Strategic Review: the answer is, we can't answer

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 7:25 PM - 33 Comments

I had an excellent day giving a speech to the Canadian Club of Kingston and chatting with students at Queen’s University. At 12:20 p.m. this email arrived from an official at Media Relations at the department of Public Works and Government Services Canada. It answers, after a fashion, questions I’ve had for a while about many hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of twice-announced cuts to federal spending.

Here’s the email in its entirety:

Hello Paul,

This information is for you follow-up questions you had last evening.

PWGSC has developed implementation plans for the results of our strategic review. Until we communicate these plans to stakeholders and employees, we are not in a position to provide greater details.

Budget 2011 provides a high-level overview of the strategic review decisions.

Maybe I should translate. Public Works knows what it will stop spending on, but it has not told the people who benefited from those programs (or laboured under the yoke of their inefficiency), nor has the department told, um, itself. So it can’t tell me. Continue…

Weiner faces calls to resign on both sides

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 4:21 PM - 24 Comments

Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner, who was revealed this week to have tweeted lurid photos to several women despite being recently married, is facing calls from both Republicans and fellow Democrats to resign. Weiner tearfully confessed to sending the photos to the women in a press conference on Monday, after denying the photos came from him amid claims his Twitter account was hacked. But he stopped short of saying he would step down, saying he hasn’t broken any laws. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has called a House ethics committee to investigate whether any rules were violated by Weiner. “Lying is unforgivable, public lying about something like this is unforgivable,” said former Democratic Party Chairman Tim Kaine. “He should resign.”

Reuters

Throne speech protest spurs security review

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 4:07 PM - 0 Comments

Following the disruption of last week’s throne speech caused by Brigette DePape , in which the 21-year-old  page stepped onto the floor of the Senate and revealed a cardboard “Stop Harper!” sign, the Senate has announced it will review the page program’s hiring and background check processes. Senators are meeting on Tuesday to discuss the incident’s implications for security and how people are hired to serve as parliamentary pages. “This was clear contempt for the Parliament she had sworn to serve, taking place as it did in the middle of one of the most democratic acts in the world,” Ontario Conservative Senator David Tkachuck told the Toronto Star. “I don’t have to tell you what would have happened if she had something else in her jacket instead of a poster.”

The Toronto Star

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 2:35 PM - 62 Comments

From Peter Milliken’s conversation with John Geddes, the former Speaker suggests a possible punishment for unparliamentary behaviour.

Q: But why not throw out MPs more often when they get out of line?

A: Before I was Speaker, I said one of the problems with this practice of giving the Speaker the power to throw a guy out is that he’s out of the chamber for a day. No rights or privileges suspended. He gets paid. He can fly to Vancouver. He can go to work in his office. He can go to caucus meetings. He can go and have a press conference in the foyer.

Q: What would be a better punishment?

A: My urging years ago, when I was not Speaker, was the guy should be thrown out of the Parliament Buildings, not allowed in for the rest of the day. All travelling privileges suspended and his pay docked for the day. Then the guy would start listening to what the Speaker says. Otherwise, you just make a saint of the person. He can hold a press conference and say, I called the prime minister a liar, or whatever the offence was, and I was right. Blah, blah, blah. He’ll get more media coverage if the Speaker threw him out. It’s not a very effective penalty.

“Provincially-funded bullying”?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 1:22 PM - 19 Comments

Comedian Dawn Whitwell claims her invitation to perform at Toronto’s Bishop Marrocco-Thomas Merton Catholic Secondary yesterday was rescinded after the school board learned she was married to a woman. Whitehall was asked to participate in the anti-homophobia event a month ago, she says, but last week was told not to come. A Toronto Catholic District School Board spokeswoman countered Whitwell’s claim, saying the event was meant to be anti-bullying, not anti-homophobia, that Whitwell was only considered as a possible speaker, and that they were concerned that she might make light of the bullying issue. “The decision was strictly based on the fact that she was a comedienne and they really felt that it wasn’t a good fit,” the spokeswoman told the Globe and Mail. The dustup is just the latest since the Ontario Ministry of Education told Catholic school boards to encourage gay-straight alliances as part of anti-bullying policy: in January, Halton’s Catholic board won international notoriety after it banned gay-straight alliances, and students at a Mississauga high school have been fighting for months to have their own gay-straight alliance recognized. Whitwell told the Globe Catholic schools “can’t move forward,” adding: “My bigger concern is that this amounts to provincially-funded bullying.”

The Globe and Mail

Two new elements added on periodic table

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 12:44 PM - 4 Comments

Two new elements are to appear on the periodic table after a three-year review by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, the governing bodies of both disciplines. The elements are unnamed as of yet, the BBC reports, but they’re both extremely radioactive and exist for less than a second before decaying into lighter atoms. Several labs have claimed to have discovered new chemical elements, but these two are the only one to fulfill criteria for now. They’ve been temporarily named ununquadium and ununhexium.

BBC News

Three astronauts blast off to Space Station

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 12:34 PM - 0 Comments

Three astronauts from Russia, Japan and the U.S. blasted off for the International Space Station on Wednesday in a cramped Russian Soyuz spacecraft, Reuters reports. Sergei Volkov, Satoshi Furukawa and Michael Fossum are to arrive at the orbital station after a two-day trip from the Kazakh steppe where they launched. When they arrive, they’ll be greeted by NASA’s Ron Garan, and Russia’s Andrew Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyayev, who’ve been on the station since April. Volkov will try to grow cucumbers on the station, and Furukawa will be attempting to grow tomatoes.

Reuters

Harper hacked by hash brown

By Jesse Brown - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 12:25 PM - 52 Comments

That title scans, but isn’t really accurate—forgive me. The more precise but less fun headline is:

Conservative Party website and Twitter account hacked, probably by LulzSec. 

On Tuesday, hackers gained access to the CPC’s website, and proved it by posting a silly news update about Stephen Harper choking on a hash brown. Who was behind this “attack”?  CBS is pointing to LulzSec, the same hacker entity that has thoroughly pwned Sony (6 times!), though LulzSec’s culpability is unconfirmed.

Tony Clement and Jack Layton, who rarely find themselves on the same page on any given issue, have found common ground on this one. Both feel very strongly that the prank was not funny.  But they’re wrong—it’s *kinda* funny. Continue…

The Season That Slaughtered the Sitcom

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 12:21 PM - 2 Comments

I was revisiting NewsRadio season 5, and on one of the commentaries, Paul Simms mentioned a season “where NBC had 18 sitcoms. So you can thank them for killing the multi-camera sitcom.” I checked, and discovered the season he was referring to was 1997-8. Though the Wikipedia schedule doesn’t apply to the entire year (NewsRadio was moved from Tuesday to Wednesday at some point, and shows rotated in and out of the Thursday slots), NBC did in fact have 18 sitcom slots that year: Monday through Thursday all had four sitcoms followed by a drama at 10, and there were two other sitcoms on Sunday. Now that’s what I call overkill.

The sense of a sitcom glut was increased by the fact that nearly all these shows were identical: four-camera sitcoms about young, affluent white people living in New York City. This description applied to the good ones (NewsRadio, Seinfeld, Friends) and the bad ones (almost anything airing after Seinfeld or Friends) alike. NBC’s overdose of comedy, combined with the fact that most of the comedies were the same and that the new ones weren’t in the class of Seinfeld/Friends/Frasier, made the network a joke and made it clear that they didn’t have much in reserve to replace Seinfeld. And this was Seinfeld‘s last season.

It was in a way the comedy equivalent of ABC’s decision, a few years later, to do Who Wants to Be A Millionaire every night. In drama, CBS is currently becoming a punchline for a similar reason, since they have the same type of drama on over and over. It’s taken longer for that strategy to become a problem (maybe because dramas are easier to schedule than comedies, which have to be paired off), but the failure of the Criminal Minds spinoff, Laurence Fishburne leaving CSI and the lower-than-expected numbers for Hawaii 5-0 suggest that the network might finally have passed the saturation point.

But back to comedy, 1997-8 also saw the collapse of the family comedy, also because of over-saturation, though of a more specialized type. ABC filled its TGIF lineup with clones of Sabrina, and CBS, which was trying to launch its own family comedy block, unveiled its own magical-person comedy, the legendarily terrible Meego. The CBS lineup never got off the ground; ABC’s TGIF brand was never able to fully recover from having three versions of the same show in one night.

The lesson is a simple and familiar one: TV networks can never resist copying their own successes. It works for a while – after all, NBC reacted to the success of Seinfeld by rolling out Friends and Mad About You. But 18 versions of the same thing is probably too much.

New Speaker sets early tone of civility on the Hill

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 12:18 PM - 1 Comment

Canada’s youngest-ever Speaker in the House of Commons is reportedly making sure MPs follow through on their promise to make Parliament more civil this time around. Andrew Scheer cut off a member of the Conservative caucus Tuesday when he referred to opposition New Democrat Pat Martin as a “fool.” Martin responded by saying that he thinks “the new Speaker just passed his first test.” Scheer’s prompt action occurred during the second question period of the new parliamentary session. Members from all parties in the House of Commons have pledged to uphold political decorum and civility in Parliament.

Winnipeg Free Press

Don't get cocky

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 12:14 PM - 15 Comments

Mark Jarvis manages to take issue with both sides of the Brigette DePape debate.

… the point here is simply that of all the reactions that DePape’s actions have generated, it is unfortunate that greater reflection about what is needed to strengthen Canadian democracy and how best to address these needs have given way to overconfidence in the status quo.

You might remember Mark from previous posts like Three-part reform. The book he cowrote with Peter Aucoin and Lori Turnbull—Democratizing the Constitution: Reforming Responsible Government—is now on sale. You can read the first chapter here.

Iran lifts death sentence for Canadian

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 12:06 PM - 0 Comments

Iran’s Supreme Court decided not to impose a death sentence on a 35-year-old Iranian-born Canadian programmer charged with developing and promoting porn websites. Saeed Malekpour was arrested in October 2008 when he travelled to Iran to visit his sick father. Malekpour’s wife, who lives in Richmond Hill, Ont., told the Guardian newspaper that she is “very pleased that his life is finally saved.” Malekpour is to remain in custody while a judicial review is carried out. His family said Malekpour developed software that was used by a porn site without his knowledge. According to his wife, a campaign by human rights groups played a large role in saving his life.

CBC News

Pro-Gadhafi forces launch fresh attacks on Misrata

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 11:54 AM - 1 Comment

Pro-Gadhafi forces have launched fresh attacks on the rebel-held city of Misrata, shelling it from three sides, according to Libyan rebel spokesperson Hassan al-Misrati who spoke to Reuters on Wednesday. Twelve rebel fighters have been killed and thousands of pro-Gadhafi troops are trying to enter the city, al Misrati said. The attack is the most intense effort by pro-Gadhafi forces to take the city after heavy bombardment waned in mid-May. Meanwhile, NATO has also intensified its bombing campaign in the North African country, announcing in Brussels that “real progress” has been made. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the international community should start preparing for a post-Gadhafi era in Libya.

BBC News

The best new restaurant in Canada

By Jacob Richler - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 2 Comments

Photographs by Simon Hayter

Most people who have met the great chef find David Hawksworth to be a reticent and soft-spoken man, someone apparently most at ease when communicating with produce, knives and heat. But on the evening of May 16, he was ebulliently disposed, flashing smiles left and right, even at a food critic—me—inconsiderate enough to show up for dinner at his long-awaited eponymous new restaurant on its opening night. “Look,” he said, gesturing proudly at the view from the big windows that straddle his entranceway, overlooking busy West Georgia Street and the grand facade of the Vancouver Art Gallery. “We could be in London, Paris or New York.”

Indeed, the setting of the Hawksworth Restaurant in the Rosewood Hotel Georgia—which opened without that prefix in 1927—is exceptional. And taking it in, I remembered that Hawksworth had summed up its top-city calibre almost exactly the same way when he had first showed me the site in the fall of 2008. Back then, both his new restaurant and the reborn Hotel Georgia were expected to open about a year later.

The intervening recession, which slowed the project, also gored our fine-dining scene from coast to coast. Recent ventures from Canada’s top chefs have not made headlines for raising the bar, but for lowering it. In Montreal, Normand Laprise has ventured into the bistro business with Brasserie “T.” Far more alarmingly, in Toronto, Marc Thuet no longer has a restaurant, Jamie Kennedy lost his flagship wine bar, and Susur Lee has had a go at takeout and bar snacks, and now shills for Kraft. Vancouver’s seminal fine-dining restaurant, Lumière, was shuttered in March, and Hawksworth’s former restaurant West has struggled to fill his empty whites since he left in 2008. Hawksworth’s track record there, combined with delays for his new project and the general malaise in the industry, have together made Hawksworth Restaurant the most hotly anticipated Canadian opening of the year.

Continue…

Review: In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terro, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

By Brian Bethune - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 11:05 AM - 0 Comments

In early 1933, William Dodd was an overworked but politically connected history professor looking for a diplomatic sinecure that would allow him time to finish his opus, The Rise and Fall of the Old South. Instead, in July of that year, Dodd—accompanied by his wife, his son and his pretty and not at all sexually inhibited daughter Martha, 24—took up the post of U.S. ambassador to Nazi Germany. Although the Dodds stayed there until 1937, Larson concentrates on their first 12 months, the year in which Hitler transformed from chancellor to unquestioned dictator. Even as Dodd’s alarm about the regime grew, his government remained preoccupied with the Depression, not very concerned about the fate of Jews or Communists, and convinced that Germany’s new criminal rulers couldn’t last long. The State Department lectured Dodd on the importance of good relations, the better to maintain the flow of German Great War reparations to American bondholders. The increasingly despondent envoy never did finish his history book.

Martha, for her part, was at first enamoured of the new Germany and even more so of her enhanced social life. She embarked on an astonishing series of affairs, several simultaneously, with everyone from a French embassy attaché and the chief of the spy network based in the Soviet embassy to Rudolf Diels, the first head of the Gestapo. (Larson calls him “surprisingly honourable,” and with reason—Diels ended up testifying for the Allies at the Nuremberg war crimes trials.)

Larson succeeds brilliantly at keeping his historical characters anchored in the moment, trying to deal with not just a regime becoming more inexplicable and murderous by the day, but with their own disbelief at what was going on. How the Dodds coped, and what that meant to the remainder of their lives—Martha became a Soviet spy—offers a fascinating window into the year when the world began its slow slide into war.

Continue…

Stop heckling, start answering

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 33 Comments

From Question Period yesterday, Stephane Dion attempts to expand everyone’s mind on this matter of civility.

Mr. Speaker, I did not hear an answer to the question of the $127 million being cut in this budget compared to the previous budget. Can the minister answer the question? Common courtesy in this House also means getting answers. It is only natural for the opposition to protest if it does not get an answer. Can he give us an answer regarding the $127 million in cuts to aboriginal housing?

Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan did not provide such an answer. And so it fell to government House leader Peter Van Loan to explain the Conservative side’s policy on ministerial explanation. Continue…

The case for a national drug plan

By Ken MacQueen - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 10:35 AM - 42 Comments

Photographs by Simon Hayter

On June 7, Maclean’s hosts “Health Care in Canada: Time to Rebuild Medicare,” a town hall discussion at the National Gallery of Canada, in Ottawa. The public forum is held in conjunction with the Canadian Medical Association and broadcast by CPAC.

Garrett Shakespeare is 22. He lives in North Vancouver where he supports himself as a lifeguard and swimming instructor at the local recreation centre. Many nights you’ll find him working as “DJ G-Ratt,” spinning electronic music and mixes at Vancouver nightclubs. Shakespeare exists in a world of chronic pain caused by an exceptionally rare and fatal blood disease, paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (PNH), in which his red blood cells are attacked by the body’s immune system. There are, perhaps, 80 or 90 people in Canada similarly afflicted. Without treatment, about one-third of patients die within five years of diagnosis, and half die within 10 years, says the Canadian Association of PNH Patients. Shakespeare was diagnosed 11 years ago. And he is just one example of the many ways in which Canada’s health care system is neither universal, nor equitable, as far as our drug policy is concerned.

What is the life of a guy like Garrett Shakespeare worth? Should he be allowed to live if it costs $10,000 a year? What if $50,000 is the price of his life? How about $500,000? Is Garrett Shakespeare’s life worth $500,000 a year?

Continue…

I fought the lawn, and the lawn won

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 18 Comments

Getty Images; iStock; Photo illustration by Taylor Shute

This column has long dedicated itself to breaking important news, and I’m proud to continue that tradition with my latest shocking exclusive: there are, like, way more dandelions this year.

But it’s not merely their numbers that should alarm us—it’s their size. The ones in our yard are bigger than usual this spring. How much bigger? I’m pretty sure I saw a bunch of elves making cookies in one.

Let me be clear: I’m not trying to set off a nationwide panic—but over the weekend I stooped to yank out a particularly robust dandelion and it tried to reason with me. I ended up leaving it in place, where it has since acquired advanced motor skills and a hunger for human flesh.

Continue…

Review: Those Guys Have All The Fun: Inside The World of ESPN

By John Intini - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

In 1969, Gay Talese turned his razor-sharp eye on the New York Times and produced The Kingdom and the Power, a terrifically detailed, drama-filled portrait of “The Grey Lady.” Now, more than 40 years later, comes the profile of another media heavyweight, ESPN, and while it’s short on the fly-on-the-wall narrative that made Talese a legend, Those Guys Have All The Fun, at 745 door-stopping pages—enough space to cram 550 interviews worth of gossip and navel-gazing—is no less exhaustive. Everyone, it seems, answered the phone when Miller and Shales called. Even ESPN’s all-time biggest egos, namely Bill Simmons, Keith Olbermann and Chris Berman, came out to play.

The authors provide brief italicized intros and let the key players—anchors, executives, athletes, producers, cameramen, even Barack Obama—tell the story of the “sex-crazed frat house in the middle of nowhere” (ESPN is based in Bristol, Conn.). The format pulls readers quickly through the 30-year history of the network: from a $9,000 investment in 1978—on a credit card, no less—to a global behemoth that airs in 200 countries and in 16 languages.

In some ways, this is a business book more than anything else. But there’s plenty about office sexcapades—“adultery was practically an indoor sport”—feuds, and, most damning of all, the sexual harassment rampant in ESPN’s early days. One former CEO even recalls a time in the 1980s when secretaries were literally being pimped out by guys in the mailroom. Fans, of course, will enjoy it for the behind-the-scenes look at the often wild world of sports from those who really did have a front-row seat. And while some sections of this lengthy book drag, the highlights more than make up for it.

Continue…

The right to remain silent

By Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 14 Comments

Siede Preis/Getty Images

Richard Foo Ma was sitting behind the wheel of his Mercedes, the clock on the dashboard approaching 1:20 a.m., when a black Lexus pulled up beside him in the parking lot of a popular Edmonton nightclub. Even if he had spotted the ambush, there was no time to react. A flurry of bullets shattered Ma’s windshield and left him for dead, blood leaking from his brain.

Amazingly, the 22-year-old survived the gangland-style shooting. (“A miraculous recovery,” as one detective later wrote.) But when he was finally well enough to speak to police—to help investigators figure out who may have tried to assassinate him on that Wednesday morning in October 2009—Ma shooed them away from the hospital. He told the cops “not to bother him anymore” because “he just wanted to live his life,” and that he had no intention of ever testifying in court.

Ma did end up in a courtroom, but not to face the gunman (who, to this day, remains at large). Instead, he is fighting for financial compensation from an Alberta fund that, like many across the country, provides lump sum payments to victims of crime. At the heart of his case is a controversial question: should a victim who refuses to co-operate with police still be entitled to a cheque?

Continue…

The French are coming

By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Mathieu Lam was 23 when he decided to leave his home country of France in 2005 to work and travel in Canada. He was interested in the country’s reputation for natural beauty and its relatively high standard of living. Plus, he felt his prospects for employment at home were dismal.

Now, six years later, Lam is a permanent Canadian resident who runs a software development company in Toronto. He also operates a website called Programme Vacances Travail, which helps French youth who, like him, want to live and work abroad. “Canada has always been a country that attracted me,” he says in French, describing why he chose to come to Canada.

Lam’s not alone. Over the past decade, the number of French people coming to Canada has risen significantly. Permanent residents admitted from France jumped from 4,345 in 2000 to 6,930 in 2010. The increase in temporary workers is even more dramatic. In 2000, 5,932 temporary foreign workers entered Canada from France. By 2010, that number had risen to more than 17,000.

Continue…

'We are taking this incident very seriously'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 8:44 AM - 134 Comments

Senator David Tkachuk, chair of the Senate standing committee on internal economy, budgets and administration, rose in the Senate yesterday to offer his colleagues the following update on the rogue page situation.

Honourable Senators, all of you will be familiar with the following: I do swear that I will be faithful and bear True allegiance to Her Majesty The Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors. So help me God.

That is the oath of a Senate Page.

A regrettable incident took place on Friday during the Throne Speech. A Senate Page, Brigitte DePape, chose to disrupt proceedings.

She broke her oath to the Queen and her signed contract with Parliament not to behave in a way that brings her impartiality into question.

Continue…

A newbie mentor and Frum’s rainbow

By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 1 Comment

Photographs by Mitchel Raphael

Martha was supposed to do the party

When MP Peter Stoffer entered the NDP’s first post-election caucus meeting, he thought he was in the wrong room. The supersized NDP means there is no longer enough space for tables. “I have no place to put my coffee,” the Nova Scotia MP jokes. Stoffer may find he’s squeezed for space in other places, too. He has always liked to sit in the back row in the House, “seat 308” as he calls it. But he thinks Leader Jack Layton will want him to sit on the front bench (which he would happily do if asked). The good thing about sitting in the back was, “I got a much better view of everything and you get more legroom because the curtains are behind you.”

For the sake of a larger caucus, though, Stoffer is willing to adapt. Aside from landing official Opposition status, there are other benefits to more people in caucus. One is more soccer players. Stoffer is the MP who organizes soccer games between MPs and other groups, including the pages, the media and diplomatic corps. He says he has found at least two new players (one is even a soccer coach) and that the new young people in the party will also be a huge advantage. Quips Stoffer: “Now we have people who can run and breathe at the same time.”

Continue…

Pauline Marois and the Parti Québécois have a very bad day

By Philippe Gohier - Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at 6:55 PM - 6 Comments

It’s hard to feel much sympathy for PQ leader Pauline Marois. It was an absolutely terrible idea for the PQ to support bill 204, which would immunize Quebecor’s arena rental deal with Quebec City from being tested before the province’s courts. It was an even worse idea for her to be petty and belligerent about it. The word ‘comeuppance’ keeps coming to mind.

At the same time, the PQ’s plight has become so pathetic as to be pitiable. Marois, you’ll recall, was already looking for ways to patch her battered caucus this morning after three party super-heavyweights—Louise Beaudoin, Pierre Curzi, and Lisette Lapointe—bolted yesterday. But that’s when Jean-Martin Aussant abruptly quit, giving the impression a full-blown mutiny was underway. In fact, Marois’s downfall is exactly what Aussant had in mind, telling reporters the PQ leader should resign.

Jean Charest drove in the final stake this afternoon when he announced the vote on bill 204 would be postponed until the fall. All that infighting inside the PQ, all that strategizing about how to win a vote that was threatening to derail Marois’s political career? Useless—all of it. Continue…