Fresh eyes

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 5:23 PM - 10 Comments

Bruce Anderson tries to explain why the NDP might be surging and why that surge might be hard for some people to understand.

They’d hear him say politics has too much mud-slinging and not enough progress on things that count for average folks. They’d listen to him go on about wanting to work with other people and parties, about hiring more doctors and nurses, “rewarding job creators,” “strengthening your pension” and “making your life a little more affordable.” The language is not that of class warfare, and the goals don’t sound weirdly utopian. These voters might compare Mr. Layton’s pitch with the urgings of Stephen Harper to avoid a coalition, to cut taxes, to strengthen law and order. Or the entreaties of Michael Ignatieff to rise up in defense of our democracy. The NDP themes might well compare favourably, as far as themes go.

John Geddes: Are Layton's lines reassuring or unsettling?

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 5:19 PM - 4 Comments

An IP address is not a person

By Jesse Brown - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 5:08 PM - 5 Comments

‘Skooky840′ is a good neighbour; he or she doesn’t lock their WiFi. When my Internet connection is out, I hop on theirs until I get things sorted. I’m not sure why they don’t protect their signal with a password. Maybe they can’t figure out how to. Maybe they can’t be bothered. Or maybe, like some folks I know, Skooky840 leaves their signal open to be polite, as a courtesy to neighbours like me. As long as we don’t abuse it and run up their bills, hey- why not? I’d love to thank Skooky840 for making my life a little easier and our street a little friendlier, but I don’t know who they are. A WiFi signal, like the Internet Protocol (IP) address associated with it, is not a person.

Try telling the cops that. If I were to abuse my neighbour’s politeness and/or carelessness (and if I were a criminal and/or creep) then this might happen: Skooky840 might be swarmed by a SWAT team in their own home because a predator hijacked their hospitality.

When a crime is committed online, tracking it to an IP address is a good place for police to start their investigation, much like how tracking a gun to the person who registered it is a good and obvious way to embark on a murder investigation. But it’s just a start. One Internet connection might be shared by different people who might live in different homes. If the signal is not password protected, any stranger walking or driving by could potentially have committed the online crime. If I were intent on committing a crime online, that’s probably how I’d do it. Alternatively, if I were the least bit afraid of being accused of a crime linked to my own connection, I might choose to remove password protection in order to gain plausible deniability—if my WiFi is open to the world, I guess it could have been anyone!  Of course, even if I use a password, it still could have been anyone—millions of computers are infected with botnets that allow third parties from any part of the world to access the Internet through someone else’s IP address, often without the host’s knowledge.

Of course, the Internet is still relatively new, and there are plenty of dumb criminals out there who won’t take any of these easily available precautions to cover their tracks. Track a child porn download to its IP address, and there’s a good chance that the perpetrator will be physically nearby. But for how long? And as criminals become more technically savvy, will the police, laws and courts evolve as well?

At some point, seizing the computer of someone because they’ve had access to an implicated IP address will be sloppy policing, and a violation of privacy to boot.

Where Parliament isn't a joke

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 4:32 PM - 36 Comments

The UK Parliament spent half an hour today debating the prison break from Sarposa prison in Kandahar. Alistair Burt, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, took fourteen questions from Labour and Conservative MPs on topics including how it happened, to how it might affect the political negotiations with the Taliban, and the impact it will have on morale of UK soldiers in Afghanistan.

Canadians will notice a few curious things about the exchanges. First, the Afghan file is actually one that relates to Burt’s assigned portfolio—something rather unheard of in Ottawa. More oddly still, at no point did Burt accuse the opposition members of disloyalty to the troops or to the UK, nor did he take the occasion to bray like a donkey about how everything his government had done on the file was noble and pure, while everything the previous government had done was villainous and incompetent. Instead, Burt frequently thanked the opposition member for the question, and even—get this—agreed on occasion with the point the opposition member was making. At one point Burt and a Labour MP even shared a joke about which Pitt they were talking about.

But more importantly, Canadians will observe a foreign parliament treating with great seriousness an event that speaks directly to the country’s national security interests. I read on Twitter today that Michael Ignatieff made a few remarks about Sarposa . If Stephen Harper, Bev Oda, Lawrence Cannon, or Peter MacKay have addressed the fiasco, I’d appreciate a pointer to their remarks.

Meanwhile, here’s a transcript of the debate at Westminster.

The Bull Meter: Stephen Harper on ministerial budgets

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 3:33 PM - 12 Comments

"The budgets of ministers’ offices are being cut by 11 per cent — that’s what the Conservative government is doing"

- Stephen Harper
April 16, 2011

A Canadian Press article from April 16 questioned the soundness of Stephen Harper’s claim, saying it had obtained a document showing that international travel for ministers, their staff and parliamentary secretaries is being transferred from ministerial office budgets to their departments. Some of the cuts alluded to by Harper, the Canadian Press concluded, could be simply “accounting changes.”

To test that hypothesis, we asked Drew McPherson, a Nova Scotia-based computer whiz who keeps tabs on government expenses, to calculate how much four randomly selected ministers’ offices had spent on international  in fiscal year 2009-2010. We then compared his data with those ministers’ total gross expenditures, as reported in the Public Accounts of Canada. The result? The transfer of international travel expenses to a separate budget would have only a minor impact on ministerial budget, certainly not enough to make up for an 11 per cent cut in spending.

In his analysis, McPherson picked the offices of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Minister of National Revenue, Minister of State (Agriculture), and Minister of Health. For all four, money spent on international travel ranged from 0.7 to 2.6 per cent of total expenses. Therefore, while the new accounting rules certainly help reduce ministers’ budgets–at least aesthetically–the extent to which they do so is quite limited.

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

Sources:

Public Accounts of Canada 2010 Volume III

Governmentexpenses.ca

Strange stench befouls downtown Toronto

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 2:59 PM - 18 Comments

A mysterious stink wafted through Toronto’s downtown core on Tuesday morning. The first official reports of the stench came in around 8.30 a.m. after a person called emergency officials to complain of a “dead animal” smell wafting just west of Union Station, the Toronto Star reports. Firefighters and the Toronto Transit Commission have responded, but didn’t find a dead animal or a gas leak. The city is also looking into the source of the stench, with investigators out hunting for an answer. Some have said it smells like an outhouse, while others describe it as egg and sewage mixed together. Twitter users are guessing at the source of the stench, many of them with saucy answers relating to the current election, under the hash tag #whatsthatsmell.

The Toronto Star

Dossier illustrates push for terrorist attacks post-9/11

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 2:29 PM - 3 Comments

After the September 11 attacks, a small circle of al Qaeda operatives looked for ways to follow-up with new attacks, according to classified Guantánamo files released by WikiLeaks to the New York Times. More than 700 classified documents give new details of the terrorist organization’s efforts to make 9/11 the first in a series of attacks aimed at the United States, although these plans collapsed after the Central Intelligence Agency captured Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 9/11 planner, and other leaders of al Qaeda. Mohammed and others reportedly discussed plots that weren’t acted upon, including a wave of aircraft attacks against the West Coast, filling an apartment with leaked natural gas and exploding it, blowing up gas stations and even cutting the cables that hold up the Brooklyn Bridge.

The New York Times

Poll projects 100 seats for NDP

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 2:23 PM - 80 Comments

According to a new EKOS poll conducted from April 22 to April 24, Jack Layton’s NDP could win 100 seats on May 2, putting it in second place behind the Conservatives, The Globe and Mail reports. The poll put the Conservatives at 33.7 per cent support nationally among decided and leaning voters, and the NDP at 28 per cent, while the Liberals trailed at 23.7 per cent. If those numbers pan out on Election Day, Layton could have a working majority in the House of Commons with the support of the third-place Liberals. It will be the Liberals’ worst showing ever and the best result by far for the NDP. The poll of 2,783 voters is accurate within 1.8 percentage points.

The Globe and Mail

The Internet candidate for Edmonton-Strathcona

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 2:15 PM - 33 Comments

The election should probably not pass without noting the candidacy of Christopher White, running as an independent in Edmonton-Strathcona. Mr. White is the fellow who started the Facebook group that helped rally thousands of Canadians to protest prorogation.

Now seeking office—however long the odds in his particular case—his wide-ranging platform includes a wiki to encourage discussion and feedback.

Bernardo fan kicked out of Tory campaign

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 1:01 PM - 12 Comments

Michelle Erstikaitis, a devotee of Paul Bernardo and a dangerous offender, was removed from a Toronto Tory campaign team on Monday. Last week, Erstikaitis used a fake name and dyed her hair in order to serve as an envelope stuffer for Toronto Centre candidate Kevin Moore, just weeks after being released from Vanier prison for women. A spokesperson for Moore says that when the team became aware of her identity, they asked her to leave. “Mr. Moore is a wonderful man and he should be absolved of this,” said Erstikaitis to QMI Agency on Monday.

QMI Agency

William and Kate aren't the only ones getting married

By Katie Engelhart and Julia Belluz - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Paige Viozzi

Jane Barber of York, England, heard the announcement at work, listening to the 1 p.m. news on the radio. She cursed out loud at her desk. “I thought, ‘Noooo!’ ” the 35-year-old blond told Maclean’s. “They’re stealing my thunder!” Minutes later, her phone was going non-stop. “Everyone was ringing me up saying, ‘Do you realize what day you’ve chosen?’ ”

It was the end of November, and Prince William had just appeared before the press to announce that he and his fiancée, Catherine Middleton, had set a date for their wedding: Friday, April 29, 2011—the same day that, months earlier, Barber had carefully selected for her own nuptials. The realization that her walk down the aisle would be shared with one of the world’s most prominent couples was not a happy one.

For dozens of other couples, the news hit even harder. The country’s broadsheets were thick with tales of British brides turned bitter. “Brides-to-be are filled with dread that their day in the spotlight could be overshadowed,” the Telegraph reported. “Watch out, Kate. Britain’s bridezillas are out to get you,” said the Guardian. In London, couples rushed to the registry office to switch their wedding date. Within days, North Americans were doing the same. MSNBC extended sympathy to brides and grooms who’d been “royally hosed”; Time magazine called it their “royal pain.”

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How much will the royal wedding cost?

By Cathy Gulli - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 12:50 PM - 5 Comments

Illustration by Taylor Shute

For rich and royal individuals like William and Kate, the idea of setting a wedding budget seems contrived. But the couple say they want to balance the extravagance expected of them with a sensitivity to the troubled economy affecting Brits. It’s a sweet sentiment—and an unlikely reality. Estimates put the cost of the April 29 festivities at between $15 million and $68 million, a far cry from the $20,000 that a typical Canadian wedding costs. Most of Will and Kate’s wedding bill will be covered by the royal family, but the Middletons have insisted on paying for certain items, though nobody is saying what. At minimum, the two clans will pick up the tab for the church service, music, flowers, decor, reception and honeymoon. There is, however, one thing taxpayers will foot the bill for: security and street cleaning. The upshot? The big day should boost the British economy by $1 billion through tourism and merchandise. Now that’s a wedding favour.

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Imagine all the people… voting NDP

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 12:42 PM - 70 Comments

The latest spot from the New Democrats.

Liberals hold secret Tory dossier of Harper quotations

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 12:22 PM - 13 Comments

A 500-page binder of controversial quotations by Stephen Harper has found its way into Liberal hands. But the dictionary-sized dossier was compiled by the Conservatives as early as 2003, after being initiated by Harper’s former chief of staff Tom Flanagan, who admitted in his 2007 book, Harper’s Team, that he was aware that some of the Prime Minister’s past comments might hurt him. Many of the quotations show the Harper was more right-wing during his time in opposition than as Prime Minister. One quotation had him boasting about being more pro-life than his fellow evangelical Conservative, Stockwell Day. In another, he suggested “the poor” should be taken care of by the provinces, not the federal government. But what many expect to hurt Harper the most are the comments he has made about health care provision, such as when he said in 2002 that “the private provision of publicly insured services should be permitted.”

The Globe and Mail

The sounds of silence

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 12:20 PM - 1 Comment

Christian Hartmann/Reuters

It may be a case of self-perpetrated extinction: the last two living fluent speakers of a dying language won’t talk to each other. Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69, who live less than 500 m apart in the village of Ayapa, Mexico, are the only ones still able to master the finer points of Ayapaneco, one of the country’s dozens of indigenous languages. However, they don’t care to engage each other in conversation, the Guardian newspaper reports. Segovia is said to have been speaking the language to his brother until he died a decade ago, and he speaks it to his son and wife, who understand him, but aren’t able to use Ayapaneco to answer back. Velazquez, on the other side, reportedly speaks to no one in the language. Their obstinate silence appears to stem less from true acrimony than from a general disinterest in each other. The pair just don’t have much in common, according to Daniel Suslak, a linguistic anthropologist who is contributing to drafting the first dictionary of the language. Interest in the silent pair of neighbours is also coming from Mexico’s National Indigenous Language Institute, which is planning to hold language classes with the two men.

'This option is the most expensive'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 11:32 AM - 51 Comments

A 2002 government report discouraged against the approach now favoured by the Conservative side.

The report compared a targeted approach — consisting of various tools, such as regulations, incentives and agreements — to a system that sets caps on industrial pollution and creates a market in which polluters would pay by buying credits from those that reduce emissions … The discussion paper suggested that the approach adopted by the Conservative party would be the worst possible solution for the economy and the environment.

“This approach requires many initiatives, likely by three different orders of government, with the associated administrative costs,” said the report. “And because it does not use market forces to find the lowest-cost emissions reduction opportunities, it is inevitably a higher-cost approach than those based on emissions trading. . . . This option likely also provides the least certainty for meeting a target.”

Patient, help thyself

By Ken MacQueen - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 17 Comments

Andrew Vaughan/CP

On April 27, Maclean’s hosts “Health Care in Canada: Time to Rebuild Medicare,” a town hall discussion at the Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel in Vancouver. The public forum is held in conjunction with the Canadian Medical Association and broadcast by CPAC.

Numerous polls put health care as the top priority in the federal election campaign, yet until recent days there was little debate about the failures of a health system that is a middling performer among most wealthy nations in its scope, cost and outcomes.

There’s an alarming lack of new ideas among national leaders on ways to either help provinces improve delivery of public health services or to rein in what a new report by the C.D. Howe Institute calls “chronic health care spending disease.”

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Keith Olbermann's New Show is Named Like Itself

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 11:27 AM - 2 Comments

Former MSNBC pundit Keith Olbermann has announced the name of his new show on Al Gore’s Current TV channel, and somewhat surprisingly, it’s exactly the same as the name of his old show – Countdown With Keith Olbermann will from now on be known as Countdown With Keith Olbermann. It premieres, or rather re-premieres, June 20.

This is not what you expect to happen; normally the host comes up with a name that is close to his show on the old network, but not identical, since the former network won’t let him use the trademarked name. (This also applies to running bits; even Letterman’s Top 10 List was slightly re-named for CBS.) I can’t find ownership information on Countdown so I don’t know if MSNBC didn’t own the show, or they just didn’t try to stop him from using the title.

[vodpod id=Video.7146561&w=640&h=400&fv=videoId%3D918521927001%26amp%3BplayerID%3D847218437001%26amp%3BplayerKey%3DAQ%7E%7E%2CAAAAvPkseQk%7E%2CnmZoLqNmmHF760Zi7BJA76MkAISK4vzR%26amp%3Bdomain%3Dembed%26amp%3BdynamicStreaming%3Dtrue]

In other news about network-hopping pundits, TV Guide amps up the rumours about Katie Couric possibly jumping ship from CBS to ABC. (Her departure from the CBS Evening News is already official; the only question is what she does next.) It’s another reminder that with Oprah about to leave, everybody’s falling all over themselves to find the next big daytime host that the affiliated stations need to survive.

Outsourcing the boss

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Andrew Tolson

Morgan Solar is a Canadian tech start-up. Its founders are Canadians, a former fibre-optic designer and his brother; its team of engineers and physicists working on a new, cheaper kind of solar panel are mostly drawn from Ontario universities. Its CEO, though, comes from the States.

This combination of Canuck brain power and U.S. top management is not unusual among small enterprises in the science sector. “I know a handful of companies in Canada, high-growth companies in high technology, and a lot of those have brought up CEOs from the States,” says Morgan Solar’s co-founder John Paul Morgan. In the case of his own company, “we were looking all over,” says the 32-year-old engineer and physicist, who used to be CEO himself but felt the need to hand over the reins to a more seasoned manager last year. “It just so happened,” he says, that the best fit was Asif Ansari, a California-based executive.

American bosses are also a popular pick among young enterprises in the biotechnology and health care sectors. “Even if you’re based in Mississauga, Ont., hiring in Boston or New York is an opportunity to get the expertise necessary,” says one person with close knowledge of the medical devices industry who asked to remain anonymous.

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Energy efficiency rules

By Jason Kirby - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Aga Luczakowska/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Procter & Gamble, the consumer products giant behind Tide, Crest toothpaste and Gillette, has told its suppliers to regularly report their energy consumption rates. The thinking is simple: if P&G can drive down its suppliers’ energy costs now, it could enjoy a price advantage over competitors later on if oil prices keep rising.

The program began last year with a survey to P&G’s raw material suppliers and even ad agencies, asking for information on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, according to a story in Fast Company. More than 80 per cent responded, and of them, 94 per cent reported their electricity usage. This year, any company that doesn’t fill in the form won’t be able to do business with P&G.

The company has a big carrot to accompany its sizable stick. Suppliers who lower their energy consumption or offer useful energy efficiency advice get a higher rating, which will translate into a boost in business from P&G.

How much is that fighter jet in the window?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 10:01 AM - 34 Comments

Murray Brewster finds a new estimate for the F-35s.

An estimate by a Pentagon cost-analysis unit projects it will cost $915 billion to keep the U.S. fleet of 2,443 jets flying for 30 years. The document, leaked to Bloomberg in Washington, forecasts a lifetime maintenance bill of roughly $375 million per aircraft.

Alan Williams, a former senior Canadian defence official, says the costs would be comparable for the 65 planes the Conservative government intends to purchase, starting in 2017. Using the Pentagon numbers, the 65 planes would cost more than $24 billion to maintain over 30 years, well above Canadian government estimates.

Know your place

By Jessica Allen and Patricia Treble - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

Tim Graham Royal Photos/Getty Images

Those lucky enough to have one of those gilded and burnished invitations dropped into their mailboxes will soon be off to the most exclusive, most talked-about event of the year—and also the most challenging in terms of etiquette. Wondering what to wear, how to act and talk, is surely costing some their sleep, and adding to the pressure is the knowledge that more than a billion people are likely to follow the day’s events. Luckily, invitees have been given instructions for the day, in the spirit of the Middle Ages when special courtesy books were often distributed at formal banquets reminding diners not to scratch flea bites or pick their noses. This time, of course, the rules are more genteel.

It’s worth mentioning the obvious. First, guests must remember to bring the invitation, plus ID. Security will be incredibly tight. And they must get there early. Really early. Only the great and good arrive in the last hour before Kate Middleton and father start their walk down the aisle.

For the male half of the species, clothing advice is on the invite itself. Women get no such help, but precedence dictates a formal dress or suit. Luckily they’re not being asked to wear evening gowns, as guests were to Sophie Rhys-Jones’s daytime wedding to Prince Edward in 1999. Since this is a religious, as well as royal, event inside an ancient, cold abbey, ixnay on anything too short or skimpy. Yes, royals like their hats and this is a chance to sport a spectacular one—but not too grand, or those in the seats behind won’t see a thing. And women shouldn’t panic if they find themselves wearing something similar to one of the regal frocks. After Margaret Thatcher committed that sin at an event in the ’80s, she called the Queen’s household to ask whether the two women should coordinate colours on future joint outings, only to be told not to worry—Elizabeth II never notices what others are wearing.

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Hard-hitting loans

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

A month into the lockout that has frozen the NFL, cash-strapped football players appear to be attracting a swarm of vulture lenders. The online sports magazine ThePostGame.com reports that with no paycheques rolling in, players are now turning to short-term loans with “obscene terms” to pay bills and existing debts.

Interest rates on these loans range from 18 to 24 per cent, and rise as high as 36 per cent upon default, one source alleged. The lockout, which started on March 11, is the product of disputes between NFL owners and players over a range of issues, including how to divide over $9 billion in annual revenues. Predicting that the disagreements could lead to a months-long standoff, the NFL Players Association advised players to set aside three game cheques from the 2010 season as a lifeline. (The median salary for NFL football players is $770,000.)

That piece of financial good sense, though, was apparently lost on many. Ten per cent of players have already secured predatory loans, and close to half could be signing themselves into the hands of loan shark lenders before Labour Day, around the time the regular season normally begins, the anonymous source said, adding: “They’re going to lose their homes. Their credit is going to be shot.”

A secure status symbol

By Julia Belluz - Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

China Photos/Getty Images

There are some 960,000 millionaires in China, and they have a few favourite ways to display their wealth: Cartier jewelery, Louis Vuitton watches, Giorgio Armani fashions and Bentley automobiles. Now there’s a new status symbol for the richest in the People’s Republic: the private bodyguard. In April, the Public Security Ministry announced it has sanctioned the first bodyguard agency in Zhengzhou, after lifting a ban on security companies who provide such services last year. This legislation was a response to a booming industry that has grown with China’s economic emergence on the global stage, but has operated in a legal grey area until recently. By the end of 2010, the industry was worth an estimated $1.2 billion, and there were more than 3,000 unregulated bodyguard companies. Top-tier guards often work as drivers or caregivers, hold doors open, and dress well. They are mostly female (less imposing that way), and armed with martial arts skills (citizens can’t carry firearms). The price tag? As high as $45,000 per year.