Feds pay out G8, G20 compensation

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

Businesses that were affected by last summer’s G8 and G20 summits will receive nearly $2 million in compensation from the federal government. The majority of the cash will go to those affected by the G20 summit in Toronto, during which violent protests and a security perimeter essentially shut down the city’s downtown core.  The remaining $67,256 in claims will go to businesses affected by the G8 in Huntsville, north of Toronto. However, the government still has to assess 72 more claims out of the 411 it received. Government officials won’t reveal whose applications have been approved, and say information about which businesses will be compensated will be released when the Public Accounts are published, likely in the fall.

iPolitics

Pakistan arrests 'CIA informants’ who helped bin Laden raid

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 12:58 PM - 0 Comments

Pakistan’s intelligence agency has arrested five alleged CIA informants who helped execute the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, according to media reports from the U.S. The New York Times reported that the owner of the safe house rented by the CIA to spy on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad was among those arrested. While Pakistan denied the reports, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s Inter Services Public Relations told the BBC that people had been arrested for interrogation. Among those targeted were people suspected of throwing flares into bin Laden’s compound to guide approaching U.S. helicopters on the night of the raid, as well as those who allegedly helped the helicopters refuel in Pakistani territory. Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan have been strained since the operation was carried out in May. There has been speculation that high-level Pakistani authorities were aware of bin Laden’s presence in the country.

BBC News

Mission accomplished?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 12:32 PM - 2 Comments

The governor of Kandahar questions Stephen Harper’s contention that “Afghanistan is no longer a threat to the world.”

“Maybe…Mr. Harper is an optimistic man, and I am also an optimistic man, but we shouldn’t be that confident, because the Afghan situation is pretty delicate,” Tooryalai Wesa told Embassy in an interview in Montreal during the Internal Economic Forum of the Americas on June 8. ”I don’t know him closely, but this is—from my perspective—a bit of an optimistic statement at this time of Afghanistan’s situation.”

A world of 10 billion

By Charlie Gillis and Kate Lunau. - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 10 Comments

For the world, as for his family, the birth of Adnan Nevic was cause for celebration. No less an eminence than the secretary-general of the United Nations attended his arrival, posing with the swaddled child as camera strobes lit a maternity room in central Sarajevo. He was born four minutes past midnight on October 12, 1999, and Kofi Annan had made his way to the hospital like a wise man following a star. There were 5.999999999 billion people on the face of the planet, depending on whose “population clock” you went by. The time had come to designate a six billionth.

The challenges that lay before this infant reflected those of human populations around the globe. His parents, Jasmin and Fatima, were poor. The family lived cheek by jowl in a bleak apartment. His father needed work. Ethnic conflict remained a dormant but ever-present threat to their country. The UN chief offered words of hope, saying this “beautiful boy in a city returning to life should light a path of tolerance and understanding for all people.” But a long and happy life? For that, Adnan Nevic would need a few breaks.

Today, as demographers look ahead to a 10-billion-strong global population, the future of No. 6,000,000,000 is no less clouded. By day, he is an apple-cheeked sixth-grader who loves dogs and cheers on the fabled Spanish soccer team, Real Madrid. At night, he watches over a father stricken by bowel cancer, and sleeps in the same bedroom as his parents in their two-room flat in Visoko, a run-down town 28 km outside Sarajevo. Adnan’s plight could never really stand in for that of all humanity. But it does, to borrow the UN boss’s trope, illuminate the road we will travel over the course of his life.

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Music: Have Not Been The Same, even now

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 11:01 AM - 19 Comments

You get used to running into authors on the Maclean’s staff. Weekly deadlines and and an elevated ambient level of intellectual pretension ambition have built up a hefty staff library. Michael Friscolanti, Michael Petrou, Anne Kingston, colleagues Feschuk and Potter, and many more have put paper between covers. Geddes wrote a lovely novel. Even the boss finally finished his Hearst book.

But one of the most pleasant and unexpected surprises came a couple of years ago when I was chatting with Michael Barclay, an editor who often pauses from more vital chores to do a second read of my column on Tuesday nights to check for egregious errors. Barclay revealed that he’s an author, with Ian A.D. Jack and Jason Schneider, of Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995. Since that extraordinary book has now been revised, updated and re-released in a tenth-anniversary edition, I thought I’d tell you about it. Continue…

The dissenting Ms. May

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 10:46 AM - 60 Comments

A day after denying unanimous consent to move along a crime bill, Elizabeth May becomes the lone dissenting vote on the motion to extend Canada’s involvement in the Libya mission.

In my case, on behalf of the Green Party and my constituents of Saanich—Gulf Islands, I must say no, but I see we have a role as peacekeepers. I believe passionately that we return to our role as peacekeepers as a nation that is so well known around the world for peacekeeping. We have a role within NATO to be the nation that stands and says, enough of the aerial bombardment, now is the time to send in the diplomats. Let us work with colleagues who have some chance of reaching the illegitimate government of Mr. Gadhafi. Let us work with colleagues in the African Union, the Arab League and the United Nations, and be the country that says we do not continue to give a blank cheque to a mission that has no exit strategy.

The House of Mutual Appreciation

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 9:54 AM - 14 Comments

Ruth-Ellen Brosseau rose yesterday to ask her first question of the government. When she stood she was treated to a standing ovation from the NDP side and applause from various members of the Conservative side.

After stating her question—in French, mind you—she was treated to another standing ovation from the NDP and more applause from various members of the Conservative side.

Geoffrey Ernest Yellow

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments

Illustration by Team Macho

Geoffrey Ernest Yellow was born in Hamilton on Nov. 16, 1955, the first son of Ernie and Frances Yellow (née Tait). His father, an Englishman who moved to Canada after the Second World War, was a millworker at Stelco; his mother, originally from Scotland, worked as a newsroom secretary at the Hamilton Spectator before leaving to raise her children. (John was born next, then Mary.)

Like so many toddlers, Geoff adored the television show Romper Room, which featured “Ms. Lois” reading to groups of children and peering into her magic mirror. “He wanted to be on that show so badly, so I wrote in,” Frances remembers. “Sure enough, we got the call.” The program was taped at a downtown Hamilton studio, but because the Yellows didn’t own a car, Geoff’s dream-come-true required some early morning bus rides. “He thought it was wonderful,” Frances says. “He got to be a TV star for two weeks.”

When Geoff was 11, the family moved to Grimsby, a small town on the tip of Niagara’s wine region. He taught his little brother to fish in Forty Creek and skate without holding on to a chair. When they were teenagers, he took John to his first rock concert: Alice Cooper. “He was three years older, but he never minded me tagging along,” John says. Once, during a visit to the Canadian National Exhibition, Geoff won a giant stuffed giraffe. “People offered him money for it,” says Mary Dancer, his little sister. “But he came home and gave it straight to me. I am in my 40s now, and I still have that darn giraffe.”

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The good news about B.C. prawns

By Jacob Richler - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 9:30 AM - 1 Comment

Photography by Simon Hayter; Getty Images

What with the spring runoff in late May, the surface waters outside of Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay turn distinctly brackish, a toxic mix for the spot prawns that lurk below. So, on a recent prawn hunting expedition aboard Organic Ocean One, the first stop of the crisp, spring morning was for harvesting purer seawater, sucked up from 10 m below, where it is irreproachably salty and hideously cold. “About 4˚ C,” explains Frank Keitsch, a cigarette dangling from his lip as he lowered the vacuum pipe into the insalubrious depths. “That’s what prawns are happy in.”

That, and hollandaise sauce, and lemon-caper aioli, and even—freshly shelled and still wriggling some—in a little ponzu, I thought to myself, waiting impatiently for the holding tanks to fill so that we could get on with things. Ducking under a low door frame adorned with a bumper sticker that reads “Friends don’t let friends eat farmed fish,” I entered the cabin to check on Steve Johansen, Keitsch’s partner in this fishing operation, and the unofficial spokesperson for the spot prawn fishery at large, who was working his cellphone.

Over his shoulder, I could see he was making last-minute adjustments to the orders on his list, which was scrawled by hand on a sheet of foolscap. It read like a who’s who of the Vancouver restaurant scene. The celebrated sushi bar Tojo’s was down for 4.5 kg of Johansen’s daily catch—same as the Blue Water Cafe, the Raincity Grill, Bishop’s and Cioppino’s. Eclipsing them all, Coast, on Alberni Street, had a request in for 18 kg. West was in for a mere two kilograms, while Robert Clark’s sustainable seafood C Restaurant had just downgraded an earlier order for 11 kg down to nine.

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What are Canadians thinking?

By Emma Teitel - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 9:25 AM - 2 Comments

Atlantic Canada: Fifteen per cent of East Coasters claim that their hairdressers know more about them than their spouses. That’s tops in the country. The national average is 10 per cent.

Quebec: With just 51 per cent backing the Canucks during the Stanley Cup final against Boston—the team that knocked Montreal out in the first round—Quebecers are the least supportive in Canada. Meanwhile, 63 per cent in Ontario and 66 per cent of those on the Prairies were bleeding blue and green.

Ontario: Sixty-three per cent of Ontarians would like all films featuring smoking to receive an 18A rating—a mandate that would permit teens to have consensual sex and operate a motor vehicle before they are allowed to watch Pinocchio. Other films potentially implicated include Snow White, Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire and Alice in Wonderland.

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Sowing seeds from the sky

By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 9:15 AM - 0 Comments

If you’re a canola farmer on Manitoba’s flood-ravaged prairie, what do you do when you can’t plant your seeds because your fields are too wet for your tractor? John Gibson and his team at Provincial Helicopters, Ltd., have a solution: hire one of their helicopters to do it for you. “The farmers are really having a hard time of it,” says Gibson, president and chief pilot of the company based in Lac du Bonnet, Man. “Getting the seed on the ground, even if it is wet, is a high priority right now.”

Rob Pettinger, president of the Manitoba Canola Growers Association, says this is one of the wettest seasons he’s ever seen. In some regions, he expects canola to produce just 10 per cent of its normal yield. But Gibson says the rain-soaked fields, while a problem for tractors, are just wet enough for the seeds they drop from their helicopters to land without being damaged. He and his team have already planted seeds for three farmers this season, and they have received interest from at least 15 more.

When hired, Gibson’s team mounts a seeding system to a helicopter. In the back, a hopper is filled with thousands of canola seeds. The seeds are then dropped into a large circular dispenser that hangs like a wheel beneath the helicopter. As the aircraft flies back and forth at about 30 feet above the ground, the wheel spins, spitting out seeds.

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Where have Georgia's immigrant workers gone?

By Stephanie Findlay - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 15 Comments

Karen Kasmauski/Science Faction/Corbis

Following in the controversial footsteps of Arizona’s lawmakers, the ruling Republican party in Georgia introduced beefed-up immigrant legislation earlier this spring. The bill, HB 87, empowers police to question the immigration status of criminal suspects and demands business owners use E-Verify, a federal database, to check a prospective employee’s immigration status. HB 87 will take effect July 1. But, just as in Arizona, a class-action lawsuit was filed against the legislation: last week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), along with several rights organizations and individuals, challenged the law in federal district court. “This legislation turns Georgia into a police state,” says Azadeh Shahshahani of the Georgia chapter of the ACLU. Even Carlos Santana weighed in on the national debate: “The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” said Santana earlier this month at Major League Baseball’s annual civil rights game.

Along with opposition from civil rights groups, leaders of the agricultural industry—one of Georgia’s largest—are protesting the bill. Charles Hall, executive director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, says migrant workers have “heard horror stories of people being harassed, being deported, being stopped at a licence check.” As a result, says Hall, farm workers are bypassing Georgia, causing a massive labour shortage in the state and sending the $1.1-billion industry into a tailspin. Hall reports farmers are experiencing labour shortages of up to 50 per cent, and estimates that a quarter of Georgia’s crops will go unharvested—representing some $300 million in lost revenue.

Although Georgia’s unemployment rate sits at 9.9 per cent, Hall says hiring domestic workers isn’t an option. “If we could get domestic workers to do our field work, we would,” he says, “but they’re not available.” Domestic workers might work in the cooler packing houses, but not in the fields. “It’s back-breaking work,” says Hall.

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A learning experience

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 8:44 AM - 5 Comments

From his scrum with reporters yesterday, Tony Clement looks on the bright side.

Reporter: Didn’t you know that you needed paperwork on your handing out government money?

Clement: Well, we knew that we had to make sure that every penny was documented, and in fact, that was the case. The fact of the matter is each project had to be–had to be subject to a contribution agreement so that the partners and the municipalities would account for every penny and indeed the auditor-general–the good news for the taxpayers is the auditor-general was quite clear that no money was misappropriated nor was–nor did we have a situation where money was unaccounted for. So that’s the good news for the taxpayers but I think we–we have something to learn from that report, just like every report that she does is a learning experience.

The Commons: Getting the words right

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 7:37 PM - 27 Comments

So the House is almost entirely agreed. Colonel Gadhafi of Libya is an undesirable despot, guilty, it would seem, of various abuses and disgraces, likely up to and including crimes against humanity and thus, through some combination of diplomacy, humanitarian aid and bombs, he must be prevented from doing any further harm to the people of Libya, they who should be allowed to proceed soon enough to freedom and democracy.

Now, if only the House could agree on how best to describe the process by which this general notion might be made real.

“Our strategy is clear,” John Baird proclaimed this morning. “By applying steady and unrelenting military and diplomatic pressure while also delivering humanitarian assistance we can protect the civilian population, degrade the capabilities of the regime and create the conditions for a genuine political opening. At the same time we can bolster the capacity of the Libyan opposition to meet the challenges of post-Gadhafi Libya and to lay the foundations of a state based on the sovereignty of the people.”

On this, the Foreign Affairs Minister asked the House of Commons to endorse a three-and-a-half-month extension of Canada’s involvement in the NATO mission over and around Libya. And it was on the occasion of this request that Jack Harris, the NDP’s shadow defence minister, stood a short while later to wonder if we might call this “regime change.” Continue…

'Like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 5:33 PM - 15 Comments

If Tony Clement won’t stand to take his questions, Charlie Angus seems determined to shame him for it. This from QP today.

Charlie Angus: Mr. Speaker, the President of the Treasury Board seems incapable of standing up in this House and explaining his $50 million pork spree in Muskoka. It is so bad that he has friend, the foreign affairs minister claiming that the Muskoka gravy train was developed by public servants. It is simply not true. The Auditor General’s report is clear, and I will quote: ‘Senior officials said their input was never sought.’ This deal was cooked up by the member from Muskoka. Public servants were deliberately frozen out. When will this minister take responsibility for his abuse of public trust?

John Baird: Mr. Speaker, just because the member opposite says something does not mean it is true. Here is what we did. We supported investments to help Canada host the G8 with infrastructure, resurfacing the runway of an airport, resurfacing a provincial highway, and building the G8 centre which is now a community centre. Each of those projects was approved by the minister of infrastructure of the day. Each of those projects came in fully on budget. For each of those projects, there is a full contribution agreement that was negotiated with the municipality. These are all good projects. The Auditor General has given some advice on better transparency and better clarify, and we fully accepted that counsel.

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This episode really existed

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 5:06 PM - 5 Comments

If it’s possible for a television episode to become an urban legend, then this episode of the cheesy sitcom Too Close For Comfort is one of TV’s great urban legends. The show was an adaptation of a Brian Cooke sitcom, greenlit after the US adaptation of Man About the House (Three’s Company) became so big. When ABC canceled it, it became one of the first US sitcoms to produce episodes directly for syndication, and it was for syndication that the episode “For Every Man, There’s Too Women” was produced. It definitely aired, and people remembered seeing it, but there were rumours that it was “banned,” and it’s possible it was pulled from some of the daily syndicated runs.

The episode was about Monroe (Jim Jay Bullock) getting raped by two women. And though it seemed to be sort of trying to be a serious issue episode, it was really more of a cheesy, wacky, cheaply produced sitcom episode with the creepy empty-room, soap-opera style of shooting, and what mostly sounds like a laugh track rather than an audience. In other words, a typical ’80s syndicated sitcom episode that doesn’t realize it’s insane. (It wasn’t like the Diff’rent Strokes child molester episode, whose combination of Very Special lessons and tasteless comedy was clearly intentional; this episode doesn’t seem to have any idea of what it’s doing.) The combination of subject and execution made the whole thing extremely weird, even by the standards of the ’80s syndicated sitcom that gave us robot girls in French maid outfits and Scott Baio working as a nanny in the same house for two completely different families.

Anyway, a few years ago, over twenty years after the thing aired, there was a minor meme online about whether the episode existed, with people vaguely remembering that they saw the episode but not quite sure any real episode could possibly fit that description. Finally some U.S. channel reran it a week or so ago, and someone uploaded it to YouTube in two parts. So here it is. The credited writer, Bill Davenport, was a veteran whose regular gigs included All in the Family, Maude, Hogan’s Heroes and Ozzie and Harriet. I don’t know much about him but I’d be inclined to guess this wasn’t his personal favourite script.

Part two, in which we meet the two women of the title, one of whom appears to be a man in drag.
Continue…

Famous Catholic theologian calls for end to papal absolutism

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 4:00 PM - 12 Comments

Influential theologian Fr. Hans Kung is calling on Catholics to reject the long-held notion of the absolutism of papal power. In a video message to a meeting of the American Catholic Council, Kung lamented that “few people realize how powerful the pope is,” comparing the Pontiff’s authority to that of the monarchs in pre-revolutionary France. “We have to change an absolutist system without the French Revolution,” he said. Giving in to the Church hierarchy, Kung argues, would doom the institution to irrelevance. “The world is moving on, going ahead, with or without the church,” he said.  “I believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is stronger than the hierarchy.” Kung is widely recognized as one of the chief architects of the Second Vatican Council.

National Catholic Reporter

Canada officially recognizes Libyan rebels

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 3:26 PM - 1 Comment

The federal government is casting its lot with the rebels in Libya. Canada declared on Tuesday it was officially recognizing the National Transitional Council of Libya as the legitimate representative of Libyan citizens. The announcement by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird came ahead of a debate in the House of Commons over the extension of Canada’s participation in a NATO-led military mission in Libya. The NDP has proposed amendments to the government motion to continue the mission, including an increase in humanitarian aid, a focus on preventing and prosecuting rape as a tool of war, and a pledge to keep troops off the ground.

CBC News

GOP presidential hopefuls duke it out in CNN debate

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 2:39 PM - 0 Comments

Seven Republican presidential contenders gathered to debate in New Hampshire on Monday night, spending much of their time attacking President Barack Obama. Although the campaigns of Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum declared victory, a survey of GOP insiders found former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was the biggest winner. According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released before the debate, Romney is the choice of 24 per cent of Republicans, with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin coming in second at 20 per cent, followed by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Palin and Giuliani have not announced they will join the race.

CNN

Feed the rich

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 2:33 PM - 23 Comments

Rhys Kesselman considers two of the Conservative government’s promised tax reforms.

Once the federal budget is balanced, the Conservatives plan to double the TFSA’s annual allowance to $10,000 and to permit income splitting for couples with children under 18. These are costly schemes, each running ultimately to billions a year.

While these proposals may appear to have wide appeal, most Canadians would gain nothing from them. The tax savings would flow disproportionately to the highest earners. Moreover, the ostensible goals of these proposals would be much better achieved by major changes to their structures.

Another straight blogger outed

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 2:15 PM - 1 Comment

An editor of a lesbian blog that published posts from a blogger pretending to be a gay woman in Syria has also come out as a straight man. Bill Graber, a 58-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran, wrote under the name Paula Brooks at LezGetReal for three years before he was outed. He says he felt he wouldn’t be taken seriously as a straight man when he set up the blog, so he took on a false identity. Graber posted comments from “Amina Arraf,” (actually 40-year-old University of Edinburgh student Tom MacMaster), who ran the blog A Gay Girl in Damascus, revealed to be a hoax earlier this week.

BBC News

Hundreds of police raid Mohawk community

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 1:16 PM - 1 Comment

Hundreds of police officers were dispatched to the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, Quebec in a drug trafficking and organized crime raid on Tuesday morning, the CBC reports. About 500 police officers from the RCMP and the Sûreté du Québec are taking part in the operation.  Raids are also being carried out in First Nations communities in neighbouring Akwesasne and Oka, though the number of people who have been arrested so far is not clear. Police are expected to release more details soon at a news conference in Oka.

CBC News

Maple Group officially enters TMX takeover fray

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 12:48 PM - 0 Comments

Maple Group Acquisition Corp. has launched an aggressive bid to prevent the London Stock Exchange Group PLC’s proposed purchase of TMX Group and to acquire it for itself. The consortium, led by four of Canada’s largest banks, kicked off its bid for the TMX by mailing its offer to TMX shareholders. It also simultaneously launched an effort to convince TMX shareholders to vote against the LSE takeover deal, calling TMX “a great Canadian success story.” In the offer, Maple Group said they will ensure the TMX remains headquartered in Canada, while alleging that an LSE takeover would negatively affect Canada’s standing as an international financial centre.  TMX shareholders will vote on whether to accept the proposed LSE takeover on June 30. There is speculation that the federal government may step in to prevent the foreign takeover, as they did last year when Ottawa blocked BHP Billiton’s bid for Saskatchewan’s Potash Corp.

The Globe and Mail

On patrol with Canadian troops in Afghanistan

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 4 Comments