential challenger in 2012 ( not easy if your name is Mitt Romney and you passed a health care reform bill similar to Obama’s as Governor), Obama has succeeded in remotivating his base by what they have seen in last week’s speech as the line in the sand.The face of America is in for an historic confrontation. Let the battle begin.

Adventures in probability

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 4:06 PM - 25 Comments

Michael Veall cautions against reading too much into sudden poll changes.

So even if a party is up say 3.5 percentage points comparing a new poll with a previous poll, if each poll had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, the 3.5 percentage point increase should be compared to a margin for error of about 4.4 percentage points. There is a reasonable chance that the party’s vote intention share in the total population did not change at all: all that happened was that the pollsters randomly happened to choose more of the party’s supporters in the second poll.

The margins of errors for changes in leads can be twice as large again. If a party is leading by 5 percentage points in one poll and then by 9 percentage points in the next poll, the margin of error around that 4 percentage point gain could be over 8 percentage points. While probably the lead increased, there is still a significant chance that the lead decreased.

Taking the NY out of NYSE?

By Kate Lunau - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 3:40 PM - 0 Comments

A long-standing symbol of American capitalism, the venerable New York Stock Exchange traces its history back almost 220 years. Now, facing a likely merger with German market operator Deutsche Börse, a pressing question has emerged: what will the new stock exchange be named?

As the deal was announced in February, U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer insisted that “New York” should come first in the new name. “NYSE is one of the most pre-eminent brands in the financial industry,” he said, “and there is no reason it shouldn’t come first.” But German politicians have patriotic concerns as well: although NYSE chief executive Duncan Niederauer is set to take the same title at the new company, Deutsche Börse will own 60 per cent. (The company will be headquartered in both Frankfurt and New York.)

An early front-runner for the new name, “DB NYSE Group,” is apparently out of contention. According to the Wall Street Journal, employees of both companies have submitted more than 1,000 suggestions, which will be looked at over the next few weeks by a committee of experts. Set to become the largest stock exchange in the world, it seems likely that—whatever the new company’s called—its name will eventually become an icon of sorts, too.

A statistically unrepresentative sample of Canadian concerns

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 2:52 PM - 40 Comments

Over the last few days, Michael Ignatieff has discussed astrophysics with a six-year-old girl (true story), purchased two cakes from a Vancouver bakery, participated in Regina’s spring pow wow, shot a little pool and played with a bulldozer simulator in Dettah and shaken hands at BBQs in St. Isidore and Yellowknife.

Yesterday he took questions at two town hall meetings: the first in Vancouver, the second a few hours later in Victoria. The topics broached by members of the public during these discussions included: cooperation among parties in Parliament, elected MPs who change their party allegiance, airport security, science, taxation, improving access to generic drugs for developing countries, how to assist older Canadians in their retirement without raising taxes on younger Canadians, the case of a Canadian citizen imprisoned in Mexico, copyright law, child poverty, farmed salmon, Canada’s role in the Middle East, the possible health hazards of genetically modified organisms, Canada’s complicity in a 9/11 conspiracy, the recognition of foreign credentials, mental health, marijuana legalization, the high cost of dental work, dysfunction in the House of Commons, Internet usage rates, registered disability savings plans, proportional representation, the use of uranium in bombs allegedly dropped on Libya, halibut fishing, students and funding for the CBC.

Mister Fascinator

By Anne Kingston - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 2:50 PM - 2 Comments

Tim Graham/Getty Images

Kate Middleton may get full props for instigating the mania for fascinators, those fantastical cranial protuberances fashioned from feathers, netting, flowers and/or beaded wires, but one canny observer traces the trend to an even more common source. “I hate to say this, but we have to credit Britney Spears for some of it—she loves her little hats,” says milliner David Dunkley. “She was on it long before Lady Gaga.” So were other style-setters, including Sarah Jessica Parker and Victoria Beckham. But it took the princess-to-be to spark a mass revival in the 18th-century headpiece, not unlike Princess Di bringing back brimmed hats in the 1980s.

Dunkley, proprietor of Toronto’s KC’s Hats, saw it coming: “I predicted we’d be all about fascinators as soon as we heard about the royal wedding, and it’s definitely picking up.” His new 13-piece “Royal Wedding Collection,” a fabulous array of handmade headgear showcased at his downtown storefront-studio space, includes several whimsical examples. “It’s the new plumage,” he says.

The boyish 40-year-old is just back from London, and his most recent stint studying couture millinery with Rose Cory, the former hatmaker to the Queen Mother—a decided U-turn from Dunkley’s former career in health policy administration. He changed gears eight years ago after his partner suggested they take a hat-making course; he went on to more study before setting up a stall at Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market, a time he calls “my master’s in retail.” Dunkley’s real education came from workshops with Cory over the past three years. Last year, she shared with him the name of the royal feather supplier, a haven of exotic plumage, including “level-five” ostrich feathers at $1,000 a pop. “I didn’t know feather levels existed,” he says.

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Will anything stick to Berlusconi?

By Leah McLaren - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 2:20 PM - 0 Comments

Alessandro Garofalo/Reuters

On a balmy spring morning in a Fascist-era courthouse last week, Silvio Berlusconi’s hotly anticipated sex trial opened in Milan. But unlike the late night “bunga bunga” sessions in which the 74-year-old Italian prime minister is accused of participating, the proceedings showed little staying power. After less than 10 minutes, Giulia Turri—the presiding justice in what local media have dubbed “the broad squad” of female judges—adjourned the trial until May 31, the next date the Italian prime minister has said he is available to show up in person to defend himself.

As the gavel dropped, the stuffy courtroom packed with European press erupted in laughter and a mixture of Italian, French and English chatter. “It’s bizarre, yes, but we are used to bizarre states of affairs in Italy,” quipped Beppe Severgnini, an influential columnist for the newspaper Corriere della Sera. He arched an eyebrow under a pair of spectacles and brushed a piece of lint off his grey summer suit. “This trial is like High Noon—a shootout between the judiciary and Berlusconi. Who knows what will happen, but someone’s going to get hurt.”

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A slow boat to Misrata

By Ruth Sherlock - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 2:10 PM - 2 Comments

Maurizio Gambarini/Keystone Press

Kalashnikovs raised in the air, the fighters on board unloaded rounds into the sky as the fishing boat pulled away from the dock. Friends and relatives cheered the men from Benghazi’s shore, waving, crying and praying they would see their loved ones again. Minutes before, a martyrs’ prayer had been read as the fighters readied to journey to the besieged western Libyan city of Misrata. In three days’ time they would be fighting alongside Misrata comrades in ferocious street battles against Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s snipers and tanks, as the regime sought to crush the rebellion in the city just 200 km west of Tripoli.

As the Benghazi coastline faded, and the Victory—an ancient wooden fishing boat—undulated in the heavy waves, the fighters wrapped away their machine guns and buried their ammunition in boxes of tomatoes. If the Victory were to pass NATO patrols off the coast, she had to look like an aid ship instead of a vessel carrying 12 young Misrata-bound “fighters” who in reality had never before raised a gun. “I haven’t fired it yet,” said Mohammed Ali, 23, of his Kalashnikov. As the sun began to sink, the men excitedly pointed at the nearby waters: “Dolphins! Dolphins!”

Most of the fighters have relatives in Misrata. But as Gadhafi’s forces seek to choke off the town, cutting power supplies and phone networks, there’s been an information blackout. “All my family are in Misrata,” said Salah Edin, 19. “I haven’t been able to speak with any of them in over a month.” The ship’s captain, Mohammed Hassan—an eccentric figure in full navy uniform, but with a revolutionary scarf banded around his head, cursed Gadhafi. “He uses us like a pack of cards, and then when he is finished he throws us away.”

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The student vote

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 2:05 PM - 23 Comments

Sarah Millar asks an important question: will vote mobs mean actual votes?

Small said part of the reason she doesn’t think the current online push will translate to more voters at the polls is because the Internet is fragmented — if you don’t want to see politics online, you won’t. “The relationship between technology and voter turnout is that there isn’t one.”

Jamie Biggar, co-founder of LeadNow an organization which is helping to facilitate the vote mobs, disagreed with Small, saying that social media is what is bringing in those who normally would not participate in politics. Through sites like Facebook and Twitter, they’re seeing their friends are involved, and they’re watching the videos, he said. “Vote mobs are a way to turn desire into action,” he said

PQ close out congress on combative note

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 1:59 PM - 6 Comments

Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois was rewarded for the PQ’s steady rise in the polls on Saturday with a 93 per cent score in a confidence vote at the famously fickle party’s congress in Montreal. Marois used the congress to elaborate further on her plans should the PQ take the next election in Quebec. Among the measures her government would implement are several that are seen as a sop to the party’s hardliners: the implementation of a Quebec constitution, the establishment of Quebec citizenship, and the recovery of powers from the federal government. Marois made clear the party program is aimed at provoking Ottawa. “It will demonstrate that it is impossible to change the current system to have a true recognition of Quebec’s difference,” she told a news conference. “It is another way to show how sovereignty is necessary for our identity, for our language and even for the development of our cultural, economic and social programs.”

Montreal Gazette

Goodbye B.C., Hello Montreal

By Jacob Richler - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Dale May/Corbis Outline

On April 6, just 3½ weeks after the incomparable Daniel Boulud beat a long-anticipated retreat from Vancouver, his team in New York was putting the finishing touches on the contract that would enable his return to Canada. His fresh assault is to be launched through the far more sensibly considered bridgehead of Montreal’s Ritz-Carlton, whose general manager Andrew Torriani had been courting Boulud for six months. The hotel is in the midst of a massive renovation that will ultimately see it shed 99 rooms and gain a floor, along with 46 condominiums and a rooftop swimming pool—and when it reopens in January 2012, in place of the venerable Cafe de Paris you will find something entirely new: Maison Boulud.

“It’s a rebirth—a new life for this hotel,” chef Boulud said to me, late that morning at his flagship three-Michelin-starred Restaurant Daniel, on 65th Street in Manhattan, where his windowed office sits dramatically perched a half-level above the rest of his kitchen, to provide a better view of the work stations below. “It will be something new for Montreal, something unique.”

Boulud’s unique qualities as a chef and restaurateur have given rise to an empire that includes five restaurants in New York alone (Daniel, Café Boulud, DB Bistro Moderne, Bar Boulud, DBGB Kitchen), as well as outposts in Miami (DB Bistro Moderne), Palm Beach (Café Boulud), London (Bar Boulud), Beijing (Maison Boulud) and Singapore (DB Bistro Moderne). Aside from the Boulud Brasserie, which he closed last summer after a five-year run at the Wynn in Las Vegas, he has experienced but one major setback—Vancouver—where he stepped in to replace the ousted Rob Feenie at Lumière and Feenie’s, relaunched the latter as DB Bistro Moderne, and failed at both, closing their adjacent doors on March 13. “It’s a passage in life,” Boulud says, his disappointment obvious. “Fortunately, financially it made no difference. Emotionally, I would have loved to have been there longer.”

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Stephen Harper and the Canada Health Act

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 1:32 PM - 190 Comments

Greetings from the Northwest Territories, where the Conservative and Liberal campaigns have come to debate Stephen Harper’s feelings for the Canada Health Act.

Specifically, the Conservative side is demanding that the Liberal side pull an ad that suggests Mr. Harper once suggested aloud that the Canada Health Act be scrapped. The ad cites the Globe and Mail, but it now seems the comment in question should have been attributed to a different former president of the National Citizens Coalition. (The Globe has now added a correction to the article in question.)

The Conservatives further claim that Mr. Harper “has always supported the Canada Health Act.” There may be quibbles on that point to be found below in the backgrounder the Liberal campaign has distributed, which sets out their sourcing for the ad in question (including, er, Maclean’s) and other comments attributed to Mr. Harper.

Speaking with reporters here, Mr. Ignatieff said that if the Liberal ad is mistaken, necessary action will be taken. Indeed, the Liberals now say they will replace the “scrapped” quote from the current ad with one of the other comments cited here. Furthermore, they say they will post an online poll to ask Canadians which of Mr. Harper’s quotes should be used in the new cut.

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New poll has NDP tied with Liberals for second place

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 12:41 PM - 44 Comments

Four weeks into the election campaign, the NDP are tied with the Liberals for second place in a new Angus Reid survey. The poll shows both the NDP and the Liberals sitting even at 25 per cent support nationally, while the Conservatives continue to enjoy a comfortable 11-point lead at 36 per cent. The Bloc Québécois are at 9 per cent support, and the Greens trail with 5 per cent. There is some doubt as to whether the NDP can maintain that support come election day, as 41 per cent of respondents who supported the NDP also said they may change their minds and vote strategically in a bid to prevent a Tory majority. “Jack Layton did quite well in that debate and he’s attracting the attention of a lot of people, but he hasn’t really locked down their votes yet,” says Angus Reid Public Opinion vice-president Jaideep Mukerji.

Toronto Star

WikiLeaks reveals U.S. funded Syrian opposition groups

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 11:56 AM - 1 Comment

Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks to the Washington Post reveal that the U.S. government has been secretly funding Syrian opposition groups. The State Department has channeled up to $6 million to a Syrian exile organization, the Movement for Justice and Development, since 2006. The funds have been used primarily to operate Barada TV, which has recently stepped up coverage of anti-government protests in Syria. The cables reveal that the funding had been set aside at least until September 2010, and began after Washington’s ties with Damascus were frozen in 2005. But they also reveal that some U.S. diplomats questioned the decision to provide funding, saying that Damascus “would undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groups as tantamount to supporting regime change.” Anti-government protests calling for the end of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime erupted on March 15, and at least 200 people have been killed.

Al Jazeera English

The NDP war room, feeling their oats

By Paul Wells - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 11:51 AM - 73 Comments

From the Inkless emailbox, two salvos aimed at the NDP’s principal opponents. A reminder — the rest of this post comes verbatim from the NDP, not from me:

REALITY CHECK: Stephen Harper is the new Paul Martin. Harper is playing the same partisan games with Quebec he used to denounce

Stephen Harper in 2005:

“The Liberals and the Bloc are playing the usual games, obsessed about fighting a referendum we’re not having, a referendum that nobody wants.” – National Post, December 9, 2005

Stephen Harper yesterday:

“…what Mr. Duceppe has said coming out of that PQ convention [Sunday] — he has said that they are moving towards, they are walking towards, his objective — the sovereignty of Quebec and another Quebec referendum…that is another reason why Canadians, we believe, must choose a strong, stable, national Conservative majority.” – CBC.ca, April 17, 2011 Continue…

Coney Island's Luna Park opens for the season

By Zoran Milich - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 11:22 AM - 0 Comments

The origins of political order: From prehuman times to the French revolution

By Brian Bethune - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments

In 1989’s The End of History—a hugely controversial work arguing that history, conceived of as an ongoing struggle between opposing views on how human society ought be organized, was finished off by the Cold War triumph of liberal democracy—catapulted Fukuyama to fame as a superstar intellectual. Or, depending on perspective, to infamy as a swaggering neo-con blockhead. Fukuyama has come a long way in his political views since then, publicly repudiating neo-conservatism and even voting for Obama in 2008, but he’s lost none of his authorial ambition or penchant for simplifying big questions.

Consider Fukuyama’s sociobiological take on human social formations. We are what we are—really smart apes—and for hunter-gatherers, as all humanity was during the great majority of its history, kinship-based bands are inevitable, even now the default mode into which we retreat when our larger organizations fall apart. The transformation into larger tribes, made both possible and necessary by agriculture, was also relatively natural, an acceptable way of connecting bigger groups of still-related people. But states, those much larger masses of unrelated subjects—how they arose and why so many failed—are very different, and the meat of Fukuyama’s book.

After considering a few standard ideas on their origins—as voluntary social contracts or a means to large-scale irrigation projects—Fukuyama dismisses them all, on the reasonable grounds that state formation, with its corresponding institutions of serfdom and slavery, was a huge setback to human liberty. Only violent compulsion, he argues, could have pushed the other necessary, but not sufficient, factors in state formation—primarily agricultural surpluses allowing for large populations and a division of labour—into creating an actual state. In a political game of dominoes, neighbouring populations were forced to follow suit or fall before the greater military power of the original state. Much of later human history can then be described, in Fukuyama’s depressingly convincing scenario, as a struggle to limit states’ coercive power.

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The Philadelphia Orchestra Story

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 10:49 AM - 5 Comments

My own blogging will be light for the next couple of days (Passover, you know) but I wanted to call music fans’ attention to a sad piece of news: The Philadelphia Orchestra is filing for bankruptcy, the first major U.S. orchestra to do so.

The reason for the bankruptcy filing is that “leaders believe reorganization gives them a chance to shed a monetary obligation to the pension fund and other contractual arrangements they cannot afford.” Depending on how cynically you look at this, you could see this as the board trying to make the musicians bear the brunt of the financial problems. But there’s no doubt, as the article explains, that the financial problems are very real. The orchestra’s attendance has fallen by 100,000 in the last 20 years.

And the decline seems particularly sad because isn’t just any old major U.S. orchestra; it is, or was, one of the most important musical institutions on the continent. Thanks to Leopold Stokowski, the orchestra introduced a lot of contemporary music to North America, was one of the major figures in orchestral recording back when classical music was the backbone of the record industry, and cemented its status as the U.S.’s leading orchestra by playing all the music in Fantasia (though only Stokowski appeared onscreen as himself; the orchestra was played by studio musicians).

Under its subsequent music directors – mostly Eugene Ormandy, who stayed there for almost 40 years and made hundreds of successful recordings – it was less adventurous and got something of a reputation for stolidity, both in repertoire and performance, but it maintained its reputation as having the most beautiful, plush string sound in the musical world, and gave several important premieres, including the first North American performance of Mahler’s 10th symphony.

As to the future of the orchestra and its still-unrevealed plan to fix things: the chief executive officer’s statement about why the orchestra can still remain a “destination orchestra” for great musicians is not very encouraging.

I think a destination orchestra isn’t singularly about pay. I think it’s about what happens when you’re here, how you feel about the environment you’re working in, and who is around you and what musically you’re doing. We need to have as much pay as we can, but we need to frankly have a relationship with the art that is rewarding beyond pay.

The reality tends to be that the great orchestras pay well (when Georg Solti was asked what the secret of the Chicago Symphony’s success was, he replied simply “we pay very well”). Not just because of the musicians they attract, but because without good pay and benefits, the players will spend a lot of their time moonlighting. That “art for art’s sake” environment is hard to create when everybody is running around picking up extra work.

The Canadian connection is that last year, Yannick Nézet-Séguin was appointed the next music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He is now expected to be not only the music director but almost the saviour – the guy who will come in next year and bring in the thousands of concert-goers they’ve lost. That’s a lot of pressure to put on one conductor, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s up to it. One advantage he has over previous Philadelphia conductors is that he is young, and an exciting personality. Philly did very well in the ’80s under another young, exciting conductor, the Italian Riccardo Muti. After Muti left he was replaced by older, less exciting German kappellmeisters (Wolfgang Sawallisch, Christoph Eschenbach), who also couldn’t give it the gigantic recording contracts it had under Stokowski and Ormandy. Nézet-Séguin won’t be able to make as many recordings either, but he might sweep aside some of the cobwebs, so to speak.

U.K. accepts migrant workers from Misrata

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 10:47 AM - 0 Comments

The U.K.’s Department for International Development (DFID) will accept 5,000 migrant workers and their families from the war-battered Libyan town of Misrata, DFID Secretary Andrew Mitchell said on Monday. Aid workers and residents in Misrata say the situation is becoming increasingly “dire,” with shortages of food, power, water and medicine being reported as pro-Gadhafi forces continue shelling the city. The U.K. will pay £1.5 million to charter ships to evacuate migrants from the rebel-held town and provide them with medical care. Two boatloads of migrants have already been evacuated. DFID officials say about 300 civilians have been killed and 1,000 injured in Misrata since late February.

BBC News

Canadian injection site cut overdose deaths, study says

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 10:41 AM - 8 Comments

Just as Canada’s highest court prepares to hear a lawsuit over the federal government’s attempt to close the Insite safe injection facility in Vancouver, a new study has been published in the prestigious Lancet medical journal showing that Insite—the only sanctioned facility for the injection of illegal drugs—has cut overdose deaths and should be emulated elsewhere. At the site, heroin and cocaine addicts are provided with clean needles and allowed to inject themselves with their own drugs under a nurse’s supervision, then given some time to adjust before leaving. Drug overdose deaths have been cut by 35 per cent in Vancouver’s downtown Eastside, which has one of the country’s highest drug addiction rates, the study says. It requires a legal exemption to stay open, and critics say it promotes illegal drug use.

Reuters

Touch

By Patricia Dawn Robertson - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Every so often, a new writer bursts onto the literary scene and readers are left asking themselves: did he or she emerge from Zeus’s head like Athena? So it is with Alexi Zentner’s debut fiction, Touch. This family drama, set in a logging town in northern B.C., has a quirky, Gothic Canadian feel although its Canadian-born author now resides in Ithaca, N.Y. In fact, falling snow is as much a character in Touch as are the deep, dark woods. Think Kamouraska meets The Shining.

Stephen is an Anglican minister who has returned to his hometown of Sawgamet to assume his stepfather’s parish. At the same time, his beloved mother is on her deathbed.This impending loss is coupled with the intense sensation of homecoming and the story naturally trails back to Stephen’s humble roots.

The book opens dramatically with lumberjacks floating logs downriver as Stephen’s foreman father supervises. “I was 10 that summer, and I remember him as a giant.” Family stories are a means for Stephen to honour his ancestors, prepare for his mother’s demise and map out a new life with his wife and daughters: “Memories are another way to raise the dead.”

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Andrew Coyne: which party can best manage PQ relations?

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 24 Comments

Party and power

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 10:19 AM - 26 Comments

Samara has released its latest report on the life of an MP.

The MPs’ insistence that important work was done only in private raises some serious questions for Canadian democracy and citizens’ ability to engage with it. After all, how are Canadians to observe and understand the work of their elected representatives— to say nothing of their ability to hold them accountable—if all the “real work” is done away from the public gaze? And if the MPs were so embarrassed by the behaviour on display in the House of Commons, why didn’t they do something to change it?

This leads to the second major trend: the consistent observation from the MPs that the greatest frustrations they faced during their political careers came from within their own political party. 

Playboy Mansion hot tub spreads bacterial infection

By macleans.ca - Monday, April 18, 2011 at 10:08 AM - 11 Comments

The bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease was found in a hot tub at the Playboy Mansion, according to Los Angeles County health officials, causing dozens to fall sick. Officials contacted 439 people who attended the DomainFest conference fundraiser in February, and found that 123 had fevers and at least one other symptom, the Associated Press reports; 69 fell ill that same day. The legionella bacteria also causes a less severe illness called Pontiac fever, with symptoms like fever and headache.

Toronto Star