Stimulus vs Austerity 2.0

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 2:56 PM - 9 Comments

Economic arguments are, by their nature, complex and abstract. Few more so than the question of whether massive government spending helps or hurts the economy. That’s why there’s been so much attention paid to the divergent paths the U.S. and U.K. took after the Great Recession. Under Prime Minister David Cameron the U.K. pursued hard-nosed austerity to tackle the country’s deficits, while the U.S. resisted all such moves and instead opted for more stimulus.  Here we had a massive lab experiment pitting two economic theories against each other, playing out in real time on the world stage. Back in January Maclean’s delved into the battle in our story Which Country is Right.

How’s the experiment going? The results so far are inconclusive. Both sides have claimed some measure of victory. Just as critics predicted, cuts to government spending in the U.K. have kept a lid on economic growth, with GDP stagnant for the past six months. Writing on his New York Times blog economist and arch-Keynesian Paul Krugman has hammered away at the notion that spending cuts would awaken the so-called confidence fairy and lead to an investment boom. But at the same time U.S. economic growth slowed dramatically in the first quarter, despite the continued steroid infusion from fiscal stimulus and the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing strategy. Worse still, rating agency Standard & Poor’s fired a shot across the bow when it downgraded the outlook for Uncle Sam’s debt from stable to negative for the first time in 70 years.

The experiment continues.

In the meantime, EconStories is back with Round 2 of their video battle between economists John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek. In their first video, Fear the Boom and Bust, the two rap battle over their economic theories. Now they’ve been summoned from history again to appear before a Congressional committee. Watch and learn…

Policy alert

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 2:34 PM - 4 Comments

The Canadian Medical Association Journal surveyed the major political parties on various matters relevant to health care.

The responses are collected here.

Let them eat two cakes

By Jessica Allen - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 2:30 PM - 0 Comments

Queen Victoria’s stood two feet tall, had a nine foot circumference and weighed 300 lb. Queen Elizabeth II’s was nine feet high and weighed 500 lb. But the Queen Mum’s—tipping the scales at 800 lb. and towering at 10 feet—made the others look like cupcakes.

Whether Kate Middleton’s wedding cake will surpass these saccharine predecessors is anybody’s guess: just like the dress, details of the celebratory confection’s final design have not been revealed. Palace officials and cake makers alike, however, have handed out a few crumbs. For starters, the royal couple has decided that there will be two official cakes: a traditional multi-tiered fruitcake made by celebrity cake maker Fiona Cairns for displaying at the Buckingham Palace reception, and a chocolate biscuit variety assembled by McVitie’s, a popular British biscuit-making company, for the wedding breakfast’s 600 guests to actually eat. Excessive? Not at all: Prince Charles and Diana, princess of Wales, had 27 official and unofficial cakes at their wedding reception.

And besides, it’s tradition—albeit a 17th-century one that died out quickly in Britain—to make wedding cakes in pairs; a more feminine one for the bride and a less ornate version for the groom. If you haven’t figured out whose is whose, consider this: the chocolate biscuit cake is one of Prince William’s favourite sweets, often enjoyed when visiting his grandmother at Windsor Castle on Sundays for afternoon tea while he was a student at Eton. The version that McVitie’s head chef Paul Courtney will prepare—along with the help of another 10 company employees—will be made according to slightly different proportions: no fewer than 1,700 McVitie’s Rich Tea biscuits and 18 kg of dark chocolate will be required to make this groom’s cake.

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Putting the NDP in power would be “devastating,” Harper says

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 2:14 PM - 130 Comments

With just a few days before the federal election on May 2, Conservative leader Stephen Harper is warning that an NDP-led “band of opponents” would bring “devastating” tax hikes should they take power, Postmedia reports. The Tories looked to be headed for a majority, but are now under threat from Jack Layton’s surging NDP party. While campaigning in Niagara Falls, Ont., Harper singled out certain NDP platform promises, such as an increase to EI and CPP premiums and a $20 billion carbon tax, which he said were deemed by experts to lead to massive tax hikes. He went on to say the NDP surge “lays out for Canadians how clear and stark the choice is,” noting that the opposition will bring “enormous increases” in expenses of all kinds, and a “devastating effect on consumers’ pockets and ultimately on our economy.”

Postmedia

Newsmakers: April 21-28, 2011

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 2:10 PM - 0 Comments

Vote as I say, not as I vote
The man who’s considering running for the Republican primary presidential nomination has been accused of failing to cast a ballot in similar elections for more than two decades. According to the New York City Board of Elections, Donald Trump voted in the 1989 New York City mayoral race, then didn’t make it to a polling station for a primary for 21 years. Trump denied the reports, but wasted no time continuing his tirade against another man’s personal records—Barack Obama’s birth certificate. After Robert De Niro suggested the real estate mogul should check his facts on the citizenship issue, The Donald fired back, saying De Niro “is not the brightest bulb on the planet.”
The Pope will now take questions
One of religion’s primary challenges may still be explaining the problem of evil, but its platform for doing so has expanded. For the Vatican’s inaugural “Question Time” TV broadcast on Good Friday—a first in the Catholic Church’s history—Pope Benedict XVI answered seven questions, selected from more than 3,000, all of them about suffering. The Pontiff responded to an Italian mother wondering about her comatose son’s soul, a Muslim woman in Ivory Coast asking how to end violence in her country, and a Japanese child asking why so many of her peers have to suffer through natural disasters. He served up all kinds of popely wisdom, but had to pause at the Japanese girl’s query. “I also have the same questions,” he admitted. “And we do not have the answers, but we know that Jesus suffered as you do…and that the true God who is revealed in Jesus is by your side.”

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Good news, bad news: April 21-28, 2011

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 2:00 PM - 2 Comments

Good News

Khadr context

Omar Khadr should never have spent nine years of his young life locked inside the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But as the Toronto native prepares for his imminent return to Canada—and the hero’s welcome he will no doubt receive—newly released Pentagon documents offer a timely reminder of why the Scarborough-born teenager was such a prized catch. According to a 2004 intelligence assessment published on the WikiLeaks website, Khadr’s father was al-Qaeda’s “fourth in command,” and young Omar provided “valuable information” about the inner workings of Osama bin Laden’s network. Child or not, Khadr was hardly a naive bystander.

Resurrecting road hockey

Another week, another doomsday report about Canada’s obesity epidemic. The latest version, from the advocacy group Active Healthy Kids Canada, says only seven per cent of children in the video game generation get the recommended 60 minutes of daily “active play.” Which is precisely why we’re rooting for Alexander Anderson, Andrew Polanyi, Liam McMahon and Bowen Pausey. The Toronto teens are petitioning the city to overturn its long-standing ban on road hockey—a misguided bylaw that has no place in any Canadian neighbourhood.

Doing the right thing

It was a good week for those who act on instinct. In Fayetteville, N.C., a high school basketball coach saved dozens from a tornado by herding 300 players and parents into a safe area of the school—just before the twister began shredding cars and flipping vans. Then on Sunday, crew members on an Alitalia fiight from Paris to Rome overpowered a would-be hijacker who was armed with a knife, and who demanded to be flown to Libya. Not everyone can play the saviour. But when crisis calls, it’s reassuring to know that some folks step up.

#$%! Tylenol

Researchers have found a natural remedy for stubbed toes and hammered thumbs: swearing at the top of your lungs. According to a British study, F-bombs and other curse words help relieve drastic pain, especially if the person cussing isn’t a typical potty mouth. Michael Ignatieff may want to remember that tip next week.

Bad News

Rude awakening

Bashar al-Assad’s bloody crackdown on Syrian protesters drove home the cost of political freedom in certain Arab countries—leaving open the question of whether the international community is willing to help pay the price. No sooner had U.S. drones levelled part of Moammar Gadhafi’s compound in Tripoli than al-Assad unleashed tanks and troops on his own people, killing as many as 25 in Daraa. Britain, France and other countries voiced outrage, but having already committed air and logistical support in Libya, the best they could do was seek a toothless condemnation from the UN Security Council. The long-awaited Arab Awakening may yet reach Damascus. For now, though, it must proceed without help.

Shawshank Kandahar

Later this year, Canadian soldiers will begin the next phase of our military mission in Kandahar: training Afghan security forces. Perhaps they could help the prison guards, too. In a plot straight out of Hollywood, nearly 500 inmates—including senior Taliban commanders—escaped from the Saraposa jail through an underground tunnel burrowed by insurgent allies on the outside. A Taliban spokesman said the getaway route took five months to dig, with the help of “skilled professionals” and “trained engineers.” Said one escapee, in between giggles: “The guards are always drunk. Either they smoke heroin or marijuana, and then they just fall asleep.”

Spare us the spin

Well, that’s puzzling: after the fatal tasering of Robert Dziekanski, the mysterious death of a man in custody in Houston, B.C., a series of botched 911 calls in Saskatchewan, an officer’s kick to the face of a co-operative driver in Kelowna, and obstruction of justice charges against an allegedly drunk-driving Mountie who killed a motorcyclist, a survey has found that nearly 85 per cent of Canadians still trust the RCMP. And who commissioned this survey? The RCMP, you say? Never mind. Puzzle solved.

Head in the clouds

The union representing U.S. air traffic controllers is pushing for new measures to stop members from sleeping on the job. Their recommendation? Monitored naps. Here’s a better suggestion: a coffee maker in each tower, and a good night’s sleep. At home.

Notes From the Archives of TV

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 1:53 PM - 0 Comments

The Archive of American Television has posted an excerpt from its interview with Matt Weiner (conducted last year, before the contract negotiations) where he tries to explain that he’s not the egomaniac portrayed in the media. In the process of explaining that, he in fact comes off as having a very healthy-sized ego, but I guess that’s not really much of a criticism. As he sort of admits himself, if he weren’t a bit of an egomaniac he wouldn’t be running a TV series.

The Archive’s blog also notes the passing of some important TV people recently. The death of Madelyn Pugh Davis, one of I Love Lucy‘s head writers, got some media attention, and so to a lesser extent did the death of Sol Saks, the comedy writer (and occasional excecutive) best known for writing and creating the Bewitched pilot.

However, I didn’t see anything until now about the death of Gerry Finnerman, one of the great cinematographers in television. He’s best known for serving as director of photography of two iconic series, Star Trek and Moonlighting. And having mentioned those two shows, we immediately have to mention the best-known aspect of his style: the use of filters for the close-ups of beautiful women. But that was part of his very old-Hollywood, old-school approach to cinematography, which made his shows look more lush and beautiful than TV shows usually do.

Moonlighting is also one of the shows covered in Todd VanDerWerff’s new primer on ’80s drama, the era that – among other things – restored television drama to a level of visual sophistication that hadn’t been seen since the days of black-and-white TV. And Finnerman on Moonlighting was one of the people who helped make that possible.

Your semi-daily Orange Revolution update

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 1:48 PM - 27 Comments

I have one foot on the NDP bandwagon, which is about the cheapest thing anyone of my sort can do, but there you go. I’ve watched with amazement at the Dipper Juggernaut roll through my backyard, and at some disdain at the reaction of the suddenly-outraged Bloc and its entourage. (Here’s a side question for you: what would happen if, in 1995, some Anglo type had made fun of Lucien Bouchard’s cane—as proto-separatist Gerald Larose did of Layton—or made fun of the old man’s manner of speaking his second language—as Sebastien Ricard did of the same? Stay classy, folks. It doesn’t make you look in the least bit desperate…)

Anyway, the reason I’m not a full-patch, kissy-faced member of Quebec’s Orange Bandwagon is this: I still think the Dippers are going to have a tough time harvesting the good will generated towards Jack Layton—not to mention his crop of largely untested candidates, most of whom were considered but placeholders not two weeks ago. That’s a made-in-Quebec particularity : many voters remember what happens when you send a well-spoken, experienced leader into a position of power with a pack of untested pols. It happened here, in 2007, and we got the ADQ as official opposition, which was an unmitigated disaster.

Also, the Bloc has a historical knack, thanks to the peculiarities of our first-past-the-post system, of getting the most seats with the least number of votes. I don’t think that tendency will change much this time around, though the party will certainly bleed out a fair bit.

That said, my other foot, the one glued to the bandwagon, is telling me that a full-on blowout is in the cards, at the very least. So, I’d probably split the difference. No projections yet—there’s a freaking “royal” wedding to get through first—but the crystal ball is getting less hazy by the minute.

'Some day my prince will come'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 1:46 PM - 36 Comments

The Economist kind of endorses Stephen Harper.

For these reasons The Economist, like many Canadians, would be relieved if there were a better alternative to Mr Harper. But there is not.

Heart attacks more severe in the morning, say experts

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 12:46 PM - 1 Comment

People who have a heart attack in the morning tend to face a tougher recovery than those who have them later in the day and night, according to experts who studied over 800 patients in Spain. The body’s natural sleep-awake cycle could explain the difference, as it’s been well established that a person’s body clock can influence heart attack risk, the BBC reports. For example, people are more likely to have a heart attack when they’re waking up. Researchers looked at 811 patients who’d suffered a heart attack with a prolonged period of blocked blood supply to the heart muscle (called ST elevation myocardial infarction), and split them into four groups according to when it occurred. Those who suffered a heart attack from 6 am to noon had the most severe attacks, with higher levels of an enzyme in the blood, which is a signal of dying heart tissue. Researchers estimated the area of heart damaged in this group was one-fifth larger on average.

BBC News

Who are these guys?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 12:46 PM - 35 Comments

Amid concern over some of the candidates rounding out the furthest reaches of the NDP campaign, Les Perreaux offers a short history of the unlikely MP.

Old hands in Quebec political coverage recount the legend of 1962, when 26 Social Credit MPs from Quebec were elected in an unexpected breakthrough. The story goes that instead of heading to Ottawa to Parliament Hill, a couple of the newly minted MPs showed up for work at the National Assembly in Quebec City. Sympathetic workers at the provincial legislature were said to have corrected the MPs on their political geography and sent them on their way toward Ottawa.

William and Kate “incredibly moved” by public affection

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 12:30 PM - 2 Comments

Prince William and Kate Middleton will be tying the knot tomorrow, and say they have been “incredibly moved” by the outpouring of affection shown to them since they got engaged, the BBC reports. Their official wedding programme includes a message thanking “everyone most sincerely for their kindness.” Friday’s ceremony at Westminster Abbey will include vows from Midleton to “love, comfort, honour and keep” Prince William—but not to obey him. More than 600,000 people are expected to be in the streets, with several hundred already camping out in tents and sleeping bags nearby. The bride is to walk up the aisle to coronation anthem “I Was Glad,” from Psalm 122, which was composed for the crowning of Prince William’s great-great-great grandfather, Edward VII. The Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry, and Middleton’s family will be witnesses and sign the marriage registers. Prince William will be spending Thursday evening with the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and Harry, while Miss Middleton will be with her family at the Goring Hotel. The Queen will host an event for British and foreign royals at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, and will be leaving for a weekend away after hosting a wedding day lunchtime reception, giving Buckinham Palace over to the royal couple’s black tie party for the night. Meanwhile, the invitation to Syria’s ambassador in London has been withdrawn after reports that up to 400 pro-democracy protesters have been killed there by security forces in recent weeks.

BBC News 

Armadillos can transmit leprosy to humans

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 12:16 PM - 0 Comments

U.S. researchers have confirmed that infected armadillos are transmitting leprosy to humans, with about one-third of leprosy cases that arise each year in the U.S. coming from the animals, the New York Times reports. These cases mostly occur in Louisiana and Texas, where some people hunt, skin and eat them. Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, has almost completely disappeared, although up to 250 people in the U.S. and 250,000 globally contract the illness each year. It can be treated with a one or two-year regimen of antibiotics if it’s caught quickly, but some people don’t recognize the illness and end up suffering for the rest of their lives. Two-thirds of leprosy patients in the U.S. are people who lived or worked in areas where the disease is endemic, like India, Brazil, Africa, and the Philippines. But each year, up to 80 people have symptoms without coming into contact with an infected person. Dr. Richard W. Truman, a researcher at the National Hansen’s Disease Program in Baton Rouge, La., says armadillos acquired the infectious disease from humans within the last 400 to 500 years. “The important thing is that people should be discouraged from consuming armadillo flesh or handling it,” Dr. Truman said.

The New York Times 

Bunting shortage spreads in U.K.

By macleans.ca - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 11:46 AM - 0 Comments

Patriotic Britons are faced with a deepening crisis ahead of the Royal Wedding: supplies of “bunting” (strings of Union-Jack-coloured triangles) have been exhausted in shops from Leeds to London. “Even Party Pieces, the website set up and run by Kate Middleton’s parents, said that it had sold out of all of most of its bunting,” reports The Telegraph. Tesco, Britain’s chain of mega-markets, has nearly run out of its 120-mile supply. But despite the shortage of bunting, the Royal Wedding is still on.

The Telegraph

Is Stephen Harper a hologram?

By Rick Mercer - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 149 Comments

Grown men all over North America pay big money for the privilege of riding on a horse, sleeping on the ground and spending 12 hours a day driving cattle down a dusty trail with actual cowboys. For me, going out on the campaign trail, riding on the planes and following the leaders is pretty much the same thing. This wasn’t so much an assignment as it was a trip to a dude ranch. Some men want to strap on leather chaps and breathe in the aroma of cow dung; I want to slap on a press pass and breathe the same air as Harper, Iggy and Jack.

To get a seat on those planes is not an easy proposition. The Conservative party charges media organizations $50,000 for a seat. In return you get fed and watered—after that, all bets are off. There is no guarantee you get to ask a question, just the guarantee you won’t.

My week at the dude ranch started with the big gun: Team Harper. I met up with them in Rivière-du-Loup, Que., rode the bus to Edmundston, N.B., flew to Fredericton, crossed the pond to Conception Bay South, Nfld., back to Sydney, N.S., and then on to the Nation’s Capital.

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The translated campaign

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 8 Comments

James Fitz-Morris explains the intricacies of covering a Quebec campaign for an English audience.

Larose also presented English-language journalists with another tricky word – calling Michael Ignatieff and Stephen Harper “des crosseurs professionals.” (Larose has since apologized for the remarks) This is where things get sticky. The verb “crosser” is Quebecois slang for “to masturbate.” It’s a term one does not use in respectable company. To translate that as “professional wankers” doesn’t really capture the vulgarity of it. The British would say “professional tossers,” but that’s a term that doesn’t mean anything to most Canadians. The closest equivalent is “professional jerk-off.”

Go ahead, start being disappointed in the NDP now

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 11:03 AM - 93 Comments

Okey-doke. Let’s think this NDP polling surge through. Tell you what: go ahead and pick some riding where the New Democrat is said to have a chance of knocking off a high-profile incumbent. We’ll take Justin Trudeau’s Papineau, which is thought to be in some danger from Laytonmania as its MP flits about stumping for Liberals elsewhere in the country. Visit the La Presse 2008 election map with me, select “Papineau” on the pulldown menu, and let’s see what the Little Prince’s victory there actually looked like…

In the constituency as a whole, remember, Trudeau got 41% of the vote. But try clicking on the dots that represent single-institution polls, mostly long-term care facilities. Trudeau ran at much, much better than 41% inside those buildings. At the Hôpital Jean-Talon, he got 45 of the 69 valid votes cast. At the Centre d’hébergement de soins de longue durée-Les Havres, he also got 45 of 69. He swept the Résidence St-Michel and the Résidence d’Iberville like a meth-crazed janitor.

Do you figure this pattern emerges because old folks love Justin Trudeau? I mean, I’m sure they do; he has a name they recognize. But vote totals like this also reflect the local knowledge of political professionals and their ability to devote resources to particular vote clusters—in short, “ground game” or “GOTV”. Seniors’ residences just happen to be where the effect of having a partisan machine—a network of operators who can pack buses, speak a second language, arrange targeted messaging, or, let’s face it, get a case of whisky to the right guy—is most visible. At every election, the same thing happens in workplaces, ethnic neighbourhoods, various kinds of drop-in and hang-out centre, condominiums and shopping malls. Votes come in bunches; it’s hard to gather them that way from a distance.

You’ll see the same telltale, heavily-weighted dots anywhere you look; Laurie Hawn hoovered them up in my Edmonton Centre riding in ’08. It’s awfully easy, you see, to conflate two distinct kinds of micro-scale analysis of the political landscape. The one that has received some attention is the regional scale: the NDP vote surge measured by the polls will be relatively efficient, voter for voter, in a place like B.C.’s Lower Mainland where the party is already strong, and will be relatively inefficient—at electing NDP candidates, that is—in Quebec ridings where the NDP might normally run below 2%. But at the even smaller scale, the building-by-building, neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood scale, the question is whether absentee, casual, or unfamiliar candidates will be able to deliver the level of vote share recorded by pollsters at all. This is Electoral Politics 101, but for a civilian observer outside a war room, looking at the La Presse maps impresses the truth upon one in a way that abstract knowledge doesn’t.

The NDP seems obviously poised to suffer a 2004-Democratic-Party-style letdown in which the bona fides of “youth” and “protest” and “internet” voters are questioned by those who overestimated their power, or pretended to, in the first place. Despite the last six days’ worth of polling, I am not, at this moment, convinced that the NDP is going to beat the Liberals either in seat total or national vote share. Wells’s First Rule still holds. And Lord knows the soul-searching I expect to see after the election qualifies as the “least exciting outcome”.

A price must be paid—but by whom?

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 454 Comments

Voting is a kind of jury duty, and like the jury system, derives much of its strength from the participants’ lack of specialized knowledge of the subject. A specialist can become jaded, or obsessed with finer points; the public has the benefit of distance. My own experience as a political writer confirms this. I will frequently get exercised about this or that controversy, and wonder why the public is not of the same mind. But the public is called upon to judge not only this controversy, but a great number of issues of varying weights, and in the fullness of time, as that particular issue takes its place among the others, it often does not seem quite as all-important to the public as it had earlier seemed to me. And most of the time the public is right.

To vote is to distill a complex array of different, possibly conflicting considerations into one: the parties, the leaders, the local candidates, plus whatever issues are pertinent to you, and the parties’ positions on each. Which makes that perennial journalistic search for the “ballot-box question” such a preposterous enterprise. Every single voter will have his own ballot-box question, or questions. I cannot tell you what yours is, or should be. I can only tell you mine.

For me there are two issues of overwhelming importance in this election. The first is the economy, not only in its own right but for what it means for our ability to finance the social programs we have created for ourselves. The second is the alarming state of our democracy: the decaying of Parliament’s ability to hold governments to account, and the decline, not unrelated, in Parliament’s own accountability to the people.

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Hope spring eternal

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 30 Comments

Globe and Mail, 2008. “Instead of carping about a dysfunctional Parliament, for which he holds much responsibility, Mr. Harper should throw out his previous playbook and try making the institution work. It would mean displaying the confidence to operate outside his comfort zone of near-absolute control, but it is a mission built for a true conservative. And, no, Senate reform is no substitute for getting the House of Commons operating well.”

Globe and Mail, 2011. “Mr. Harper could achieve a great deal more if he would relax his grip on Parliament, its independent officers and the flow of information, and instead bring his disciplined approach to bear on the great challenges at hand. That is the great strike against the Conservatives: a disrespect for Parliament, the abuse of prorogation, the repeated attempts (including during this campaign) to stanch debate and free expression. It is a disappointing failing in a leader who previously emerged from a populist movement that fought so valiantly for democratic reforms.”

What's hot at Hot Docs

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 10:11 AM - 0 Comments

Toronto’s Hot Docs festival is showing 199 films from 43 countries between April 28 and May 8. I haven’t seen all of them. Far from it. But I’ve watched quite a few, either on DVD or at press screenings. So far it doesn’t look like a stellar crop. I’ve seen nothing as thrilling as last year’s Marwencol or Exit Through the Gift Shop. In this week’s issue of Maclean’s, I explore a curious sub-trend of docs about mad science, led by Project Nim—by far the best film I’ve seen to date. Here are some capsule reviews of what excited me among the films I’ve seen. I’ll add more titles as they come up. Click on any title to link to the official Hot Docs web listing, with screening times and other info.

Project Nim comes from the team behind 2009′s superb Oscar-winning documentary, Man on Wire, and it’s another story of strange behavior in ’70s America. By turns funny, sad and frightening, this documentary is Dickensian tale of an epic experiment that made a minor celebrity of a chimpanzee named Nim. Ripped from his mother at the age of two weeks, Nim is raised by a series of human surrogate mothers, as a kind of special-needs child. The goal is to teach him sign language and refute linguist Noam Chomsky’s thesis that language is exclusive to home sapiens. Directed by James Marsh, and based on Elizabeth Hess’s 2008 book, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, the film offers a rich mix of archival footage and fresh interviews with Nim’s various guardians, several of them still rankled by decades-old custody issues. The human parenting tricks ranged from breast-feeding Nim to getting him stoned on pot and alcohol. Inevitably, the chimpanzee teaches us more about messed-up humans than the scientists seemed to learn about apes.

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Canada's greenest employers

By Kate Lunau and Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 10:05 AM - 4 Comments

The Green 30 is based on how employees perceive their employer’s environmental efforts. We asked each organization that made the 2011 list, compiled by Aon Hewitt, to highlight some of the key programs and practices that they think earned them high marks. Here are some of the highlights:

Baxter Corporation
Medical products and services, Mississauga, Ont.

•    Has published an annual Global Sustainability Report, measuring the company’s progress on nine sustainability priorities, including reductions in its carbon footprint and a green supply chain, since 1999.

•    Less reliant on natural resources by reclaiming cooling water from its manufacturing process; decreases energy use through gas and electricity reduction efforts.

•    Since 2002, the facility in Alliston, Ont., has diverted more than 1.7 million lb. of packaging from landfills, and recycles more than 90 per cent of non-hazardous waste.

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'Smiles and snake oil'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 24 Comments

Stephen Harper apparently takes aim at Jack Layton.

“It matters very much who is making the big decisions, the big decisions, sometimes tough decisions,” Harper said Wednesday evening near the end of a 27-minute speech to a packed ballroom. “They’re not all easy decisions. They’re not all smiles and snake oil.”

A country gets its back up

By Paul Wells - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 95 Comments

Maybe now we can stop telling ourselves Canadian elections are predictable.

It is fashionable in Ottawa circles before every election campaign to draw oneself back from the lunch table, let one’s gaze wander toward the ceiling, and announce to the room, “I don’t know why we’re even bothering to have an election, anyway. It’s not like it’ll change anything.” More often than not these weary predictions are wildly wrong.

The 2000 election killed the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and—because Jean Chrétien was able to win a plurality in Quebec less than a year after he passed the Clarity Act—the political career of Lucien Bouchard. In 2004, Paul Martin came within an ace of losing power to an upstart Calgarian whom Liberals had viewed with contempt. In 2006, Stephen Harper took Martin down. In 2008, Harper confirmed his hold on the seats he’d won and drove Stéphane Dion’s Liberals to their lowest share of the popular vote since Confederation.

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High-up culinary disasters

By Julia McKinnell - Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

For Chip Olver in Banff, Alta., it was the soft-boiled eggs that foiled her. When she first moved from sea level in Hamilton to the high altitude of the Canadian Rockies, she had yet to figure out that water boils at a lower temperature the higher up you go. (Baking also requires adjustments in both oven temperatures and ingredients.) In Banff, as in Jasper, Alta., and Whistler, B.C., foods like eggs and pasta take longer to cook. Rice often needs more water, and for a Canmore, Alta., resident, making split pea soup is an all-day affair. Olver yanked the eggs from the boiling water too soon. “I cooked them but they weren’t done and I’d cut already cut the tops off. I had to start over,” she laughs, recalling the incident from 30 years ago. Olver and her friend Myriam Leighton went on to co-author a collection of high-altitude-tested recipes for a cookbook called A Taste of the Canadian Rockies.

Cecilia Lortscher, Canmore’s Cookie Lady, says, “Lots of recipes just won’t work here.” Lortscher runs a cookie business called Sweet Madeira. Her cookies are exquisite. She’s mastered the knack of baking at high altitude, but it’s been a trial-and-error process: “Buns like hockey pucks and cookies that run!” she explained in an email to Maclean’s. “A really fudgy chocolate cookie with lots of sugar and fat, that probably wouldn’t work here,” she says. Same goes for the cinnamon buns she once tried to make. “I just couldn’t do it.”

In Santa Fe, N.M., at 7,000 feet above sea level, chef John Vollertsen runs a cooking class (offered through the Las Cosas Kitchen Shoppe and Cooking School) called “High Altitude Baking.” The ad reads, “Bring your high-altitude frustrations.”

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